On Sunday, the sermon will also appear below so that you can read or listen at your leisure.
Present Prophecy – Linda+
Advent 2 Year B 6 December 2020 Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Was John the Baptist the last prophet, or the first evangelist? Yes. The writer of Mark’s Gospel begins, not with shepherds, magi, and a manger, but with the resounding liminal presence of one who stands on the threshold of fulfillment of God’s promise to Creation. John the Baptizer evokes the foundational prophetic tradition, appearing as a wild specter of Elijah, dressed in camel hair and subsisting on locusts and honey, preaching repentance of sins. Mark reminds us of the words of Isaiah; a messenger from the wilderness, crying out,
“…prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
John the Baptizer harkens backward to the prophets while pointing forward to Jesus: Repent. Prepare. Something new is coming. Wake up. Good News, Good News, Good News. Prophet and evangelist, old and new, linking past and future.
We often think of prophets as predictors of the future, but that’s not a complete picture. The idea of touting prophecy as a foreteller of future events was actually a way of reinforcing something more important: the call of the present moment, the call to repent, to turn away from systems of injustice or complicity or idol worship, lest the judgment of God be passed upon the people of God. So when calamity struck Israel, as it did in 597 B.C.E. with the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile that followed, the prophets’ words became, not just a call to the people to heed their current situation, but also a predictor of future events: “See? Disaster has befallen us just as Isaiah predicted!” That’s the sexy bit—the idea that certain people can look ahead and tell us what will happen. Somehow it’s easier to ponder and contemplate and speculate about whether prophecy is right or wrong than it is to actually listen to what the prophets are saying and then do the hard work of healing and justice.
Prophecy of the present moment is more than just knowing the future; it is a call to awaken to the challenge of creating a better one.
The reason the writers of the Gospels so often cited the prophets was not just because the prophets lent them credibility by imaging God’s future actions, but because they recognized a commonality and solidarity with the past. The Gospel writers recognized that the people of their history had stood at similar thresholds—meeting crises of war, famine, occupation, exile. And how they responded to those crises mattered to their future as the people of God.
Mark the Evangelist knew that invoking Second Isaiah would have an impact on his audience. While First Isaiah, written in the 8th century B.C.E., had warned the people of the consequences of their idol worship and turning from God—a warning that went unheeded, ultimately to their downfall–Second Isaiah spoke to the people two centuries later, during the Babylonian exile. And this time, for a change, God spoke words, not of warning, but of comfort. This was because the people were at a different kind of threshold from the ones they had encountered before. They spent a generation in Babylon without their home or their Temple. They had to find, in their new circumstances, a way to get along from day to day in a new country and culture. They had to learn new ways to worship and live their faith as people of God in a foreign land. They were struggling with what it was like to be in a New Normal. They needed reassurance—to know that God was still with them.
“Comfort, O comfort my people…she has served her term…her penalty is paid…”
Whew.
“The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Thank God. This time of struggle is temporary—we will get through it, somehow.
The prophet speaks of a God of both strength and gentleness; of a God who can lift valleys even as he carries his flock gently in his arms. The prophet speaks God’s hopeful promise of deliverance; coming in might yet feeding his flock like a shepherd. Comforting God’s people. But comfort is not to be equated with complacency.
“A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I say?’”
Cry out deliverance! Cry out that God is near! Cry out hope! And John the Baptizer does just that. Good News! The Messiah is here among us! The world is changing! The Holy Spirit is on the move! Wake up! Prophet and Evangelist. We don’t have to wear camel hair and eat locusts and wild honey to be either of these things. Or both. Cry out!
What shall we say? How shall we proclaim the might and grace of our God to a world consumed by sickness and fear; to a country riven by division and failure of political will, hungering for justice, compassion and healing? Because make no mistake, in this Advent season we are being called to be prophets and evangelists, crying out for world-turning change and proclaiming the now-and-not-yet of the Dream of God for all of Creation.
That’s a tall order. How dare the Gospel make such demands when we are dealing with so much, when we are trying to find a way to get along day to day, trying to learn new ways of worship and live our faith as people of God in what feels like foreign land of masks and social distance? When we are struggling with what it is like to be in a New Normal? How dare the Gospel make such demands upon a people in exile from our lives of ten months ago? How do we begin to meet such a challenge? By facing it, naming it, and trusting in God’s paradoxical mountain-leveling strength and shepherd-like lovingkindness. Hear the words of Bishop Steven Charleston:
Sometimes prophecy is pragmatism dressed up for church. And that is not always a bad thing. Take our current situation, for example. It doesn’t take a mystic to determine three things: we are in a bad way on many fronts, things will not get better right away, and the only way forward is together in faith. These statements are just facts. They pragmatically describe our context… But notice one other thing: this down to earth, common sense, give it to me straight approach releases a deep fountain of spiritual strength in us. …There is prophecy here because we now understand what we are up against and what we have to do. Prophetically, the future is not ours to see, but pragmatically it will be what we make it.
The people of God have been in exile before, and they learned that they would be changed by it. It is no different today. Like ancient Israel, like the first century Mediterranean world, we shall be changed by where we are now, and it remains to us to decide what our future will look like. And then, with God’s help, to make it so.
Welcome to our new, weekly updated Worship Resources section. Here you can find helpful links for things you might like to have during virtual worship.
Coming soon…listen in to our weekly sermon podcast which will be posted each Monday
On Sunday, the sermon will also appear below so that you can read it at your leisure.
Advent 1: Stuck in the Clouds – Mark+
Advent is my favorite season. There is something about the shortening of the days as, in the Northern Hemisphere, the earth cycles away from the face of the sun, the weather cools, and the days shorten and darken. Within this natural process something is awakened in us – a kindling of light to compensate for the shortening and darkening of days. This kindling of light finds symbolic expression in the candles of the Advent Wreath. Each of the four weeks of the Advent Season are represented by another lit candle. Despite the darkening and shortening of days, the kindling of light within is an anticipation for and an expression of the hopeful expectation of the greater light of God’s promise to restore creation in a new heaven and a new earth.
