Dear People of God,
I hope this note finds you adjusting well to our new, temporary normal in Dallas and the surrounding areas. I hope you’re heeding the guidelines of the County and / or your respective municipality. As we do so, we are expressing God’s love for our neighbor as counterintuitive and unglamorous as it might seem.
I want to remind you of this opportunity to invest in the “little church” that lives in your home. Tomorrow our weekly Morning Prayer service will be posted online HERE. As per our normal Morning Prayer, we’ll be using the Daily Office Morning and Evening Prayer booklets. You can download one HERE. Please join us for prayer tomorrow, and try it on your own in successive mornings and evenings.
Secondly, some of you who normally tithe via check at the Sunday Offering have asked how you can give since we are not meeting on Sundays. There are three simple ways to continue your giving to St. Bart’s.
1) You can mail your check to:
St. Bart’s
P.O. Box 180005
Dallas, TX 75218
2) Click HERE create an online giving profile.
3) Similarly, you can text any donation amount to the number 84321. A secure link will be sent to your phone to set up a giving profile.
Please let us know if you have any questions. And, as always, if you have any prayer or material needs, please reach out to contact@stbartsdallas.org or call the Church office at 214-506-8718 and someone will follow up with you as soon as possible.
God bless you and your little church, and we’ll see you soon!
Jay+
Update: Sermon Audio, Service Opportunity
Dear People of St. Bart’s,
Thank you all for your positive responses to our decision to cancel services for the next 2 weeks in addition to your availability to help those in need. So, I write you this evening on those two topics.
First, St. Bart’s will post our Sunday Worship Bulletin (for the Third Sunday in Lent) along with sermon audio tomorrow around our regular worship time of 5pm. Yes, I’ll be preaching into my phone a short homily - it should be fun - and we’ll post it online HERE. We’re doing this so you can have a chance for your family or household to worship together. The home is the “little church,” and the social distancing strategies that the COVID-19 saga has necessitated give us an opportunity to celebrate our weekly worship in this “little church.” Simply follow the liturgy as you would on any normal Sunday, praying the prayers, reading the scriptures, and listen to the short homily at sermon time. Read the prayers for Holy Communion as if you were at church, and one day soon we’ll partake again of Christ’s Body and Blood as one body.
Secondly, many of you have asked what can be done to help the community. Since many schools will have extended spring break, families that rely on school lunches will be at an extreme disadvantage. Lake Pointe Church’s White Rock Campus is collecting non-perishable food items in order to help families like this. You may drop your non-perishable food items at their campus from 2-5 pm tomorrow, Sunday, March 15, 9150 Garland Rd, Dallas, TX 75218.
As always, if you have a prayer or material need, please email contact@stbartsdallas.org or call the Church’s number 214-506-8718 and leave a message. Someone will follow up with you as soon as possible.
God bless you, and I look forward to sharing with you via the magical interweb.
Jay+
COVID-19 Update from the Rector
Dear People of God,
Greetings in the name of God our Father, in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit! He has given us the hope of everlasting life in his Son, and abundance in his holy and life-giving Spirit.
I am writing you as COVID-19 (aka coronavirus) has reached “community spread” level in Dallas County. Accordingly, Dallas County administrator Judge Clay Jenkins declared a state of emergency for the county. In this state of emergency gatherings of 500 people or more are prohibited while gatherings of 250 people or more are highly discouraged. For this reason, the Clergy and Vestry of St. Bart’s have decided suspend worship services and church-sponsored activities for two Sundays (March 15 and 22).
We are taking these extraordinary precautions not out of fear or panic, but out of love for neighbor. Many of our parishioners fall into the category of highly vulnerable to this disease: those over age 60 and / or with compromised immune systems. A key tactic in preventing further community spread of the virus is social distancing. As the people of St. Bart’s, we want to do our part to help stop the spread of the disease in the city of Dallas.
