The recitals begin Wednesday, February 29 and continue weekly through April 4. Recitals begin shortly after noon at 12:10, end at 12:40 p.m., and are free and open to the public.

Lenten Organ Recitals Schedule:

29 February — Michael Stuart
7 March — Greg Chestnut
14 March — Linda Petersen
21 March — Cynthia Roberts-Greene
28 March — Matthew Woods
4 April — Nancy Siebecker

Palm branches and crosses burned in preparation for Ash Wednesday in the Church of the Redeemer’s St. Francis Garden.

Persons in need of assistance from a priest in preparing for a first confession should call the Parish Office at 955.4263.

Ash Wednesday, February 22, is the first day of Lent, and Redeemer will celebrate The Eucharist with the Imposition of Ashes at 7 and 10 a.m., 12:10 p.m., and 6 p.m.

Ashes are signs of mortality and penitence; the priests mark the foreheads of the congregation with the ashes in the form of a cross, the sign of redemption and in remembrance of baptism.

Ash Wednesday is a strict fast day; pregnant women and those with special dietary needs due to age or health are exempt from fasting.

Redeemer is located at 222 S. Palm Ave., in downtown Sarasota. For more information, call 941.955.4263./end

Valerie Arsenault

David Wilson (photo by Lars Johannesson Photography)

Ticket Type

Adults $15.00 USD Students $7.00 USD

The Manatee concert of the Festival will take place on February 25, 7:30 p.m., at Christ Church, 4030 Manatee Ave. W., Bradenton.

Dan Cartlidge with Ann Stephenson-Moe

The Anthem will be Missa in Simplicitate de Jean Langlais, with baritone Daniel Cartlidge.

Service is Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in C – C. V. Stanford.

All are welcome. For more information, call 941.955.4263.

When the primaries are all over, and all of the bad things the candidates have been saying about one another are brought to a close, it will be fascinating to see what they will do to repair the damage. I’m sure there will be some amusing backtracking!

President Lyndon Johnson told the story once of an old judge he used to know in Texas. He had been on the bench for thirty years. One day the chairman of the Judiciary Committee called and said , “Judge, I’ve got bad news for you. There was a bill introduced today that would eliminate your job.” The judge said, “I’m sorry to hear that, and shocked. Who is behind it?”

The chairman said, “Well, there’s Bill Small.” The judge said, “Him. Why do you listen to him? A week doesn’t go by but what we get in small claims court 6 or 7 cases of shoddy merchandise sold by him. If it weren’t for my long loyalty to the party and the fact that he was a member I would have come down on him a long time ago. Who else?”
“Well, there’s Ed Crawford, the editor.” “Him and his yellow journalism. If he weren’t a friend of yours I would have banned his reporters from the courtroom on a dozen different occasions. Who else?”

“Well, there’s Gordon Manning, the lawyer.” “You and I know that shyster should have been disbarred on a dozen occasions. I’m shocked that you would let people like that operate on your committee.”

The legislator said, “Well, judge, I also have good news. I had the votes and we voted the bill down, and your job is safe.”

The judge said, “Well, darn you (The language was a bit stronger than that, actually). “Why darn me? I just saved your job.” “Darn you because you just made me say some very unkind things about three of the finest men this country has ever produced!”

Don’t ask me why, but for some reason that story came to mind while I was thinking about the Presidential race.

All of the candidates want to be King. All want to be the Messiah, God’s anointed, to save the people in these perilous times. To do that they have to win the peoples’ favor by convincing us that theirs is the true saving message. Is it beginning to sound religious? Of course, it would sound even more religious if they could show us God is on their side. If they could heal a few people along the campaign trail, that would help.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on a kind of campaign trail as well. He is travelling throughout Galilee to get his message to as many people as possible. He is the Messiah, God’s anointed one. In fact, he is God himself in the flesh. He wants to get the message out that he has come to save his people from their sins. Along the way, however, he encounters people who are sick and who have various diseases. He has the power to heal. It is his nature to heal, and so he heals them.

One of these persons is Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, who lays sick with a fever. He heals her, and her healing is so complete that she immediately begins to serve them. One commentator says that “the word translated ‘serve’ is the same as that used when the angels ‘waited on’ Jesus in the wilderness. Later Jesus himself will use that same verb to describe himself as one who comes to serve. Here Simon’s mother-in-law embodies the ideal of discipleship as service to others, and foreshadows the actions of the women who later ministered to Jesus at the cross.”

Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law really brings out the crowds. Persons suffering from arthritis or who had toothaches; people with gout, hip problems, digestive ailments, as well as more serious diseases, all heard about the healing, so that the whole city showed up at Simon’s doorstep, wanting relief from their maladies. They were not there to have Jesus tell them about God’s saving grace, which was really what Jesus wanted to communicate to them. But he was compassionate; in fact, he embodied compassion. So he couldn’t turn them away. He healed them, from the one who was nearsighted to the one with inoperable cancer, to the one who had an evil force in his life that he couldn’t overcome.

Our Lord Jesus had two major challenges with which he had to deal. The first was the prevailing notion of what the Messiah would be. The Israelites expected the Messiah to be a political ruler who would free Israel from Roman rule. When he went about preaching salvation, they thought that ultimately would result in establishing an earthly kingdom in which God would truly rule. Even the disciples suffered from that misconception, up to the very end. The other challenge was what Jesus encountered at Capernaum. They wanted him to cure their earthly woes.
Jesus had the ability and the power to do both, and his temptation was to be what the people expected. Ultimately, however, he would not be diverted. He must stay true to his calling, as real as those other needs were.

In order to do what the Father called him to do, our Lord had to stay focused. How did he stay focused on his mission? He prayed. Over and over again we see Jesus going apart and praying. After all of those healings in Capernaum, the next morning he got up, long before it was light, and went to a lonely place, and prayed. His disciples searched him out, told him people were looking for him, presumably for more healings, and he told them that he had to move on. His mission, after all, wasn’t to be a miracle worker, but to get the word out.

I wonder what his thoughts were. Was he disappointed that he had to disappoint the people in Capernaum? We aren’t told that. We’re merely told that he moved on to fulfill what the Father had called him to do.

If the Son of God used prayer to stay focused, how much more do we need to pray, so that the cares and challenges we face don’t rule over us? We have at least one mass here at the church every day. We have Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer every day. And yet, rarely do we have any more than half a dozen people at mass, and we’re lucky if we have any participants at Morning and Evening Prayer other than the person scheduled to officiate and read the lessons. I’m mystified that our people don’t feel the need to pray in this manner. Some might say, I don’t have to go to church in order to pray. Those who say that probably don’t pray alone either. Each of us needs to pray, fervently, in order to keep our focus on God and his will. Do it at home. Do it here at church. But brothers and sisters, pray.

While on vacation, driving in the town I grew up in, Derby, Connecticut, I was negotiating an intersection of two multilane roads.

I entered the intersection on a green light, but because of turning traffic, got caught in the middle of the intersection when the light changed.

Everyone stopped at the light saw my predicament and did not move. But there was one lane on the far end of the intersection that was open, and a fellow in a pickup truck blasted through the intersection and met me broadside. No one was hurt, thank God, though we did take an ambulance ride to the hospital to be sure.
It was at the hospital that a policeman handed me a ticket and charged me with the accident. I was stunned.

He was absolutely deaf to my argument that I was already in the intersection when the light changed. “I’m sorry sir the law is clear”.

The guy that hit me was speeding, and was pumped up on pain killers. He ran a power saw across his hand that morning and was on his way to the hospital a second time to see the doctor when he hit us. “I’m sorry sir the law is clear”.

I did not take this well. I felt a grave injustice had been done, common sense notwithstanding. And I told him I am going to challenge this. I had enough restraint not to push this further with the policeman: I therefore avoided being shot or arrested.

So I planned that I would just fly back up there and defend myself in court; the judge would see things my way. The law couldn’t be that blind.

My brother, in his infinite wisdom and his knowledge of his big brother, recommended that I see his lawyer – and I did.

So when I went to court and stood before the judge I had a mediator who knew the law and could present my case.

But the amazing thing was, when I met the lawyer at the courthouse before the hearing, he told me that the day before, he had been at that very intersection, and the exact same thing happened to him! What are the chances?

I had a mediator who knew the law, knew what was expected by the judge and communicated it to me. And he knew the facts of my case to present them to the judge, but most significantly: He knew my very experience, he went through everything I went through exactly as it happened to me. He was the perfect mediator, the perfect bridge between the judge and me, between the law and me.

