All Saints Gazette: Phoebe, Food, Finances
Greetings from All Saints!
This week:
Thursday, 5 September, 18:00—Community at Vrijburg
No service on 8 September. Next one on the 15th!
Phoebe the Deacon, Commemorated 3 September
We don’t know much of anything about Phoebe, a deacon mentioned by Paul in his letter to the Romans. He says: “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.”
“Deacon” is of course one of the orders of ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church (as in the Catholic and Orthodox churches and some others). All priests have also been ordained deacons, but not all deacons become priests. If a vocational deacon (i.e. one who isn’t a priest) is present at the Eucharist, she reads the Gospel, gives the dismissal, and often leads the intercessions. Nobody has ever put together all that coherent a job description for deacons, but my friend Stacy Alan once said something like this:
Bishops are supposed to keep their gaze on the course of the church through history and around the world.
Priests are mainly looking at a particular community.
Deacons are looking around and seeing what and who is in the corner that nobody else is looking at (I can’t find the sermon at my friend’s ordination where she said this, but here’s her sermon at my deacon ordination).
A deacon-like church
I commend Phoebe and the diaconate to your reflections for several reasons. First, I think what All Saints does resonates with the way Stacy described deacons. We are a community that looks to the corners. Not having a building or an established brand, we kind of live in the corners ourselves. Many of us in fact have personally been shoved into the corners, or come from communities that systematically have. As we start to get a steady trickle of new people (AWESOME THAT YOU ALL ARE HERE!) and maybe get a bit bigger, we must never stop being a church that looks to and lives in the corners of the Netherlands and the world.
Always been here
Second, while it’s a bit debatable whether established ordained orders already existed in the New Testament, Phoebe is one of the main biblical ancestors of the order of deacons, even if people mostly talk about the seven male deacons of Acts 6. She was a corner person herself in the patriarchal world of Greece and Rome. We only get the one sentence about her because, while Paul and the early churches really were quite exceptional, they were not exceptional enough. But nobody could erase her. Here she is in holy writ! In fact, she probably delivered the letter. So friends (women friends, queer friends, black and brown friends, disabled and neurodivergent friends, precariously employed friends, and even our able, straight, neurotypical, middle class, white, male friends), you have always been here in Jesus’ story, and the story is not going any farther without you.
By the way, are any of you called to be deacons?
Multi-Community Meal at Vrijburg
You have to eat dinner anyway, so come eat with us on Thursday at 18:00 at Vrijburg. All Saints co-sponsors this meal with the Vrijburg congregation, and the other communities that meet in the building often join too. We take pains to include everyone regardless of their proficiency in English and Dutch, and the food is always good. Bring something to share if you can, but don’t worry about it if you can’t. Just come!
Beloved Community Corner: Experiment with offering
We can finally start receiving an offering beginning at our next worship and will soon have a way to give online. In our reflections together a few months ago, we named ways that we want different parts of our lives to invest in the world that God is bringing forth. Supporting our communities financially is one of those ways. We are grateful for any support, however much and however often. But here’s an invitation: Can you make a regular offering part of your spirituality? Whatever amount you can; no gift is too small. But I’ll be so bold as to suggest a little experiment: commit to a little more than whatever amount first comes to mind, and then see if you actually miss it in six months.
We of course understand that not everyone is able to do contribute financially without causing hardship to themselves or people in their care, and you can invest in our church others ways too.
That's all for today!
Want to talk to a priest? We want to talk to you too!
Website: https://allsaintsamsterdam.church/
Mpho: mpho@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Kyle: kyle@allsaintsamsterdam.church
General: info@allsaintsamsterdam.church
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