Moreover, as the people of God, chosen and dearly beloved, we put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Now more than ever we have an opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ to each other and our neighbor. We can behave in calm hope knowing that only our compassionate and loving Heavenly Father controls outcomes. He dearly loves us and the world He has made.
What’s next? I know that many of you may inadvertently experience a sense of isolation in this short season. Stay tuned to this newsletter for information and ways to continue to cultivate your life in Christ. Chris and I will be calling to check in on our older, isolated, and more vulnerable parishioners. If you have a prayer or material need, please email contact@stbartsdallas.org or call the Church’s number 214-506-8718 and leave a message. Someone will follow up with you as soon as possible.
God-willing, we will resume worship on Sunday March 29 with added measures to prevent community spread and protect those most vulnerable in our midst.
May the God hope fill you all joy and peace in believing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jay+
Provision in the Wilderness
We are a couple of weeks into our lenten journey, and we may feel weary, dry, thirsty, and desperate. You may even be cursing this whole lent thing and giving up on it. Take heart because if we persist it’s possible we’ll see the Lord making provision for us in mysterious and tangible ways.
One of Sunday’s lessons describes the Israelite's journey out of Egypt into the wilderness. There, in the middle of the Sinai desert, they realized they had no resources to sustain life - they were thirsty and scared for their lives. So they contended with Moses. Apparently the situation got pretty tense because Moses cried out to God saying, “They are almost ready to stone me” (Exod 17:4).
Then God gives Moses some specific instructions. “Go before this people and take with you some of the elders of Israel. Also take in your hand the rod with which you struck the river and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it so the people may drink” (5-6).
So God provided for his people in their deep and desperate need. And he did so in a mysterious, sacramental kind of way. St. Paul tells us that the rock that Moses struck was Christ who had been with Israel in the desert. And though the rock flowed like a fountain, it was still a rock. This phenomenon is rather like the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Bread and Wine at Holy Communion as they become his Body and Blood. They are still bread and wine, but by a mystery, because Christ is with us, they are the Body and Blood.
I pray God is your provision this lent. And I pray especially that as we partake of the eucharistic feast each Sunday this wilderness season, you will receive the Body of Christ and drink his Blood with glad and thankful hearts knowing He goes with us in the desert.
Together in Lent,
Jay+
A Lesser No, A Greater Yes
In this first full week of Lent, I find myself drawn back to a song by Audrey Assad called “You Speak.” In the chorus she sings these words,
“In the silence of the heart You speak
In the silence of the heart You speak
And it is there that I will know You
And You will know me
In the silence of the heart
You speak, You speak.”
What strikes me about these simple words is that they point to an important truth about spiritual disciplines. That God speaks into the silence of our hearts is what makes silence good. In other words, the good of silence is not necessarily silence itself, but that in silence we might hear God speak.
It is crucial for us to remember this truth in Lent. Spiritual disciplines are meant to foster an encounter with God. Fasting, prayer, almsgiving–all the classic disciplines of Lent–are not ends in themselves, so they are not meant to be practiced for their own sake. Rather they are practiced for the sake of encountering God.
To pray is not to say a set of words so that I might appear spiritual to myself and others. No, to pray is to commune with God. To fast is not to see either how heroic or how weak I might might be in relation to my appetites. No, to fast is to say no to one appetite, in order to say yes to our appetite for God. To give alms is not to lord my means and my resources over someone who has less. No, to give alms is to love my neighbor and to seek the face of God in the faces of the needy.
Think again of our gospel passage from last Sunday–Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. As Jesus fasted he was certainly saying no to his very real and very human appetite for food, but in saying no to that appetite he was also saying yes to God. So when Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”, he says in effect that when we say no to something lesser, we can say yes to something even greater.
On March 27th we will be hosting a concert with Audrey Assad and Page CXVI. You can get your tickets here.