Advent is my favorite season in the cycle of the Church’s year. The music is haunting, the rich purple or in some churches blue of the liturgical season chimes so perfectly with the outer world imbued with somber light. The atmosphere of expectation increases as each day we open another window in the Advent Calendar magnetized to the fridge door or pinned to the wall.
Advent’s theme is one of hopeful expectation. Although our gaze focuses forwards our immediate experience is one of waiting and, while we wait, we prepare.
What is it we are waiting for and why is it we are still waiting?
The focus of my exploration on this first Sunday of Advent is a question with two parts: what is it we are waiting for and why is it we are still waiting? But before I respond to this question I need to note that our 2020 Advent experience will be changed in this time of pandemic.
This Advent we will have to explore our experience of expectation, waiting, and preparation without the supports of in-person worship. For us, this year, the kindling of inner light each Sunday with another candle lit on the Advent Wreath, along with hearing the haunting melodies of Advent music against the background of the somber purple of the Church’s vestments and hangings – will be a virtual experience.
We are more equipped for this than we might think. Many aspects of our lives are now conducted from the terminals of our computers or viewed, as our Advent worship will be, through the media of livestream through your YouTube app on your TV. We human beings are social creatures and of course we badly miss the social gathering aspects of worship. At St Martin’s we have been fortunate enough to have prepared for this eventuality over the spring and summer months through equipping the church for HD streaming.
As part of the process of preparation, Linda+ and I have also had time to reflect on the pandemic’s implications for the theology that underpins our Eucharistic liturgy. We have found our way to reclaiming an older strand of Eucharistic theology – one that stresses physical participation less than participation through our senses of sight and hearing. With each week we continue to learn from our experience in honing the performance of our liturgy to better fit a virtual experience.
On this Advent Sunday, I give thanks to God for his loving providence towards us at St Martin’s. For among the resources that have allowed us to prepare for the challenges of the winter ahead, we have been blessed to have among us the technical skills particularly of Ian Tulungen, David Brookhart, and Emma Marion – our technical production crew – who, together with the adaptive skills of our musicians – Gabe Alfieri, Steve Young, Lori Istok, Amanda Neves, Jacob Chippo, and Glenn Zienowicz – enable us to open our liturgy to our members viewing from home and also so many others who are drawn to worship with us online.
But I’ve avoided the two part question I posed earlier long enough: what is it we are waiting for and why is it we are still waiting? The answer is too large and complex for one sermon and I trust that the essential elements of addressing the question will emerge over the next 3 Sundays.
In what should be a joyful experience of hopeful expectation ushering in a new Church year – why are we greeted by the doom and gloom of the readings appointed for today?
Our readings point to the experience of waiting for the fulfillment of a promise. When fulfillment is delayed we experience the anguish of frustrated longing that overshadows the hope within us. Writing in the time after the return of the exiles from the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the prophet Isaiah – remember this Isaiah is the third by his name, laments that, despite the exiles’ return and the hopes of a glorious restoration of the nation, the pallor of exile still hangs heavy over the people causing the prophet to cry out:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.
Is 64:1
In other words, Isaiah cries out to God: why do you remain far from us, up there in the heavens, aloof and distant, can’t you see the mess we are in, understand the help we need – an accusation – why have you not yet rescued us?In the midsts of an earth changing pandemic this ancient accusation finds a deep resonance in us. The prophet’s cry alerts us to a central theological strand in Advent, one not often talked about, a strand which is more easily avoided in better times. At the heart of Advent is the painful experience of waiting. Waiting is the hardest thing we ever have to endure because waiting is an experience of helplessness.
In Advent we await with the eye of faith what we know to be God’s promise of restoration for the world, a hopeful expectation that God will finally put the wrongs to rights. In the infant Jesus – God the Creator comes to dwell among us within the tent of Creation.
But the problem for us lies in our experience of the nature of time. In God’s coming to dwell within the tent of humanity, divinity emptying into the life of Jesus, God opens a new and crucial chapter in the long story of Creation. To our dismay the chapter is not yet complete, as we groan with painful longing for its finalization, which the scriptures talk of as a second coming or return.
Third Isaiah’s question, after all this time, and despite the Advent of the Incarnation, remains our painful question too. When O God will you tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains will quake and the nations tremble at your presence? For Christians this question becomes: when O God will Jesus return clothed in the vibrant metaphor of descending clouds of glory?
When indeed? Jesus himself seems to offer little comfort in Mark, when he reaffirms the enigma of time. He tells us that we will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds, but about that day or hour no one knows, so keep awake.
I guess the next question is: what does it look like to keep awake? We will have to return to this next time. So for now let’s simply say, Amen.
Thursday Evenings 5:30-6:30pm -Meditation Hour via Zoom click here for invite– for more on meditation visit here and and on how to meditate visit here.
Lent and Social Justice
This Lent we will also do something aiming to have a practical effect in the wider world. Following our screening of the film Lost in Providence last Wednesday evening, we are proposing that the parish engage in a letter writing campaign to the members of the General Assembly requesting their action on much needed reform of the outdated eviction laws that promote tenant evictions as a principal cause of homelessness throughout RI. RI lags behind neighboring states in achieving a better balance between landlord and tenant interests. Visit evicted-in-ri.com for more about the urgent social problem of decaying housing and widespread family homelessness.
Useful background information and letter writing materials:
You can find three week’s worth of readings so plug into the relevant week links at the bottom of the commentary section.
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This service reaches back to the days of the Abrahamic Accord – a relationship between Christian and Jews on the East Side. The Accord has ceased to function for some time now, yet the interfaith Thanksgiving service has continued, alternately hosted by Temple Beth-El and St Martin’s. Attendance has been falling each year at this service, and although billed as interfaith it is now mostly Christians who attend. This year as the host I signaled a desire to review the approach to this service. Following the Pittsburgh shootings, I then wondered if we needed to hastily put something together to signal community solidarity with our Jewish neighbors. In discussion with the Temple, we decided that having had a tremendous community vigil to mourn the shootings, and with busy calendars, nothing further was needed at this time. We have jointly agreed not to hold an interfaith Thanksgiving service this year.
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We are seeking nominations for the positions of Senior and Junior Warden, Treasurer, Clerk, and one Vestry member.
