The Weekly View

Sunday, March 8, 2020

This Sunday

Dear St. Luke Community, 

REMEMBER to set your clocks ahead one hour this Saturday night for Daylight Saving Time.

This Sunday marks the second Sunday of Lent, and the first in our Lenten Series, Entering the Passion, which moves through the days of Holy Week beginning with scriptures we usually hear on Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11).

To see a preview for our Lenten series, click here.

We enter the story by attending the parade. Jesus enters Jerusalem and we enter with him, imagining what it was like to witness this pivotal event in the last week of the life of Jesus. We often think of the palm parade as a joyous occasion, but there’s another side to this parade that represents risk. Jesus knows that he will be noticed by the ruling elite. He knows that as he rides into town heads will turn and those in power will begin to wonder about the implications of his growing popularity. Where do you stand on this day? As you enter into the scriptures can you cast yourself in this story? 

Are you one of the disciples who goes to find a donkey, aiding in Jesus’s subversive act of defiance and maybe giggling like a teenager who knows they will stick it to the man. Or perhaps you’re standing by the gates as Jesus’s biggest fan, waving palms and leading the crowd in cheers. But maybe you’re standing in the background, unsure of whether or not you want to risk your own reputation along with his. Maybe you cast yourself as his mother, proud but also deeply afraid. And maybe you don’t like to be front and center, but prefer the quiet role of the donkey, supportive in presence. 

The list goes on, each one with their own implications as to how we follow Jesus Christ this Lenten season. Any which way we go, we go together with Jesus leading the way all the way to the sacred cross.

This Sunday we’ll also install Elders as part of the Ordered ministries of the Presbyterian Church. Ordered Ministries are gifts to the church to order its life so that the ministry of the whole people of God may flourish. The existence of these ordered ministries in no way diminishes the importance of the commitment of all members to the total ministry of the church (Book of Order). 

And finally, last but certainly not least, we will also celebrate The Lord’s Supper.

See you Sunday,
Nicole

Outreach and Deacon Ministry

All are welcome to participate 

Street Chaplaincy ~ Tuesday, March 24th
Won’t you please join us? Save these upcoming dates, June 30 & October 6, for evenings of service for The Street Chaplaincy! St. Luke and other local congregations partner with The Street Chaplaincy to host Tuesday night Wellness Gatherings, where we join the street community in worship and share a meal together. More to follow when the dates draw closer. If you’re interested in serving, please email Michael Baranowski at .

Mill Street Meal Providers ~ Monday, April 6th, Group B

St. Luke Prayer Shawl Ministry ~ Sunday, March 29th, 11:15 AM-12:30 PM
Today, knitters and crocheters of all faiths are creating handmade shawls for people in need, as gifts of comfort, hope, and peace. You can knit in the privacy of your own home or drop into a monthly knitting group. If you knit or crochet and would like to contribute to St. Luke Presbyterian Church Prayer Shawl Ministry, please contact Skipper Cummings or You do not need to be a member of St. Luke to participate. 

Bible Study - Wednesdays at 9:30 AM
St. Luke Choir Rehearsal - Wednesdays at 7:00 PM
Women's Spirituality Group - Thursdays at 9:00 AM
St. Luke Women’s Bridge - 4th Tuesday, March 24th, 10:30 AM
Session Meeting - 4th Tuesday, March 24th, 7:00 PM
Deacons Meeting - 2nd Tuesday, March 10th, 6:00 PM

About St. Luke
We are a community of people following the teachings of Jesus Christ built on God’s foundational love and grace.

Our mission is to practice love by following Jesus.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

This Sunday

Dear St. Luke Community, 

This Sunday is the 34th Annual Mariners Sunday. The worship service is attended by over 200 people from across the Bay Area, belonging to various yacht clubs and representing multiple faiths.

This Sunday is also the first Sunday of Lent, a time to attend to a kind of internal spring cleaning. Peter W. Marty, the publisher of Christian Century Magazine and Senior Pastor of St Paul Lutheran in Iowa, talks about Ash Wednesday in a recent article.

Peter talks about being behind a truck so covered with grime that on the back is written the words “wash me.” He then goes on to draw a beautiful metaphor to the grime of our lives that accumulate over time, subtly.

He writes;
The salt spray on the SUV I tailed that day was accumulated grunge, just like most of the messes in my life. For the record, my house is pretty neat. It’s the sordid pieces of my personal life that accumulate without fanfare—the capacity to judge, the unforgiving spirit, the self-centered ways, the distracted me. This is why I need Ash Wednesday and that gray smudge. Yes, it adds grime on top of grime. But that ash functions like a milestone or signpost because it’s in the shape of a cross.

