Category: Uncategorized

John Oldham

Dear Nativity Community,

Happy Autumn! I hope you and your family are safe and happy. 

I want to update you on recent “regathering” activities at Nativity and invite you to consider coming back to participate in worship service and events in person on the Nativity campus. This is clearly a personal decision for each individual and family to consider based on your family circumstances, health, and other factors. My family and I began to attend services in person last spring and have found the benefits of sharing faith and fellowship in person to be comfortable and renewing. We are holding two services each Sunday and livestreaming the 10:30 service. The livestreaming of the 10:30 am service has been very popular, and I assure you that the staff and Vestry are committed to meeting our members where they are, and we will continue to provide online options for services and many meetings. This past Sunday we had over 100 people attend the 10:30 service in the nave (all masked), followed by a wonderful bring-your-own picnic and sing-along under the oak tree.  

I also want to update you on the activities and missions that Nativity continues to pursue. Ministry teams have been meeting regularly and we have resumed events such as Rise Against Hunger, Backpack Buddies, multiple campus cleanup workdays, youth gatherings, the adult softball team, and senior lunches. Multiple  groups, including Bible study, Spanish class, Social Justice book club, Chatty Yarns, Grief Group and others,  have also been meeting in person and online. Music offerings are back: the choir performed at worship last Sunday and a Beethoven performance was given in the church on Monday evening. Additionally, work has begun on expanding our memorial garden. Are you feeling called to join in any of these activities? You would be most welcome.

Finally, I am asking you to prayerfully consider your 2022 pledge. The Nativity community is blessed with an abundance of resources, and the time and talent gifted by our members to the church and the greater community are what make Church of the Nativity a truly unique community. It is your financial gifts, however, that allow us to compensate our staff, pay the utilities and mortgage, support the ongoing outreach, social justice, and environmental missions, provide children and youth programs, deliver the wonderful musical offerings, and make continued investment in our campus.

Please know that you all are treasured members of the Nativity community, whether you choose to participate in body or in spirit. Stay safe and healthy and please reach out if you would like support or information of any kind.

Evelyn Judson

Stewardship is the notion that we need to give of ourselves to take care of our church and the rest of the world. The phrase “time, talent, and treasure” is used to define the possibilities of what we have available. Gifts of treasure are vital to the church; we need financial support to continue our mission, to pay our clergy and staff, and to maintain our infrastructure. We all need to contribute. But giving financially, even generously and joyfully, is still a step removed from the core workings of the parish.

So we come to “time and talent”. Sunday school teachers, the Altar Guild, the choir, those who show up on workdays, or to cook pancakes, or help with church mailings. Many contribute to all the routine jobs that transform a church into a family. At Nativity we do that very well.

I believe “time and talent” needs to encompass more than routine and traditional jobs. It needs to be the very core of our corporate being. So, I would like to add a new stewardshipcategory. Imagination. What does each individual member see in our church and our world that goes beyond our family and routine? How do each of us give our own vision to the greater whole? How can we encourage and develop not only our own concepts, but those of every other member? This, after all, is what we affirm when we repeat our Baptismal vows.

I challenge every Nativity member today to think about what it is that you love to do? How can that love contribute to the Church of the Nativity and to our greater community? Do you write, draw, or sing? Scrub floors with joy? Fix lawnmowers, plant tomatoes or feed people? Do you love to pray for others? Consider your strengths and limitations and imagine how you can use them to love God, love your neighbor, and change the world.

Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the feast. Alleluia.

Good Friday is one of two designated fast days according to the Book of Common Prayer, the other being Ash Wednesday.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had enough fasting for now. The problem especially being that it was an involuntary fast. Fasting from the bread and wine of communion, fasting from gathering for public worship, fasting from programs and activities, fasting from coffee and conversation with my people. Enough fasting that I didn’t ask for, or intentionally plan.

Perhaps the intentionality of fasting from food on Good Friday is an argument for why fasting might be a good thing to do that particular day. Does it make a difference to choose to fast from something while in the midst of involuntary fasting? What does a fasting of choice, in the midst of feeling like all control has been taken away, feel like?

What a strange couple of days the triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter) is in “normal” times as we move from the fasting of Lent into the Feast of Good Friday. There is already a spiritual whiplash in the three days as we feast at the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, remembering Jesus’ meal with his friends and his commandment to love, to the fast and desolation of death on the cross and the loss of Jesus’ presence with us while in the tomb, then back to feast again as we shout “Allelluia The Lord is risen!” on Easter.

This year, we move into the feast of Easter, and yet we still must fast. Still I wonder, isn’t that how we live every day of our lives? We live in the hope of Easter, while we confront the daily suffering and small deaths of being human in this world. We move from moments of fasting, chosen or not, into moments of feasting in the dailyness of our lives. I wonder, do we recognize the feasts when they arrive? How do we continue to feast while we fast?

Although I cannot gather with you in worship right now, you all are in my daily prayers. I keep the directory beside my computer here on my dining room table and turn to a new page each day. Each time I glance down on it, I pray for everyone on that page. I feast on the richness that is our community.

Above my head on my dining room wall hangs all the Christmas cards that you all sent me (yes, I know, they should have come down on Candlemas). Each time I look up and see it, or notice it behind my head while I’m on a zoom call, I smile. I feast on the joy I have through my relationships.

I cannot celebrate the Eucharist with you right now, but each night my family sits down together for dinner. Prior to the pandemic, we might have been able to eat together one or two nights a week. Now, eating together is the rule rather than the exception. I feast on these last moments together as a family before my teenagers fly from the nest.

Therefore, let us keep the feast. We all have different circumstances, different things we might feast upon. As we (finally) enter this Easter season, how will you feast?