Our parish bylaws require that the Rector and Wardens appoint a nominating committee at least eight weeks before the Parish Annual meeting which is traditionally held the last Sunday in January. Our parish custom has been for the Rector, Wardens, and retiring vestry members to constitute the Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee will nominate persons for the positions of Senior and Junior Warden, Treasurer, and Clerk as well as the number of necessary parishioners to replace those Vestry members whose three-year team has expired. It is customary for the Junior Warden to move to the Senior Warden slot. This is not required and others may be nominated to stand for election to Senior Warden at the Annual meeting.
This year, we will be seeking names of parishioners who would be capable and willing to serve in the four Parish ‘officer ‘ positions: Senior and Junior Warden, Treasurer, and Clerk — we do anticipate that John Bracken will stand for nomination as Senior Warden for a one-year term, having ably served as Junior Warden. In addition, the committee will be seeking one person to serve on the Vestry for a three year term.
Note that we are only attempting to fill one vestry position this year rather than the customary three. We are proposing to change our bylaws to allow for a smaller, more streamlined vestry that is more in keeping with the current size of the Parish. The proposed change, also to be presented at the annual meeting, reduces the size of the vestry from 14 to 8. We feel that this change also acknowledges that many of our capable parishioners who would like to serve on the Vestry are simply too busy to be able to serve in the fully committed fashion they would prefer. Please contact the Rector or one of the Wardens if you would care to nominate someone to serve in one of the positions mentioned.
Leave an Enduring Legacy by Contributing to Saint Martin’s Endowment
Since it opened its big red doors at 50 Orchard Avenue in 1922, Saint Martin’s has brought to the Greater Providence area a thoughtful approach to Christianity; one that combines the beauty of traditional Episcopal liturgy with vigorous outreach programs and a striving for social justice. In order to help ensure that Saint Martin’s continues to thrive, the Parish is strengthening its endowment and asks your help.
Saint Martin’s Endowment was set up decades ago to help fund long-term expenses and to insulate the parish from the vagaries of economic cycles. The endowment provides an ability to offer financial support to new initiatives and to make needed repairs to our beautiful and historic facility in a timely and cost-effective manner. It has also been used to support and jump-start new ministries and outreach programs. Dedicated funds within the endowment also fund special music programs on Christmas and Easter and allow the replacement of worn vestments and the like.
Our goal is to grow the size of the endowment so that we can restrict withdrawals to 4-5% of principal per year range. This is a sustainable level and is considered a “best practice”.
How can I help?
There are many ways to contribute to the Endowment. Some are simple and straightforward such as: an outright gift of money or assets such as stock or real estate, including Saint Martin’s in your will, making Saint Martin’s a whole or partial beneficiary of a life insurance policy, or a gift from an Individual Retirement Account. Other techniques such as Charitable Gift Annuities and Charitable Remainder Trust are more complicated but well worth considering if a sizable gift is contemplated. Consideration of tax and estate law can make your gift more powerful by reducing taxes and expenses.
Common Ways to help strengthen Saint Martin’s Endowment
Simple & Immediate Gifts. Cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate and personal property can be given at any time to the Endowment. Some people have the idea that a gift to the endowment needs to be large. That is not the case. Any amount is always welcome. You can give a small affordable amount each month which adds up over time; others choose a larger one-time gift. The parish can also take title to real estate and valuable personal property such as jewelry or paintings and sell them with the proceeds going into the Endowment.
Gifts from an IRA, 401K and some other retirement plans. This is an increasingly common technique. The money that has accumulated in the plan has never been taxed but is taxed when you withdraw or when it goes into your estate when you die. However, gifts from such retirement accounts to charitable or religious organizations such as Saint Martin’s are not taxed at all. In addition, you may be entitled to a charitable deduction in the amount of the gift.
Tip: If you are over 70 1/2 the IRS requires that a portion of your IRA account be distributed each year until your death. This is the so called Required Minimum Distribution (RMD). If the money goes to you, it is taxed at your individual income tax rate. However, if you instruct your IRA to give the money directly to a not for profit such as Saint Martin’s then the distribution is not taxable to you.
Deferred Gifts: Wills and Bequests. A bequest through a will is the most common way the Endowment has been funded. It is a simple and straight forward way of giving and creating a legacy of good that will live on. Bequests can be in simple dollar amounts, or as a percentage of your estate or even a percentage of the remainder after other specific bequests such as gifts to children or other charities have been made. The language needed to add a bequest to an existing will can be quite simple: “I give, devise, and bequeath to Saint Martin’s Parish, 50 Orchard Avenue, Providence, RI, the sum of $ XXX. to be placed in its Endowment.
Tip: You should always use an attorney to develop your estate plan and draft and make changes to your will. Even if you do not have a lot of money, a will helps your family and friends understand how you would like to handle things. It can also avoid complications and confusion. The Episcopal Church Foundation’s “Planning for the End of Life” booklet contains considerable information about these topics. It can be found on line at http://www.ecfvp.org/webinars/122/basics-of-planned-giving-2.
Life Insurance. You may have life insurance that is no longer needed (children grown, spouse has passed) Some name the parish the beneficiary or partial beneficiary of such excess life insurance.
You may get a tax deduction for the cash surrender value of the policy not its ‘face value”. If the policy requires continuing the premiums, those too can be deductible.
More Complicated Techniques. There are some techniques which only make sense if one has considerable assets. These include charitable gift annuities, Charitable remainder Trusts, and Pooled Income funds. Should you wish to explore these options Saint Martin’s will be happy to work with your advisors.
For further information please contact the church office or one of the Clergy or Vestry. The phone number is 401-751-2141; [email protected];
(Information provided in this brochure is of a general nature. You should always consult your own lawyer or accountants before making important decisions.)
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The books of I & II Chronicles seems to start the whole story we have read through Samuel and Kings all over again. But we will note how different Chronicles is. It’s a more one-sided version of the story of Israel told only from the perspective of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Clearly written during or after the Exile it’s the story of those that were left.
With Paul’s letter to the Romans, we now enter into a very new world, a world fashioned not by Jesus but by Paul. Paul wrote a good chunk of the N.T. although scholars dispute his authorship of all the books attributed to him by tradition. However, Romans is Paul, through and through. His central message is the Jewish Messiah is for everyone and not simply the Jews. Following his dramatic conversion, Paul came to understand that Jesus was God’s surprising ending to the story of Israel. This was an ending that the traditional reading of Israel’s story was not set up to handle.
