The Clarendon Connection

News of Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church January 2008

Sunday Schedule

Choir rehearsal 9:45 a.m.

Worship 10:30 a.m.

Children’s Education 10:45 a.m.

Refreshments and fellowship 11:30 a.m.

Communion will be celebrated on January 6th.

January Calendar

Orders for Equal Exchange items will be taken at church on January 6th (for more info, see page 2)

Joint Session and Deacon’s meeting on Wednesday, January 9^th, 7:30 p.m. (date is tentative)

Yoga, at 12:15 p.m. on Sunday, January 13^th (for more info, see page 3)

Writing Group meets on Wednesday, January 16^th at 7:30 p.m. (date is tentative; for more info, see page 3)

Peace, Justice and Mission committee will meet at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 17^th

“Be A Villen” runs at The Nave Gallery from Friday, January 18^th – Saturday. An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 18^th from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. (for more info, see page 3)

Right after church on Sunday, December 20^th, a potluck and the annual meeting (for more info, see page 4)

Book Group/Bible Study on Wednesday, January 23rd at 7:00 p.m. (for more info, see page 4)

Yoga, at 12:15 p.m. on Sunday, January 27^th (for more info, see page 3)

Horizons Bible Study will meet at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, February 1st (for more info, see page 4)

COMING IN FEBRUARY:

Adult Education series on the historical Jesus, featuring the book “Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions” by M. Borg and N.T. Wright (see book review)

Parish News

Here is a note from Doris Fisher’s daughter:

Hi .....just wanted to let you know that I and my family really appreciate the carolers last Friday nite..it was just wonderful...Mom really enjoyed it very much…all she talks about is the carolers..We want to thank all of you for doing this for Mom...I will never forget this as long as I live..Again, thanks for a wonderful time last Friday..tell everyone for us we said thank you. Merry Christmas to you and your families, From all of us...Mom, Susan, John and Kristen

It was great to see Branden (a former seminarian) and Tisha Brooks in church over the holidays. They are expecting their first child in February. Congratulations!

We pray for continued healing for Ching Ling Kung and her family as she recovers from a stroke.

The Presbyterian Coffee Project

Orders will be taken for Equal Exchange COFFEE (drip or whole bean) and TEA (English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Green, Rooibos),hot cocoa mix, baking cocoa and chocolate bars ($3.00 per bar, or $30.00 for a box of 12), at church on Sunday, Janaury 6th. You can send orders to Katherine no later than the evening of January 6th by phone (617-628-6716) or email (kgkg@gis.net).

Due to higher organic cocoas prices, Equal Exchange has had to increase their chocolate bar and cocoa prices. The 12 oz cans of organic hot cocoa mix and the 8 oz cans of organic unsweetened baking cocoa will now be $5.00 per can.

Remember that Equal Exchange makes contributions to the national Presbyterian Church

For every pound of fairly traded products that Presbyterians purchase, Equal Exchange donates $0.15 to the Presbyterian Church USA. For 2006, that amount totaled $21,012. The funds were used to support a reforestation and environmental sustainability project with a coffee cooperative in Nicaragua.

What is EQUAL EXCHANGE? In 1991, Equal Exchange became the first U.S. company to adopt international fair trade standards as guiding principles on 100% of their products. By working with democratic farmer cooperatives around the world and paying a fair price, Equal Exchange supports efforts to improve local communities, putting more control and greater income in the hands of impoverished, small-scale farmers in developing nations. We also serve freshly made Equal Exchange coffee at Clarendon Hill’s coffee hours!

Christmas gifts for families from Somerville Early Head Start

Thanks to your generosity, we were able to provide everything that the two families from Somerville Early Head Start were in need of, plus a few extra items (like gift cards for a local grocery store.) Thank you so much for your willingness to help!

Introduction to Yoga

Come join our small, half-hour class during coffee hour (12:15 p.m., on Sundays, January 13^th and 27th) to practice mindful breathing and gentle yoga postures. Great for stress release, improved flexibility and strength. If interested, please email Liz at cavatorta1@hotmail.com for more info.

Writing Group at Clarendon Hill--all are welcome!!

