Clergy Reflections on WorshipFor Holy Trinity's Sunday bulletins, the clergy write a column called Clergy Reflections on Worship. Each brief column focuses on a particular aspect of liturgy, with the clergy endeavoring both to teach and reflect personally. For your enjoyment, here are recent columns. A Jewish Pentecost Pentecost celebrated the wheat harvest, as well as the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai and God’s covenant with Israel. The festival came fifty days after the second day of Passover. During Passover, the Jewish people remembered God’s act to free them from their enslavement to Pharaoh in Egypt. On Pentecost (or Shavuot in Hebrew), they celebrated the Torah and God’s call to them to be a nation committed to the love of God and one another. In the early Christian movement, Jews who were following the Way of the Christ continued celebrating Pentecost as a Jewish festival, until they eventually were forced out of the synagogue. Soon, the Christian celebration of Pentecost began to focus on the gift of the Holy Spirit, and early on Pentecost was one of the Baptismal Days. Still, Pentecost retained some Jewish meaning: The Day of Pentecost was seven Sundays from Easter Day, while fifty days is roughly one seventh of a year. In the Jewish tradition, the number seven held the symbolic meaning of completeness and perfection. She-Spirit One change happens in The Nicene Creed. If near us, you might hear the clergy whispering the feminine pronoun she in reference to The Holy Spirit. We believe in the Holy Spirit. With the Father and the Son she is worshiped and glorified. She has spoken through the Prophets. We quietly use the feminine she not merely because we seek gender-respectful language in worship. Rather, we also know that, in both the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and the Greek New Testament, the words for God’s Spirit are feminine. Both the Hebrew and Greek languages assign a masculine or feminine gender to nouns. What is translated as spirit in English are the Hebrew ruah and the Greek pneuma; both words are feminine and can also mean wind or breath. When St. Jerome translated the scriptures into Latin in the early fifth century, ruah and pneuma became spiritus, a masculine word, from which we get the English spirit. The English language does not categorize nouns by gender, but we have become accustomed, because of the Latin, to using the masculine pronoun he for The Holy Spirit. (Some scholars believe that the reification of God as male in the Constantinian Church quelled the strong leadership of women manifest in the early Christian movement.) We, the clegy, tell you now about our quiet word changes not to distract you from your own prayer (please don’t start watching us too closely!) but simply to offer you the freedom also to experiment with theological language, softly, while still part of the worshiping community. Would it be meaningful to you to use the feminine she for The Holy Spirit? Or the word Mother instead of Father for God, the Creator? We invite you to whisper towards God. Confession and New Life I am very careful to write “public” confession. As humans we will continue to “do the very thing we hate” (see Romans 7:15) during the Easter season, and in fact throughout the church year and throughout our lives. Just because we are in Eastertide does not mean sin has taken a vacation. There is still, and always will be, a need for personal reflection and seeking forgiveness for the hurts and injuries we have caused. Reconciliation never goes out of style or season. Beyond Naming God as Lord Almost every English-speaking Christian is accustomed to praying to the Lord, a practice rooted in biblical language. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, known as the Septuagint, the Greek word kurios, meaning master or lord, translates certain Hebrew names for God. Sometimes the Greek kurios captures well the meaning of the Hebrew, as in the Hebrew name Adonai, which also means lord, master or owner. Sometimes the meaning of the Hebrew is lost, as with the divine name revealed to Moses at the burning bush, YHWH, which is actually better translated into English as I AM WHAT I AM or I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE. Today, many people use the word Lord much as the Greeks did, simply as a name for God. For me, though, the word Lord in English is problematic for our contemporary context. First, Lord carries a gender bias, suggesting that God is male. To name God again and again as male (few Christians can imagine praying to the Lady) contributes, I believe, to a disempowerment of women in the life of the faith community. In new liturgies and translations of the scriptures, The Episcopal Church is endeavoring to move past the patriarchal social contexts and language that have shaped Christianity for centuries by finding gender-respectful names and images for God, such as Holy One. Second, Lord also carries a class bias. Whereas lord was widely used by biblical people, and later Christians through many centuries, to speak of accepted social relationships among people, it is not a word we commonly use today. The reason is we, in the twenty-first century, are challenging social structures, such as slavery and the growing divide between the very rich and the very poor, that place some people into subjection under others. Finally, Lord theologically implies a relationship between God and humanity that Jesus, himself, rejected. In