When you see these people remember to thank them for helping to make Riviera Presbyterian Church a church that is ministering by reflecting the path of Christ.

• Richard Jimenez-Alicea for coordinating once again a wonderful church picnic.
• Allison Anderson for faithfully preparing communion elements each month.
• Karl Brester and Danny Ricardo for coordinating the Ping Pong Tournament during the church picnic. Congratulations to Stanley Schoenblatt who won first place and Oscar Posada who won second place.
• Larry Peterson and Annie Peterson who staffed the barbecue grills at the picnic.
• Tracey and Stanley Schoenblatt who helped with the water play at the picnic.
• Lee Popham who loaned us his ping pong table.
• Zach Schoenblatt, Maxx Schoenblatt, Nicole Prieto, Donnie Hanson, Dan Dixon, Rey Prieto and Richard Jimenez-Alicea who helped set up tables and
  chairs and then take them back.
• Chuck Hannemann who preached on May 2nd.
• David German and Richard Godbeer who are working very hard in the preparation of the church grounds for the Memorial Garden.

This summer, we propose taking a little of that time for nurturing friendships while we’re still in place, working day to day.

Why not consider gathering with Laurie and with a few friends from church for lunch, once a month? No agenda except friendship…no program except enjoying one another. We’ll set up one in the Coconut Grove area and another on a different date in the Doral. If it works, we’ll keep it up. In June, let us know if you’ll join us on:

• Thursday, June 3, at Green Street Café in Coconut Grove at noon
• Thursday, June 10 in the Doral (place to be determined), at
  noon. Please email Laurie or the church office for the Green Street
  lunch. And Laurie, the church, or Richard Jimenez-Alicea for the Doral lunch.

If you can gather a few more folks in an area not easily accessible
to either place, we can add a third feast… talk to Laurie if that possibility interests you. Hope to see you come summer!

Following the worship service, everyone gathered for a pasta lunch in the Fellowship Hall, where money was raised to support The Child Care Center’s Tuition Assistance Fund. Special thanks are in order for Amanda Jackson Willy (Child Care Center Board member and chairperson of the Fundraising Committee, who organized the event), Mr. Patrick Vital (who graciously donated the food for the luncheon), and to everyone at both Riviera Presbyterian Church and the Child Care Center for making this event a most memorable one!!!

For the past couple of months, it has been my privilege and a real joy to meet with five exceptional people who are in conversations about church membership with the community here at RPC. The conversations have been unusually rich, as the group’s participants have explored the wide diversity of perspectives their respective faith journeys have engendered. Like many others in our congregation, some have come into life at RPC as individuals formed by life-long family commitments to church membership, many from traditions far more restrictive socially and theologically than ours. Others have come to faith as adults, starting new in communal religious practice by their own choice, not because they were promised or raised to that
faith by their family of origin. Among all these adult faith practitioners, there are a wide range of understandings of God and God’s work in the world; a breadth of ideas and profound questions about who Jesus was, and who the Christ is, for the postmodern Christian faith community; and, along with those personal belief perspectives, a predictably wide attitude about what the Church is and how to be a part of it. Listening to them, and looking around on Sunday morning, I am newly awed at how the rpc collection of souls: members friends, and all our children, have entrusted such an important part of their spiritual and life journey to life in community. The thing is this: churches may look more or less uniform, seem in their common work and worship as if all their adherents are on the same path in the same place at the same time… but in reality, no believer looks alike…thinks alike… experiences God in the same way—even at different points on their own faith journey, let alone in their communal journey. And yet…somehow, these collections of diverse individuals, these very-different kinds of families, choose to let their individual voices be drawn into common praise and prayer….choose to let their differing commitments, political persuasions and personal styles be knit into shared work in mission and a common process of education for faith, choose to allow
their varying skills, expertise and social locations to be gathered up in varieties of volunteer efforts that manage the life of the congregation, keep its common life vibrant, and care for its hurting and isolated members. With people we barely know outside of this sanctuary, we confess our failures and disappointments. We share our fears and the concerns we have for friends and the world. We stand up and ask for what we need and expect to have it given serious attention. We donate time
we scarcely have for ourselves to projects that were not our idea, because we are trying to bear faith with our neighbors. We
are a community bound together neither by necessity nor fiat, but by faithful intention. We are a community shaped not by the
“rights” to which we are entitled; but by a sense of mutual responsibility. We don’t always get it right…but we keep trying. It
must be a gift of the Spirit!

