Old First Presbyterian Church

Epiphany Sunday - Online Worship at Old First - January 3, 2021

Welcome to online worship at Old First!
Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.org
Visit our website at http://oldfirst.org/

Epiphany Sunday - Online Worship at Old First - January 3, 2021

The live feed of today's worship got onto a endless repeat cycle. We are sorry about that and we're trying to figure out what happened. But, the original version on YouTube is working fine, so go to this link and you can see the whole service. And feel free to fast forward over the parts you've seen several times.
Epiphany Sunday worship is here:
https://youtu.be/7vqmeuQd4M0

youtube.com Welcome to online worship at Old First!Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.orgVisit our website ...

Happy Epiphany Sunday. If you haven’t gotten your Star Words yet, keep watching your mail! Why not color an Epiphany Star and add it to the face book page. Peace, Pastir Maggi
P. S. You will find the ⭐️ on this page and on your Sunday church email

Happy Epiphany Sunday!!

Blessings on the end of 2020, and here's to a more hope-filled 2021!
As we prepare for Epiphany this Sunday, we wanted to give you a free Epiphany Star that you can share with your family, friends, and/or congregation! Print it out, color it, cut it out, and get ready for Epiphany!
https://click.convertkit-mail.com/gkuo00q2q4h5h9ookear/7qh7h2u0k7d0o5uz/aHR0cHM6Ly9kb3dubG9hZC5maWxla2l0Y2RuLmNvbS9kL3JvclU3NE5jMnVWOVB1U3BtVFhEU1IvdUhrUjY5Z3h3ZUJBQU5pWnJCR0VUZw==

Happy Christmas Sunday! I so much enjoyed worshipping with Covenant Presbytery Church today. Rev. Erwin Barron’s sermon was full of imagination, art , whimsey, hope and goodness. It is not too late to watch it. That is a plus of online worship. I am taking a weeks vacation from work. I will be with you all again in 2021. Peace Pastor Maggi

Call to Worship (Dec 27, 2020)

We join Covenant Presbyterian Church in their worship today. Erwin Barron is the preacher. Click here to join the worship:
https://youtu.be/90I6L32NujM

youtube.com

Erwin's sermon introduction (Dec 27, 2020)

Sunday, Dec. 27 worship with Covenant Presbyterian Church with Erwin preaching his unusual art/slide show sermon.

Click here to join:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QJgNWrVDTU&list=PLY9VV0A5FKvarNsNqIe2VE4nlE7h-2K0_

youtube.com

Merry Christmas, from Old First!

Christmas Eve - Online Worship at Old First - December 24, 2020

Welcome to online worship at Old First, and merry Christmas!
Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.org
Visit our website at http://oldfirst.org/

Christmas Eve - Online Worship at Old First - December 24, 2020

Welcome to online worship at Old First, and merry Christmas!
Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.org
Visit our website at http://oldfirst.org/

[12/24/20]   The Old First Presbyterian Church Choir will be heard worldwide this evening on wcpe, the classical station 1 of 11 stations in the country that provide classical music 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Jay Pierson we'll be announcing for that station this evening and will play us election from the CD that was made in 2012. Go to the website, the classical station. Org and start listening at 7 p.m. or TuneIn later the old first choir will be played sometime between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. San Francisco time. again the website is 3 words. the classical station. Org

First Person
This Advent, walking is my spiritual practice
I’m being tutored in exposure.
by L. Roger Owens
December 16, 2020
feet walking in snow Photo by Antonin Duallia on Unsplash

I walk a few miles every day. It began as an effort to improve my health. Recently, I’ve realized that walking has become a spiritual practice as well—and an especially appropriate one this Advent.

Our family decorated for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. With the living room filled to capacity—statues of snowmen on the piano, Advent wreath on the coffee table, icon of St. Nick staring down from a garland-draped mantle, stockings laid out in front of the fireplace, a tree crowded between two recliners—the whole room felt cozy. It felt safe, the way home should feel.
L. Roger Owens

L. Roger Owens teaches Christian spirituality and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and is author of Threshold of Discovery: A Field Guide to Spirituality in Midlife.

See All Articles

The next evening, before dinner and prayers and the Saturday-night lighting of the first Advent candle, I took my walk. It was cold outside, so I put on my coat, grabbed my cap with earflaps and a scarf, and headed out the front door. I stepped out of our cocoon of coziness and was shocked by a blast of wintery wind.

As I walked, the wind evaded my defenses. It chapped my cheeks, chilled my ears. It penetrated my pants and coat and the mesh on my sneakers. Though clothes covered my body, still I was exposed.

Throughout these long months of pandemic, many of us have done everything we can not to be exposed. We’ve stayed in if we were able, hunkered down. We’ve tried, in the words of poet May Sarton, to “love safe in the walled city.” For those of us not directly touched by the virus—which is fewer of us each day—we’ve imagined a kind of invulnerability. My own life has become so safe, so routine, that to learn of mounting COVID-19 deaths each day has begun to feel abstract and distant.

