From Fr. David Peck
Health Update
May 25, 2023
Dearest Friends,
Of course serious illness—with its dependency, pain and suffering—is humbling and miserable. I am glad to be emerging from that first phase and starting on a path of recovery. I am walking a few blocks and have some independence again. While never a path I would choose, the promises of our faith have held true even in the misery. The experience of major illness can be sanctifying, meaning it can be instructive for holiness of life and spiritual growth. Clearly this is my summer project!
Mine will be a long and two stage recovery with a short term focus on gaining much needed energy and weight. A further repair surgery in August will be needed followed by another 4 week recovery period.
I am so grateful for Shayna’s leadership of the parish. She has taken me off the rota so that I can be a volunteer at the altar or pulpit this summer when feeling well enough to do so. Our Vestry, clergy, staff and pastoral care team are truly a gift from God. Call upon them to increase your faith, hope and love in times of life challenges, whatever they may be.
…I love that Episcopalians, who often struggle to find Bible verses, are discovering they can find scriptures that work for them and for me as a powerful means of encouragement! The children’s chapel cards are beautifully compassionate and inspiring. We are a priesthood and pastors of all believers and of all ages!
Sadly cards are about all I can handle at the moment. Please no flowers, meals or visits for the time being. I have all that I need or want thanks to Cordelia, the nurses and a few others…
I was reminded by one in our congregation to use the profound prayer with which I begin each day. It is found with several others as part of the “ministration to the sick” at the bottom of page 461 of the Book of Common Prayer. I am so moved by our common prayer:
This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.
In hope filled prayer,
David+
Archived Letters and videos from Father David
We are in a remarkable time of both suffering and spiritual growth. We are learning new ways to worship, give, pray, learn, and we are offering pastoral care to more people than ever before. My first priority will be funerals and baptisms and weddings. Once we have gotten through that backlog and learned how to worship in groups of 10-25 we can think about creative possibilities of how to come to church on a reservation ticket-only basis with masks and social distancing. But this experience of church will not be like “old church” for many months.
I am so grateful for your patience, faithful prayers and sacrificial generosity. I am so proud of your commitment to meeting the adaptive challenge of technology. Let us continue to be safe and sensible as we seek to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yours in Christ, David
April 3, 2020
Dear friends,
I was yesterday with some of the unsung heroes of our community. I was with funeral professionals who in their work and in their care for the bereaved, as well as our dead, are putting themselves in risk and danger as well as their families. And we together with them are able to pray and stay steady in our work despite our anxieties. As I said to them, I say to you now that we try to turn our fear into something more faithful. And as we do so, I hope to find in an acronym, something that shares for you how I have done that in recent days.
Fear itself: F-E-A-R I turn into facts, Easter attitude and resilience. Fear turned into different words into fact, Easter, attitude and resilience. Facts, for me of why it is that we’re staying at home and how to keep ourselves safe. Easter, because that is what our lives are rooted in, and with that hope comes our ability to have a different attitude–an attitude that is positive and hope-filled despite our fears. And finally the resilience with our own frustrations, our own mistakes that we make cooped up at home and frustrated by our own limitations and those around us.
In this time of seeking to be more faithful, I was able to say to them that Saint James will pray for them every day. I could say that because we are praying and meditating daily whereas there were small groups before who prayed on behalf of the whole parish daily that number has now become a hundred people praying daily. We do so in different ways and at different times but all of us together. We do so joined by those from Washington State, Utah, New Jersey, Louisiana as well as London. So thank you for your fidelity, your generosity and your sacrifice.
Your fidelity generosity and love is plain to see. I see it for example, in the Easter cards that our children and their families are making for those among us who are shut-in. I see it in the services that Alyssa is offering in greater number to more people in her own ministry of house church and Godly Play and the other resources from which we can all benefit as we use them. I see it in how we are joining in what we have lost with those who are homebound themselves and have been far longer than we will be. That our children are a means of connecting with them is a beautiful work and prayer.