After two exciting and productive meetings in October and November, the writing group will meet on Wednesday, January 16th, at 7:30 p.m. in the Green Room. Please join us!! We will begin with a group check-in, move through 1-2 writing exercises, share as we feel moved, and finish with a group check-out. We are open to everyone, regardless of previous writing experience and will tailor each session to the needs and interests of those who show up. Contact Gusti or Liz for more information: gusti_newquist@yahoo.com or Cavatorta1@hotmail.com

The Nave Gallery

Be A Villen runs from Friday, January 18^th – Saturday, February 9^th. An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 18^th from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Dedicated to Brian Liberatore, SHS Class of 2002

A number of young Somervillians call themselves “villens”. It is an expression that means unity and fellowship in a city that had previously been divided into east and west. Young people in Somerville have suffered recent tremendous loss due to drugs, violence and accidents. If anything, tragedy seems to have brought these “villens” closer together as a group.

The exhibit “Be A Villen” is meant to be a vehicle to allow artists to express some of the many complex emotions evoked by their experiences of tragedy. Additionally, broader interpretations of the theme are welcome; for example, issues of gentrification and change and its effects on young citizens as Somerville moves forward in the 21st century. Teen Empowerment will award the most compelling submission with a prize and the opportunity to showcase the piece at the annual Somerville Youth Peace Conference.

For this exhibit the Nave Gallery is donating its 20% commission of all sales to the Brian M. Liberatore Somerville High School Scholarship Fund. This fund is targeted for SHS students with an interest in art, music and hockey.

The Nave Gallery is an important partner in Somerville’s vibrant arts community. It is a project of ARTSomerville, a volunteer organization that draws upon the talents of local creativity, strengthening communication among artists and the public by presenting exhibits, performances, and educational activities, in collaboration with the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church. The gallery is a noncommercial art space featuring work of both emerging and established artists. Run and staffed completely by volunteers, the Nave provides an important exhibition space for both local and regional artists.

All exhibitions are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Friday 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. and Saturday & Sunday 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

To see a schedule of events, which is updated often, please look at the website: www.artsomerville.org/upcoming.html

Annual Meeting

Join us right after the service on Sunday, January 20th (snow date January 27^th) for a potluck meal and the annual meeting. At the annual meeting we will elect officers for the coming year, hear reports from our committees about the activities that have occurred in the past year and ideas for the upcoming year, vote on the annual budget for 2008 and conduct other necessary business. Everyone is invited to attend – only members of Clarendon Hill are allowed to vote. Bring a dish to share (appetizer, main dish, side dish, dessert or beverage), enjoy some great food, and let your voice be heard!

Book Group/Bible Study

There has been a simmering desire for more bible study opportunities at CHPC. The book group of the past few years is now a bible study that will be reading and listening to the Gospel of Matthew. We will go through it chapter by chapter at whatever pace we

need. Although meant to be more about listening for God's voice through this gospel, we will certainly also be ready to look at issues of interpretation and history. If you have been looking for something like this you are invited to join us on Wednesday evening January 23rd at 7:00 p.m.

Friday afternoon Horizons Bible Study

On Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m., February 1st, all interested in a once a month Bible Study are invited to come to Salam Lebbos' house in Arlington. We will be using the 2007-2008 Horizons Bible Study: Above and Beyond - Hearing God's Call in Jonah and Ruth, published by Presbyterian Women. If you are interested in participating, please contact Gusti Newquist, Katherine Gustafson, or Salam Lebbos. Get in touch with Katherine if you need a ride or directions.

Stewardship for 2008

Thanks to those of you who have turned in your pledge forms, and indicated how you plan to support Clarendon Hill during 2008 with your tithes.

There are many more of you who give on a regular basis: you know who you are! But we have not yet received your pledges. Please take a minute or two of your time, think about what the community at Clarendon Hill has meant to you over the past year, and fill out a pledge form. (You should have received one in the mail in December – if you need a new one, there are on the table by the entrance to the sanctuary. Fill out the pledge form and put it in the offering plate, or mail it to the church at your convenience. It is critical that our officers know what are budget for income will be for the coming year. Thank you so much!

Rental Space Available!

Teen Empowerment and the Somerville Producers Group have both recently left their rental space at the church, so there is room available! If you know of a group or organization that is in need of office space, please have them get in touch with the church right away.

Update from the Finance Committee of the Session

The Session is currently completing the 2008 budgeting process, and we wanted to share some of our findings and recommendations with the Congregation.