Until a nephew gets the virus. Or a college friend loses his father to it. Or it claims a high school classmate, who played the Cowardly Lion to my Tin Man, or a faithful lector in my church. Then I remember that the sense of invulnerability engendered by the privilege of being able to stay home, stay inside, is just that: merely a sense, not the real thing.

Ruther Burrows, a Carmelite sister, has said that in prayer we become “open, exposed, inviting God to do all God wants.” In prayer we set aside our illusions of invulnerability; we lay ourselves bare before the wind of God’s Spirit, before its sometimes gentle caress, its sometimes shocking blast. In prayer we practice what it means to be human.

I’m not sure I know how to do this in prayer, but I’m learning that my walks can help me. They can tutor me in exposure. They can help me taste an undefended openness, if just a little.

Rowan Williams writes that “being a creature is in danger of becoming a lost art.” Reflecting on this line over the years, I’ve read it through the lens of Wendell Berry’s insistence that accepting creaturely finitude requires observing limits: we must stay in our lane, refusing Promethean overreach, or a fate worse than Prometheus’s awaits us. The unavoidable catastrophes being caused by the global climate crisis go some way to proving Berry’s point.

But now I think there’s more to this art than honoring limits. The art of being a creature also means honoring the inherent vulnerability of existing as flesh and blood, a vulnerability present whether we stay in our lane or not. The men and women who are dying of COVID-19 in nursing homes are not exceeding creaturely speed limits, nor are the thousands infected in jails and prisons, nor are the nurses and doctors whose vocations render them more vulnerable than the rest of us. Their suffering is the result of the deadly mixture of innate human vulnerability and a badly mismanaged crisis. Even within our limits, we can’t escape fragility.

Given some health concerns in my family, I’m still not shopping in a grocery store if I don’t have to, and I won’t set foot in a restaurant. We will keep our kids learning online as long as the school district allows and continue to pick up library books curbside. We will try to stay safe, for our own sake and the sake of others.

But I can embrace honoring my human vulnerability this Advent, nonetheless, risking exposure, if to nothing more than wintery cold and roaming delivery trucks, to remind myself that there is no perfectly safe walled city. I can practice the art of creatureliness, however much of a novice I am, by stepping outside each day. By putting one foot in front of the other down the side of a gravelly road, awake, exposed to sun and shade, wind and snow.

On that Saturday walk, as I was heading back up the hill toward our house, the voice of Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel came on my playlist singing Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus: “Hail, true body, born of the Virgin Mary, who truly suffered, sacrificed on the cross for humanity.”

It’s a eucharistic text, but it fits this season as well. Before the body of Christ ever graced an altar inside a church, that body was laid in a manger as a child—open, exposed, vulnerable. Showing that his body, his life, was the most human of all, that it had become the truest prayer.

As I stepped back into the comforts of home—a dinner of Pakistani beef cooking on the stove, tree lights turned on now that night was falling, holiday music spilling from the kitchen—I knew one thing: that walk, and the ones to follow, would become, somehow, my Advent prayers.

Lighting the Candle of Love - Online Worship at Old First - December 20, 2020

Welcome to online worship at Old First!
Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.org
Visit our website at http://oldfirst.org/

Lighting the Candle of Love - Online Worship at Old First - December 20, 2020

Welcome to online worship at Old First!
Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.org
Visit our website at http://oldfirst.org/

John Brown University

In the midst of a difficult year, this Christmas season brings us another reminder to keep our focus on Christ our King.

We are proud to bring you the JBU Cathedral Choir singing Beautiful Savior.

We wish you a safe and blessed Christmas.

donate.larkinstreetyouth.org

Make the holidays extra special for young people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco by sending $25 Target gift cards or donating directly to Larkin Street Youth Services. These supports are crucial in helping Larkin Street distribute gifts to over 500 young people this holiday season. With the unbelievable challenges this year has presented, let’s remind these young people our community loves and supports them.
You can use either for these two links
http://www.target.com/gift-registry/gift/larkinstreet
Here’s a unique link for those interested in making a donation directly on the website:
https://donate.larkinstreetyouth.org/Old-First

donate.larkinstreetyouth.org

This is what sermon preparation looks like these days. Pastor Maggi

Art for Ministry—Image Licensing Library

sanctifiedart.org 185+ Images Inspired by Scripture & the RCL

[12/13/20]   Welcome to online worship at Old First!
Your generosity supports us during this uncertain time. Give online at http://donations.oldfirst.org
Visit our website at http://oldfirst.org/

The Third Week of Advent
those who dream... sow joy (joy)