The feast and season of Pentecost, described in the bible in Acts 2:1-11, sometimes is referred to as the birthday of the church. And often, it is presented that when the Spirit came down on the demoralized and frightened disciples of Jesus; a strong, unified, powerful movement came into being. But a careful reading of scripture, supported by a basic understanding of human history and human psychology, would tell us otherwise. It would tell us that what was born on Pentecost was a sense of community surprising because it was expressed across boundaries of language, experience and culture. The Pentecost
believers didn’t receive the Spirit and all speak in the same language…they received the Spirit, and were able to speak in their
own languages…and at the same time, understand and be understood by their neighbors and by strangers outside their
house. So, if a “Church” was born on Pentecost, and if it continues today, here at rpc and elsewhere…it is for two reasons:
first, because there is at work in the world a Spirit who empowers each of us to express our selves, and our faith journey honestly
and authentically –especially when it differs from that of our neighbor; and second, because there is at work within each of us a Spirit of hospitality that checks our quick urges toward domination and homogenization and equips us to listen to the opinion, the story, the feelings of the person sitting next to us or passing by outside our doors, even and especially when that person’s “language” is different from our own. Many, if not most church growth models teach that the only way to be successful and grow as a congregation is to hone our common ground and cause like to hew to like; but the witness of Pentecost, and the enduring belief of this small expression of the Church called RPC, is strangely, wonderfully contrary. Let’s each keep doing our small but vital part to keep it that way: speaking our own language with humility and trust; listening with love and care
while someone else does the same, and believing that when we do so, God shows up and the path of Christ is illuminated.

Thank you each for being a part of it…. Laurie

As plans proceed for the 219th General Assembly (July 3-10), specific attention is being given to how to increase and strengthen the spiritual aspect of the meeting. Here are some examples:

Bible study. Even before the commissioners and advisory delegates arrive in Minneapolis, they and everyone across the denomination will have available online through The Presbyterian Leader a Bible study written specifically for this assembly by Matt Skinner, a Presbyterian minister who teaches New Testament at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The font. This year’s theme, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38), lends itself well to baptismal
imagery, such as the font that will be front-and-center of the commissioners and advisory delegates as they work to discern the mind of Christ for the PC(USA). While each of them will have brought a small portion of water to pour into the font, what is more important will be the rivers of living water that pour from them in the Spirit-led decisions they will make over the course of their week together.

Worship. The opening Communion service on Sunday, July 4, will include not only those who have traveled to Minneapolis for the assembly but also thousands more Presbyterians in the Twin Cities area. In addition, worship will be on the schedule each day, and the traditional ecumenical service will take place in Westminster Presbyterian Church, just down the street from the convention center.

Prayer. A room will be set aside for commissioners, advisory delegates, and others to use for quiet prayer, reflection, and meditation. The area is being designed by volunteer members of the Committee on Local Arrangements, a group of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area that, along with other myriad tasks for the assembly, is planning the opening and daily worship services.

The opening prayer for each session of the assembly will take place around the baptismal font. New at this assembly will be the practice of inviting commissioners and advisory delegates to turn to a few others in the row in front or behind them to form small groups to pray on a regular basis.

But praying for the General Assembly is not limited to those who will be in Minneapolis! Individuals, sessions, congregations, and groups across the PC(USA) are encouraged to begin praying now for the meeting, for the Moderator who will be elected the first night of the assembly, and especially for those who will be serving as commissioners and advisory delegates.