As we prepare for a Holy Week in which so much will be changed and which we will miss many things about, we yet will find in our quest of Holy Week what it always is each year. To find the Holy One in our midst. To bow down before the God who saves us despite the injustice and betrayal of others or our own doubts and our own sins.
And we will find a risen Christ among the tombs. To do this, there will still be camp Holy Week for our children youth and families online. To do this, we will have a holy week of diocesan services with our Bishop and clergy leading us. So well as you can see from Headlines and Happenings there is Compline every night at nine o’clock with me by Zoom. And of course, there is the recorded worship that brings so much consolation to you and to me.
This weekend, Holy Week begins with our Palm Sunday liturgy which we share and we’ll be sharing with more people than have ever been at Saint James across our 275-year history. That is because we are doing church in a new way. This is the only Holy Week we will get this year, and it will be full of pain as well as loss, but I invite you to find with me in it that strength and consolation—that joy that will be there also because Christ is waiting. Christ is waiting in our hearts and he is waiting for us as that True Vine in which we find ourselves as his true branches. We await even now His resurrection and even our own. God bless you this holy week.
Dear friends, I hope this video blog of mine helps you to find in this struggling time the support many in the parish are wishing to share with their brothers and sisters.
I want to talk at this time about how hope and expectation can form our lives more deeply. My prayer at the start of this crisis was that, through it, we could as Christians experience a deepening commitment of our faith to our church. It was frankly the only thing I could see coming out of this that could be any good at all. I asked that you visualize this growing connection with me by memorizing the simple script from Jesus in Saint John’s Gospel where he says, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” And with that sense of abiding in that love, I hope to use this time of suffering to pray more deeply and to feel more deeply God’s abiding presence in us by being together.
This experience we call sanctification a growth in holiness, and as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us in the prayer for the sanctification of illness, we can even find in this time of pandemic, a sanctification of all our lives, the whole life of the world and the human family and in our own homes where we must now spend so much time. So it is that I hoped as a parish we could grow spiritually and reach out to each other via livestream technology and all that we’ve learned how to stay connected with those who were shut in or traveling and away from home. I’m so proud and pleased that we’ve been able to do this together through Zoom technology and livestream and our own phone calling and just good neighborliness towards those we know and live nearby.
I’ve worked longer days than ever, and I know many of you have along with our staff team—each of us under great pressure to create connecting mechanisms even in this time of social distancing and isolation. So I hope that in this time of remarkable growth for us as a parish, when people have literally found us across the country and around the world, that we can frame our own hope in this time of suffering. A time when remarkably our attendance at least on livestream, has grown into the thousands where previously we met only in our hundreds. Our prayers every day in the daily office and in meditation which attracted five or a dozen people now attract 40 or 50. And so as we rejoice in the lectures and Christian formation that we do together online we are able to continue to strengthen our love and our connections as well as our faith hope and love together.
Your parish is experiencing a renewal at this time but of course, also a cash crisis with so many others. I want to encourage you, and I want to remind you that if you are able to give, to keep giving to give now to send in checks to go online and make your payments and consider an Easter offering that is a special gift in this time when we are connecting with so many more in a time of heightened need and isolation. If there’s anything you need from me or from your church, I hope you’ll call. Call the parish office or call me. Email the parish office or email me or any of the staff with whom you have worked or want to reach out to. We are thriving even as we are struggling. And so this sanctification of all of our life in Christ at this time is what you would hope us to be all about.
I’ve taken a significant pay cut for April in the hope that we can sustain each other we are cutting back on any non-essential expenses, but of course we’re reaching out more and more through our own technology, our continuing music and study and prayer. So please if you’re able to give, do. If you’re needing to scale back your giving of course do that also. We want to be with you in the best of times and in these worst of times.
Let us continue to pray more not less, as we have been doing so that we can grow more and not less even in this time. Remember this prayer of sanctification of illness that each of us is seeking to offer in the Book of Common Prayer night by night, day by day. Join me on Compline at 9 PM every night and consider how else you might join with your sisters and brothers online and worship as we’ve been doing so faithfully.
This prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (page 460) for the Sanctification of Illness: “Sanctify Oh Lord, this time of coronavirus for your whole human family that the sense of our weakness may add strength to our faith and seriousness to our repentance in this season of Lent. And grant that we may live with you and all our sisters and brothers in Christ and the whole human family through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen. God bless you.
A Pastoral Letter to the Congregation of Saint James, Lancaster during the pandemic corona virus. March 18, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Dear People of Saint James,
The Sanctification of Illness
One of the most consoling prayers I use when visiting with the sick is the “prayer for the sanctification of illness”. In it we hear the good news that even a time of illness is an opportunity to draw nearer God. This God of all creation draws near to us in mercy in special ways during times of isolation, loneliness and illness if we can be alert to them. I am praying for you every day. Please use the prayers at the end of this letter and pray for one another, your own needs and those of the world.
Remember me and your ministry team here as well. We are literally working day and night to develop new ways of being in touch with you in the coming weeks. We will learn how to draw closer to each other despite all that would separate us. That learning begins with desiring to draw nearer to God and to your congregation right now and every day.
“Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.” These are intense words. Psalm 23 is a reading this weekend and our Bishop is going to speak to us especially at Saint James about what this psalm means to her. The psalmist is speaking words into our hearts. These are words of astonishing commitment in a time of trial. A time of temptation to give in to anxiety and fear about how much we do not know about how people will love will be, how we shall be when this is over. We do well to hear how someone who is under great stress but full of grace sounds like when they are in touch with their desire for a living faith. A confident faith that is breaking free spiritually from so much of what would make the psalmist feel afraid of or isolated.
Our ministry as a parish is strong and deep because of our commitment to common prayer and common giving. Some have lost work and the ability to give financially. They can give even more in prayer. And we can give what we can to support them with the ministries we are developing with your giving. Even with technical troubles last weekend we had 2-3 times the number watching on livestream who would normally be in church. Thank you for wanting to make that effort with so many others in the diocese. Last night, our Director of Children, Youth and Families, Alyssa brought eight families together by Zoom to do the House Church gathering that was planned but could not take place in the original format. At Evening Prayer from his home tonight Brother David brought together a 8 people on Zoom from the parish and beyond to Pray with the Saints on Wednesdays at 5:30pm as they normally do.
That resilience and innovation is going to be a hallmark of how we minister together and grow in holiness through this time. Jesus said, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” In the vineyard of Saint James, we are bearing fruit even as we struggle with our fears and loneliness. This is a glimpse of what sanctification looks like in the first week of radical responsiveness in a national crisis.
Both as a staff team and as your Rector we will regularly offer email reflections, video posts and opportunities to gather online and pray. The Pastoral Care team is available by telephone, Zoom, Facebook, or Skype for prayer.
As clergy we are still giving last rites in person, able to hear confessions in the chapel, do marriage preparation by telephone. This is just part of what I have done in the last 24 hours as well as downloading Zoom and learning how to be a host on it and learning a host of new things about doing ministry online. Please go to zoom.us and download the simple free software if you want to easily join special meetings or bible studies or daily office and meditation times. If I can do it you can too!
If you email Karen and me with Zoom Prayer in your subject line then we will invite you to meditation and prayer times via Zoom. If you email Br David Rutledge he will invite you to his Evening Prayer with the Saints on Wednesdays at 5:30 PM. Register via urbanwell.org for The Mercy Seminar on Thursday nights. Headlines and Happenings will keep you up to date and eblasts when there is special news or new tools to help us connect that we want you to know about.
Stay in touch with needs you have through:
- Karen at the office who is getting emails from home: (office@saintjameslancaster.org)
- Debbi who is available with Father Rick and me for pastoral care and referrals: (dmiller@saintjameslancaster.org)
- Join me in spirit or via zoom for Meditation times throughout the week and Compline online at 9 PM daily by emailing me rector@saintjameslancaster.org (copying Karen office@saintjameslancaster.org) so that I can invite you to zoom.