Jesus himself played fast and loose with Scripture, using it as the scene setting device for taking the story in new and shocking directions from a Jewish point of view. Paul does likewise. He takes the long history of Israel and gives it its most universalist twist. Actually, the universal inclusion of all the nations on Mount Zion was already part of the prophetic tradition evinced by the Third Isaiah. So Paul simply picks up where Third Isaiah left off and moves to his central thesis.
In Romans, Paul spends a lot of time debating the merits and demerits of the Law. Put simply Paul notes that according to Israel’s reading of its own story, failure to keep the Torah was the core problem that led to national catastrophe and exile see the last chapter of II Kings for a heart-wrenching description of this. If Torah keeping was the core of Israel’s struggle, then it seemed logical to the Jewish Christian lobby that Torah keeping should be the gentiles’ problem as well.
In Romans and elsewhere Paul lays out his case, that Torah keeping is no longer the problem for either Jew or Gentile. Sin is a universal human problem, not exclusively a Jewish or Gentile problem. Jesus’ death and resurrection gives a new twist revealing God’s plan is the defeat of sin through death. Henceforth the promise given to Moses becomes the promise to all peoples.
Now the rest of the acts of Ahab and all that he did, ….are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel?
So ends the First Book of the Kings. The period covered by First and Second Kings is a period of fragmentation with a series of very unsatisfactory kings sitting on the thrones of the now divided kingdoms of Isreal and Judah. As the state of kingship continues to decline there arises a new breed of prophet in the land. As typified by the great Elijah and his successor Elisha we encounter the rise of the political prophet as the antidote to the corruption of the monarchy. The office of the political prophet is to speak truth to power. The prophets function like the Supreme Court, guardians of the constitution. At the heart of the Hebrew constitution lie two key concepts:
The political prophets function like the Supreme Court, as guardians of the constitution. At the heart of the Hebrew constitution lie two key concepts:
As typified by the great Elijah and his successor Elisha we encounter the rise of the political prophet as the antidote to the corruption of the monarchy. The prophets function like the Supreme Court, guardians of the constitution. At the heart of the Hebrew constitution lie two key concepts:
The definition of Israel as those who God brought out of the land of bondage. The Exodus is the defining moment in the birth of the Israelites as a distinct people, a people born in slavery and liberated by God to be his chosen race.
There is to be no other God but Yahweh who is the only true King in Isreal.
In all ages and in each political system there needs to be a mechanism for judging unconstitutional actions by those in authority, a voice that speaks truth to power. Thus all the kings are assessed by how faithful they are to God. In Canaan the king was sovereign. He was God’s appointed surrogate. Like God, the king stood above the law. In Israel, the king was not sovereign, he was a servant of God with the responsibility to ensure faithfulness to the laws of God, sitting under God, not above him. This was easy for Isreal’s kings to forget when they become mesmerized by the example of real divine Canaanite models of kingship all around them.
First and Second Kings is a chronicle of the failure of each king to remember and to obey the founding principles of the covenant. So each comes to a sticky end – hastened by the work of the political prophet who declares what is valid and what is not according to the laws God has established in the Covenant with Moses.
First and Second Samuel and First and Second Kings comprise that phase of Hebrew history we refer to as the Monarchy. The struggles recorded reveal a universal tendency that without checks and balances power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. This is a powerful message for us to remember in our own current period. We see the resurgence of the figure of the nationalist dictator aided and abetted by the resurgence of an uncritical and paranoid nationalism. We see how this resurgence has not left America untouched. We witness the tensions when a dictatorial interpretation of presidential leadership, aided and abetted by a resurgent nationalism with all the xenophobic elements of fear of foreigners, those who are not of the tribe, of racism, and sexism expressions of the patriarchal systems of oppression, arises within a system founded on checks and balances designed to place limits on executive power.
To read the Bible is to read and learn that there is nothing new under the sun.Vigilance emerges from a knowledge of history and a long, long memory.
The story of the rape of Tamar (2 Samuel 13) is one of the most horrifying episodes in the Hebrew Scriptures, arguably second only to the story of the rape, murder and dismemberment of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19. These “texts of terror,” a term coined by theologian Phyllis Trible, leave the reader stunned at the least, and potentially triggered at the worst. How can we possibly read such horrific passages spiritually? How can such despicable behavior be part of our sacred Story?
The first thing to remember is that our sacred Story is a checkered one. It reflects the stark and often cruel reality of the human condition. The key is to read each episode as being in the context of the broad arc of God’s relationship with Creation—a relationship that progresses toward reconciliation in fits and starts from the very beginning; one step forward, sometimes five steps back. And in this passage we are currently in a dizzying backward swing.
So how to read this story? One possible option is to avert our eyes and pretend it isn’t there. That isn’t too difficult to do, since this is not part of the regular lectionary; there is little chance that you will hear it read or preached on in a Sunday service. But averting our eyes doesn’t make it go away any more than closing our eyes to human suffering makes it cease to exist. No; we need to look more closely, not away, and interrogate the text. What is the writer trying to tell us? And where is God in this story?
Up to this point in the account of David’s life and kingship, if we look closely, we can see that David’s biographers aren’t exactly enamored of their subject. David is light and shadow—a lot of shadow. There are times when David shows humility and love for the God who called him to lead God’s people. But by this point in the reading of Samuel you may have also noticed that a lot of people around David have died violently, and somehow David has avoided responsibility almost every time. Nothing sticks. And in the case of his daughter Tamar, the writer makes quite clear that David is indifferent to what is going on, effectively under his nose. This entire episode precipitates a family tragedy of epic scale, ultimately alienating David’s son Absalom from his father and dividing Israel.
Remember how the Deuteronomist writers made clear that God wanted one thing and one thing only of God’s people—to put God first? Remember how Samuel warned the people that if they got a king they would forget God and regret their decision? This rather sideways portrait of King David and his sons invites us to hear the writer say, “I told you so.”