In addition, the Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, has written a call to prayer for the assembly that will be featured in the 2010 Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study on July 3rd, opening day.

Finally, the Book of Common Worship contains a prayer for a General Assembly meeting. You are invited to use it often before and during the gathering of what is the highest governing body of the PC(USA):

Almighty God, in Jesus Christ you called disciples and, by the Holy Spirit, made them one church to serve you. Be with members of our General Assembly. Help them to welcome new things you are doing in the world, and to respect old things you keep and use. Save them from empty slogans or senseless controversy. In their deciding, determine what is good for us and for all people. As this General Assembly meets, let your Spirit rule, so that our church may be joined in love and service to Jesus Christ, who, having gone before us, is coming to meet us in the promise of your kingdom. Amen.

(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993, 805)

Let’s go down, down in the river to pray.

If you are connected to individuals or groups who would benefit from a volunteer experience or know anyone who could participate as a summer staff please contact me and/or Vanessa Silverman 786-382-4287 Vanessa@doornetwork.org for more detailed information. DOOR welcomes individuals and groups of many ages of all faith backgrounds as well as school and university participants for service learning. Thanks Friends! …for any help you can provide, if you’d like more information also let me know.
– Peace,
Laura Fothergill

PAID JOB OPPORTUNITIES BETWEEN JUNE-AUGUST

Each year the DOOR program selects a number of outstanding adults to work as a team, to help run the short-term (Discover) programs and to discern together the call to ministry in an urban context while serving, learning and reflecting. Some positions are particular to a type of ministry (homeless, cook/purchasing, food bank, etc) To be a part of the Discern team is to engage in personal as well as group reflection and to engage in leadership development.

The support staff position requires a desire to work together on the staff team as well as a desire to work with participants and the local agencies.

• · Help facilitate the experiences of groups that come to DOOR
• · Work together as a team
• · Lead worship, group reflection and orientation
• · Serve others daily in the visiting groups, at the community agencies, and other staff members
• · Be the link between Discover participants and community agencies
• · Most Support Staff positions are full-time and pay a stipend

VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCES FOR INDIVIDUALS and GROUPS

The Summer program is called Discover, participants will learn about urban life through:

• · Volunteering in the community
• · Participating in reflection
• · Worshiping together
• · Considering how faith shapes your group’s responses to needs in your home community
• · Volunteering at a variety of community agencies
• · Staying at facilities in the city
• · Participating in a network of service-learning opportunities
• · Hearing a local perspective on the city
• · Using public transportation (when available)
• · Interacting with people of the city

In the last story told by the gospel of John before Jesus’ passion, a family dinner celebration bears undertones of conflict and a sense of impending doom. The supper is in honor of the resurrection of Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother. Jesus had raised him from death, and one whom they had lost had been found. But his life had been purchased at a cost: the leaders who already feared Jesus’ power, feared it more in the wake of this greatest sign; and intensified their efforts toward his death.

Lazarus, too, is now at risk: he has come from death to life to find his own life has become a destabilizing force among his neighbors, and those gunning for Jesus are now gunning for him as well. The threat of catastrophe and death lurks literally just outside the door; but noone wants to speak of it.

Because this is a celebration, right? Dinner is served and nothing is said. Martha bustles around with dishes overflowing; the friends laugh and eat. Judas begins a debate about the stewardship of wealth and the appropriate allocation of resources; the writer points the finger at Judas, distracting even us, his readers after two thousand years, with salacious details of betrayal and corruption. No one wants to say what everyone knows is going on: they are about to lose everything.

Liturgically, we play this out in the services of Holy Week: services that are routinely neglected by church members and visitors alike. Though calendars are published two months in advance, though description and testimony express both the importance and the beauty of the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae and the Good Friday vespers—almost no one wants to come. And I get it. A service that is fundamentally about death may in fact seem depressing. There is already a lot of suffering in the world, and in our lives, and why should we spend time on this long ago story of pain and loss? So we forget, or schedule other things, or stay home and watch Gray’s Anatomy, and keep a safe distance between ourselves and the Story that opens the door not only to Christ’s passion. . .but more frighteningly, to our own. And we go to church on Easter, because the resurrection is real gospel; it is good news. And we are an Easter people, right?