- Watch the meditation teaching videos we are putting into The Urban Well folder at
www.livestream.com/saintjameslancaster The World Community for Christian Meditation also has a great wealth of materials to grow in holiness on their website: wccm.org
Yours in Christ,
For the Sanctification of Illness
Sanctify, O Lord, the challenges we face as a world, and the fears we have in our hearts, that the sense of our shared vulnerability may add strength to our faith, and seriousness to our repentance; and grant that we may live with you in everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Prayer for Health Care Workers
Sanctify, O Lord, those whom you have called to support our health care systems for the the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them by your life-giving Spirit, that by their ministries the health of our whole community may be promoted and your creation glorified; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Dear People of God,
Again I begin my letter to you with the words of Jesus: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” (John 15:5). Please memorize this verse and make it a common prayer with me.
My pastoral letter handed to the congregation last weekend and found here is needing to be amended by increasing public health concerns.
Though the bishop has issued a directive today to close churches beginning next weekend, I HAVE MADE THE DECISION THAT, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, WE WILL WORSHIP TOGETHER ONLINE ONLY because of the size of congregations at Saint James.
PLEASE DO NOT ATTEND SERVICES AT CHURCH UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
As far as technology and staffing allow, Saint James will put as much of its ministry online through Livestream as possible. Our core work of prayer, worship and study in Lent will not be suspended or postponed. We will however receive it by a different medium than in groups and in person.
Beginning this weekend Saint James will provide a choice of two beautiful livestreamed liturgies—a contemporary one Saturday night at 5 PM and a traditional liturgy Sunday at 10:30 AM.
We will also Livestream some midweek programs such as our Tuesday night teaching series, the Urban Well’s Mercy Seminar and the March 23rd 275th Anniversary Lecture, among others. In addition, we will also support CYF ministries by ensuring that families, children and youth have access to formational material.
To allow us to better focus on Livestream worship and draw on fewer volunteers, the Sunday 8:30 AM Service and Sunday morning Forums will be suspended for the time being. This is a change in how we worship and give, not a change in whether we choose to worship and give. I have said before that Lent is exactly the season we need in which to meditate on where our treasure is; what we value most; and to free ourselves from anxiety by remembering the reality of Ash Wednesday that we are dust and to dust shall return. From here, we look with joy all the more to an Easter that will more surely come and for which we must more surely long. We are blessed to have these truths to live by and trust.
Most generations in human history have had to deal with times of epidemic. That we also have an easy means of accessing times of worship, meditation and study that bind us together is a great blessing.
Please ensure you are signed up for Headlines and Happenings on our website to stay current with future changes and new resources. Click here to sign up.
Please continue as able to make your gifts and pledges online or by mail. We intend to reach more people not fewer with the good news of Jesus Christ in the coming weeks and months.
Know that every one of your staff is praying for you and working to sustain the life of the church at this time. It is precisely for such as this that we have been prepared in prayer. Your church’s ministry is strong because you have made it so. Thanks be to God! Yours in faith, hope and love,
Beginning this weekend Saint James will provide a choice of two beautiful livestreamed liturgies—a contemporary one Saturday night at 5 PM and a traditional liturgy Sunday at 10:30 AM.
We will also Livestream some midweek programs such as our Tuesday night teaching series, the Urban Well’s Mercy Seminar and the March 23rd 275th Anniversary Lecture, among others. In addition, we will also support CYF ministries by ensuring that families, children and youth have access to formational material.
To allow us to better focus on Livestream worship and draw on fewer volunteers, the Sunday 8:30 AM Service and Sunday morning Forums will be suspended for the time being. This is a change in how we worship and give, not a change in whether we choose to worship and give. I have said before that Lent is exactly the season we need in which to meditate on where our treasure is; what we value most; and to free ourselves from anxiety by remembering the reality of Ash Wednesday that we are dust and to dust shall return. From here, we look with joy all the more to an Easter that will more surely come and for which we must more surely long. We are blessed to have these truths to live by and trust.