But what of Tamar? She speaks 82 words as she begs her half-brother to see sense and not do this horrible irrevocable thing. And once it is done, and he recoils from her, she begs him again not to cast her out in disgrace. Just 82 words. But it is her actions that are most eloquent. This young woman, whose life has been effectively ruined by the combined actions of Amnon (rapist), Jonadab (conspirator), Absalom (who tells her to remain silent and waits two years for revenge) and David (willfully ignorant) refuses to accept her fate silently. She tears her garments, puts ashes on her head and wails with grief as she makes her way home from Amon’s chamber. In effect, she demands that the entire community witness to what has happened to her.
Where was God? God was in the ashes Tamar put on her head. God was in her tears. God remains in her testimony read through millennia, and in the testimony of abused and abandoned women everywhere and in every time. This text of terror invites us to hear Tamar’s call for justice and comfort for people like her, and to respond on their behalf.
The inspiration of Scripture isn’t just in the writer. It is also in the reader, if we have ears to hear.
December 6, 2020 Worship Resources
/in Worship Guide /by Kathryn BarrWelcome to our weekly updated Worship Resources section. Here you can find helpful links for virtual worship.
Click here to see view the Holy Eucharist in Advent booklet.
Click here to view the Scripture readings and the responsive Psalm for Advent 2.
Click play below to hear the weekly prayer list. Names submitted after the recording are read during livestream and the following week.
Click here for our Virtual Offering Plate and we thank you for your support during this time.
On Sunday, the sermon will also appear below so that you can read or listen at your leisure.
Present Prophecy – Linda+
Advent 2 Year B 6 December 2020 Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8
Was John the Baptist the last prophet, or the first evangelist? Yes. The writer of Mark’s Gospel begins, not with shepherds, magi, and a manger, but with the resounding liminal presence of one who stands on the threshold of fulfillment of God’s promise to Creation. John the Baptizer evokes the foundational prophetic tradition, appearing as a wild specter of Elijah, dressed in camel hair and subsisting on locusts and honey, preaching repentance of sins. Mark reminds us of the words of Isaiah; a messenger from the wilderness, crying out,
John the Baptizer harkens backward to the prophets while pointing forward to Jesus: Repent. Prepare. Something new is coming. Wake up. Good News, Good News, Good News. Prophet and evangelist, old and new, linking past and future.
We often think of prophets as predictors of the future, but that’s not a complete picture. The idea of touting prophecy as a foreteller of future events was actually a way of reinforcing something more important: the call of the present moment, the call to repent, to turn away from systems of injustice or complicity or idol worship, lest the judgment of God be passed upon the people of God. So when calamity struck Israel, as it did in 597 B.C.E. with the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile that followed, the prophets’ words became, not just a call to the people to heed their current situation, but also a predictor of future events: “See? Disaster has befallen us just as Isaiah predicted!” That’s the sexy bit—the idea that certain people can look ahead and tell us what will happen. Somehow it’s easier to ponder and contemplate and speculate about whether prophecy is right or wrong than it is to actually listen to what the prophets are saying and then do the hard work of healing and justice.
The reason the writers of the Gospels so often cited the prophets was not just because the prophets lent them credibility by imaging God’s future actions, but because they recognized a commonality and solidarity with the past. The Gospel writers recognized that the people of their history had stood at similar thresholds—meeting crises of war, famine, occupation, exile. And how they responded to those crises mattered to their future as the people of God.
Mark the Evangelist knew that invoking Second Isaiah would have an impact on his audience. While First Isaiah, written in the 8th century B.C.E., had warned the people of the consequences of their idol worship and turning from God—a warning that went unheeded, ultimately to their downfall–Second Isaiah spoke to the people two centuries later, during the Babylonian exile. And this time, for a change, God spoke words, not of warning, but of comfort. This was because the people were at a different kind of threshold from the ones they had encountered before. They spent a generation in Babylon without their home or their Temple. They had to find, in their new circumstances, a way to get along from day to day in a new country and culture. They had to learn new ways to worship and live their faith as people of God in a foreign land. They were struggling with what it was like to be in a New Normal. They needed reassurance—to know that God was still with them.
Whew.
Thank God. This time of struggle is temporary—we will get through it, somehow.
The prophet speaks of a God of both strength and gentleness; of a God who can lift valleys even as he carries his flock gently in his arms. The prophet speaks God’s hopeful promise of deliverance; coming in might yet feeding his flock like a shepherd. Comforting God’s people. But comfort is not to be equated with complacency.
Cry out deliverance! Cry out that God is near! Cry out hope! And John the Baptizer does just that. Good News! The Messiah is here among us! The world is changing! The Holy Spirit is on the move! Wake up! Prophet and Evangelist. We don’t have to wear camel hair and eat locusts and wild honey to be either of these things. Or both. Cry out!
What shall we say? How shall we proclaim the might and grace of our God to a world consumed by sickness and fear; to a country riven by division and failure of political will, hungering for justice, compassion and healing? Because make no mistake, in this Advent season we are being called to be prophets and evangelists, crying out for world-turning change and proclaiming the now-and-not-yet of the Dream of God for all of Creation.
That’s a tall order. How dare the Gospel make such demands when we are dealing with so much, when we are trying to find a way to get along day to day, trying to learn new ways of worship and live our faith as people of God in what feels like foreign land of masks and social distance? When we are struggling with what it is like to be in a New Normal? How dare the Gospel make such demands upon a people in exile from our lives of ten months ago? How do we begin to meet such a challenge? By facing it, naming it, and trusting in God’s paradoxical mountain-leveling strength and shepherd-like lovingkindness. Hear the words of Bishop Steven Charleston:
The people of God have been in exile before, and they learned that they would be changed by it. It is no different today. Like ancient Israel, like the first century Mediterranean world, we shall be changed by where we are now, and it remains to us to decide what our future will look like. And then, with God’s help, to make it so.
November 29, 2020 Worship Resources
/in Worship Guide /by Kathryn BarrWelcome to our new, weekly updated Worship Resources section. Here you can find helpful links for things you might like to have during virtual worship.
Click here to see view the Holy Eucharist in Advent booklet.
Click here to view the Scripture readings for this week and the responsive reading of the Psalm.