Each year, our utility expense has become a greater proportion of the overall budget, reaching nearly 20% of our expected expenses in the coming year. We are forecasting a total expense of nearly $32.000, up 20% from 2007, most of which will go to the cost of heating the church building, an expense that has nearly doubled in the last four years.

We have also recommended a substantial increase in our local mission budget. In 2007, we budgeted $1,000, all of which was distributed to Somerville Early Head Start. In 2008, we are recommending an increase to $4,000. The Session believes that we can find multiple candidates in the area where we can once again make a big impact, and we want to signal our commitment to supporting local mission.

Elder Jeff Bray

Nominating Committee

The Nominating Committee will shortly begin it’s work to fill our boards, committees and church positions for 2008. If you are called and asked to serve, please prayerfully consider your answer to be an enthusiastic “YES”!

We need your energy, time, imagination and love to make Clarendon Hill the best that it can be.

Upcoming Events of Interest

Thanks to Naila Jirmanus for passing along the following information:

"Turning the Climate Corner" with Ross Gelbspan, Pulitzer Prize Winning Climate-Expert

Friday, January 4th, 7:00pm, FREE; http://www.jamaicaplainforum.org

The Global Warming debate has come into the national spotlight in recent years with new scientific evidence leading to the same conclusion about the earth's atmosphere: it's getting warmer as a direct result of human activity. Pulitzer Prize winning Boston Globe journalist Ross Gelbspan has been watching and reporting on these climate change issues since 1984, and is considered an international authority on the issue. Ross visits the Jamaica Plain Forum to discuss new research findings, and share his long-sighted perspective.

"Everything's Cool" documentary, Friday, January 25th, 7:00pm, FREE

EVERYTHING'S COOL is a film about America finally "getting" global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action. While industry funded nay-sayers sing what just might be their swan song of pseudo- scientific deception, a group of global warming messengers are on a high stakes quest to find the iconic image, the magic language, the points of leverage that will finally create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels to the new clean energy economy - AND FAST.

Ross Gelbspan, film subject and Pulitzer Prize winning Climate-expert, returns to the Jamaica Plain Forum for a screening and discussion about this award-winning climate-change documentary.

Youth and families highly encouraged!

The Jamaica Plain Forum; First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist Sanctuary; 6 Eliot St. (Across from the Monument), Jamaica Plain

MBTA Line: 39 Bus to The Monument, or Orange Line to Green Street or Forest Hills

The Massachusetts Climate Action Network, The Massachusetts Energy Consumer's Alliance, The Boston Climate Action Network, and the Center for Democracy and the Constitution

http://www.jamaicaplainforum.org

Energy Assistance Available to Somerville Residents

Thanks to Kristy Graf for passing this information on:

Somerville residents are eligible for Weatherization funds from the U.S. Department

of Energy. The funds are administered by the Town of Arlington - contact person

is Janet Baroni, 781-316-3432. People applying for fuel assistance should check

off the "weatherization" box on the form. Tenants can have an energy audit done

and have their apartment/house insulated (for free!!) if the landlord gives permission.

Low-income homeowners can have their boilers replaced, etc. For more information

on Weatherization, see the link below.

http://www.waptac.org/si.asp?id=1029 [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?

Also, don't forget that the City of Somerville Housing Department has rehabilitation

funds available for new roofs, window replacements, boiler upgrades, etc. Call

617-623-6600 x. 2577, or go to:

http://www.somervillema.gov/Division.cfm?orgunit=HOUSING

Christ and the Grand Inquisitor

This appeared in The Boston Globe on Monday, December 24^th, and was written by James Carroll.

In this religiously contentious season, it is difficult to think about Christmas as an event of more than commercial significance. The spiritual assertions of Christians, whether intentional or not, can seem an imposition. Christianity has had such dominance in the West that its adherents often miss how alienating its observances can be to others. Yet Christmas, whatever else it means, is a given fact of culture. Jesus is a marker on the road to history. All who travel that road might ask, “Who was he?” “What did he mean?” These questions have obvious relevance for believers, but because followers of Jesus so dominate a vast geography of consciousness, nonbelievers, too, may have an interest.

Jesus eschewed violence. He was killed by a violent empire for opposing it.

The Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, who lived a generation after Jesus, and whose “Jewish Antiguities” provides independent, if not entirely undisputed, confirmation of key elements of the Gospel story, offered a simple but crucial observation about Jesus and his friends; “Those who in the first place had come to love him and did not give up their affection for him.” It was in that “not giving up affection” for the dead Jesus that the Jesus movement was born.

Stories were told about him that gave expression to that affection. Of those stories, the Nativity is the one, perhaps, that most resonates with feeling, which is why so many people have found it irresistible. But the very appeal of Jesus to vast masses of humans has itself lead to skepticism.

The boldest meditation on the meaning of Jesus comes in the tale of the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamanzov,” in which Jesus is interrogated by the Grand Inquisitor. The crime of Jesus consists precisely in the affection that so many otherwise ignoble humans have for him.

How dare Jesus inspire such widespread trust? A relatively small number “of the great and the strong,” the Inquisitor argues, can carry the burden of freedom, “while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak but love Thee” cannot bear freedom’s weight. Only an elite minority is worthy to manage the word. The rest, taken up with narrow concerns for bread and money, and consoled by miracles and mysteries, must live for subservience. The masses are to blindly meet their meager needs, while bowing before the authority of those few who are capable of higher aspirations.

The crime of Jesus was to say no to this. Dostoevsky sees in him an invitation addressed to every person, to regard himself or herself as capable of overcoming the limits of birth, circumstance, class, culture, and even time. That the Grand Inquisitor, an official in the movement that claims Jesus as founder, regards this invitation as an offense is Dostoevsky’s way of pointing to the transcendent significance of Jesus, beyond Christian belief.

Indeed, the Jesus who rejects slavish authority for himself and others is the living critique of any institution, the church included, that asks less of humans, instead of more. It is the this universal call to self-surpassing that the radical appeal of Jesus can be found.

Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is reviled as a malign figure, but he was laden with good intentions. He simply valued humanity as is, for all that keeps it earthbound. Jesus loved humanity for what it might become. There is more to life than bread, money, and the satisfaction of meager needs. Indeed, satisfaction and aspiration are mutually exclusive.

The Inquisitor was right to see the threat in such a difference, for restlessness and even rebellion are built into the hope for something higher. When the followers of Jesus could not “let go of their affection for him,” and then when masses of ordinary people felt ennobled by their connection to him, the authority of institutions, from empire to church, would never again be paramount.

That is why, finally, the Grand Inquisitor pronounced his verdict; “Tomorrow, I shall burn Thee. Dixi.” Christ said nothing in reply.

The Inquisitor “longed for Him to say something however bitter and terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all His answer.”

The Inquisitor, too, was a person – one of those grains of sand, to whom the transcendent invitation could be offered.

“Go!” the Grand Inquisitor said to Christ, allowing the principle of self-surpassing its escape. “And he let Him out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away.”

Karl Rove, the literary genius

Written by Stephen McCauley, a guest columnist, who teaches at Brandeis and is the author of give novels, This appeared in the Monday, December 10^th edition of The Boston Globe.

Dear Mr. Rove:

I’m guessing that you don’t receive a lot of complimentary messages from my ZIP code, but this is a thank you note. To be honest, I’m surprised to find myself writing it – I haven’t been a fan. But after watching your recent performance on “The Charlie Rose Show,” I felt I had to express my gratitude.

When I saw you implying that the Bush administration, was, in essence, pressured by the Senate to go to war in Iraq before it wanted – before letting weapons inspections run their course, before forging a true international coalition - I realized that you’re something of an ally.

I don’t mean a political ally.

Here’s the thing: I earn the bulk of my living writing novels – made-up stories about invented people – and somewhere in the middle of your bold restructuring of the historical record, I understood that you are, and always have been, a fiction writer’s good friend.

Literary fiction hasn’t been flourishing in this country for the past decade. It uded to be that people went for great stories and memorable characters. For years, they read Jane Austen’s romantic comedies and Leo Tolstoy’s sprawling sagas and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s melancholy love stories to connect, on a profound level, with the complicated ambiguities of emotion. Then, back in the mid-1990’s, our culture took a sharp turn, and suddenly, everything was about “truth.” Writers and readers abandoned the novel en masse, and shifted their allegiance to the memoir.