The question is, whether we can ever truly be an Easter people if we have refused to learn what it is to be people of holy week: who acknowledge the betrayals and finality of Thursday, the horror and violence of Friday, the emptiness and aching loss of Saturday. How can we feel what resurrection joy is, if we have not allowed ourselves to feel before?

Mary alone in this story shows us the way we must go. Mary, who does not speak but whose act of acknowledgement, of grief and of deep love, fills the room with fragrance. In the face of the powerful emotions of joy, fear, grief and love; she reaches deep within herself. She finds and she gives what is hers alone—in this story, a jar of expensive perfume, worth a life’s savings. Breaking it open, she pours it extravagantly on Jesus’ feet. Breaking herself open, she weeps, and washes his feet with her tears. Unbinding her hair, she breaks the bondage of silence and denial that holds all of them paralyzed, and the binding of fear, unacknowledged grief and those separations that come when we have to hold ourselves apart from those we need and love because we cannot bear the risk of letting go—all those bindings drop away, setting the family, the friends, the women, the men, the betrayer and the betrayed alike, free.

So what? Why should we do this? Why be like Mary, and not like the others? Show up and name the elephant in the room, release the pain and the potential? Give the most precious thing we own, which is our genuine, honest, transparent self? Rabbi Hillel, whose work Pirke Avot was roughly contemporaneous with the gospels, said this: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

We should do it because if we don’t, who will? And the story of our world these days is too similar to what we have read: a people consumed with trivialities, lost in denial of what is really important, paralyzed and impotent to step up and face with courage and honesty the difficult challenges and the painful adjustments we all must make if we are to repair our world. Our faith story –ALL of it—embodies a unique capacity to embrace the fullness of feeling and experience that constitute our lives and times. It is not just a story about resurrection, butterflies and success: it is a story of loss faced bravely, sacrifice given freely for the sake of love; lovers and enemies bringing out of silence words of truth, and deeds of generosity and transforming power. It is a good story, our faith story, but it’s richer if we tell all of it, not just the Easter-happy ending… When we break ourselves open, becoming deeply real, the fragrance of the Resurrection, at last, becomes real as well: it fills God’s
world with healing balm, as it rises in each one of us, who are Christ’s body, the Church. Christ is risen, Alleluia!

Please join us for Holy Week and Easter Services:
Palm Sunday March 28 we, too, will “turn our faces toward Jerusalem,” and prepare with Jesus to enter the city and begin our long Holy Week walk through crucifixion and death into Easter on April 4.The sanctuary will be “righted” for this journey and for Easter; that is, we will again be configured facing our Cross. Those who wish and who are able, are invited to gather in the narthex for a procession with the choir in festive song, waving palms, as we greet Jesus and welcome him into the city.

Those who prefer to be seated are of course invited to do so, and also to take a palm with you to your seat so you too may participate in the procession from your place.

Maundy Thursday, at 7:30 on April 1, will take place as the last supper did for the disciples, gathered around tables with friends, here in the sanctuary. It is the service of Shadows, or Tenebrae, in which we tell the story of Jesus’ last days: a story of communion with friends, the pain of abandonment and betrayal for the betrayed and betrayer alike; the hard story of how fear creates a mob mentality, spiraling out of control, that ends in the sacrifice of Jesus’ life. We begin the service with communion, and through quiet hymns, poetry and scripture, we listen by candlelight to the narrative of the passion of Jesus.

Good Friday service, at 7:30 on April 2, will be observed in the garden outside the church and fellowship hall, before our rough wooden cross, a vesper service of quiet prayer, simple songs, and readings. As the sun sets and the evening falls, we ponder the ending of the life of Jesus, and pray for courage to sustain us through the empty Saturday, and the faith to await a resurrection The sanctuary will be stripped following the Good Friday service, except for the labyrinth, in which we will walk ‘that lonesome valley” with Jesus.

