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Third Sunday after Pentecost:
June 18, 2023
SCRIPTURE READINGS
Exodus 19:2-8a
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)
Preacher: The Reverend Jennifer Wagner Pavia
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Saturday, June 17: Neighbors 4 Neighbors is taking off the month of June. They will return in July.
Saturday, June 17, 6:30pm: SoB Venue: Juneteenth celebration (currently full)
In Luther Hall
Sunday, June 25, 4:00 PM: Performance of Brahms' A German Requiem with orchestra & singers conducted by Dr. James Vail
In Sanctuary
Monday, June 19, 7 PM: Vestry meeting
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Bible and Breakfast
Tuesdays | 9:30 AM
Luther Hall & Zoom
Midweek Eucharist
Wednesdays | 7:00 PM
Sanctuary
Adult Forum
Wednesdays | 7:45 PM
Luther Hall & Zoom
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The Backpack Project is back! | |
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For the last several years, St. Bede’s has partnered with First AME Church on a back-to-school backpack project for children in foster care, and this summer we are doing it again.
We plan to fill 45 backpacks (15 for elementary school-age children, 15 for middle school and 15 for high school), and we’re collecting monetary donations to buy the supplies that will go inside.
If you’re writing a check, please make them payable to St. Bede’s with “Backpack Project” in the memo portion (at the lower left corner of the check.) You can bring the checks (or cash) to church, mail the checks to church, or send your checks to Alice Short (3156 Coolidge Ave. Los Angeles 90066). In addition, you can donate via the St. Bede’s Vanco e-giving and payment process site.
We’d be grateful if you could make your donations by July 16, and we plan to schedule our “assembly dinner” at the end of July or the start of August.
Questions? Please reach out to members of the Mission Committee.
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James Vail conducting orchestra and singers at St. Bede's, November 2018 | |
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On June 4, our St. Bede's Choir, under the direction of Frank Basile, gave a beautiful performance of Trinity Sunday Evensong. Basile noted that for the first time the concert was live-streamed and the Psalms were sung in Gregorian and Anglican chants. In reflecting on the Evensong, parishioner Elizabeth Coombs declared that our choir was in "top form." She further exclaimed, "The volume of 'O Gracious Light' was three times what you would expect from a choir its size! It was truly transporting!"
The next concert at St. Bede’s will be held on Sunday, June 25, when we partner with Dr. James Vail, the esteemed conductor and Professor Emeritus of Choral and Sacred Music at the USC Thornton School of Music. The photo shown above shows Dr. Vail conducting a concert at St. Bede’s in 2018. The concert this year will feature Dr. Vail conducting the Laudamus Te Singers, the St. Bede's choir and a string orchestra including harp, timpani, and Frank Basile on organ. The musicians will be performing Dr. Vail’s transcription of Brahms' A German Requiem; however, the piece will be sung in English so that we are able to understand it. Be sure not to miss this monumental work that consoles the living. The performance will be held in our Sanctuary on June 25 at 4:00 PM.
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Please don't forget to support FRIENDs of MUSIC's
2022-2023 season!
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ST. BEDE'S ONLINE GIVING PORTAL | |
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Are you planning to attend worship online and want an easy way to make a pledge payment? Do you want to ditch the checkbook and set up reoccurring payments? Are you looking for a convenient way to make a one-time special gift to St. Bede's?
Did you know you can make donations online to St. Bede's, securely and easily?
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Visit the St. Bede's website and at the top of every page, look for the "Donate" button. When you click on the "Donate" button, you will be transported to St. Bede's Vanco eGiving and Payment Process Site.
Vanco is an industry leader in online payments. More than 40,000 churches, faith-based groups, nonprofits, schools, and educational organizations trust Vanco to securely complete transactions every day. Vanco complies with PCI Level 1 standards, the highest security standard in the payment processing industry.
You are invited to set up one-time or recurring gifts using credit, debit, or bank transfer on Vanco's secure payment processing platform. Giving online through the Vanco site saves time and the hassle of remembering to bring your offering. In addition, you decrease the expense incurred by St. Bede’s from handling and processing checks and cash.
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FROM THE EPISCOPAL NEWS
A newsletter serving the Diocese of LA
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Centennial celebration at St. Barnabas’ Church, Pasadena
By John Harvey Taylor/The Bishop's Blog
At the turn of the last century, when people of African descent weren’t welcome at All Saints Episcopal Church Pasadena (where prophets of equity now dwell), some believers whom that injustice had scattered gathered to pray and begin to plan at Georgia Weatherton’s house in Pasadena. Georgia is now remembered as one of the eight matriarchs of the St. Barnabas Episcopal Church – Pasadena, CA family, who celebrated their centenary on Sunday in grand style.
The founding meeting was in 1908. While the cornerstone of the beautiful church on North Fair Oaks Ave. says 1933, the first services were in 1923 at a private home on Del Mar. According to the careful planning of event chair and lifelong parish member Marco White, the 100th was held on the feast day of the great saint himself.
His story fits to a B. The book of Acts discloses that the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch to investigate its transformative ministry to the Gentiles — which is to say non-Jews, which is to say the whole world. Like St. Barnabas parish, the ministry in Antioch was the work of believers who had been scattered — in their case, because of persecutions that followed the martyrdom of St. Stephen. So Stephen’s blood watered such seeds that, even in these said-to-be secularizing times, 2.6 billion people call themselves Christians, 44 million more than a year ago.