Maybe readers became too impatient to wade through the obfuscations of art – metaphor and simile and the mandatory epiphany. Maybe writers became impatient, too. It’s a lot quicker to simply lay out the details of abuse and addiction, and cut straight to rehab and redemption.

And the bleed didn’t stop at books.

Television soon followed suit. Who needs another scripted sitcom when you can gather together a group of buff folks under one roof, mix some Mai Tais, and turn on the hot tub? They’ll come up with their own dialogue and, if things are cooking, take off their bikinis.

Fiction, on the page and on the screen, needs a carefully structured narrative; life just has to happen.

More than one novelist I know has plaintively cried, “Who needs fiction? We’ve become obsolete!”

But there you were with Charlie Rose proving otherwise. With a few carefully chosen words, you made it clear that fiction does have a place in American life, and that you – arguably one of the most powerful men in the world – function with a novelist’s instincts.

When faced with a question that challenged the logic of your worldview, you did what novelists do: You made something up. You twisted the record to fit your narrative with the subtlety of Austen and the boldness of Tolstoy And you did it with such Fitzgerald-like conviction, a lot of viewers probably accepted it, like they accept Gatsby’s infatuation with Daisy.

I used to shudder the sight of your silhouette as you strode down the hallways of the White House. There was always something about your man-behind-the-curtain elusiveness combined with your appearance – Baby Huey in Brooks Brothers – that I found unnerving. You’ve been credited with being “Bush’s brain” and I was appalled with the way your administration ignored, distorted, or simply buried the facts on so nay issues – from global warming to foreign policy to medical science.

But now I see that you’re lifting the entire genre of fiction back to the level it once enjoyed in public life. Author are unapologetically fictionalizing their “memoirs.” Reality television producers are hiring out-of-work sitcom writers to create dialogue and character quirks for the “real” people in those hot tubs. Politicians have always been notorious for manipulating statistics to their favor, but according to a story in The New York Times, Rudy Guilani is taking a page from your book – so to speak – and just making them up.

There was a lot of hand-wringing in bookish Cambridge over President Bush’s gleeful scorn for academics. Who would have guessed that his administration would turn out to be so literary? From the Kafkaesque muddle of its opening chapter back in 2000 to its Orwellian skewering of language to what is turning out to be its Stephen King-like denouement.

So thank you, Mr. Rove. You’ve taken us full circle, from “Who needs fiction?” to “Who needs the truth?” Novelists everywhere have reason to be pleaded. Except maybe the unlucky scribe who gets stuck writing the sequel.

Seeking a fresh reading of the nativity

This comes from the Spiritual Life column of The Boston Globe, dated Saturday, December 22^nd and written by Rich Barlow.

The birth Christians celebrate Tuesday anticipates the rebirth of the world, from sin to redemption. Earlier this month, seeking a similar rebirth for Christianity through a less traditional reading of Scripture, a conference of progressive Christians heard from a speaker who has co-written a new book on the nativity story.

Oregon State University scholar Marcus J. Borg didn’t mention his book, “The First Christmas,” in prepared remarks for the conference, sponsored by Harvard Divinity School. But themes from the book came up repeatedly when he spoke at the gathering held the second weekend of December at First Church in Cambridge.

In his book, Borg, an Episcopalian, and co-author John Dominic Crossan, a former Catholic priest, argue that a literal reading of the Nativity story is impossible for many modern Christians. Science and biblical scholarship have corroded belief in concepts like the virgin birth.

But the virgin birth is one of the few points of agreement in the starkly different birth accounts of Matthew and Luke. There’s no manger in Matthew’s telling, which also has the Holy Family living in Bethlehem before Jesus’s birth, not visiting for a census.

But believers need not reject the Gospels because they aren’t historically accurate, Borg said.

“Reading the stories carefully suggests that the authors themselves did not intend these as historically factual accounts,” he said in an interview between conference sessions.

Borg and Crossan write that both Matthew and Luke wrote their Nativities as parables and overtures. Like a symphony overture, they encapsulate the theme of the coming Gospels: for Matthew, that Jesus is the new Moses; for Luke, or obligation to the poor and outcast sand the presence of the Holy Spirit. And like Jesus’s parables, they are stories intended to convey lessons.

What are those lessons? That Jesus is “the light in darkness [and] fulfillment of humankind’s deepest yearnings,” Borg said.

Another lesson he sees is potentially more controversial.

