Greetings from your Discernment Committee Chair!

If you’ve been in church the last couple of Sundays, you may have noticed that our “Rose Window” display (which symbolizes where we are in the discernment process) is slowly being completed, and stage three was recently filled in. On April 14, 2012, the Discernment Committee met with the Rev. Canon Joanna Satorius and she presented us with the list of candidates who would like to move into the next step of the process with us to be considered for our next rector. We have fourteen candidates, from all over the United States. Our candidates are an impressive bunch, with varied experiences
and backgrounds.

The week after we received the list, each candidate was mailed a packet with additional information about our parish and about the community, along with a list of questions the Discernment Committee had compiled. The candidates have been asked to provide the answers to those questions and some other materials. Once the candidate materials have been received, which we anticipate to be around June 1, each member of the Discernment Committee will be provided with a notebook with all of the information about each candidate. On July 7, the Committee will meet to discuss which of the fourteen candidates should move to the next step to be interviewed by the Committee, either in person or by Skype videoconferencing.

After these interviews, some candidates may also be visited at their home parishes by members of the Discernment Committee, so that there is a chance to see the candidates in their own current parishes. Ultimately, after this process and lots of prayer, the Discernment Committee will pass three names on to the Messiah vestry. The vestry will then decide who will be the next parish rector.

You may wonder why we don’t share the names of the candidates, or other information about them, with the parish. The Discernment Committee has promised confidentiality to the candidates, and we have also committed to one another to keep that promise. Many of the candidates are currently priests in other parishes, the members of which may not know that their priest is considering a call to Messiah. It would not be helpful to a candidate’s current relationship with his or her parish to disclose that in an untimely manner. The Episcopal Church is a very small world, and it is possible that members of our parish may know members of a parish where one of our candidates is currently serving. Therefore, the only persons who know all the names of the list are the members of the Committee, and we have agreed to not share details about the candidates. Even the vestry does not know the names, and ultimately they will only know the three final names which are passed on by the Discernment Committee. Please help us keep our commitment of confidentiality by understanding that we can only share certain information with the parish at large—mostly about the process, rather than details about the candidates. Feel free to ask questions about that process, but please know that we are not going to divulge specific information regarding the candidates.

Now, more than ever, we need your prayers. Continue to pray for our parish, for the Discernment Committee and for the potential candidates. With your prayers, we know that the next rector of Messiah parish will lead us in the direction God has chosen.

Nancy Whitehead

Messiah Family Beach Bonfire

Join us on June 23rd at Corona Del Mar for fun at the beach. Bring your frisbees, kites, a side dish to share and your own non-alcoholic drinks. We will provide hotdogs and marshmallows to roast. Feel free to come at any time, but the roasting will begin at 6 pm. A pay lot is at the corner of Iris and Ocean Blvd., or there is street parking on the bluff. Check Facebook on the 23rd for exact location or call Stephanie Miller at 714-478-6799 (no texts).

Family Film Night and Potluck

The next movie night will be on May 26th at 6 pm.

We will be showing My Neighbor Totoro, a film by Studio Ghibli, who also made Ponyo and The Secret of Arriety. We invite people to bring food for a pot luck dinner and will meet in the Upper room.

Inquirer’s Class

Led by Fr. Mark Stuart
to Begin June 17th at 9:00am

If you are new to the Episcopal Church and interested in joining Messiah Parish we highly recommend that you enroll in the Inquirer’s Class which will continue for 6 months. Through this in-depth study and discussion we will explore basic Christian belief with an emphasis on Anglican expression of the historic faith. If interested, we ask that you please make an appointment with Fr. Mark prior as we need a count of attendees to order the study book.

Celebrate 12 Years of Ministry!

Bilingual Eucharist and Party on the Patio

to celebrate the 12 years of ministry at Messiah of

the Reverend Carolyn Estrada.

Sunday, June 10,

beginning at 10:15 AM

May 13, 2012 - Father Mark D. Stuart

This coming Thursday the Church will celebrate a feast that has sadly become forgotten and rarely observed; namely the Ascension.