John’s gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called your friends” (15:15). For Jesus, I believe, and for me, God and humankind are in a covenantal relationship of mutual love, respect and adoration. For this reason, you will also hear me this morning change, in Eucharistic Prayer B, the words “put all things in subjection under your Christ” to “bring all things into reconciliation through your Christ.” This change in the prayer book story, by the way, I learned from the superior of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic order deeply rooted in church tradition, yet, like Holy Trinity, seeking to worship in ways that point towards God's future.A Bucket of Tomatoes Today, during the offertory at the 10:30 A.M. service, we will use liturgical action to show our support for the Immokalee Tomato workers. We invite as many as wish to stand in the center aisle (we don’t usually do this, but it’s okay) and pass a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes up the aisle to be offered at the altar with the other gifts. The workers are currently paid 40 to 45 cents per 32-pound bucket, or a meager 1.3 cents per pound (think about what you pay for a pound of tomatoes at the store,) and are asking for a penny increase. This small increase to the consumer will result in a large increase in the wages of the workers, and therefore their ability to support their families and live decent, respectable lives. During worship, we cannot go out into the fields, standing side by side with the workers, and actually pick tomatoes with our own hands. But we can bear the weight of a field bucket of tomatoes, passing it from hand to hand, from person to person, until it reaches our altar, around which we gather as the baptized community, and from which we share the Body of Christ. Later at the altar, as the bread is broken, the Celebrant will say as the fraction anthem, “We break this bread to share in the Body of Christ.” The People will answer, “We who are many are one body, for we all share the one bread.” Today, though separated by hundreds of miles, the Immokalee tomato workers are one with us in Christ. The Great Fifty Days of Easter However, the fifty days after Easter are especially significant in the church year. Fifty days is roughly one seventh of a year. Just as we celebrate a little Easter once every seven days on Sundays, in this Easter season, we consider all fifty days to be one great big Sunday celebration. We have fifty days especially dedicated to celebrating and delighting in the fact that Christ has risen from the dead, and that death is no longer the end, but instead a beautiful beginning. Alleluia! Eucharistic Prayer B Furthermore, Eucharistic Prayer B expresses Eastertide’s invitation to proclaim the good news. In the gospel stories of Christ’s resurrection, the women at the empty tomb are told not to hang around contemplating their experience, but rather to go forth and tell others. In Matthew’s gospel account, which the Episcopal Church is reading in this liturgical year, for example, an angel of the Lord, whose appearance is like lightning, tells Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, “Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead.’” The women indeed leave the tomb quickly, with both fear and great joy, and run, not saunter, to share what they have experienced. In Eucharistic Prayer B, the People’s memorial acclamation is not simply a theological statement, such as “Christ has died, Christ is risen” in Eucharistic Prayer A, but rather more an expression of our own going forth into the world to spread the Word: “We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection.” How do you proclaim Christ’s resurrection? How do we as a parish? How do we, individually and collectively, share our experience of resurrection life with others? How do we bring Christ’s light, firelight, lovelight, into a dark world? We practice here on Sunday morning by saying to one another, “Alleluia, Christ is risen.” The Alleluia, though, wishes to resound throughout the world. A great Alleluia. Easter, Always and Everywhere Making rounds on the internet recently have been some interesting facts: The last time Easter Day occurred this early was in 1913, and the next time will be in 2228, or 220 years from now. The last time Easter Day occurred on the earliest day possible, March 22, was in 1818, and the next time will be 277 years from now. So, for most of us, this day is the earliest we shall ever experience Easter. Or is it? Easter is, of course, is more than a day. Easter is a way of life, the Way of Christ, not describable by mere facts. In the Christian’s radical new life in Christ, everything is changed, even calendars and time. Our liturgical years are simply human constructs. The deeper truth is that, in Christ, Easter is always and everywhere. In every moment, “things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 280). As Darcy Steinke writes in her memoir Easter Everywhere, we encounter the divine “not just in churches but hospitals, highways, costume jewelry, garbage dumps, libraries, the cruising area of public parks. Also pet stores, subways platforms, Ferris wheels, and rainstorms.” We meet the risen Christ in one another. Moment by moment by moment. The Sacred Order of Deacons John's Storytelling As the deacon has read the stories from John’s gospel, we have been standing for quite a long time. John’s gospel tends to tell lengthy and