As we travel towards the cross over 40 days of Lent, we have the opportunity to take a moral inventory of our lives. It’s a time to experience our dependency on a God who forgives and redeems. If you think you don’t have anything to be sorry for, then you’re probably keeping the door to your messy closet closed, denying that there’s any mess to clean up. Redemption means to begin again. It’s what we mean when we say “born again.” We start over, we vow to do better, to be better, to love more, forgive more, and enact change through the ways we choose to live our lives.

Yesterday, because of that article, I went and got my car washed. I thought it would be a good way to begin my Lenten journey. By the end of the day I had accumulated dust on the windshield, reminding me that like everything else in our faith, it’s a practice. It’s getting up and vowing to let more love into your heart while letting go of all things that separate you from a love that is freely given if only we would clean out our closets and wipe away the layers of grime that accumulates over time. 

See you Sunday,
Nicole

Outreach and Deacon Ministry

All are welcome to participate 

Manna Bags ~
Thank you to all who contributed to and participated in this outreach mission!  We assembled lots of bags to distribute to the unsheltered population in Marin.

Mill Street Meal Providers ~ Monday, March 2nd, Group A

Bible Study - Wednesdays at 9:30 AM
St. Luke Choir Rehearsal - Wednesdays at 7:00 PM
Women's Spirituality Group - Thursdays at 9:00 AM
St. Luke Women’s Bridge - 4th Tuesday, March 24th, 10:30 AM
Session Meeting - 4th Tuesday, March 24th, 7:00 PM
Deacons Meeting - 2nd Tuesday, March 10th, 6:00 PM

St. Luke’s mission: To practice love by following Jesus. 
Learn more at www.stlukepres.org
Facebook ~ St. Luke Presbyterian San Rafael
Reverend Nicole Trotter ~
Office Admin., Joanne Trifoso ~
Office Phone: 415-454-2705, Office hours: M, W & Th: 10-1 & Tues: 1-4
Sexton, Carlos Araujo ~ Sunday 8:00 AM-Noon   

February 23, 2020

This Sunday

Dear St. Luke Community, 

This is Transfiguration Sunday. It’s the Sunday on our liturgical calendar that ends the Season of Epiphany. All of those manifestations of Christ witnessed through Epiphany come to one final climatic moment. 

Frederick Buechner does a wonderful job of describing the scene for us-
It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. Even without the voice from the cloud to explain it, they had no doubt what they were witnessing. It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they'd tramped many a dusty mile with, whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they'd seen as hungry, tired, footsore as the rest of them. But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory. It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it they were almost blinded. 

Even with us something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing. (Originally published in Whistling in the Dark)

Also this Sunday, during Worship, we will be assembling Manna bags that will hold some small and essential items to assist unsheltered folks of San Rafael. Under the leadership of the Outreach Committee, will assemble the bags as part of worship during the offering, remember that offering is an essential response to God for the freely given grace we receive.

As we move towards Lent there is much to look forward to: including a Lenten theme, a Lenten book study, a Fat Tuesday dinner and Mariner’s Sunday. Please take a look at the announcements below for details.

See you Sunday,
Nicole

Outreach and Deacon Ministry

All are welcome to participate 

Manna Bags ~ This Sunday at offering
Over the past two weeks, St. Luke’s Outreach has collected items to fill and distribute “Manna Bags” to the unsheltered population in Marin.
• Socks (the #1 requested item)
• Protein bars
• Mini toiletries (soap, shampoo, lotion, toothbrushes, toothpaste)
• Tissue packets
• Ziploc gallon bags
We also purchased rain ponchos and mylar blankets, and will also include a list of Marin resources and services in each bag.  Our goal today is to fill 150-200 bags, which we will distribute next week.

Mill Street Meal Providers ~ Monday, March 2nd, Group A

Designer Clothing Warehouse Sale ~ Click here for the invitation

Bible Study - Wednesdays at 9:30 AM
St. Luke Choir Rehearsal - Wednesdays at 7:00 PM
Women's Spirituality Group - Thursdays at 9:00 AM
St. Luke Women’s Bridge - 4th Tuesday, February 25th, 10:30 AM
Session Meeting - 4th Tuesday, February 25th, 7:00 PM
Deacons Meeting - 2nd Tuesday, March 10th, 6:00 PM

St. Luke’s mission: To practice love by following Jesus. 
Learn more at www.stlukepres.org
Facebook ~ St. Luke Presbyterian San Rafael
Reverend Nicole Trotter ~
Office Admin., Joanne Trifoso ~
Office Phone: 415-454-2705, Office hours: M, W & Th: 10-1 & Tues: 1-4
Sexton, Carlos Araujo ~ Sunday 8:00 AM-Noon