Easter Day, April 4, 11:00 am The Day of Resurrection– bring your friends and family and celebrate Christ’s resurrection at Riviera! Worship will full of inspiring music, beautiful flowers, and rich, expressions of faith. Following the service, we will continue the celebration with a special Holy Grounds fellowship time and an Easter Egg Hunt for the children, in the church courtyard.

Peace,
Laurie

Lent is a season for some discomfort and for looking at things from alternative perspectives “along the way,”….and therefore it seems important to pay attention to the discomfort or restlessness many of you have been kind enough to comment on, as you have reflected on worship during this season. Some have noticed that the sun coming through the east windows makes seeing the worship leaders a little more difficult. Others have shared that having “the cross beside us, instead of in front of us” is uncomfortable, and seems almost “wrong.” “It’s as if our attention is pulled from the cross, and is less clear to us. We have to strain to see the cross.”

This, too, seems symbolically significant to me. In the Lenten season, the texts of
scripture, week, by week, attend to the confusion and dread of the disciples
as they begin to grapple with Jesus’ prediction of his impending death. They
speak of the awkwardness of the journey toward Jerusalem, marked by embarrassing excess, frustrated confusion, heartbreaking betrayals, and surely, Jesus’ own very human dread and resistance to embracing the path he has chosen. So if we have found ourselves physically squinting into harsh light, a little disoriented as to our proper place, and straining toward a cross that was once always clearly before our eyes but is, in the moment, less easy to see and not entirely where it should be. . .maybe, in that, we are mirroring the paths of the disciples and Jesus.

On Passion Sunday, March 21, we turned our eyes toward the
smaller cross on the balcony. It was a time for reflection and community,
centered in the hearing of the choir’s powerful rendering of Mendelssohn’s
passion cantata, Christus., a time “away in a deserted place.” The cross
was behind us and before us as we heard sung and read the story of Passion
Sunday. With our Lenten journey coming to an end, we are gathering
our courage and our strength to face the Cross as Jesus did, when he
“turned his face toward Jerusalem.” Beginning on Palm Sunday, our sanctuary
will return to its more familiar forward-facing orientation, the beauty of
our rainbow celtic cross before us again

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

• Allison Anderson: Photography
• Karen Deilke: Tropical Painting
• Lauren Greenberg: Jewelry
• Jeff Larson: Photo/Digital
• Lynne Latham: Photography
• Kay Levine: Watercolors
• Deon Mandelstam: Glass, Ceramics
• Fariba Ostovary: Ceramics
• Bettyann Pober: Painting, Cards
• Sara Preston: Photography
• Lexi Segré: LexiJewelry
• Kathy Stults: Glass Art
• Alicia Saffe & Marcia Ibanez: Kay-Mia Jewelry

Note: List subject to change

Celebrating the beautiful, colorful and diverse fabric of people in South Florida, Riviera Church invites you to visit, see and meet these important local artists.
Where:
Riviera Presbyterian Church, 5275 Sunset Drive, Miami, FL 33143

During a late-night meeting that Presbyterians followed coast-to-coast via Twitter, the presbytery voted 156-138 to allow Larges to be ordained. And it voted 157-144 to approve That All May Freely Serve, for which Larges serves as minister coordinator, as a validated ministry.

Mary Holder Naegeli, a minister from San Francisco Presbytery who has been involved with earlier legal challenges to Larges’ efforts to be ordained, released a statement to the news media on Nov. 11, saying that “enough signatures were collected at the close of the meeting to secure a Stay of Enforcement while a remedial complaint is filed with the Synod of the Pacific Permanent Judicial Commission.”

More: http://www.pres-outlook.com/component/content/article/44-breaking-news/9395-presbytery-votes-to-permit-larges-ordination-stay-of-enforcement-sought.html