Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Reception & memorial service for Mrs. Allein H. Watson, September 19, 2019

Allein Harkey Watson


A Memorial service for Allein Harkey Watson, 83, of Saint Joseph, LA will be held Thursday, September 19, 2019 at Christ Episcopal Church in Saint Joseph at 2 pm following a private family burial. The service will be officiated by Father Gregg Riley under the direction of Young's Funeral Home.

Allein Harkey Watson was born on January 22, 1936 in Vicksburg and passed away Monday, September 16, 2019 in St. Joseph.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Philip Brooks Watson, Jr., parents, Haynes Louis Harkey, Sr. and Allein Wood Harkey, two brothers, Haynes Louis Harkey, Jr. and Thomas Gilbert Harkey, Sr., and sister-in-law, Barbara Harkey.

Survivors include three sons, Benjamin Maddox Watson & his wife Linda of St. Joseph, LA, William Brooks Watson, Sr. & his wife Karen of Monroe, LA, and Scott Harkey Watson & his wife Mary Lynn of Tallulah, LA;
grandchildren, Anna Kate Tonore & her husband Michael, Allie Elizabeth Watson and fiancé Jonathan Doucet, William Brooks Watson, Jr., William Parks Watson, Elizabeth Claire Watson, Elizabeth Lee Watson, and Philip Newell Watson; one great granddaughter, Emory Wade Tonore; nieces, Virginia Harkey Youngblood and husband Gerald of Austin TX; Shelia Harkey of Shreveport, LA and Rebecca Watson Vizard and husband Michael of St. Joseph, LA; nephews, Haynes Louis Harkey, III and wife Alison of Ridgeland, MS, Thomas Gilbert Harkey, Jr. and wife, Sherry of Shreveport, LA;
Matthew Faulk Harkey and wife Robin of Ridgeland, MS, sister-in-law, Peggy Harkey of Shreveport and special friend, Jessie Campbell of Saint Joseph, LA. She is also survived by a host of of great nephews and great-nieces.

Pallbearers will be William Brooks Watson, Jr. William Parks Watson, H.T. Goldman III, Frank R. Burnside, Jr., M. Sterling Blanche, William A. Guthrie, Jr. and Michael D. Thompson.

In lieu of flowers the family request memorials be made to Christ Episcopal Church, PO Box 256, St. Joseph, LA 71366 or Tensas Academy, PO Box 555, St. Joseph, LA 71366.

The family will receive friends Thursday from 1:00 until 2:00 at Christ Episcopal Church in the Parish House. 
(from Young's Funeral home website)

Monday, September 16, 2019

"...we are the Lord's possession."



It is with great sadness that I let you know Mrs. Allein Watson passed away this morning (Monday, September 16th) at home.  Funeral arrangements are being made at this time.  Notifications will be sent as soon as arrangements are complete.

"Happy from now on are those who die in the Lord! So it is, says the Spirit, for they rest from their labors."


Sunday, September 15, 2019

CEC News and Father Riley's homily from September 15, 2019



 CEC News

… Mrs. Jane Barnett will lead us in Morning Prayer September 22nd.  Father Riley will lead us in Holy Eucharist September 29th.

…The vestry has approved a contract with Pearl River Glass Studios to repair our stained glass windows and to add new exterior protection.  Work will begin soon.

…Please check out the diocesan website at  http://www.epiwla.org/  and register for  the upcoming evangelism event at Camp Hardtner, September 28.  Some of us have already registered.  The event features The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers. Here is the note from the diocesan website:
Come to Camp Hardtner  on September 28 to discover a fresh, humble, effective and Episcopal approach to the spiritual practice of evangelism. The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers - Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism, Reconciliation and Stewardship of Creation - will lead an engaging and practical workshop that will offer basic training in evangelism as well as the Way of Love. This workshop is for everyone: clergy, lay leaders, and anyone else who desires to deepen their faith and learn how to share their faith story with others.
14 PENTECOST, PROPER XIX - C - 19                              LUKE 15. 1-10



One of my favorite stain glass windows, and one of the more popular ones I might add, is that which depicts Jesus carrying the lost sheep that was found across his shoulders. Each time I read this passage that image comes to mind, along with one of my favorite hymns, “The King of Love My Shepherd is.”

Luke’s 15th chapter contains three parables of “lost and found.” In today’s gospel, we are presented with the first two. Jesus is relating these little stories in response to a group of grumbling Pharisees and scribes that do not approve of the company he is keeping, namely, those they considered “sinners.”

Tax collectors are lumped in with the sinners as well, as the Pharisees and scribes making no distinction between the two. Tax collectors were Jews who had sold out to the Romans and were making a profit off their own people. The “sinners” were those the religious elite viewed as being “unchurched.” They did not keep the law as prescribed.

Neither of these two were the types that any respecting Jew would keep company with. So why was Jesus? His telling of these two little parables should have silenced his critics.