complex stories, instead of the fairly simple and straightforward stories in the synoptic gospels. All four of the biblical gospels include stories about Jesus that probably first existed in oral form and then were later written down after it became clear the story had value for the faithful community. The stories in the synoptic gospels tend to have a simple formula: 1) presenting problem, 2) Jesus’ response and 3) reaction of the people. For example, a young girl is ill, Jesus comes and heals her, and the crowd is amazed. John’s gospel has fewer stories, many unique to this gospel, that include changes of scene and a variety of characters, and are sometimes spread out over a period of time. Last Sunday, for example, Jesus healed a man born blind, but then the Pharisees investigated, the man’s parents were interviewed, the man was interviewed a second time, the Pharisees pronounced judgment, and finally Jesus reconnected with the man sometime after things had settled down. We can wonder why John’s stories are longer, with greater complexity. Perhaps the evangelist was responding to the storytelling preferences of the Johannine audience. Perhaps there was a need to make a stronger theological defense, through literary detail, of the good news of Jesus, especially as Christianity came into increasing conflict with both Judaism and Rome. Yet we can also simply appreciate the details, allowing them to inform our own engagement with the good news of Jesus. Listen, then, to the complexity in today’s gospel story, identifying the various characters, scenes, issues, and outcomes, and reflecting on what meaning the details hold for you. Solemn Collect as Blessing Instead of this collect, we could have chosen to offer a solemn prayer over the people from The Book of Occasional Services in which we find blessings for every season of the church year. This liturgical resource, which also includes liturgies supplemental to The Book of Common Prayer, such as the Advent Festival of Lessons and Carols, Tenebrae, and a Public Service of Healing, offers a different solemn prayer for each Sunday in Lent. We, the clergy, preferred this year to offer the collect for Good Friday as our solemn prayer in part because of the spiritual grace that comes from repeating a prayer. Because you are hearing the prayer every Sunday, we imagine that it is shaping your Lenten journey toward palm, cross and tomb. We also are moved by the idea, suggested in the Gregorian Sacramentary, of this collect as a blessing, even though it may not sound like one. Even in the somber season of Lent, we can deeply know, and be grateful for, the blessing God bestows upon us through Christ’s willingness “to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.” Telling the Great Story As the Christian mission began to take the gospel message to other parts of the world, it encountered other religious traditions that interpreted the story of Jesus in ways that changed the story slightly. This altering of the story became known as “heresy.” To protect against various incorrect stories, the great story of salvation told by the celebrant at the Eucharist began to be written down, to make sure the story was told accurately. These “approved” stories (known as “orthodoxy”) were collected in volumes known as a sacramentum, used by bishops and priests. Our Book of Common Prayer is a direct descendent of these sacramenti. Included in our prayer book are six approved stories the priest can tell over the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The Episcopal Church recognizes, however, that there are many ways to tell the story of salvation that are not included in our prayer book. Celebrants are welcome to tell the story using language and images appropriate for local contexts and meaningful to particular communities. This is why the Episcopal Church provides various supplemental Eucharistic texts as a resource for worshipping congregations, such as Eucharistic prayers that include feminine images of God. Within the prayer book itself is a special Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist (p. 400) allowing a celebrant to be creative in telling the story. Occasionally, the celebrant at Holy Trinity will make small changes to the prayer book stories, in order to tell them to our particular congregation in our particular context. For example, in this morning’s prayer of consecration, the celebrant may change the words “This is my Blood…which is shed for you and for many…” to “This is my Blood…which is shed for you and for all…” in order to emphasize that Christ’s offering is for all of humanity. In Eucharistic Prayer C, Holy Trinity priests often include the female companions of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to honor the contributions of women in the salvation story. We needn’t worry of “creeping heresy” by these minor changes to our liturgy. All of the priests at Holy Trinity are seminary-educated in orthodox theology. Instead, we welcome the changes with our ears always tuned to hear the great story of God’s love and salvation in new and compelling ways. A Penitential Order During Lent, Holy Trinity is opening every Eucharist with a penitential order centering on the People’s confession of sin as a preparation for the Eucharist. Penitential Orders have precedence in late medieval Eucharistic rites that included a priest’s private confession before celebrating and even deeper roots in the Lenten customs of the early Church. For