This the Gospel reading from St. Luke which tells the story:

Jesus said to his disciples, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

When I was a youngster in Sunday School, I remember clearly for some reason one of our projects was to put together a little cut-out Jesus on some clouds and attach Him to a popsicle stick; then on a blue sky background we pasted cotton balls as more clouds. At will we could make our Lord ascend to heaven over and over again as a circa 1950’s interactive version of the Ascension event. That’s more than most people ever relate to the Ascension.

It is not the best known of the feast days on the Christian calendar, but it is one that takes on increasing depth and importance the more you think about it and experience it. The first thing to get clear about the Ascension is that it is about God. It is not about gravity, or magic tricks, or the location of heaven, or anything else of that matter. It is about God.

Even though it comes toward the end of Eastertide, the Ascension is most closely related in meaning to Christmas. What I mean by that is at Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation: God becoming flesh and living as one of us. The divine became human. What we can say is that what was begun at Christmas is brought full circle, and proclaimed again in a different way at Ascension. At the Incarnation (Christmas) what it means to be God became fully a part of what it means to be a human being. In Jesus the human and the divine become united in the person and life of one man. At the Ascension this human being – the person and the resurrected body of Jesus – became for all eternity a part of who God is. In other words, the life of a specific human being is forever joined to the life of God, the One Who created the heavens and the earth.

Even though there were just a few witnesses to the Ascension event, it had great implications for the future of the entire Church throughout all time. The great paradox of the Ascension is that by removing Himself from the world, Jesus would no longer be confined to a single place or a single moment, but He would be alive in the Spirit to all people for all time. It is important to remember that it was not the spirit of Jesus, or the essence of Jesus, or the divine nature of Jesus, or the invisible part of Jesus, or the idea of Jesus that ascended to the Father. It was the resurrected body of Jesus: a body the disciples had touched; a body that eat and drank with them; a real physical, but gloriously restored body, bearing the marks of nails and a spear. This is what ascended. This is what, now and forever, is a living, participating part of God.

It is critical to our faith to think about what that says about being human. Sometimes we who are involved in the life of the church are uncertain about the value of our humanity. We have a reputation (sometimes deserved) for being uncomfortable or even embarrassed about much that characterizes being human: like the realities of our bodies and the reality of being sensual, sensory beings; the fact that we are finite and limited; the fact of our mortality and certainty of our death; the painful difficulty we have in relationships; the struggles, joys, and setbacks that always seem to be part of our quest for God; and the power that our feelings and emotions sometimes have over us. All of these parts of being human, and so many others, we frequently treat as less than holy, as somehow divorced from our spiritual nature, and even sometimes as bad things that we should not have.

On the other hand, the Ascension, along with the Incarnation, is here to tell us that it is a good thing to be a human being; indeed it is a wonderful and an important and a holy thing to be a human being. In fact, it is such an important, good thing that God did it! This is not to say that everything about us as human is wonderful and full of light and perfection! But it is clear that to God we are very special beloved and worthy of being called into the fullness of holiness. The Incarnation teaches us that is why we should treat ourselves and one another with care and respect. The Ascension, the fact that God has brought into God’s Self One Who is fully human, can remind us that simply being a human being is a sacred thing and that human life is a sacred thing, never to be taken lightly or abused.

We are able to approach God, to reach out to God and look for the presence and will of God with confidence and with joy. For as we turn toward God, we are not only dealing with the creator of the universe and the ruler of all time and eternity; we are also drawing near to the one who lived our life and who has shared our fate. We are coming near to one who knows us and who cares about us. We are coming home.

Amen.

May 6, 2012 - Father Mark D. Stuart

Novelty can be alluring. The new promises to surpass the old – I am incredulous whenever I see on the news the long lines outside stores with folks waiting sometimes days for the latest iPad or iPhone or whatever gadget or computer game that is just being released. It can be a thrill buying a new car or new clothes or new whatever. But the new quickly becomes old, and so novelty can create an inexhaustible desire. Our love of novelty can even take on the appearance of a search for truth, when in fact it is only a form of distraction.

In the Book of Acts during the Easter season we hear of the Apostles going throughout the Mediterranean region spreading the Good News. There were many competing new religions and philosophies swirling around then. So, many of the crowds drawn to Apostles came out of their curiosity to hear something new. There were scores of novelties: if one god or philosophy failed you or bored you, there was always another.