Coming soon…listen in to our weekly sermon podcast which will be posted each Monday
On Sunday, the sermon will also appear below so that you can read it at your leisure.
Advent 1: Stuck in the Clouds – Mark+
Advent is my favorite season. There is something about the shortening of the days as, in the Northern Hemisphere, the earth cycles away from the face of the sun, the weather cools, and the days shorten and darken. Within this natural process something is awakened in us – a kindling of light to compensate for the shortening and darkening of days. This kindling of light finds symbolic expression in the candles of the Advent Wreath. Each of the four weeks of the Advent Season are represented by another lit candle. Despite the darkening and shortening of days, the kindling of light within is an anticipation for and an expression of the hopeful expectation of the greater light of God’s promise to restore creation in a new heaven and a new earth.
Advent is my favorite season in the cycle of the Church’s year. The music is haunting, the rich purple or in some churches blue of the liturgical season chimes so perfectly with the outer world imbued with somber light. The atmosphere of expectation increases as each day we open another window in the Advent Calendar magnetized to the fridge door or pinned to the wall.
Advent’s theme is one of hopeful expectation. Although our gaze focuses forwards our immediate experience is one of waiting and, while we wait, we prepare.
The focus of my exploration on this first Sunday of Advent is a question with two parts: what is it we are waiting for and why is it we are still waiting? But before I respond to this question I need to note that our 2020 Advent experience will be changed in this time of pandemic.
This Advent we will have to explore our experience of expectation, waiting, and preparation without the supports of in-person worship. For us, this year, the kindling of inner light each Sunday with another candle lit on the Advent Wreath, along with hearing the haunting melodies of Advent music against the background of the somber purple of the Church’s vestments and hangings – will be a virtual experience.
We are more equipped for this than we might think. Many aspects of our lives are now conducted from the terminals of our computers or viewed, as our Advent worship will be, through the media of livestream through your YouTube app on your TV. We human beings are social creatures and of course we badly miss the social gathering aspects of worship. At St Martin’s we have been fortunate enough to have prepared for this eventuality over the spring and summer months through equipping the church for HD streaming.
As part of the process of preparation, Linda+ and I have also had time to reflect on the pandemic’s implications for the theology that underpins our Eucharistic liturgy. We have found our way to reclaiming an older strand of Eucharistic theology – one that stresses physical participation less than participation through our senses of sight and hearing. With each week we continue to learn from our experience in honing the performance of our liturgy to better fit a virtual experience.
On this Advent Sunday, I give thanks to God for his loving providence towards us at St Martin’s. For among the resources that have allowed us to prepare for the challenges of the winter ahead, we have been blessed to have among us the technical skills particularly of Ian Tulungen, David Brookhart, and Emma Marion – our technical production crew – who, together with the adaptive skills of our musicians – Gabe Alfieri, Steve Young, Lori Istok, Amanda Neves, Jacob Chippo, and Glenn Zienowicz – enable us to open our liturgy to our members viewing from home and also so many others who are drawn to worship with us online.
But I’ve avoided the two part question I posed earlier long enough: what is it we are waiting for and why is it we are still waiting? The answer is too large and complex for one sermon and I trust that the essential elements of addressing the question will emerge over the next 3 Sundays.
Our readings point to the experience of waiting for the fulfillment of a promise. When fulfillment is delayed we experience the anguish of frustrated longing that overshadows the hope within us. Writing in the time after the return of the exiles from the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the prophet Isaiah – remember this Isaiah is the third by his name, laments that, despite the exiles’ return and the hopes of a glorious restoration of the nation, the pallor of exile still hangs heavy over the people causing the prophet to cry out:
In other words, Isaiah cries out to God: why do you remain far from us, up there in the heavens, aloof and distant, can’t you see the mess we are in, understand the help we need – an accusation – why have you not yet rescued us?In the midsts of an earth changing pandemic this ancient accusation finds a deep resonance in us. The prophet’s cry alerts us to a central theological strand in Advent, one not often talked about, a strand which is more easily avoided in better times. At the heart of Advent is the painful experience of waiting. Waiting is the hardest thing we ever have to endure because waiting is an experience of helplessness.
In Advent we await with the eye of faith what we know to be God’s promise of restoration for the world, a hopeful expectation that God will finally put the wrongs to rights. In the infant Jesus – God the Creator comes to dwell among us within the tent of Creation.
But the problem for us lies in our experience of the nature of time. In God’s coming to dwell within the tent of humanity, divinity emptying into the life of Jesus, God opens a new and crucial chapter in the long story of Creation. To our dismay the chapter is not yet complete, as we groan with painful longing for its finalization, which the scriptures talk of as a second coming or return.
Third Isaiah’s question, after all this time, and despite the Advent of the Incarnation, remains our painful question too. When O God will you tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains will quake and the nations tremble at your presence? For Christians this question becomes: when O God will Jesus return clothed in the vibrant metaphor of descending clouds of glory?
When indeed? Jesus himself seems to offer little comfort in Mark, when he reaffirms the enigma of time. He tells us that we will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds, but about that day or hour no one knows, so keep awake.
I guess the next question is: what does it look like to keep awake? We will have to return to this next time. So for now let’s simply say, Amen.
Lent 2020
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandThe 2020 Lent Program Weekly Schedule
Lent and Social Justice
This Lent we will also do something aiming to have a practical effect in the wider world. Following our screening of the film Lost in Providence last Wednesday evening, we are proposing that the parish engage in a letter writing campaign to the members of the General Assembly requesting their action on much needed reform of the outdated eviction laws that promote tenant evictions as a principal cause of homelessness throughout RI. RI lags behind neighboring states in achieving a better balance between landlord and tenant interests. Visit evicted-in-ri.com for more about the urgent social problem of decaying housing and widespread family homelessness.
Useful background information and letter writing materials:
Local Representative Letter Template
Statement of Need H7596 – S2264 Sealing and Unsealing Eviction records
Ending Housing Discrimination fact sheet 03-19
How does source of income discrimination affect RI
Daily Reading in Lent available from Amazon Prime
Bishop Knisely’s Lent Is Not Rocket Science: An Exploration of God, Creation, and the Cosmos
Station to Station: An Ignatian Journey Through The Stations of The Cross. Gary Jensen
Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters. N.T. Wright. Audible version available
The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. N.T. Wright. Audible version available
The Resilient Disciple: A Lenten Journey from Adversity to Maturity. Justine Allain Chapman
Online – daily and weekly podcasts
Signs of Life Why Church Matters Lent Program from the Society of St John The Evangelist, Cambridge, MA.
