Blessing of the Stuffed Animals!

Additionally, there will be a blessing of the stuffed animals this Sunday during the 10:30am service, so bring your fuzzy, inanimate friends with you!

Blessing of the Backpacks

For some of us, the advent of a new school year is exciting. We hear West Side Story lyrics (“The air is hummin’ and somethin’ great is comin’… “) in our heads and tap dance to the bus stop. School shopping is the absolute best – bouquets of pencils delight us. We just can’t wait to color code our planners. For others, a new school year brings trepidation and an onslaught of anxious questions. Will I like my new teacher? What if my best friend isn’t in my class? … What if I get a bad grade?... don’t make the varsity team?... 

No matter where your kids fall on this spectrum, they will likely carry a backpack to and from school. These backpacks may be mostly empty or crammed full of books and papers. No matter how full they are of stuff, they will contain hopes, dreams, fears, and questions for each new season and each new day of this academic year. If you are a teacher, you will be carrying supplies back and forth to your classrooms as well. 

We invite you all (Preschoolers through High Schoolers, Teachers, College Students, Grad Students, & Professors) to bring those backpacks and schoolbags to Trinity on September 17. Bring them empty or full. Invite a friend! Adults, even if you’re done with school, you are welcome to receive a blessing for your work. If you’d like in on this, we invite you to bring your briefcases, tote bags, or backpacks as well. The priests will bless the bags during the 10:30 a.m. service, to honor all the hopes, dreams, and fears that accompany the new school year, and to ask for God to strengthen, sustain, and encourage all our children as they learn and grow throughout the year. 

The folks at Illustrated Ministries have designed this year’s tag with a simple reminder: You Matter! God sees all of us, knows all of us, and loves us – each of us matters to our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Knowing this, you can pass this message on to your neighbors, near and far. There are color versions of these tags, pre-laminated, so you can attach them and go. Or if you’d like to decorate your own tag, Emily has black and white unlaminated versions of the tag for you to color yourself. 

God’s God Us & We’ve Got This!

Emily

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God. — Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

The Magic Word, by Mac Barnett (PreK+)

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table, by Jacqueline Briggs (Grade 1+)

Matthew 5:21-37

Julius, the Baby of the World, by Kevin Henkes (PreK+)

In this week’s text from Deuteronomy, Moses speaks to the Israelites before they reach the promised land. “Choose life!” he tells them. What does it mean to choose life? The short answer Moses gives is “loving the Lord your God, walking his ways, and observing his commandments.” When we have small children, we encourage them to choose sharing over grabbing, being a friend instead of a mean-y, using gentleness instead of hitting. We offer them simple choices to grow their independence within boundaries. “Would you like an apple or a clementine with your lunch today?” As our children grow, choices multiply and grow in complexity. Our kids navigate choosing friends, choosing to study for a test (or not), and all kinds of other more hair-raising issues. We find ourselves shouting “Make good choices!” at them as they slam the car door and run into school. It turns out that choosing life over death is a complicated thing that takes a lot of practice. In Mac Barnett’s book The Magic Word, Paxton chooses to substitute his own “magic word” for the “please” his babysitter expects. “Alakazoomba!” turns out to be a word that gets Paxton whatever, and I mean whatever, he wants, no matter how absurd or extravagant. Eventually, Paxton has wished everyone away, because they did not agree with him, and discovers that he is lonely. Barnett’s humor is enhanced by Elise Parsley’s expressive illustrations.
Older readers will appreciate Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Jump to the resources from September 4 for that one.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is famously full of scolding. The church in Corinth is struggling to choose life. They keep getting distracted by unimportant things. Paul reminds them that they need to focus on growing in their ability to follow God’s ways. He compares the church to a field full of seeds ready to grow. He says that it does not matter who planted the seeds, but it matters that God gives them what they need to grow. Those of you are gardeners may already be looking ahead to the spring and planning your garden beds. Gardeners put time, energy, and planning into their gardens, even in winter. Jacqueline Briggs Martin’s book, Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table, tells the story of former professional basketball player Will Allen and the magnificent garden he dreamed into existence. Instead of seeing death and ugliness in an abandoned lot in urban Milwaukee, Will Allen saw potential and dreamed of a garden that could feed an enormous table of hungry people. With creativity, persistence, innovation, and collaboration, Will Allen transformed the lot into a thriving urban garden. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Genius Fellowship in 2008. While Will Allen’s farming projects have changed over time, his commitment to growing remains strong. While the kind of growth in this story is visible and edible crops, Will Allen’s story connects back to the invisible growth that

happens in our spirits, our hearts, and our minds, when we follow God. With your loved ones, you might talk about the following questions. What kinds of seeds are growing in your own spirits right now? What seeds have not yet sprouted?

