Winter Weather
Dearly Beloved,
As I write to you today on the 11th Day of Christmas, we find ourselves under a Winter Storm Watch here in Henderson County. Since we have not had any significant winter weather in 2 years, I wanted to remind you about how we notify you on any cancellations of worship and other activities here at All Saints. Cancellation decisions are always made by 6:00 m. on the day of a winter weather event. Here the 4 ways notices are available to you:
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An email will be sent to every parishioner. Be sure to check your “Spam” folder. Many times large group emails are routed automatically to this folder by your email system. You may receive 2 separate emails in different formats.
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A post will be made on the front page of the parish website. Our website address is allsaintsmillsriver.org.
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A post will also be made on the parish Facebook page at facebook.com/allsaintsmillsriver.
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A message will be placed on the church voicemail system which you may access at (828) 891-7216.
If any cancellation of worship occurs on a Sunday morning, it is my intention to live-stream at 11:00 a.m. that day with Morning Prayer and a sermon. Be sure to have your prayer books available so we may pray together on such a morning. The live-stream may be accessed at one of the following 3 ways:
I pray you will join us on-line whenever we have a cancellation morning.Please read on below for a special Christmas message.
Blessings,
Fr. Erich
A “Must Read” Christmas Message
Yesterday, I sent out a prayer request for Sammy, the 7month old son of Father Ian & Julie Dunn. Fr. Dunn is the rector of one of our churches, All Saints Church in Prescott, Arizona. Sammy had heart surgery to repair a leaking valve. This is the second such surgery Sammy has had in his young life. Thanks be to God it was a successful surgery. Sammy also has Downs Syndrome. Needless to say, the past year has been extremely difficult for the entire Dunn family. The Dunns also have a 2 year old daughter. In amongst all of the difficulties they have faced, Fr. Dunn wrote a Christmas message to his congregation on the day after Christmas while he was at the hospital with his son. I find, knowing the background, that this is likely the finest Christmas message I have read in 30 years in the ministry. I share that message with you below and ask that you continue to pray for the Dunn family and their precious little Sammy, who is here pictured with his Daddy.
Merry Christmas,
Fr. Erich
Fr. Dunn’s Christmas Message to All Saints Church, Prescott, AZ
Beloved in Christ,
By now most of you have heard that Sam was transferred from YRMC to Phoenix Children’s and readmitted on Christmas Eve. Sam and I were probably getting in the ambulance to come to Phoenix about the time that many of you were gathered at the church to remember the eve of the Nativity of our Lord, and I’m sure it was jarring to learn of this.
As I was preparing for Christmas Eve, I was thinking about the reality that Christmas is a season of the unexpected. Yes, to one extent, Israel was expecting a messiah – but they were not expecting Jesus.
I was thinking about this because nothing about my Advent or Christmas was what I had expected. When we returned home from PCH in November after Sam’s surgery, we were looking forward to resuming life, getting Sam back out to church, and helping him enjoy social time with friends and to do other normal baby things.
We were not expecting to return to PCH for six weeks, and we certainly weren’t expecting to be returning yet again after only two days of being home.
If we carefully read the Christmas narrative, we realize how unexpected all the events are.
For Mary and Joseph, the incarnation was especially surprising. They were both the kind of people you’d be thrilled if your child brought home. They were called blessed and righteous, respectively, meaning they were lovely young people.
But then Mary got pregnant.
We do not need to use a ton of imagination to envision the kind of scandal that this would have caused. Of course, we know that Mary was pregnant because of a work of the Holy Spirit and not some moral failing. But we see this scandal especially poignantly when Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem for the census.
We learn that there was no room in the inn. This is a peculiar translation of the Greek. The choice to translate it as inn most likely dates back to the early Latin translation of the gospel accounts by St. Jerome. If we look at other translations that were contemporary to Jerome’s Vulgate, such as the Syrian translation, we see this word rendered more appropriately as guest room.
In other words, what seems to have happened, is Joseph’s own family refused him and his pregnant bride-to-be a room! Before you keep reading, let the gravity of that sink in for a minute.
But it wasn’t only Joseph’s family that were unaware and therefor not expecting the Messiah to enter the world through this pregnant, unwed, young woman.
All of Israel was unaware. If we look at the history of scripture, the Incarnation and birth of Jesus ends what is often called the 400 year silence. You see, Malachi was the last prophet in Israel, and then we enter this period of no prophecy, turmoil, and often rebellion.
Yet the faithful continued to anxiously expecting God to do something.
They did not expect that something to be the cries of a baby on the first Christmas eve. It was very unexpected that God’s first sound after those centuries of silence would be an infant crying out for his mother. Yet, Christmas is a season of the unexpected.
Furthermore, in our earthliness we would expect the messiah to be born in some high place, to a priest or someone of nobility. We certainly wouldn’t expect that he would be born of some girl from the backwaters of Israel.
The final unexpected event comes when we see who God sends the angels to – it isn’t the priests, or the academics, or ruling parties. It is shepherds. They were people who spend their day caring for sheep and and their nights sleeping on the ground in caves with their animals. They were rough people who society sneered at. This is who God tells first that the Messiah had been born.
I know you all have been walking with Julie, Lucy, Sam and me through this trying season of our life and none of us expected that Sam would be in and out of the hospital this much.
But Christmas reminds us that God shows up in these unexpected times in the most unexpected times.
God in Christ has already done this in the most amazing way – by becoming incarnate in the Virgin Mary, being made man, dwelling with us in flesh, experiencing the fullness of temptation, so that he can sympathize with you in your temptation, and of course doing the most unexpected thing – he died for you. He took the penalty of your sin, and was nailed to the cross not in rote obedience but profound and deep love for you.
The unexpectedness of Christmas should jar us out of everything that we are going through, it should awaken us to this incredible reality of what God has already done for us and his profound love for us, even in the midst of whatever you are going through.
God has already secured your heavenly home for you through this unexpected incarnation of his Son. We can rest in that incredible and goodness every day no matter the turmoil or joy that we may face that day…
From my family to yours, I want to wish each and everyone of you a very Merry Christmas.
In Christ,
Fr. Ian Emile Dunn