One can think of other instances of how those scattered and dispersed by malice and prejudice manage to take root, survive, and thrive, still glorifying God and caring for God’s people. St. Barnabas’ party coincided with the L.A. Pride parade, where the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, former presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, led a cohort of LGBTQ+ folks and their allies — all believers whom Christianity’s prejudices scattered for thousands of years. Though we Episco-Pals are not the larger part of the church, we are the ones who, at long last, have come to proclaim that the image of God is large enough to contain every human expression. The struggle isn’t over. But their witness at Pride on Sunday, like the partiers’ in Pasadena, was surely evidence of the durability of God’s love.
I was along at St. Barnabas to preach, celebrate, speak at a program before lunch, and have as many wonderful conversations around this extended family as I could over friend chicken, mac and cheese, and collard greens. The wise, gracious priest in charge, the Rev. V.R. Marianne Zahn, handled countless details. The Rev. Golie Haynes assists her. As always, veteran lay leader Robert Edwards served expertly as my chaplain. My first liturgical duty was censing and blessing a chancel cross he had fashioned in memory of his mother-in-law, Edna Pierre Hodgson. The Rev. Canon Jamesetta Hammons, who served this parish for many years, was back as deacon of the mass. Canon Andy Tomat, friend of the parish and the hardest working volunteer diocesan treasurer in show business, smiled joyfully all day. It was a joy and blessing beyond words to see Mary Regas in church, spouse of the late George Regas, who made no peace with prejudice when he was rector of All Saints.
At lunch the speakers included Rep. Judy Chu, Pasadena city council member Justin Jones, and Assembly member Chris Holden. Parish historian Michael Mims and lifelong member Sylvia Wiggins shared priceless stories. Offering the invocation were Bishop Ernesto Sanchez and Fr. Carlos Mojica, whose Catholic Apostolic Community Church nests at St. Barnabas.
I spent lunchtime with Jonathan Williams, parish treasurer these 15 years, as well as Marco, his brother, Dino, who admits to being a former St. Barnabas acolyte, and other members of their family. An IT expert, entrepreneur, and former Los Angeles Dodgers executive, Marco introduced me to his daughters Natalie (about to get her second masters, this one from Columbia, in urban planning, with a focus on affordable housing) and Whitney (a consultant who works for a collaborative project supporting women entrepreneurs in my hometown of Detroit). They beamed with pride, seeing what their father had wrought on Sunday, setting the stage for St. Barnabas’ second century. The believers who were scattered just can’t help but blossom.
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2027 General Convention to meet in Phoenix; $2 million approved for Indigenous boarding school research
By David Paulsen
[Episcopal News Service – Providence, Rhode Island] The 82nd General Convention in 2027 will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, based on a plan endorsed June 15 by Executive Council. The church governing body, in the final day of its four-day meeting here, also approved an additional $2 million for research that is just getting underway into The Episcopal Church’s historic ties to Indigenous boarding schools.
The vote in favor of Phoenix was far from unanimous and generated significant controversy because San Juan, Puerto Rico, was passed over for a second straight time. Several Executive Council members said the U.S. territory in the Caribbean should have been given the opportunity to host The Episcopal Church’s largest churchwide gathering. Puerto Rico Bishop Rafael Morales, an Executive Council member, personally expressed disappointment on behalf of his diocese.
“The people of Puerto Rico that I represent feel some rejection about that,” Morales said. He explained that after San Juan was first passed over in favor of Louisville, Kentucky, as host city of the 81st General Convention in 2024, churchwide leaders had encouraged Puerto Rico to try again.
“On the island, we have everything that we’ll need” to host General Convention, Morales said. “The issue was the cost, because of the rooms, because of the hotels,” he said, and the cost of airfare to the island from the continental United States, where most Episcopal dioceses are located. “We were ready to receive the convention with all the facilities, with a good convention center, but money speaks.”
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Episcopal churches nationwide to host special activities to commemorate and celebrate Juneteenth
By Melodie Woerman
[Episcopal News Service] Dioceses and churches across The Episcopal Church have announced activities marking Juneteenth – June 19 – which commemorates the date in 1865 that federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to ensure that all enslaved people in the state were freed. This came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, but the order couldn’t be enforced everywhere until after the end of the Civil War on April 9, 1865.
Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day, became a national holiday when President Joe Biden signed legislation on June 17, 2021, making it the first new national holiday adopted since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created. While Texas and more than two dozen other states already observed Juneteenth as a state holiday, interest in a federal holiday was renewed in the summer of 2020, during months of racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and a number of other Black people. On June 13 Biden hosted a concert on the White House lawn to celebrate Juneteenth and to mark Black Music Month.
As the home of Juneteenth, the city of Galveston provides a virtual Juneteenth Freedom Walk Tour, where participants can learn about five historic sites in the city and their importance to the holiday.
On a reflection entitled “Juneteenth and the Call to Remember” on The Episcopal Church website, the Rev. Willis Foster Sr., canon for diversity in the Diocese of Southern Virginia, and Edna Johnston, a member of the Church of the Holy Comforter in Richmond, Virginia, and the principal of History Matters, note that it is important for Episcopalians to mark this holiday. “Juneteenth reminds us that we must try to understand and talk about American slavery and its legacies. This includes talking and teaching about slavery in our history books, churches, and political discourse. It means remembering the histories of those who were enslaved here in North America and those who have continued to experience and confront racial injustice.”
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