This week’s text from Matthew’s Gospel continues the Sermon on the Mount. Chapters 5-7 in Matthew’s Gospel contain this dense portion of Jesus’ teaching. For Matthew, Jesus is like a new Moses—he wanted to remind his readers of Moses giving the law to the Israelites from Mt. Sinai. Can you see connections between the short text from Deuteronomy (where Moses talks to the Israelites about following God’s ways) and this text? Jesus teaches that when we are in a disagreement, we should “be reconciled to our brother or sister” before coming to offer gifts at the altar. While we often think of our entire church community as a church family, and apply his teaching to disagreements in that context, it is also helpful to remember the importance of making up with our biological families when we fight. Kevin Henkes, beloved children’s author and Caldecott Medal winner, has a book that connects will with this theme. In Julius, Baby of the World, Lilly gets angry with her baby brother Julius for monopolizing everyone’s attention. He is just so infuriatingly cute! She resents him. But (there’s always a but...) when her cousin insults Julius, she leaps to his defense. Lilly realizes that Julius is pretty great after all, and the two mice are reconciled. Anger is a powerful emotion that can get out of control before we know it. Let’s be real—a lot of have lost our tempers at some point. When we end up “Hulking out,” we need tools to repair our relationships afterward. Helping our children practice reconciliation at home is a good place to start. With your loved ones, you might wonder together: what makes it hard to calm down when you are angry? What helps you calm down after you have felt angry?

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Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

They shall build houses and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. — Isaiah 65:21

Surely it is God who saves me;
I will trust in him and not be afraid. — Isaiah 2:2

Isaiah 65:17-25

Global Babies, by The Global Fund for Children (Infant +)

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Little Guys, by Vera Brosgol (PreK 3+)

Luke 21:5-19

So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth’s Long Walk Toward Freedom, by Gary D. Schmidt (PreK 4+)

Note: This week’s resource corner focuses on the Hebrew Bible text from RCL Track 1 and the Epistle and Gospel texts from both RCL tracks. Typically, we read the RCL Track 2 texts at Trinity on Sundays.

When they were exiled from their homeland, God’s people left everything behind—homes, gardens, and ancestral places of worship. In this week’s text from Isaiah’s prophecies, God offers hope to the exiles—they will build houses and get to live in them, plant gardens and get to enjoy the fruit they produce. Animals will live peacefully with each other—"the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.” Babies will grow up into adulthood, and old people will enjoy their old age. Global Babies, published by the Global Fund for Children, is a celebration of babies and a fun way to prepare for the Incarnation of Jesus at Christmas. The babies pictured in the book are from all around the globe. As you look through the pages at their tiny faces, breathe in God’s expansive love for all of God’s people, and breathe out a prayer of blessing for babies from all around the world and for the diverse cultural expressions of God’s image.

In this week’s text from 2 Thessalonians, Paul issues a command to his readers. He instructs them, in no uncertain terms, to avoid people in their community who are idling their time away instead of working to contribute to the good of the community. What Paul says is harsh! It is really important to remember the context of his words – some people in the Thessalonian church had stopped working because they believed the rumors (from last week’s text) that Jesus was returning soon. They were just waiting around! Other communities throughout history have taken his words, about who should get food and who should not, and made them into strict laws on social welfare. The Jamestown settlement is one example from early American history. In one commentary on this passage, scholar Mariam Kammel writes, “This passage has nothing to do with whether a social welfare should be in place to catch the helpless in society; this is entirely concerned with those who should and can work but refuse and instead direct their energies to causing chaos in the community.” The Little Guys, by Vera Brosgol, illustrates the mischief caused by (tiny) agents of chaos with the hilarious hijinks of some small, but mighty forest dwellers. All their showing off throws the entire forest into upheaval. The little guys have power, because there are so many of them and they work well together. How could they channel this power to work for the good of the forest and its creatures?