the first Christians, Lent was a season for reconciliation. People who had been excommunicated from the body of the faithful because of notorious sins were restored to the communion of the Church after a Lenten period of penitence and forgiveness. Their return to Eucharistic companionship happened on Maundy Thursday, a day commemorating Jesus’ mandatum novum, or new commandment given at the Last Supper, that his followers love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). Through the Lenten process of reconciliation, “the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior” (Ash Wednesday liturgy, Book of Common Prayer, p. 265). In our own day, the Penitential Order may include a reading of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, which are a biblical expression of God’s desire for us to be in relationships marked by holy love and mutual care, respect and faithfulness. Sin, in the context of the Ten Commandments, can be understood as anything that causes a break in such relationships. During Lent, therefore, we prepare for the Eucharist much in the same way as the early Christians prepared for the Maundy Thursday meal: By confessing the ways we have not loved God and our neighbor with our whole hearts and by seeking reconciliation that will find its fullest expression as we share bread and wine. In the Penitential Order, we pursue this reconciliation together, Holy Trinity together, in the public sphere. What I experienced privately as a priest at an Anglo-Catholic parish, I now experience, joyfully, with all who worship here—we are, together, the reconciling body of Christ. Confessing and forgiving in preparation for a meal, and deeply in holy love with God and one another, as the Christ loves us. Eucharistic Prayer A Eucharistic Prayer A also gives a dramatic image of the crucifixion, appropriate for Lent—Jesus “stretched out his arms upon the cross.” The Prayer then offers a theological understanding of the crucifixion as Jesus’ “obedience” and “perfect sacrifice.” Once the bread and wine are consecrated, Eucharistic Prayer A looks ahead to where we are going in our Lenten journey. As we recall Christ’s “death, resurrection, and ascension,” we acknowledge that, during Lent, we walk with the Christ to palm, cross, and tomb, yet with joyful anticipation of our Easter life to come. The Holy Gospel The earliest forms of Christian worship probably did not include such formal readings of sacred texts. In the second century, Justin Martyr described, in his First Apology, Christian gatherings as centering on the Eucharistic prayer and communion in bread and wine, while the “memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets” were read as long as there was time. By the fourth century, however, after Constantine I had established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire and as the Christian Councils were formalizing the biblical canon, liturgies called not only for the reading of sacred texts, but also for special ceremonies for the gospel reading. A collection of works known as the Apostolic Constitutions, dating from the late fourth century, for example, included an instruction for the people to stand for the reading of the gospel, offered by a deacon. Over time, the ceremonies for the gospel reading became increasingly elaborate, involving processions with accompaniment by acolytes carrying lights and special responses by worshipers. Gospel books began to be ornately decorated with gold, silver, and jewels. From the eleventh century the practice of censing the gospel book gradually spread. The gospel book began to be venerated, such as by kissing the book. All of this ceremony arose from the belief that the reading of the gospel, and the gospel book itself, symbolized the presence of Christ in the Liturgy of the Word, just as the Eucharistic prayer, and the bread and the wine, symbolized Christ’s presence in the Liturgy of the Table. Our own worship is shaped by many of the ancient ceremonies. Our gospel book is ornately decorated in silver; we process the book with cross and torches; we stand and offer special responses as a liturgical deacon reads the text. Beginning next Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, the Rev. Hopie Jernagan Welles, our seminarian and a newly ordained deacon, will read the gospel every Sunday, as we abide in the ancient custom. Notice, though, that the gospel book will change from the opulent silver one to a slim book wrapped in simple purple cloth. This change represents the Christ’s experience of self-denial, even unto death. During Lent, the Christ is still present for us in the Liturgy of the Word, yet with the humility exemplified by Jesus. A Sacred Inventory The main approach to the altar, or communion table, is called the nave, from the Latin word navis, meaning ship. This name has roots in the keel shape of the room’s vaulting and in the biblical image of Christian disciples as being “fishers of people,” as we hear in today’s gospel reading. The nave extends from the church entrance (at Holy Trinity a small, separate entrance hall called a narthex) to the chancel, the area around the altar reserved for clergy, altar ministers, and choir. Within the chancel are physical locations representing the two main parts of the Eucharistic celebration—Word and Sacrament. The Word of God is read from the Bible at the lectern and proclaimed by the preacher from the pulpit. (In the earliest churches, the Word was read and