In the same way, that was the great hope that occupied Israel for most of its history: to have a perfect mediator.

They hoped for the prophet, one who could perfectly bridge the gap between God and man. Someone who knew God so intimately that he could make God’s mind and heart known to his people, at the same time intimately familiar with their own circumstances and could fairly represent them before God.

That was the promise made by God through Moses to the Jewish people.

We hear it this morning in the Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy: the Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst,…..and will put My words in His mouth and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. One like Moses, who would bridge the gap – that’s what Moses did – make God’s will known to the people, and God’s power to lead, provide, and deliver at the same time he represented Israel’s needs to God. (vv15-18)

That was the hope, the promise that Israel awaited through their history, to have someone represent them to God and God to them; someone with real authority and power, like Moses.

And they waited and waited. And the reality was, as is stated in Deuteronomy 34:10, since then no prophet had risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.

Even at the time of John the Baptist’s ministry, the Jewish leaders asked John: Are you the prophet? (John 1:21) And he said no but he pointed at the one who was.

And that is what we see in the gospel lesson this morning. As Jesus taught in the synagogue his listeners were astonished because he taught the word of God as one who had authority. He taught the word of God as if he had the power to act on it. He taught it as if it was his own.

Then he plainly demonstrates that authority; taking authority he frees a man from an unclean spirit. He commands it to go and it goes. He frees a man of a powerful force that had bound him, oppressed him, and crushed him, a force no man had the authority or power to defeat. But Jesus knew his problem – he knew his need – and he did something about it.

The people are astonished. This Jesus has taught the word of God with authority and demonstrated that authority by exercising power over forces man has no ability to overcome on his own, liberating man of the things that bind and break and crush our lives and spirits.

It was this kind of evidence, a demonstrated intimate knowledge of God’s heart and mind, and God’s power mediated to man, freeing him from things he could not free himself from including death itself ultimately, that led some to recognize that the promise made by the Lord to Israel – that I would raise up a prophet like Moses (one who knew God face to face) – was finally fulfilled in Jesus.

Peter in a sermon proclaimed at the temple in Jerusalem proclaimed to the multitude there that Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. (Acts 3: 22)

St. Stephen gave his life, testifying that very same thing to the Council of Elders in Jerusalem. (Acts 7:37) Jesus is the prophet for whom we were waiting.

It is a truth the church has proclaimed ever since: Jesus is that one, the prophet who will make knows the word of God, who knows God face to face, who knows his people and brings their needs before the judge. One who has the authority to plead their case, and to win their freedom from every consequence of sin, death, guilt, even evil spirits, and powers.

Do we as Christians today, live our lives in light of that truth? Have we come to Jesus seeking to know God, know his heart and mind for our lives? Do we seek to hear him speak to us in scripture, in prayer? Do we trust that what he has said in scripture, and says to us, is true and dependable?
And do we trust in his power to enable us to live that life?

What things do we bring with us today that weigh us down, that separate us from knowing and experiencing God’s presence and joy? What doubts, guilt, accusations, un-forgiven sins, condemning thoughts, destructive behaviors, do you carry?

Jesus alone has the authority to plead your case, to represent you personally, and he alone has the power to break those powers that bind. He alone can declare you innocent and free. He alone is your mediator, your bridge between yourself and God.

As we continue our worship this morning, as we seek God’s face in word and sacrament, turn to him; give Him your case today. Trust him this day for your life that you may know his presence and peace.

Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, our Father and our judge, you govern all things in heaven and on earth, mercifully hear the supplications of your people as we lift these burdens to you, and through the mediation, the power, the love, and the cross of Jesus Christ, grant us your healing, your forgiveness, your deliverance, that we might live in your peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.

Born a slave in Delaware in 1746, Absalom Jones bought his own freedom in 1784 and eventually, in 1802, became the first African-American ordained as a priest in The Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Canon Anderson formerly served as the Rector at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, the Mother Church for Episcopalians of African Ancestry, founded in 1792, and whose founding Rector was Absalom Jones. The Rev. Canon Anderson was also Rector for parishes in Hartford and Washington, D.C., and now resides in Sarasota.

Additional parking is available during Sunday worship at the M&I Bank Garage building on McAnsh Ct. For more information, call 941.955.4263.