All about this Sunday at St. John the Divine
All Parish Study: Growing in His Likeness – Hall Life Center
Children's Sunday School – First Floor & Lower Level
Preparation for Communion – Room L17, Lower Level
Youth Sunday School – Room 238
Youth Confirmation – Room 236
Blood Drive
Eat a good breakfast and come donate blood, 8:00 am - 12:30 pm in Room 120, with the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center. Giving blood is a wonderful way to give back to your community and it costs nothing but a little time and a little blood! Sign up in advance.
Teen Daughters of the King
This group is for girls 6th grade through high school and meets on the third Sunday of the month at 9 am in Room L21. Our focus is on fellowship and learning how a deeper understanding of prayer, service, and evangelism bring us closer to God, his son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Contact Paula Burns at 713.202.3955 with questions.
Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
20:1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ 5 So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ 8 And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ 9 And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first last.”
This morning at the Offertory, we hear an austere, moving arrangement of the African American Spiritual “Steal Away” as arranged by Dale Adelmann, the Canon for Music at The Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. Listen for the rich 8-part harmonies of the choir as Adelmann sets the spiritual in a particularly Anglican manner.
During the Ministration, we hear the motet “Christus factus est” by the 19th Century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. Its text is taken from one of the oldest Christian hymns that we have and is quoted in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. This a cappella setting of Philippians 2:8-9 is dramatic in its conveying of the text. “…Christ became obedient unto death, even the death on a cross. Wherefore God also has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…”