Luke stresses the repentance of the sinner and contrasts that with the self-righteousness of the Pharisees and scribes. Their view of God’s mercy and the worth of the individual were all wrong. Jesus makes that clear in today’s parables of the lost sheep and coin.

It always seems to be the case that when our idea of God is skewed, we fall for the temptation to discriminate, to see ourselves as somehow better than another. There must have been a lot of that kind of thinking going on among God’s people at the time of Jesus.

For the gospels contain more than one teaching on the subject. In addition to today’s parables, what follows in Luke is that of the prodigal son. In it, we hear of the stay-at-home brother who resents the return of his younger sibling who has squandered his inheritance in riotous living. He now comes home with hat in hand and only to be received by his father with open arms and the throwing of a grand celebration as if his return was something to celebrate.

The older brother sees himself as somehow better, more worthy of his father’s love than the one who has returned. After all he has, in his own eyes, been the faithful one. Then, there is the story Jesus tells of the two men praying in the temple.

One sits up front and turns to view the one sitting in the back. The self-righteous one sitting up front thanks God that he is not like the other one who he deems a sinner. However the Jews of Jesus’ day were not anymore self-righteous in their thinking than we are today.

There is a reason why pride is the number one deadly sin. Its by-products are impenitence, which is a refusal to face one’s own sins and confess them to God, and hypocrisy, arrogance and snobbery that all go together to make up a self-righteous attitude.

As human beings we promote such thinking when we fall for the temptation to discriminate. Just look at our own society where do the divisions lie? Is it not race, creed, culture, religion and politics? Pride and its accompanying sin of self-righteousness build walls that separate.

The self-righteous have no need for repentance for the eyes of their soul have been blinded by their sin. In their own eyes they are fine just like they are. What alienates from God is self - satisfaction which leads us to imagine that there is nothing so very wrong with us, and to treat with contempt those who differ from us, or worse yet, those we deem as unworthy of God’s love.

Such was the case in today’s passage as the Pharisees and scribes watched Jesus sitting down to eat with those they deemed unworthy, not only of Jesus’ company, if he was who he said he was, but more especially their own.

Often when we read this story we think that being found by God is all that is necessary and is worth rejoicing. But the point of the story is that the sheep and the coin were lost. Sinners must repent.

Jesus’ idea of repentance and that of his critics differ.

For them, nothing short of adopting their standards of purity and law observance would do. For Jesus, when people follow him and his way, that is true repentance. Christ says that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents.

And that is the way it should be here. After all, isn’t that the point of praying that God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? The joy of God is in the recovery of the lost who know their own misery. Imagine the impact of this on the repentant sinners who heard these stories.

They didn’t have to earn God’s love or Jesus’ respect. He loved looking for them, and celebrated when he found them. And what Jesus did - this is the deepest point of the parables, and the ultimate reason why the Pharisees objected to them - was what God was doing. Jesus’ actions on earth corresponded exactly to God’s love in the heavenly realm.

What Jesus is doing is offering kingdom hospitality. It is not entertaining, it is evangelism.  The real challenge of these parables for today’s church is what would we have to do in the public’s eye, if we were to make people ask the question to which stories like these are the answer?

What might we as Christians do that would make people ask, ‘why are you doing something like that?’ that would give us the chance to tell our own story of our having been lost but now are found.

Our calling to follow Jesus is to follow his example, to welcome the stranger and the sojourner in our midst, even the sinner and the outcast. To reach out to the hidden places where “lost coins and sheep” tend to hide. To invite all to accept God’s hospitality and to celebrate with those who come the realization of all our need of continual repentance.

For we were once lost but have been found by Him who is the King of Love. Through the merits of His life, death and resurrection we now enjoy the hospitality of God, and live with the Hope that at the last Day He will bring us, with all the saints, into the joy of His eternal kingdom. AMEN+


Tuesday, September 10, 2019

CEC News Update and Father Riley's homily from September 8, 2019



CEC News Update!

   Father Riley will lead us in Holy Eucharist September 15th; 29th.  Mrs. Jane Barnett will lead us in Morning Prayer September 22th

…The vestry has approved a contract with Pearl River Glass Studios to repair our stained glass windows and to add new exterior protection.  Work will begin soon.

…Please check out the diocesan website at  http://www.epiwla.org/  and register for  the upcoming evangelism event at Camp Hardtner, September 28.  Some of us have already registered.  The event features The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers. Here is the note from the diocesan website:

Come to Camp Hardtner on September 28 to discover a fresh, humble, effective and Episcopal approach to the spiritual practice of evangelism. The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers - Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism, Reconciliation and Stewardship of Creation - will lead an engaging and practical workshop that will offer basic training in evangelism as well as the Way of Love. This workshop is for everyone: clergy, lay leaders, and anyone else who desires to deepen their faith and learn how to share their faith story with others.
13 PENTECOST, PROPER XVIII - C - 19             LUKE 14. 25-33



As we approach the election cycle, the political ads are becoming more numerous. Imagine if you will, a politician standing on a soapbox addressing a crowd. “If you are going to vote for me,’ he says, ‘you are voting to lose your homes and families; you are asking for higher taxes and lower wages; you are choosing to lose all you love and hold dear. Can I count on your vote?”