If I wanted to sow joy,
I wouldn't use words.
I would turn the music all the way up,
And push the table against the wall,
Until we had room to dance.
I would roll the windows down
And drive you out of town,
Until fresh air filled your lungs.
I would squeeze your hand
And look you in the eye,
So that you would know you are not alone.
I’d lay down the picnic blanket and we’d look at the stars,
So that nothing could separate you from God’s great beauty.
I’d open my door, like Elizabeth did for Mary.
I’d tell you to stay as long as you’d like.
Make yourself at home. What’s mine is yours.
And maybe we’d sing. And maybe we’d laugh.
And maybe it would be enough to be in the presence of God and each other.
If I wanted to sow joy, that’s what I’d do.
So sing me your song. We’ve got dancing to get to.
Sarah Are, Sanctified Art

I am preaching on Luke 1:45-55 this week. This picture looks like Joy to me. Pastor Maggi

Christmas Eve Worship: On-Line with Old First, December 24

We will gather for on-line worship on Christmas Eve, Thursday, December 24, via Facebook Premiere and YouTube.
We will begin with a musical prelude at 6:45 pm. The service itself will start at 7:00 pm. (All times are Pacific Standard Time.) Links to the broadcast via Facebook Premiere and YouTube will appear here as the date comes closer. Remember to have a candle at hand.

Old First Presbyterian Church - San Francisco, California | Donations

Developing and Sustaining Our Leaders
God has blessed the Church with incredible leadership in every time and place, but those leaders often need to be supported by their communities as well. The Christmas Joy Offering addresses the support needed by some of our leaders, including supporting leadership development for communities of color, and providing support for Presbyterian church workers in their time of need.
By giving to the Christmas Joy Offering, you honor God's gift of Jesus Christ by providing assistance to current and retired church workers in their time of need and developing our future leaders at Presbyterian-related schools and colleges equipping communities of color.
You can easily make your Christmas Joy Offering by using Old First’s secure On-Line Giving link. Simply select “Joy Gift Offering” in the “Select Giving Opportunity” window.
https://dev.oldfirst.org/donations//

dev.oldfirst.org

Christmas Joy Offering 2020: We are the Church, Together!
Participating in the Christmas Joy Offering Amid a Pandemic

[12/08/20]   A church member shared this letter from a Kaiser Oakland doctor. As we move into to this new purple tier may we all be well and keep our community safe.
Pastor Maggi

Hello friends... I'm saddened and disturbed by the lack of understanding around how important the stay at home order is. Today, in the Bay Area, doctors and nurses felt a sense of relief that the local counties stepped up to essentially ask people to stay home starting Sunday.
If you don't work in healthcare, you may not understand what is going on in our hospitals, but I think if you are a human being you should care. Our hospitals in the Bay Area are filling up to levels exceeding our normal winter census. This means that today we are stretched thin. Our doctors are caring for a significant number of patients per doctor and the hospitals start to backup if we don't have people leaving beds that the next admissions need. Our ICUs, including new ICUs we opened in March and July, are nearly full and we have to resort to overflow areas to care for the next group of people needing vents.
The thing about Covid is- there is a lag. People who will need the hospital generally come to the hospital about 5-7 days after their symptoms begin as they worsen. About 1 in 5 will need to go to the ICU and be placed on a ventilator. People who stay in the ICU can stay up to months as they struggle to live. So day over day, the number of people in the hospital will continue to grow. Our projections for the coming weeks show numbers exceeding the number of beds we have in the hospital. It will disrupt our normal process and hospital flow, our ERs will be backed up because beds are not available.
Our patients having surgery will be impacted and may be asked to delay procedures. Our doctors will take care of an unsustainable load of patients. Most importantly, there may not be enough nurses to care for all the patients who will overwhelm the hospital. We have backup plan after backup plan to put patients in areas that aren't usually for overnight stays. To double up patients in the rooms that aren't meant for two. To accommodate people with pop up areas, and reroute IT infrastructures so patients can get medications they need and orders written. This preparation has been months in process and we have plans to implement. But such large hospital censuses strain the system and impact how we deliver care.
This has never happened before in the twenty years I've been in medicine. It feels scary. We will rise to the challenge. We will work hard. We will work long hours to take care of you and your loved ones. We will break a little. Maybe a lot. But the only thing that can actually curb the numbers of patients in the hospital is your behavior. You HAVE to not get COVID. You have to stop your kids from spreading COVID. You have to prevent the spread to your grandparents and the kind cashiers at the grocery store and your neighbors. This is not a drill. Unlike in a natural disaster, we can't farm out patients to nearby hospitals in counties not impacted. All of our California hospitals will be impacted over the next weeks. Please support us.
It would make me very happy if you share this post and help disseminate the voices of actual physicians and healthcare workers, whose words need to be amplified. We are your brothers, sisters, classmates, neighbors, friends, colleagues. We don't want to see you or your loved ones suffer. We hope we don't meet you next week, or on Christmas or New Years. Have a quiet holiday. Order a lot of takeout to support your restaurants. Pick up your gifts at local stores. Buy some gift certificates to put money in pockets of local businesses. But please be safe.

Thank you thank you,

Kaiser MD, hospitalist