Also, ever wonder why we say the Ten Commandments together in Lent? To learn why and more about the Ten Commandments join us for Public Theology on Monday, March 23. We will be discussing Peter Leithart’s Ten Commandments: A Guide to the Perfect Law of Liberty
Chris+
Our Lenten Pilgrimage
Lent is here. We began with Ash Wednesday yesterday when we heard St. Paul, the Prophet Joel, and Jesus himself calling us to reconciliation, to inward and outward expressions of sorrow for our sin, and to simplicity. Simplicity that has as its end and reward God himself.
We continue Sunday as Jesus makes his pilgrimage into the desert. Here he spends forty days fasting, praying, and being tempted by Satan.
We all know the feeling of hunger. We all know the feeling of being in the wilderness. And perhaps we have experienced the forces of darkness pressing in upon us. Imagine all of these at once. After fasting. For forty days.
Thus begins our season of Lent. I’m expectant this Lent like I’ve never been before. I hope you’ll be present to yourself, to God, and to others in this season. You may have already been experiencing a wilderness or great hunger. I pray God speaks to you powerfully and shows you that he’s been walking alongside you the whole time. For on the other side of Satan’s voice is Jesus’ voice, quoting Holy Scripture, reiterating the goodness of God, and demonstrating his own dependence on the Father.
With you on the journey -
Jay+
People of Thanksgiving and Longing
This Sunday’s lessons present us three great teachers in the wild: Moses, St. Paul, and our Lord Jesus. And each of them is speaking to their people - and us - about choices, consequences, and righteousness.
In Deuteronomy Moses offers the simplicity of the choice before Israel as they prepare to enter the land God swore to give to Abraham’s descendants - the promised land. If they obey God in the land, they will be blessed; and yet if they disobey God and follow after gods they will be cursed. The choice is simple, Moses says, life or death, blessing or cursing.
St. Paul, similarly, speaks about choices to a young, gifted, and conflicted church in Corinth. He says that they’re in Christ and thus spiritual, and yet they are making choices that show a loyalty to their flesh. These flesh choices are exhibited by their divisiveness around who their leader is - Paul or Apollos. Paul is quick to point out that he and Apollos are nothing but “only God who gives the growth.”
The last and greatest teacher, Jesus, has something to say about choices and the flesh as well. In his series of sayings that are marked by the formula “you have heard it said / but I say to you,” Jesus illustrates how to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees. Dallas Willard, our friendly guide through the Sermon on the Mount, notes that Jesus is explaining what the law really means for human life under God and exactly how his hearers are to respect the law and move beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees (See Divine Conspiracy, 127).
We’ll unpack these words of life together Sunday! See you then -
Jay+
Choices, Choices, Choices
This Sunday’s lessons present us three great teachers in the wild: Moses, St. Paul, and our Lord Jesus. And each of them is speaking to their people - and us - about choices, consequences, and righteousness.
In Deuteronomy Moses offers the simplicity of the choice before Israel as they prepare to enter the land God swore to give to Abraham’s descendants - the promised land. If they obey God in the land, they will be blessed; and yet if they disobey God and follow after gods they will be cursed. The choice is simple, Moses says, life or death, blessing or cursing.
St. Paul, similarly, speaks about choices to a young, gifted, and conflicted church in Corinth. He says that they’re in Christ and thus spiritual, and yet they are making choices that show a loyalty to their flesh. These flesh choices are exhibited by their divisiveness around who their leader is - Paul or Apollos. Paul is quick to point out that he and Apollos are nothing but “only God who gives the growth.”
The last and greatest teacher, Jesus, has something to say about choices and the flesh as well. In his series of sayings that are marked by the formula “you have heard it said / but I say to you,” Jesus illustrates how to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees. Dallas Willard, our friendly guide through the Sermon on the Mount, notes that Jesus is explaining what the law really means for human life under God and exactly how his hearers are to respect the law and move beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees (See Divine Conspiracy, 127).
We’ll unpack these words of life together Sunday! See you then -
Jay+