Most generations in human history have had to deal with times of epidemic. That we also have an easy means of accessing times of worship, meditation and study that bind us together is a great blessing.
Please ensure you are signed up for Headlines and Happenings on our website to stay current with future changes and new resources. Click here to sign up.
Please continue as able to make your gifts and pledges online or by mail. We intend to reach more people not fewer with the good news of Jesus Christ in the coming weeks and months.
Know that every one of your staff is praying for you and working to sustain the life of the church at this time. It is precisely for such as this that we have been prepared in prayer. Your church’s ministry is strong because you have made it so. Thanks be to God! Yours in faith, hope and love,
The Corona virus is a concern for us all. It is a disrupting global event with local implications that will take weeks or months to fully know. Fortunately, there is clear and consistent medical advice for how to make sensible choices depending on our age, risks, and proximity to the virus. Decisions we make individually about going shopping, traveling or going to church should be made in the light of it. We will of course need common sense, deep faith and good medical care systems to reduce risks and increase our resilience. We will need the steady efforts of all to harness the compassion, science and productivity we shall need to respond well and get through this uncertain time together.
Getting through it together will be all the more important when one of the sensible responses to the outbreak is ‘social distancing’ and in some cases, isolation, in order to contain the virus. We know how important worship and prayer is to strengthen the faith, hope and love we need daily in times of stress or crisis. Even amidst the concerns and responses to the virus, we can find resources to enrich and strengthen our faith together. Saint James is well equipped to help you cope and use the challenges of this season to grow spiritually whether you are coming to church physically or not. This is what the communion of saints always does!
We should be praying more, not less at this time. First if we are not going to church physically, we should “attend” by watching Livestream online. (Click here to visit our Livestream channel.) This helps us receive every week the consoling worship and common prayer we need. This also includes online giving options which will help us continue to offer our ministry when more people than ever will need it. You can make online gifts easily as a “guest” without activating a Realm account. Contributions will be credited to a member’s name automatically. (Click here to make an offering to Saint James.) The second is to use the phone and email and text to stay connected. The third is to use some of the blogs and daily reflection emails and apps which will help us to pray and to access rich spiritual teaching. We can share our favorites with each other. Please sign up for Headlines & Happenings on our website through which we will make these resources available and announce any event changes. (Click here to sign up for Headlines & Happenings.)
Then there is all we are learning from contemplative practices. These practices help us find the gratitude as well as the stillness, silence and simplicity we need to live confidently and productively and to stay in the present. It is so easy to be full of distractions and to allow fears to temp us to lose perspective. By being open to God and each other through prayer, online participation and giving, and finding contemplative practices and teaching resources, we can help others and be even stronger together despite precautions that make social distances greater.
Please pray for all our parish family as we pray for you. May you experience daily the presence of the God who always draws near to us, so that we can draw near to one another through Jesus Christ, in whom our unity and fullness dwells eternally.
I am writing as a pastor who is incongruously on vacation in a week of sorrows and sufferings in our land and deepening uncertainty in our times. Even at a distance, through our prayers and conversations, I hear so many articulate pain that is visceral for them, as it is for me, as we see yet again the aftermath of horrible violence of mass murder and shootings. While this violence is local and driven by myriad causes none will fully fathom, its frequency and ubiquity make it self-evidently a national crisis of both guns and violence. As such we as Christians should seek to summon in common prayer both a local and a national political will that addresses this crisis. Alongside the grace of prayer, with our God-given powers of reason we ought to seek to address this matter, as in any other crisis or epidemic, with facts, with compassion, with focus, with debate, with compromise and with resolve.
Our inability thus far to address this crisis (or other ones we face nationally and globally) is exacerbated by an underlying moral crisis of truth and the norms needed for discerning it and enshrining it in a democratic legislative process. We are as a culture newly awash in information and multiplying sources of news. We are atomized socially, geographically and politically. This moral crisis of separation leaves us with the fear that we have lost the ability effectively to translate feelings into actions that are based on sound consideration of the facts, careful deliberation of options, legislative precedence and proportion, robust party politics and compromise. Arising from this crisis there are feelings of powerlessness, resentment, rage, paranoia, cynicism, disengagement and despair. It can feel like the wells of truth have been poisoned.