Embedding the Bible -The Good Book Club
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandIn 2020, our main program as part of our strategic objective of embedding the Bible in parish life will be to follow the Forward Movement program
The Good Book Club.
Each week the latest link to the monthly Bible reading program will appear
here.
You can find three week’s worth of readings so plug into the relevant week links at the bottom of the commentary section.
Interfaith Thanksgiving Service
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandThis service reaches back to the days of the Abrahamic Accord – a relationship between Christian and Jews on the East Side. The Accord has ceased to function for some time now, yet the interfaith Thanksgiving service has continued, alternately hosted by Temple Beth-El and St Martin’s. Attendance has been falling each year at this service, and although billed as interfaith it is now mostly Christians who attend. This year as the host I signaled a desire to review the approach to this service. Following the Pittsburgh shootings, I then wondered if we needed to hastily put something together to signal community solidarity with our Jewish neighbors. In discussion with the Temple, we decided that having had a tremendous community vigil to mourn the shootings, and with busy calendars, nothing further was needed at this time. We have jointly agreed not to hold an interfaith Thanksgiving service this year.
Vestry Matters
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandNominating Committee News
We are seeking nominations for the positions of Senior and Junior Warden, Treasurer, Clerk, and one Vestry member.
Our parish bylaws require that the Rector and Wardens appoint a nominating committee at least eight weeks before the Parish Annual meeting which is traditionally held the last Sunday in January. Our parish custom has been for the Rector, Wardens, and retiring vestry members to constitute the Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee will nominate persons for the positions of Senior and Junior Warden, Treasurer, and Clerk as well as the number of necessary parishioners to replace those Vestry members whose three-year team has expired. It is customary for the Junior Warden to move to the Senior Warden slot. This is not required and others may be nominated to stand for election to Senior Warden at the Annual meeting.
This year, we will be seeking names of parishioners who would be capable and willing to serve in the four Parish ‘officer ‘ positions: Senior and Junior Warden, Treasurer, and Clerk — we do anticipate that John Bracken will stand for nomination as Senior Warden for a one-year term, having ably served as Junior Warden. In addition, the committee will be seeking one person to serve on the Vestry for a three year term.
Note that we are only attempting to fill one vestry position this year rather than the customary three. We are proposing to change our bylaws to allow for a smaller, more streamlined vestry that is more in keeping with the current size of the Parish. The proposed change, also to be presented at the annual meeting, reduces the size of the vestry from 14 to 8. We feel that this change also acknowledges that many of our capable parishioners who would like to serve on the Vestry are simply too busy to be able to serve in the fully committed fashion they would prefer. Please contact the Rector or one of the Wardens if you would care to nominate someone to serve in one of the positions mentioned.
Help St. Martin’s continue its work
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandLeave an Enduring Legacy by Contributing to Saint Martin’s Endowment
Since it opened its big red doors at 50 Orchard Avenue in 1922, Saint Martin’s has brought to the Greater Providence area a thoughtful approach to Christianity; one that combines the beauty of traditional Episcopal liturgy with vigorous outreach programs and a striving for social justice. In order to help ensure that Saint Martin’s continues to thrive, the Parish is strengthening its endowment and asks your help.
Saint Martin’s Endowment was set up decades ago to help fund long-term expenses and to insulate the parish from the vagaries of economic cycles. The endowment provides an ability to offer financial support to new initiatives and to make needed repairs to our beautiful and historic facility in a timely and cost-effective manner. It has also been used to support and jump-start new ministries and outreach programs. Dedicated funds within the endowment also fund special music programs on Christmas and Easter and allow the replacement of worn vestments and the like.
Our goal is to grow the size of the endowment so that we can restrict withdrawals to 4-5% of principal per year range. This is a sustainable level and is considered a “best practice”.
How can I help?
There are many ways to contribute to the Endowment. Some are simple and straightforward such as: an outright gift of money or assets such as stock or real estate, including Saint Martin’s in your will, making Saint Martin’s a whole or partial beneficiary of a life insurance policy, or a gift from an Individual Retirement Account. Other techniques such as Charitable Gift Annuities and Charitable Remainder Trust are more complicated but well worth considering if a sizable gift is contemplated. Consideration of tax and estate law can make your gift more powerful by reducing taxes and expenses.
Common Ways to help strengthen Saint Martin’s Endowment
For further information please contact the church office or one of the Clergy or Vestry. The phone number is 401-751-2141; [email protected];
(Information provided in this brochure is of a general nature. You should always consult your own lawyer or accountants before making important decisions.)
Days 134-141 editorial comment
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandThe books of I & II Chronicles seems to start the whole story we have read through Samuel and Kings all over again. But we will note how different Chronicles is. It’s a more one-sided version of the story of Israel told only from the perspective of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Clearly written during or after the Exile it’s the story of those that were left.
With Paul’s letter to the Romans, we now enter into a very new world, a world fashioned not by Jesus but by Paul. Paul wrote a good chunk of the N.T. although scholars dispute his authorship of all the books attributed to him by tradition. However, Romans is Paul, through and through. His central message is the Jewish Messiah is for everyone and not simply the Jews. Following his dramatic conversion, Paul came to understand that Jesus was God’s surprising ending to the story of Israel. This was an ending that the traditional reading of Israel’s story was not set up to handle.
Jesus himself played fast and loose with Scripture, using it as the scene setting device for taking the story in new and shocking directions from a Jewish point of view. Paul does likewise. He takes the long history of Israel and gives it its most universalist twist. Actually, the universal inclusion of all the nations on Mount Zion was already part of the prophetic tradition evinced by the Third Isaiah. So Paul simply picks up where Third Isaiah left off and moves to his central thesis.
