The Weekly View - October 1, 2021
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In This Issue
- Weekly Message from Rev. Joanne Whitt
- Weekly Facebook Video
- Announcements & Upcoming Events
- Outreach Opportunities & Updates
message from rev. whitt
Dear St. Luke Family:
We’re celebrating a couple of important family dinners this weekend. This Saturday is St. Luke’s annual fundraiser dinner. As it’s my first time attending this dinner, I expect all of you know much more about it than I do. I’m looking forward to what has been described to me as a festive time when the St. Luke family gathers to enjoy good food, good drink, and good company. I’m bringing my husband, David Buechner, and our son, Pete, a college sophomore at Contra Costa Community College. It’s been fun to watch the St. Luke community mobilize to put this together. I’m grateful to the many people who have contributed to make this a lovely party with food, drink, music, decorations, auction items, set up, bartenders, an M.C., an auctioneer, and all the folks in the background who keep track of numbers, checks, and reservations. Thank you!
Then this coming Sunday is World Communion Sunday, when our church family all over the world gathers around the communion table to celebrate that we are “one bread, one body.” With over two-thirds of Christians living in the Global South, Christianity is more truly a world-wide religion than ever. We speak many languages; we worship in cathedrals and huts and everything in between; we read the bible differently and disagree about theology; we ascribe different meanings to the sacrament we variously call the Lord’s Supper, communion, the Eucharist, or the Mass. Nevertheless, in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, we become one with Christ and with all believers of every time and place.
We’ll celebrate World Communion Sunday with special breads from different cultures, and with music from Christians around the world. Erich Miller will play steel drums and percussion, and our choir is working on a couple of pieces from Jamaica and South Africa.
We’ll hear how Jesus welcomed children even though the disciples tried to shoo them away. Jesus isn’t saying children are special (although of course they are). As the quotation on your bulletin covers this Sunday puts it, “There is something about children and their place in the kingdom that is simply not reducible to innocence, vulnerability, humility, lowliness, lack of prestige, simplicity, purity, nearness to God, openness to Christ, or any other attribute one may suggest. It is all of this and more, for their place in the kingdom is by virtue of their being simply children of God.” (Cornelia B. Horn and John W. Martens)
And so is ours. We join around the table this coming Saturday night, and this coming Sunday morning, because we have been welcomed by Christ and each other, and we are called to welcome others.
Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor