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Worship with Us – Holy Week and Easter 2019 Schedule

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During Easter we celebrate and worship together in a spirit of joyful fellowship.

There’s a place for you here and we invite you to join us at any or all of our Holy Week and Easter services.

 

Palm Sunday: April 14

Services at 7:45 am, 9 am, 11:15 am, 5:30 pm,
8 pm Compline, (Nave)

Taize Service: April 16

Service at 7 pm, (Nave)
This service gently opens our hearts for Holy Week through the repetition of Taize hymns along with readings from scripture and prayers.

Wednesday: April 17

At 6:30 pm, we offer Stations of the Cross in the Nave, a series of 8 meditations on the last day of Jesus’ life as we move around the nave. The service takes about 20 minutes.

Maundy Thursday: April 18

Service at 7 pm, (Nave)
We enter into the experience of the disciples stunned by Jesus’ insistence that he would take on the role of a servant and wash the feet of the others.  Anyone who wishes will be able to have their feet washed – and wash the feet of others.  The service will continue with Eucharist followed by the stripping of the altar.  Stripping the church of every bit of decoration, we go to dark Gethsemane with the disciples, where they struggled to stay awake as Jesus prayed.

Good Friday: April 19

Services at Noon and 7 pm
On Good Friday, we meet in a church that is so bare it even sounds different.  We read the account of the Crucifixion according to the Gospel of John, following the traditional Prayer Book Good Friday service.

Walk the Labyrinth
1 – 7 pm, Sydnor Hall
The labyrinth is an ancient spiritual tool.  Its winding path becomes a mirror of the way we live our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Please join us to walk, search, and follow with an open mind and an open heart.

Downtown Stations of the Cross
1:45 pm, Meet at Micah Ecumenical Ministries, 1013 Princess Anne St.
For hundreds of years, the Stations have been a way to make a virtual pilgrimage in the spirit of pilgrims to Jerusalem walking the Via Dolorosa. We will walk in procession, stopping fourteen times at different sites in downtown Fredericksburg to pray and mark moments in Jesus’ journey to the cross and tomb.

Holy Saturday: April 20

Morning Prayer, 8:30 am

Liturgy of the Light, 5 pm
For children age 3 and above
The Liturgy of the Light is one of the beautiful experiences Catechesis of the Good Shepherd gives us. It is a children’s Easter Vigil service, and adults are welcome as well. Each child receives their own “light of Christ,” and we conclude with a simple Eucharist prepared by the children. We will celebrate the Liturgy of the Light in Sydnor Hall. Nursery provided for toddlers and babies.

Great Vigil of Easter, 8 pm
Followed by the Paschal Party in Sydnor Hall
At the Easter Vigil, we gather in a darkened church. We light the Paschal (Easter) candle, and we are warmed by the candlelight retelling of stories from the Hebrew Scriptures. We sing our Alleluias for the first time in forty days! And we proceed with a celebration of the first Eucharist of Easter. Afterward, the celebration continues with festive food and drink at the Paschal Party in Sydnor Hall. In all, it is a powerful and dramatic celebration of Easter.

Easter Sunday: April 21

Sunrise Easter Service at 6:30 am
Outside The Presbyterian Church
Our ministry partners from Micah Ecumenical Ministries gather for a joint service. Together, we greet the sunrise, share joy with each other, and begin our Easter celebrations in community.

Easter Eucharist at 7:45 am, 9 am, 11:15 am

Easter Egg Hunt: 10:15 am

Celtic Evensong + Communion at 5:30 pm

Compline at 8 pm

Micah Noon Lenten Services – 2019

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The Micah Ecumenical Ministries partner churches are coordinating a series of Wednesday noon services during Lent.  Host parishes will host a lunch following the service.  Here is the 2019 schedule:

March 13:  Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site), 801 Sophia St., Fredericksburg, VA
Preaching: The Rev. Anne Martin, Christ Lutheran

March 20: Fredericksburg United Methodist Church, 308 Hanover St., Fredericksburg, VA
Preaching: The Rev. Brittany Tamminga, The Presbyterian Church

March 27: The Presbyterian Church, 810 Princess Anne St., Fredericksburg, VA
Preaching: The Rev. Josh Hagstrom, Fredericksburg United Methodist

April 3: Trinity Episcopal, 825 College Ave, Fredericksburg, VA
Preaching: The Rev. Kent Rahm, Trinity Episcopal Church.

April 10: St. Mary Catholic Church, 1009 Stafford Ave., Fredericksburg, VA
Preaching: The Rev. Aaron Dobynes, Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site)

There will be a Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, April 19. More information to follow.

This year’s Ecumenical Easter Sunrise Service will be at the Presbyterian Church at 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning, April 21 with Meghann Cotter preaching.

Annual Meeting and Combined Worship Service

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Sermon for the St. George’s annual meeting December 9, 2018. The Rev. Joseph H. Hensley, Jr.

Annual_Meeting_2018Let me quote the apostle Paul as he wrote to the Philippians in the reading we heard earlier: “I thank my God every time I remember you.” Good morning beloved St. Georgians. I thank our God when I remember you and when I remember all the ways that God is at work in our midst. And I say with Paul, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion.” God is up to some good work at St. George’s. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to you, beloved parishioners, for all the ways you are cooperating and participating with God in this place. It’s been almost four years since I began my work here as your rector, and still, I thank my God every time I remember our community and our ministry. It’s good to be here. Can you turn to your neighbor and tell them, “It’s good to be here?”

The text that I would like to focus on this morning is a text from both Luke’s Gospel and the prophet Isaiah.As Luke describes the appearance of John the Baptist who is preparing the way for Jesus, Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah writing several centuries earlier: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” Prepare the way of the Lord. We are in the season of Advent, the four Sundays leading up to the feast of Christ’s incarnation, God becoming human. We often say that it is a season of waiting. Waiting for Christmas. Waiting for Christ to enter the world. Waiting. We also say that Advent is a season of preparing the way.Note that several of our music selections today include the phrase: “prepare the way.” This is our season, as we are waiting, to also be preparing.  

Since this is the annual meeting Sunday, I have a few things to say about the parish. I am preparing to do that!And so let me get there by talking about preparing the way for God. This time of the year, we talk a lot about preparing for the holidays. Are you prepared for Christmas? I’m not even fully prepared for Advent and it started last Sunday. The answer really is “no,” I am not prepared. Because when people say,“are you prepared,” what they really mean is “are you ready? Are all your plans in place?” Let’s just say I’m planning to get my plans in place. But let’s go back to Isaiah for a moment.

The word in Hebrew that Isaiah uses to say “prepare” has a different meaning from “get ready.” The word has more of a meaning of clearing. Clear the way. Prepare the path by clearing it of obstacles, smoothing the rough spots, filling in the potholes. So there is,perhaps, a difference between preparing and planning. Planning is buying presents and putting up decorations and making food. Preparing is clearing sometime in the calendar just to sit in God’s presence. Planning is putting things in place. Preparing is making space. Planning involves stocking up. Preparing involves cleaning out. Planning is important, don’t get me wrong. But I think the call of Isaiah is to clear the way, to prepare for the coming of God by making time and making room for God to enter our world. So during this Advent season, we take care not to let our planning overshadow our preparing. For it is when we prepare, when we clear room for God, that God can show us things we could never begin to plan for.

So now I would like to shift into talking about the parish, and I want to talk about St. George’s both in terms of planning and preparing. Both are essential. Let me begin by saying that we do not have enough time in this sermon or in one annual meeting to tell the story of everything we have done in the past year and everything that we are looking ahead to. The vestry and I are “planning” to offer a more complete annual report of 2018 early in the new year, once this year is complete. Be prepared for it!

Planning and preparing. We planned in our budget at the beginning of 2018 to hire three staff members, one new position and two expanded roles. We ended up hiring seven people. Our initial plans did not involve our associate rector, Gay Rahn, retiring or our director of children’s formation and outreach, Carey Connors, going to seminary. Nor did we foresee the opportunity to partner with Christ Lutheran and Trinity Episcopal to hire a young adult missioner. But we were prepared for these opportunities, because we had made some room, both materially and spiritually, for God to do some new work. So, in order of their arrival this year, we welcomed Parish Administrator, Laurel Loch, Parish Secretary, Barbara Miller-Richards, Facility Manager, Riley Mullins, Table administrator, Katie Wendt, Young adult missioner, the Rev. David Casey, Associate Rector, the Rev. Areeta Bridgemohan, and Director of Children’s and Youth Formation, Hecti Musa. Thanks be to God we have an incredible staff of 15 that works so hard and so well to support our ministries and to empower our parishioners to focus on their ministries. As another way to help parishioners plan and prepare for their own ministry, the vestry also put into place a new commission this year,the “connections commission” whose mission is to help connect parishioners who want to get involved with ministries that can use their gifts. As you prepare to get more involved, see the “help wanted” page on our website, and look for upcoming invitations from the connections commission. Part of our preparing and planning in the coming year is going to be calling some new leaders so that current leaders who are ready for a break can step back while they still have energy to give. Although we have a beautiful building and facility, it is the people who gather and minister, work and worship here every day that make St.George’s a church where we can grow and then share God’s love. It’s the people who are the church.

A church with the amount of people and activities that St. George’s has needs a dedicated and skilled staff to provide consistency and stability so that volunteers can have what they need to succeed. To be transparent, staff costs are the majority of our budget expenses. This year, we managed to minimize a deficit budget by reducing staff expenses during some significant gaps of time when positions were unfilled. We plan to begin 2019 with our full staff and will not have that same wiggle room.

We are able to hire this wonderful staff and fund all our ministries through the generous support of parishioners. I often say that the finance meeting is one of my favorite meetings because it reminds me of your generosity. The spreadsheet numbers represent your faithful and consistent gifts. Finance is often a “planning”meeting for sure, but it is also a preparation meeting. In those meetings we often have to remember to clear away our negative thinking and prepare a way for God to show us what is possible. Your gifts, gathered together, have showed us what is possible, over and over again. We have grown since I arrived in 2015.At some point, we might say, “haven’t we gotten big enough?” But then more and more people want to join our parish. Our amazing volunteer leaders hear God calling us to respond to more needs in the world. We want to prepare for what God is going to do next right here. To be frank, growing in ministry means growing in giving. Back in September, Bishop Bob Ilhoff asked some of us to think about giving not until it hurts but until it feels good. Give until it feels good. Part of how we prepare the way of God is by clearing away our hesitancy and offering as much as we can with joy. I believe our parishioners together have the resources to fully fund and even to exceed our needs for the coming years.I know many are already giving a very joyful proportion of their gifts to St. George’s. Many of us, though, could consider offering to God a more joyful proportion. This would enable us to even more joyfully share the ministries of this place, to share the welcoming love of God.          

There’s more to say, and my time is growing short. As I said, we plan to offer a complete picture of 2018 early next year, from pastoral care to Christian formation, from home communion visits to forums about wholeness, from grace in action locally to mission around the country and world, from the Table in Fredericksburg to Notre Dame in Haiti, from worship and music to fellowship and hospitality, from deaf ministry to newcomers, buildings and grounds to finance and stewardship, from care for God’s creation to time, talent, and treasure; from St. George’s preschool to St. George’s Catechesis of the Good Shepherd to St. George’s youth, from Youth in Global to Glory Ridge, from young adult community ministry to ecumenical and interfaith partnerships, from racial reconciliation to evangelism, from our first annual “round up” storytelling event to our 300th anniversary in 2020-2021. For now, I want to share one last thing about our planning and preparing.St. George’s is planning and preparing for me to take a sabbatical break next summer. My departing Sunday will be the parish picnic on June 2 and my returning Sunday will be the rally for service Sunday September 8. The theme of my sabbatical is “rooted in wholeness” which was our theme for the Shrine Mont parish weekend in October and for our adult forums this fall and next spring. I am excited to share that I received a generous funding grant from the Lilly Foundation to support some travel and retreat for me and my family and also to support St. George’s in several ways during my absence. I truly hope this time will be a time of preparing the way of the Lord, of clearing away obstacles and smoothing out rough edges. In this season of Advent, I hope each of us can find some mini-sabbaticals, some times to rest, slow down, and listen so that we can prepare to receive God who is coming into the world.

In a few minutes we will cast ballots to elect four new vestry members. As I bring this message to a close, I ask us to set aside our plans for a moment and simply prepare. Prepare our hearts to listen for God’s guidance. God is already at work: in our parish, in our neighborhood, in the world. How is God inviting us to be part of that wonderful work of love and welcome, of grace in action, of giving and receiving? Now is a time in the life of our parish not only to plan but to prepare. Prepare the way.    

All Saints’ Sunday

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Sermon from the Rev. Joseph H. Hensley, Jr., Rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | All Saints’ Sunday Year B: November 4, 2018

Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday. It is one of the major feasts of the church year, right up there with Christmas and Easter. In some places the celebration begins on the night before, on the eve of the feast. You may be familiar with the name for the night before All Saints Day…All Hallows Eve. I will say that Halloween is one of my favorite nights of the year, because it is the one night when neighbors go knocking on each others doors and are greeted with grins and sweets. The dead come to life. People walk the streets and can be whoever they want to be. It’s a beautiful thing. All Hallows Eve, the eve of the feast of all the hallowed ones, all the holy ones, all the saints of God.

Last night, on the eve of this All Saints Sunday, the Fredericksburg community had a different kind of All Hallows Eve as we gathered in the Beth Sholom Synagogue for an interfaith vigil to remember the victims of the Tree of Life massacre a week ago in Pittsburgh. It was a gathering of the holy ones of God, the saints of many faiths, not only to remember victims but to share hope for the future. Rabbi Jennifer Weiner, the new rabbi at the synagogue, asked ministers of the wider community to light eleven candles, one for each of the slain at Tree of Life. She wanted our presence there to be a sign of unity. I was asked to say a few words on behalf of the interfaith community. Since the summer of 2015, I have been helping to organize a monthly gathering of interfaith leaders where we discuss and respond to the concerns of the community. Because that group has been meeting for over three years now, when the call came from the new rabbi to come and support her congregation in their time of grief and vulnerability, we were ready. Last night we filled the synagogue almost to its capacity. The president of the synagogue said he had never seen that many people in that space before, not even for their high and holy celebrations. It was a beautiful thing for all of us. I wanted to share with you what I said last night, on your behalf.

I began by saying: “I recently heard a wise minister say this: ‘You have to do the work in the good times to be prepared for the bad times.’

The fact that so many of us are gathered here tonight is a testimony to the work we have done in the good times to prepare us for a time such as this where we must come together. We must come together to mourn the dead. We must come together to lament the loss. We must come together to reassure each other that we are still here. We do not crumble and dis-integrate when crisis strikes. We re-integrate. We further integrate.

Rabbi Weiner asked me to say a few words tonight, as a representative of many Fredericksburg area faith communities. We are here tonight to stand in grief and support, to stand also in hope with our Jewish sisters and brothers. I use family terms intentionally. We stand with our neighbors to whom we are related by virtue of being children of one God. We may have our theologically nuanced ways of understanding our relationship, but we ARE related. And as kin, we share many values in common including the affirmation of love and the renunciation of evil which corrupts and destroys the creatures of God. Although some in our various faiths at times have targeted and in some places still do target Jewish people and communities, we come here tonight firmly opposed to anyone who would use faith of any kind as a reason to kill. We come here tonight firmly in favor of a clear position – that love wins. Hatred in any form is not a path to the peace which we seek. The word, “peace,” in Hebrew, “Shalom” and in Arabic, “Salaam” can also be expressed as “wholeness,” “completeness.” We come here tonight, because we believe that it is only by being together, being the whole community, that we will overcome the haters and seek the peace and wholeness of the city in which we dwell. May God bless us all as we do this work together in a difficult time with the hope of better times and with the hope that in time, we will be better.”

At the end of the vigil, the congregation was invited to join in what is called, in Jewish tradition, the kaddish prayer. It is a prayer recited by mourners during the bereavement period. But is not a prayer to remember the dead. It is a prayer of praise to God. The word, “kaddish” means holy. And it struck me that we also say a kaddish each and every Sunday, and we invite our kaddish with these words: “Now let us join with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven who forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name: “Holy Holy Holy.”

This is the song of the communion of saints, Holy Holy Holy, because God is holy and so are we. And whether we gather in good times or in bad times, we sing our song. At the beginning of my remarks last night, I referenced a wise minister who said, “You have to do the work in the good times to be prepared for the bad times.” That minister is an Episcopal priest named Cass Bailey. He’s the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Charlottesville. I heard him speak those words last Friday at our Diocesan convention in Richmond. He was reflecting on how the community in Charlottesville had been able to come together recently around their Jewish neighbors, because they had been in the practice of coming together since the white supremacist rally in August 2017. They had already done the work to build relationships. We saints have to do the work in good times to be prepared for the bad times. We nurture relationship with God and with our neighbors in the good times so that when hard times come, we can sing together by heart. We can receive God’s grace so abundantly provided. We are here today, celebrating all the saints, in this good time, and we baptize a new saint into the household of God this morning. We celebrate the holy women and men of God who knew and lived out this truth. We celebrate them today so that when we need their support, we will remember that we are joined with all the company of heaven.

Today’s scripture lessons are all readings that remind us both of death and the possibility of new life. They are often read at funerals. We the saints know that death and tragedy are real. Today we will read the necrology of those who have died in the last year. And we will keep in our hearts those who died at Tree of Life in Fredericksburg, those who were killed at a grocery story by racist violence in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as those who were killed at a yoga studio in Tallahassee just a couple of days ago. Tomorrow, who knows what horrible news may come. We grieve. We mourn. But even at the grave we make our song, holy holy holy, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. We recite our kaddish, gathered as God’s holy people, and in so doing we are reminded that death is not the end. Hatred, bitterness, and enmity are not the last words. They are not the last work, because we are still here, with all the saints. May God bless all the saints as we work together in difficult times with the hope of better times and with the hope that in God’s good time and by God’s good grace, we will be better.

 

Transfiguration

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Sermon from the Rev. Joseph H. Hensley, Jr., Rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Last Sunday of Epiphany Year B: February 11, 2018

We began our service with a prayer containing these words: “O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory. Grant to us that we may be changed into the likeness of Christ from glory to glory. Are we serious about this prayer? Do we really want to be changed into the likeness of Christ?

Looking at the Gospel text, we witness Jesus going up to a high mountain with his inner circle of disciples, Peter, James, and John. There, on top of the mountain, Jesus undergoes a radical alteration of appearance. His clothes are brighter than anything imaginable. He looks less like the human Jesus and more like a god.

We might think that the disciples would bask in Jesus’ glory, that they would revel in this holy moment. No, the scripture tells us they are terrified. Peter just starts running his mouth, he has no idea what to say, he is so afraid. Why? Remember that in Jewish theology, to look into the face of God was a death sentence. No one looks at God and lives. Seeing Jesus transfigured before them, the disciples probably thought their lives were over. It was not an unreasonable fear. But their fear reveals that they still have much to learn about Jesus. They have a limited understanding, and it means they cannot see the greater reality.