In this week’s text from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus reminds his disciples that following him will not be easy. They will encounter hardships, difficulties, and trials. He also reminds them not to give up hope because he will be with them, giving them strength to endure what comes. Many of us have experienced hardships in the past few years due to the pandemic, isolation, political upheaval, and related uncertainty about the future. Practicing perseverance and cultivating hope for and in God is something that we can help our children learn amid these experiences. Gary Schmidt’s story, So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth’s Long Walk Toward Freedom, connects well with these themes. Sojourner Truth (named Isabella Baumfree at her birth) was born into slavery, and so Schmidt’s story begins in “Slavery Time—where hope is a seed waiting to be planted, when Chains tore families apart like the wind frays a flag.” She grew up in New York and endured many horrors because of enslavement. When she was freed, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth and began living in “Freedom Time— when hope kindled a fire in the dark and Happiness winked over the horizon.” Jesus tells his disciples in the gospel passage that they will have opportunities to testify before kings and governors and that He will give them the words and the wisdom for this testimony. After she gained her freedom, Sojourner Truth traveled the country testifying to the horrors of slavery and of perseverance and faithfulness to God through these horrors. Her story is a powerful depiction of the kind of courage, tenacity in faith, and hope in God that Jesus offers to us.

Note: Because of a loophole in the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, many people in our nation still live in Slavery Time, although the details are different from institutional slavery on plantations before the Civil War. Just this week, in ballot initiatives, four states in the US (Alabama, Vermont, Oregon, and Tennessee) outlawed slavery as punishment for a crime. This is good news! But the struggle is not over. Louisiana rejected a similar ballot measure.

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Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you. — Haggai 2:4

For I know that my redeemer lives, And that at the last he will stand upon the earth. — Job 19:25

Haggai 1:15-2:9

Granddaddy’s Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box, by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein (1st Grade +); City of Ember, by Jean DuPrau (4th Grade +)

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

What James Said, by Liz Rosenberg (K+)

Luke 20:27-38

I Walk with Vanessa, by Kerascoët (PreK+)

Note: This week’s resource corner focuses on the Hebrew Bible text from RCL Track 1 and the Epistle and Gospel texts from both RCL tracks. Typically, we read the RCL Track 2 texts at Trinity on Sundays.

When the people of Israel returned to their ancestral land after the Babylonian Exile, they found the temple in ruins. In the words of the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, the people are “disheartened and disenchanted.” As you reflect on this passage, you might dig into the meaning of those two emotions. In this week’s text from Haggai, the prophet (Haggai) reminds the people to “take courage” because the Lord is with them in their work to restore the temple. Even if the temple is not as fancy as it used to be, God is still with the people, just as God was with their ancestors in the “glory days” when the temple was shiny and splendid, and just as God went with the people into exile.

Two books connect well with this lectionary text. The first, Granddaddy’s Turn, by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein, is best for younger readers. This book tells the story of the African American struggle for voting rights through the lives of Michael and his grandfather. After waiting for a long time, Granddaddy finally gets a chance to cast his vote in the elections. Michael goes to the ballot box with Granddaddy, but they both experience the bitterness of disappointment when he is turned away without getting a chance to vote. When will justice come? How long must they wait? This issue has recently become contentious again, with pushes for redistricting and increased restrictions on voting throughout the US. As you reflect on this story, you might explore how to advocate for voting rights and justice today.

The second book is better for advanced elementary and middle-grade readers. In Jean DuPrau’s book, City of Ember, the people of Ember are disheartened, much like the Israelites when they return to find their temple in ruins. Built underground, the city of Ember was designed to be the last refuge for humanity. In the past, it was gloriously overflowing with abundant provisions. Now, it is in decay, and the people are struggling to find enough food. The generator which used to power the lights of the city is literally failing. Lina and Doon, two teenagers living in the city, are not ready to give up hope. They team up to find a way out of the failing city. In the final pages, a glimmer of hope appears. This book is the first in a four-part series. As you reflect on the theme of hope in Haggai which connects to both stories, you might discuss what hope looks like in different situations.

In this week’s lectionary text from 2 Thessalonians, Paul exhorts the church in Thessalonica not to trust rumors that Jesus had already returned and that the Day of the Lord had already happened. He writes, “we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed.” This is, of course, easier said than done. In Liz Rosenberg’s story, What James Said, the main character is shaken up when she hears a rumor that her best friend James said she thought she was “perfect.” Now they are in a fight. She doesn’t want to talk to James anymore. It turns out that he actually said that her painting for the art show is “perfect.” What a relief! Have you ever been shaken or alarmed by rumors? How did that feel? If you found out the rumors were not true, how did that new information change your feelings and thoughts? Often, our emotions effect our bodies. Have you noticed how your body responds to different emotion like joy, fear, sadness, contentment, or relief?