In Romans, Paul spends a lot of time debating the merits and demerits of the Law. Put simply Paul notes that according to Israel’s reading of its own story, failure to keep the Torah was the core problem that led to national catastrophe and exile see the last chapter of II Kings for a heart-wrenching description of this. If Torah keeping was the core of Israel’s struggle, then it seemed logical to the Jewish Christian lobby that Torah keeping should be the gentiles’ problem as well.
In Romans and elsewhere Paul lays out his case, that Torah keeping is no longer the problem for either Jew or Gentile. Sin is a universal human problem, not exclusively a Jewish or Gentile problem. Jesus’ death and resurrection gives a new twist revealing God’s plan is the defeat of sin through death. Henceforth the promise given to Moses becomes the promise to all peoples.
Day 127-133 Editorial
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandNow the rest of the acts of Ahab and all that he did, ….are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel?
So ends the First Book of the Kings. The period covered by First and Second Kings is a period of fragmentation with a series of very unsatisfactory kings sitting on the thrones of the now divided kingdoms of Isreal and Judah. As the state of kingship continues to decline there arises a new breed of prophet in the land. As typified by the great Elijah and his successor Elisha we encounter the rise of the political prophet as the antidote to the corruption of the monarchy. The office of the political prophet is to speak truth to power. The prophets function like the Supreme Court, guardians of the constitution. At the heart of the Hebrew constitution lie two key concepts:
The political prophets function like the Supreme Court, as guardians of the constitution. At the heart of the Hebrew constitution lie two key concepts:
As typified by the great Elijah and his successor Elisha we encounter the rise of the political prophet as the antidote to the corruption of the monarchy. The prophets function like the Supreme Court, guardians of the constitution. At the heart of the Hebrew constitution lie two key concepts:
In all ages and in each political system there needs to be a mechanism for judging unconstitutional actions by those in authority, a voice that speaks truth to power. Thus all the kings are assessed by how faithful they are to God. In Canaan the king was sovereign. He was God’s appointed surrogate. Like God, the king stood above the law. In Israel, the king was not sovereign, he was a servant of God with the responsibility to ensure faithfulness to the laws of God, sitting under God, not above him. This was easy for Isreal’s kings to forget when they become mesmerized by the example of real divine Canaanite models of kingship all around them.
First and Second Kings is a chronicle of the failure of each king to remember and to obey the founding principles of the covenant. So each comes to a sticky end – hastened by the work of the political prophet who declares what is valid and what is not according to the laws God has established in the Covenant with Moses.
First and Second Samuel and First and Second Kings comprise that phase of Hebrew history we refer to as the Monarchy. The struggles recorded reveal a universal tendency that without checks and balances power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. This is a powerful message for us to remember in our own current period. We see the resurgence of the figure of the nationalist dictator aided and abetted by the resurgence of an uncritical and paranoid nationalism. We see how this resurgence has not left America untouched. We witness the tensions when a dictatorial interpretation of presidential leadership, aided and abetted by a resurgent nationalism with all the xenophobic elements of fear of foreigners, those who are not of the tribe, of racism, and sexism expressions of the patriarchal systems of oppression, arises within a system founded on checks and balances designed to place limits on executive power.
To read the Bible is to read and learn that there is nothing new under the sun.Vigilance emerges from a knowledge of history and a long, long memory.
Day 114 Editorial Comment
/in Uncategorized /by msutherlandThe story of the rape of Tamar (2 Samuel 13) is one of the most horrifying episodes in the Hebrew Scriptures, arguably second only to the story of the rape, murder and dismemberment of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19. These “texts of terror,” a term coined by theologian Phyllis Trible, leave the reader stunned at the least, and potentially triggered at the worst. How can we possibly read such horrific passages spiritually? How can such despicable behavior be part of our sacred Story?
The first thing to remember is that our sacred Story is a checkered one. It reflects the stark and often cruel reality of the human condition. The key is to read each episode as being in the context of the broad arc of God’s relationship with Creation—a relationship that progresses toward reconciliation in fits and starts from the very beginning; one step forward, sometimes five steps back. And in this passage we are currently in a dizzying backward swing.
So how to read this story? One possible option is to avert our eyes and pretend it isn’t there. That isn’t too difficult to do, since this is not part of the regular lectionary; there is little chance that you will hear it read or preached on in a Sunday service. But averting our eyes doesn’t make it go away any more than closing our eyes to human suffering makes it cease to exist. No; we need to look more closely, not away, and interrogate the text. What is the writer trying to tell us? And where is God in this story?
Up to this point in the account of David’s life and kingship, if we look closely, we can see that David’s biographers aren’t exactly enamored of their subject. David is light and shadow—a lot of shadow. There are times when David shows humility and love for the God who called him to lead God’s people. But by this point in the reading of Samuel you may have also noticed that a lot of people around David have died violently, and somehow David has avoided responsibility almost every time. Nothing sticks. And in the case of his daughter Tamar, the writer makes quite clear that David is indifferent to what is going on, effectively under his nose. This entire episode precipitates a family tragedy of epic scale, ultimately alienating David’s son Absalom from his father and dividing Israel.
Remember how the Deuteronomist writers made clear that God wanted one thing and one thing only of God’s people—to put God first? Remember how Samuel warned the people that if they got a king they would forget God and regret their decision? This rather sideways portrait of King David and his sons invites us to hear the writer say, “I told you so.”
But what of Tamar? She speaks 82 words as she begs her half-brother to see sense and not do this horrible irrevocable thing. And once it is done, and he recoils from her, she begs him again not to cast her out in disgrace. Just 82 words. But it is her actions that are most eloquent. This young woman, whose life has been effectively ruined by the combined actions of Amnon (rapist), Jonadab (conspirator), Absalom (who tells her to remain silent and waits two years for revenge) and David (willfully ignorant) refuses to accept her fate silently. She tears her garments, puts ashes on her head and wails with grief as she makes her way home from Amon’s chamber. In effect, she demands that the entire community witness to what has happened to her.
Where was God? God was in the ashes Tamar put on her head. God was in her tears. God remains in her testimony read through millennia, and in the testimony of abused and abandoned women everywhere and in every time. This text of terror invites us to hear Tamar’s call for justice and comfort for people like her, and to respond on their behalf.
The inspiration of Scripture isn’t just in the writer. It is also in the reader, if we have ears to hear.
[by Linda, reallocated during site cleanup]