Most of us would probably not know what to say either, if we saw Jesus in all that glory. It would just be too much outside our understanding. Too much outside our reality. The problem of the disciples, the problem we have as well, is that we operate generally in the reality that feels comfortable to us. We operate with a limited understanding about life that makes sense. We have stories we tell ourselves so that our world is not too overwhelming. And Jesus challenges the stories we tell ourselves. Even Jesus without the glory and bright shining clothes rocks our world. We say we want to follow Jesus, but only as long as it doesn’t mess with our reality too much. There come points where, given the choice between being changed into the likeness of Christ and keeping our reality the same, we are likely to choose keeping things the same. Too much glory can be too much. A little bit of glory, a warm glow, that’s okay. But if being changed into the likeness of Christ means we are going to catch on fire with the Holy Spirit, we might just prefer to stay like we are, thank you very much. As much as we admire the great saints, most of us do not really want to be one of them, because they had to surrender their lives.

There’s a famous quote by spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson which says, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” So I would like to render this in Christian terms, “Our deepest fear is that Christ is powerful beyond measure. It is the light of Christ, not the darkness of evil, that most frightens us.” Even those of us who call ourselves Christians are often afraid of the light of Christ, because it is a light that will change us. It is a light that will demand that we see and not hide our heads in the sand. But more importantly it is a light that will make us shine in glory too. It invites us to be transfigured. And many of us like our appearance the way it is or at least the way we think it should be according to our reality. We are willing to change, but not too much. We are afraid of accepting the power of Christ as our own, because it will mean surrendering the comfort of our limited reality.

It’s okay that many of us are not ready to be changed into the likeness of Christ. That’s just where we are. I will admit, there are days when I hesitate to fully embrace Christ, because I am afraid of where Jesus will take me. I like my life the way it is. But we do not have to stay stuck in this limited reality, in resistance to our own transfiguration. In the Gospel text, the disciples are terrified witnessing the glory of Christ. God has mercy on them and overshadows them with a cloud. Out of the cloud, God’s voice speaks (is it a booming voice or a whisper? I like to think it was more of a whisper). “This is my son, the beloved, listen to him.” Listen to Jesus. And then the cloud lifts and Jesus is back to normal. He takes Peter, James and John down the mountain and the first thing he says to them is not to say anything about what they saw until after the son of man rises from the dead. Jesus basically tells them he is going to die and rise again. Just when they think things are back to “normal,” Jesus is rocking their world again. The same beloved one of God that we just saw clothed in divine brightness will suffer and die. And then, he will rise again. The greater glory is still to come, and it will come through love and surrender.

We can hear the whisper in the cloud speaking to us as well, “This is my Son the beloved. Listen to him.” Don’t listen to the voices of inadequacy and fear of being glorious in Christ. Don’t listen to the story of our limited reality that we tell ourselves just to keep comfortable. Listen to the beloved One of God who invites us on a path of greater glory. Priest and activist John Dear has said, “If we try to follow Jesus, our lives will be transfigured, because they are no longer our own. Jesus will lead us to new places, new people, new truth, so the journey is no longer a journey from crisis to crisis, death to death but life to new life, peace to deeper peace, glory to greater glory.” Jesus is transfigured on the mountain not to impress the disciples but to invite them into glory as well. Glory that is more than a mountaintop experience. Glory that is not afraid to descend into the valleys of despair and death to bring hope and new life. Glory that is even more glorious, because it has laid aside the power of this world and taken up the power of God which is revealed in love. Jesus is transfigured so that our lives and our life together in community may also be transfigured, changed from glory to glory, changed into the likeness of Christ.

This week we begin the holy season of Lent. It is a time when many of us look for some ways to grow closer to God, to grow deeper in our faith and in our connections as brothers and sisters in Christ. We give some things up. We take some things on. This Lent, I invite us to consider what is keeping us from embracing the likeness of Christ. What story are we telling ourselves that serves our limited reality but is not serving the reality of God for our lives? How are we afraid of the glorious light of Christ shining into our hearts? How can we listen to the Beloved One of God and let Christ lead us to a metamorphosis of the soul? A reshaping of the heart? What do we need to give up, what do we need to take on that will open our hearts to be changed into the likeness of Christ’s heart? Do not be afraid of the power of the beloved. Listen to him. Let us pray: Grant to us, O God, that we, beholding by faith the light of Christ’s countenance, may be changed into his likeness from glory to glory. Amen.