Into this socio-political landscape, powers and principalities, both foreign and domestic, are planting seeds of violence by reactive, thoughtless or cynical words that are not intended to either find or strengthen the common good. This is part of a plague of identity politics that tempts all democracies to substitute their principles with personalities and grievances. So it is we find ourselves in deep moral pain also. This pain is healthy. It is the body politic feeling itself unhealthy and suffering the consequences of behaviors that need to change for vitality to return.
Amidst the physical, social and moral pain I feel, I struggle to find and know and preach peace. Not only vague peace, but the unity and security that I long for—for my life, my family, my church, my country and the world. It is precisely in this longing that I am drawn to the simplicity of Jesus, to the crisis of his times, to how the overwhelming spiritual, moral and social crisis of his times was met and addressed and healed. In chapters 7 and 8 of the Gospel of John, out of which comes the stunning claim that “the truth will set you free,” is a great crisis. Jesus models the power of truth and directs people to a deeper and more inclusive discipleship of it through him. Not just through him, but through the simple power of truth given to him by his Father. The great leader of non-violent political change of the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, coined the term satyagraha to describe this truth-force. For Gandhi it was the improbable power of the truth to set an unarmed people free even in the face of the most powerful military power the world had seen through the British Empire which was then occupying India in racist colonial bondage. It was this notion of satyagraha that The Rev. Howard Thurman learned from Gandhi and that he brought back to teach his colleagues and fellow leaders of the civil rights movement (among them, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) in the 1950s.
As we wonder what next steps we can take to be set free by the truth or to go deeper in our discipleship with Jesus, I am inspired by that bridge-building work of Howard Thurman. Once when someone was talking to Rev. Thurman about what the world needed, he interrupted, “Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.” This is perhaps a model of discipleship that can help us feel the pain we need to feel and be set free to respond in ways that suit us as individuals with different viewpoints, experiences and understanding which need to be listened to more carefully and compassionately, respected more and denounced less.
I am aware also that alongside the pain we rightly feel, we also live in a wonderful age which virtually every generation before us would have longed to see for its relative levels of education, health, wealth, safety, justice, international law and interfaith understanding. I say this not to reinforce complacency or quietism, but to encourage us as we do the hard work in our own age of addressing climate change, mass migration, gun violence, racism, addiction, and prison reform, to name just a few examples of critical issues of our time. I pray that we will find ways to redouble our efforts to contend for the truth as Christians and citizens (speaking truth in love) and seek those sound policies of government that will flow from it.
There will always be distortions and divisions threaded through important debates and our imperfect knowledge that require patience, humility and a contemplative spirit to grow in us all. But we can all learn and grow through these as the “birth pangs of creation.” The issues we face are multi-generational. They will require of us all some new ways of being in relationship, new ways of being Christians, and new ways of being citizens. I believe that with God’s grace and our common practices of gratitude and repentance, we can discover the common prayers and the common will to make the necessary progress we yearn for in Christ. I believe this because as I meditate and pray, as I visit people who are sick and dying, as I read history, and observe the conduct of human affairs, I see a constantly redeemed and redeemable humanity set free by the truth of God’s renewing mercy.
I am blessed to be the pastor of a truly remarkable church, in a truly remarkable city, filled with truly remarkable people of all ages and abilities and views. As a congregation this week our discipleship took many forms: worship, prayer, hospitality, and meditation; the Bridge Dinner to welcome, be fed by, and learn from those who are refugees in our community; a Godly Play Camp for children in partnership with Advoz, a mediation, peace-building and restorative justice agency downtown. This is a very local view, indeed it is a shamelessly parochial view, but it gives me great hope. A hope that is rooted in faith and love. And for that reason I find it easy to believe in the Teacher who, through the tumultuous events recorded throughout John’s gospel, says to the people who are seeking God, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