The birth stories and the Gospels generally are “pervasively anti-imperial,” he said. Jesus’s listeners would have heard his references to the kingdom of God as a direct challenge to the Roman Empire under whose occupation they lived. Jesus meant the kingdom of God to be an earthly one, not just a blissful gift to the afterlife; the Lord’s prayer pleads that “thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Borg defines imperialism in the book as being beyond territorial conquest and including political and economic imperialism, which has controversial implications when applied to the modern Rome, i.e., the United States.

“I could make a good case that the greatest source of suffering in the United States today is oppressive economic systems,” Borg said in his talk.

He also deplored the support of many evangelical Christians for the invasion of Iraq. That support was “an extraordinary failure of Christian eudcation,” Borg siad, considering that Christian views on war, whether based on pacifism or the just war theory, rule out preemptive invasions.

In the interview, he acknowledged that mining Scripture for political meaning demands “real discernment” to avoid the notion that God takes sides in specific policy debates, an idea conservative Christians sometime stand accused of fostering. Still, Borg said, there is no getting around the Bible’s relentless drumbeat against oppressive earthly powers, “as reflected in the story of the Exodus, as reflected in Israel’s yearning for return from Babylonian captivity, Jesus and [his talk of] the kingdom of God, Paul and ‘Jesus is Lord’, Revelation and its portrait of empire as the beast whose number is 666.”

Another panelist, independent scholar Diana Butler Bass, screened a brief documentary about her church, the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C., showing how it rescued itself from near closure by rethinking the obligation of Christian practice.

Among the innovations the church adopted was taking a longstanding ministry to homeless people, which gave away leftover food as a charity, and infusing it with hospitality, welcoming the homeless to dine with the congregation at church breakfasts. Church membership surged.

“When you welcome the stranger into your church, they stay,” she said.

Her words evoked a story about an inn that had no room for a wandering family.

Book Review

Our February Adult Christian Education will use this book as a starting off point for our discussions. If you are interested in purchasing the book, please get in touch with our seminarian, Sarah Glass, who will be facilitating the discussion.

Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions by M. Borg and N.T. Wright

ISBN: 197800061288547

Synopsis

How is one's Christian faith shaped by their understanding of the "historical" Jesus? In point-counterpoint format, two leading scholars—Borg, a popular liberal voice on Jesus and member of the Jesus Seminar, and Wright, a prominent standard-bearer for the traditional Christian stance—discuss how interpretations of the Gospel and the facts surrounding Jesus impact upon such topics as the divinity of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, the meaning of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and the Second Coming.

Biography

Marcus J. Borg, author of the bestseller The Heart of Christianity, is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, author of the bestselling Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, The God We Never Knew, and co-author of The Meaning of Jesus with N. T. Wright and of The Last Week with John Dominic Crossan. He was an active member of the Jesus Seminar when it focused on the historical Jesus, and he has been chair of the Historical Jesus section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church

155 Powder House Boulevard

West Somerville, Massachusetts 02144-1613

Telephone: 617-625-4823

www.clarendonhillchurch.org

The Rev. Karl Gustafson, Minister…………………………..John Adams, Music Director

Augustus Kwaa, Parish Associate/Evangelist……………………….. Arnie James, Sexton

Sarah Glass, Seminarian

LECTIONARY TEXTS

Jan. 6: Isa. 60: 1-6; Ps. 72: 1-7, 10-14; Eph. 3: 1-12; Matt. 2: 1-12

Jan. 13:Isa. 42: 1-9; Ps. 29, Acts 10: 34-43; Matt. 3: 13-17

Jan. 20: Isa. 49: 1-7; Ps. 40: 1-11; I Cor. 1: 1-9; John 1: 29-42

Jan. 27: Isa. 9: 1-4; Ps. 27: 1, 4-9; I Cor. 1: 10-18; Matt. 4: 12-23

Feb. 3: Exod. 24: 12-18; Ps. 2 OR Ps. 99; 2 Peter 1: 16-21; Matt. 17: 1-9

Feb. 10: Gen. 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7; Ps. 32; Rom. 5: 12-19; Matt. 4: 1-11

Feb. 17:Gen. 12: 1-4a; Ps. 121; Rom. 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17

Feb. 24: Exod. 17: 1-7; Ps. 95; rom. 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42

Church Assignments