Dear friends,

 

The spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, continues in North Carolina, and especially here in Wake County. The Bishops of the Diocese of North Carolina have issued some very helpful guidance and directives as to how we continue to do church together during this anxious time, remembering especially those most vulnerable to the virus, while staying connected in community during a time of needed “social distancing.”

 

There will be several changes to our worshiping life together for the next few weeks. We are following the Diocesan directives, as well as taking some additional precautions. Your Vestry will be discussing this at their meeting next week, and additional changes may be still to come.

 

1. The Common Cup – Bishop Rodman has suspended the use of the common cup during Eucharist at this time. The risk of infection from the common cup is low; however it is prudent to eliminate this risk all together at this time. From his letter to the Diocese:

 

“It is well established that communion is complete with the offering of only the host. By                 suspending the use of the common cup for a one-kind Eucharist, you will not be denied               the promise offered by the usual communion of wafer and wine. Eucharist is a moment                      of unity, so not even celebrants will partake of consecrated wine…”

2. The Peace – We are a warm and caring congregation who loves to greet one another during the Peace! However, at this time, we will restrict our sharing of the peace to a verbal “Peace be with you,” or a simple bow, or saying “peace” sign in American Sign Language.

 

3. Passing the Offertory Plates – Rather than multiple hands touching the plates, the offering plates will placed on two tables in the church. You may place your offering in the plates as you enter for worship, during the Peace, or during the offertory time. (This will feel very strange, I know.)

 

4. Fellowship – We will not be serving food at fellowship for the time being. Coffee, tea, and lemonade will still be available, and I hope you will continue to come to Estill House after the worship service to spend time together. As much as our treats are tasty, again, it seems prudent to me to lower our risk of contamination by not serving food right now.

 

5. Watching the service from home – We are working on live streaming the worship service online so that you may watch the service from home. Visit the Nativity page on Facebook for more information in the next few days. More information via email will be available next week.

 

Though it pains me to advise anyone to miss church, if you are not feeling well, please do stay home. If you are worried about being exposed to the virus, please stay home. Everyone has a different level of comfort and feeling of safety. Please honor yours, and be compassionate towards others who might feel differently.

 

Scripture entreats us again and again to be not afraid. However, sometimes the world is a scary place, and anxiety is high right now. Let us continue to care for one another, and pray for creative ways to stay connected as the body of Christ. Let us pray for all the medical professionals who stand at the front line of caring for those affected by illness, for caregivers who bear additional burdens, and for the scientists working for remedy against this virus and all illness. Remember we follow a God who has overcome death, but still sits with us in our sorrow and our pain of our mortality.

 

Peace be with you,

Stephanie+

 

 

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I don’t know about you, but I always feel a little let down the day or two after Christmas. Christmas Eve is fun and exciting with all the services, and all the music, and all the people! Christmas Day is celebratory and fun with all the food and all the presents and all the family! Then the next day, the scatter of opened presents not put away, the remainder of ribbon sticking to your socks, the slightly bloated feeling of too much rich food and drink the day before.  And the world is still what the world was on December 24 – both good and evil hanging out together, good news and bad news on the television, work done and left undone. There is a kind of miasma of unmet expectations hanging around the atmosphere on the days following Christmas.

Perhaps the feast days of the church immediately following Christmas Day will help us. Perhaps they will bring the joy back around again.

Or maybe not. December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr. You remember Stephen from the Book of Acts. Stephen is one who the apostles name to serve the table and serve the widows and recognized as one of the first deacons of the church. Apparently, Stephen was quite a preacher too, so much so that he is accused of blasphemy. He makes people so mad with his preaching that he is taken outside of the city and stoned to death.

It is doubtful that Hallmark is going to make a movie out of Stephen’s story anytime soon, so maybe we should move to December 27, the feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. John and his brother James leave the family fishing business to follow Jesus. He is believed to be the “beloved disciple” in the Gospel of John, and he shows up with Peter in the Book of Acts. Lesser Feasts and Fasts says, “According to tradition, John later went to Asia Minor and settled at Ephesus. Under the Emperor Domitian, he was exiled to the island of Patmos, where he experienced the visions recounted in the Book of Revelation.”

Hmmm. Since the wildly different interpretations of the Book of Revelation have inspired the different theological world views within Christianity, and maybe you are still hooked by the argument you had with Great Uncle Joe after Christmas dinner about whether Jewish folks are a nationality or a religion, and about how to solve the geo-political situation in the Middle East, and what the world is coming to and .… Maybe John’s feast day on the 27th isn’t going to help us feel better after all.

So that brings us to December 28 – another feast day. Surely this day is one that will bring us more joy once again! Wait, no. This is the day we remember the Holy Innocents, the children massacred by Herod in an attempt to protect his reign from the birth of the new king known as Jesus (especially since the men from the East were no help and didn’t stop to see Herod on their way back home). You probably don’t want to read Matthew 2:13-18 as a bedtime story to your kids anytime soon.

So what do we do? What does this mean? Isn’t the Christmas season meant to bring us joy? Actually, it does. These stories just remind us that God was born into an imperfect world, and that imperfect people followed him then, and follow him now. The birth of the Savior of the world is an act of perfect love for an imperfect people. We receive God’s grace no matter how happy or sad our Christmas Eve, our Christmas Day, or any of the days following. For all our work to enjoy Christmas, we can lay down our cares, our exhaustion, our burdens in the arms of the one who said, “Come to me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

May you continue to feast upon the knowledge of the love of God who came into this world to save us.

To read more about St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, click here.

To read more about St. John, Apostle and Evangelist, click here.

To read more about the Holy Innocents, click here.