In this week’s text from Luke’s gospel, some people test Jesus with a tricky question about the resurrection. They want Jesus to be very specific about what happens after death. This topic still causes many of us to worry. Talking to children about what happens when we die pushes us to think carefully about our own theology (our way of talking about God). Jesus’ answer to his challengers can help us. He says that God is the God of our ancestors and “the God... of the living.” Somehow, the ancestors we think of as dead are still living with God. This is a mystery that shows us the great power and love of our God. Because we know that God loves us so deeply, the way we live now changes. We can be brave in our lives, reaching out in compassion toward others, because we know the depth of God’s love for us, for our neighbors, and for our world. In the wordless book, I Walk with Vanessa, by Kerascoët, a group of children observes one girl (Vanessa) being bullied by another child. They are worried and afraid. The next morning, one of the group shows bravery by knocking on Vanessa’s door and walking with her to school. This act of compassion prompts other children to join them on their walk. With your loved ones, you might share stories of a time when God’s love was reflected in your actions.

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Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.— Psalm 32:8

Isaiah 1:10-18

Brother Bartholomew and the Apple Grove, by Jan Cheripko (K+)

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

Paul Writes (a Letter), by Chris Raschka (Grade 1+)

Luke 19:1-10

Wings, by Christopher A. Myers (PreK+)

For Halloween

Zen Ghosts, by John J. Muth (PreK+)

For All Saints

The Name Quilt, by Phyllis Root (PreK+)

This week’s text from Isaiah reads like a counterpoint to the alternative lectionary text from Habakkuk. In Habakkuk, the prophet is surrounded by destruction. He cries out, “how long?” but resolves to wait and watches for the Lord to act. In Isaiah’s prophecy, the Lord has grown tired of waiting for the people to follow her God. The people spend all their time planning extravagant festivals, when what God wants is for them to “do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Jan Cheripko’s book, Brother Bartholomew and the Apple Grove, connects to this idea of doing justice and the importance of justice for worshiping God well. In the story, the young monk Bartholomew learns about justice by tending an orchard. This orchard is an important source of food for his small community of monks. When he first begins to take care of the trees, he comes up with lots of plans to take care of them, so that they will produce lots of fruit. One of the first things he does is to fix the fence surrounding the orchard to keep the animals out. But when a stag is injured on the fence, Brother Bartholomew learns that keeping the animals out is not truly just. God will still provide enough for the monks to eat, even if the deer and other animals get in and munch up some of the fruits. How might you practice justice in your own lives? How might our church community practice justice together?

Our epistle text this week come from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. Paul, as you know, wrote lots and lots of letters to small church communities all over the Mediterranean. He also travelled constantly to visit these churches and to encourage them as they lived out their faith in Jesus. This letter begins with encouragement – Paul is so proud of the Thessalonian church for being faithful and brave, even when things get difficult. Have you ever received a letter full of encouragement? Have you ever sent someone a letter like this? Chris Raschka’s book, Paul Writes (a Letter), is a colorful celebration of Paul’s lively correspondence. After reading this book, you might try writing your own letters. Who would you like to encourage? You can write something simple, like “I’m glad I know you!” or “Hey, I was thinking about you today, and I want you to know how much I love you!” Say a blessing over the postcard or letter and drop it off in the mailbox.

Our gospel text from Luke is the story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who climbs up a sycamore tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus when he passes through town. Jesus sees him, and he tells Zacchaeus, “Hurry up and climb down because I’m coming to stay at your house.” Because he was a tax collector, Zacchaeus was an outcast – no one trusted him. Jesus’s visit is an experience of grace that gives him a fresh start. Christopher A. Myers’ book, Wings, tells the story of Ikarus,

who is an outcast at his school because he has wings. One of his classmates overcomes her shyness in order to stand up for Ikarus. Her bravery is an expression of grace that transforms them both. Remember that sometimes compassion takes bravery, and that you can be brave with God’s help. Have you ever been left out until someone noticed you, and reached out to include you? How did that feel? Have you ever reached out bravely with compassion when someone else being excluded? How did that feel? What helped you to be brave in that moment?

Finally, next week, we will celebrate All Saints’ Day, after Halloween. One of my favorite Halloween books is Zen Ghosts, by John J. Muth. Stillwater the panda tells a ghost story to his human friends, Addie, Michael, and Karl. Muth’s watercolor illustrations are hauntingly gorgeous, and Stillwater’s story-within-the-story is provocative and multilayered. The Name Quilt, by Phyllis Root, connects well to All Saints’ Day. Sadie’s grandmother has a quilt with the names of generations of relatives stitched into the squares. At bedtime, Sadie points to names on the quilt and her grandma tells her stories of their ancestors. All Saints’ Day is the perfect occasion to share family stories of our ancestors and their faith. What are your favorite family stories?

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Paul Writes a Letter (Chris Raschka) is available at the Princeton Public Library.

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Wings (Christopher A. Myers) is available at the Princeton Public Library.

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