Why would anyone advertise himself in that way? Moreover, who would be foolish enough to vote for him? That is exactly what Jesus is doing and saying in today’s gospel passage. ‘Want to be my disciple? Hate you family. Give up your possessions. Take up your cross and follow me.’

Pretty harsh words aren’t they. Jesus makes it clear that there is a cost to discipleship. And if one chooses to follow him, they must count that cost before hand and know what they are getting themselves into.

In the preceding verses, Jesus has announced that the kingdom is open to all. This leads to the assembling of great multitudes that follow along behind him as he makes his way to the Holy City and the fate that awaits him.

The large crowds that accompany him are made up of individuals who have their reason for being there. Some are attracted to him because of the miracles he is doing, others, partly because of their curiosity. Some are following partly because he took the side of the poor, and partly because some of them have a half-hearted desire to be one of his disciples.

That’s when he turned to address them with the sternest claim - the claim for absolute renunciation of all natural ties and every kind of self-interest as the first condition of discipleship. Let us understand that we are not to take the word hate literally. In this case, it comes from the Aramaic word meaning, “love-less.”

When Jesus speaks of “loving and hating”, it is the will directed toward action that he is thinking of, not the feeling or the emotion.

Nothing is more important than following Jesus. To be a disciple requires total commitment. Christ is on his way to Jerusalem and the cross. The carrying of one’s own cross is then presented as a condition of discipleship. That alone should have been enough to thin the crowd.

There was not one present that had not heard of the crucified bodies that lined the Appian Way leading to Rome or perhaps seen those that hung on the outskirts of Jerusalem. They knew the condemned were required to carry their own cross. Why then, would anyone even think of doing such a thing?

Jesus follows his claim with two illustrations that give us a vivid picture of the cost involved in following Him, the tower and the war; together they reiterate the claim for absolute renunciation.

Our choice to follow Jesus was made at the font. The Baptismal office begins with a question to those adults who are being presented to receive the sacrament. “Do you desire to be baptized?” The proper response is “I do.”

As a priest of almost forty years now, I have asked that question of many adults and witnessed countless children being presented by parents and godparents who have answered on behalf of those children. By doing so they have made the commitment for them by renewing their own baptismal vows.

What I have really wanted to ask is “why, why do you desire to be baptized? Do you truly understand what you are getting yourself into?"

I can only imagine that the responses would be just as varied as the reasons why those in the crowd followed Jesus on his way to the cross. Just as I would imagine that after he delivered his stern warnings in today’s passage concerning the cost of discipleship the crowds were indeed thinned.

How seriously do we take our baptismal vows and promises? People expect that their lives will be better, that their lives will hold more meaning when they become a Christian. An abundant life is always part of the gospel promise, but it is only part.

The other part, Jesus makes clear in today’s reading, that is, everything we value is qualified by the demands of discipleship. The cost involved may include the giving up of one’s life. Look at the world around us it happens everyday. The cost may involve a limit on what we posses. Most certainly, it will change every significant relationship one has.

Most, however, do not want life to be too heavy. Nor do we like to be told what to do and how to live. Nor do we take to the idea of carrying a cross through life as being something positive.

We want all that God can give, discipleship and the good life and especially the fulfillment of the promise of eternal life. However, Jesus is telling us plainly that it is not like that. One had better count the cost before making the commitment.

Baptism is not, as it sometimes seems to be, a social event in the life of an individual. It is a lifetime commitment to one’s following Jesus and obeying Him as Lord and Savior. It is not a one time “yes” to God in Christ, but a commitment to live each day, with God’s help, in renewal of those vows and promises we made at our baptisms and the renunciations that accompany them.

Why, then, would anyone count the cost from the beginning and still choose to follow Jesus? Because in a curiously paradoxical way, it is to choose life rather than death. The choice is ours to make.

The command given to Israel remains. To love and obey God, that is life rather than death. To keep God’s commandments, that is life rather than death. To make good on our baptismal vows and promises, is to choose life rather than death.

At the font of life, we were buried with Christ in the waters of Holy Baptism and raised to new life in Him. From the font, our lifetime journey to God takes us to the altar to participate in the death of Jesus by receiving the sacrament of His Body and Blood.

Each Eucharist we participate in is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet we have all been invited to, and brings us closer to the Day when the new life we now live will be exchanged for the glory of the eternal life Jesus promises to all who chose Him. AMEN+