preached from the same location, called the ambo. Many Episcopal parishes are returning to the use of the ambo to symbolize the unity of the Word of God in ancient tradition and the contemporary context.) The sacramental blessing and sharing of bread and wine takes place around the altar, the center of visual attention because of the centrality of the Eucharist in Episcopal worship. Another sacramental location in the church is the baptismal font. Symbolically, the font is located at the church’s entrance because baptism is a rite of entry. By passing through the waters of baptism, Christians enter into a radically new life in Christ. Next to the font is the paschal candle, representing the presence of the risen Christ. On the east wall of the chancel is a small wooden box called the tabernacle. It holds consecrated bread and wine, to be taken to the sick and homebound, as well as the chrism (oil) of baptism and healing oil for anointing the sick. The sanctuary lamp above the candle is always lit, reminding us of the spiritual presence of the Christ in the consecrated bread and wine. Although the clergy of Holy Trinity are responsible for the worship life of the parish, vestry members are the stewards of the theatre of our liturgical drama. As vestry members worship, they surely contemplate the theatre and its maintenance. Perhaps they pray about the water damage to the nave’s walls, or the broken chancel chair, or a fallen welcome-card hook. For their prayers, and their leadership ministry of administrative care, we offer our sincere thanks to God. Praying for God to Remember Offered by an intercessor whose voice interweaves with the celebrant’s, the petitions and intercessions incorporated into Eucharistic Prayer D take the special form of asking God to remember. “Remember all places torn by war and violence”, we pray. “Remember all who seek the healing presence of Christ’s love.” In many stories of scripture, God’s remembrance of us leads to forgiveness, restoration, and new life. In the story of The Great Flood, for example, the narrative turns from destruction when God remembers: “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind bow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed” (Genesis 8:1-2). In the story of the Exodus from Egypt, God hears the groaning of the people and, remembering the covenant with Abraham and Sarah, calls Moses from the burning bush to deliver the people from bondage. In our parish prayers today, we will ask God to remember us yet again. But we will do so with a deep awareness that, we, too, must remember. On the night before he died, Jesus asked us to remember him, who would become broken humanity on the cross. Faithful to his request, whenever we bless bread and wine, we do so for the remembrance of Jesus. And in this Way, his Way, we acknowledge that Jesus calls us to participate in God’s work of healing and restoration. God remembers us, and we are called to remember others, both in worship and as we go forth to heal our broken world. Holy Baptism All four of these days tell stories about the Holy Spirit and a new life in Christ. Listen today, in the gospel reading, for the Spirit of God to descend and rest upon Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan River. The water in our baptismal font represents the Jordan River, and our prayers will call upon the Holy Spirit to sanctify this water BCP (p. 307). In the sacrament of baptism, water is the outward and visible sign, and a new life in Christ, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, is the inward and spiritual grace. The phrase "water and the Holy Spirit" occurs more than twenty in the Acts of the Apostles. We acknowledge that, by the "seal" of the Holy Spirit (BCP, p. 308), the gift of a new life of grace can never be taken away. Because the Apostles' Creed, one of the earliest professions of faith in Christian history, is said as part of the Baptismal Covenant, the Nicene Creed is not said on Sundays when a baptism takes place. Epiphany Gospel Procession Our magi arrive during our gospel procession. The gospel reading from Matthew describes their arrival in Judah, their encounter with Herod, and their offering of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Christ. During the procession, we will bow to tradition and sing the hymn “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” During the hymn, we will dramatize the arrival of the magoi, and then the deacon will read their story from Matthew’s gospel. In the Anglican tradition, we have always given the reading of the gospel a special emphasis. From the times of the earliest Christian communities on the British Isles, the gospel was read in the local dialect, even when the rest of the service was conducted in Latin. This practice was based on the belief that everyone needs to hear and understand the gospel for themselves if they are going to be faithful followers of the Christ. The gospel procession brought the gospel book and the deacon into the midst of the people so that everyone could hear the reading plainly (before the days of amplified microphones), and the deacon elevated the book to get people’s attention that the gospel was about to be read. So, during our gospel procession, wake up and pay attention as we continue this ancient tradition at Holy Trinity! Intercessory Silence Christmas Pageants Matriarchs of the Covenant Eucharistic Prayer C Christ the King Sunday Harvest Altar Praying for the Iraq War Dead |