Although this sounds like it might just be an ancient problem, you can see similar contemporary versions of this right in Southern California; where you can see a car with a rabbit’s foot in the cup holder, a sacred heart air freshener dangling from the review mirror, a bobble head Buddha sitting on the dashboard, and a Darwin fish with feet bumper sticker.

People are searching for an experience of God or a quest for the spiritual through all the confusing expressions of that in modern culture. Some express their search in their “automobile shrines”, while others kneel at the altar of Superlative Experience: seeking the highest high, the biggest fanciest vehicle, the most extreme sport, the most sordid confession on a reality show. Many in our culture are indulging in this cult of experience, which is actually a misguided groping for God. The “experience” idol isn’t a stranger to our churches either and can ride into our sanctuaries with religious overtones and with superficial expressions of genuine spirituality.

An undergrad student once commented on her college’s religion department whose professors taught courses in everything from Hindu beliefs to Christian history. “They know a great many things about religion,” she said, “but none of them in the department practice any particular faith. I find that strange. They know everything about God except God.” To search for the divine as only an intellectual matter is another form of misguided groping for God.

This is the attitude some of Apostles found in the 1st Century where there was a philosopher approach to faith, engaging God only as a concept, like an intellectual challenge to be conquered. Unlike the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch we heard read today who was moved to be baptized, many crowds scoffed at a faith in Jesus Christ. It’s amazing that the Apostles had the nerve to stand up and say anything at all. We might wonder why they felt compelled to look silly and risk ridicule.

This Eastertide I have not experienced overt ridicule of my faith. No one scoffed at my Easter sermons. The eggs were eaten not thrown. But for the most part I have spoken of my faith only to those who share it. Most of those who have come through our church doors have been through them many times before. I encountered no skeptical spectators; no visitor has laughed out loud at our “alleluias.” However, it would undoubtedly very different if I ventured out into our post Christian society and spoke candidly about my faith at a city council meeting. Most of the people we brush shoulders with every day do not want to know about our personal faith and if we were to attempt to share it we would probably be hushed or relegated to the category of the of the doddering old preacher who was repeatedly wrong in his predictions of the rapture.

Our society does not seem to take seriously the realities that cannot be tangibly and scientifically touched, analyzed, and intellectually understood. The contrast between seeing and not seeing, between God and idols, resonates with the reading from St. John’s Gospel for today. This is another excerpt from Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples in which he tells them that the world will not be able to see the Spirit nor will it see Jesus, but the disciples will see them both. As we are transformed by faith we are able to see God. Being trained to see things rightly involves training in resistance to the glamour of novelty. This is where folks living in the 1st Century and the 21st Century with their love of all things new fall short. St. Augustine tells us that in order to see truth, “The mind should be cleansed so that it is able to see that light and cling to it once it is seen. Let us consider this cleansing to be as a journey or a voyage home.”

The 14th – 16th chapters of St. John’s Gospel offers us some of the most profound insights into the Holy Spirit. The fruits of the Spirit are poetically described by Jesus in the well known vine metaphor in today’s Gospel lesson. In the original Greek text the word used by Jesus describing the Holy Spirit is “parakletos” Paraclete, which literally means “one who consoles or comforts, one who encourages or uplifts and refreshes, and/or one who intercedes on our behalf as an advocate in court.” Since we have no such word in English, translators variously use the word Paraclete, Counselor, Comforter or Advocate.

I actually prefer the term “Counselor.” What does it mean that God is your Counselor? It can mean someone to be at your side to help you sort out your decisions and give you strength. With the Holy Spirit as Counselor it means that the Holy Spirit is personally concerned about us. God our Counselor is not a detached listener who listens politely to us for 50 minutes, asks for payment and then wants us to leave so the next client can come in. God is the supreme Counselor who is truly concerned about us and fully understands the complexity of our being. The Holy Spirit is a non-judgmental counselor who does not condemn us in our humanness. Our divine Counselor is a facilitator of growth and maturity within us, not magically solving all our problems or making the decisions we need to make ourselves, but offers us the strength and insights we need. This is what Jesus promised the disciples and this is what he promises us.

We do not need to reach far in our search for God. God is, after all not far from each one of us. Our grasping can end as we approach the altar, where we dine together as a family, where God is placed into our hands, and where we are reminded that God has come and will come again in Jesus Christ.

Amen.