The prayer you won't get to hear for another 200 years

We have entered the long Season After Pentecost (some churches call it the “Trinity Season”). The season is calculated based on where Easter falls each year, itself a calculation based on the first full moon after the equinox (Cartoonist Dave Walker at right can explain this).

What all this means is that there are Sundays and weekdays with assigned biblical readings and prayers from the prayer book that we almost never get to hear.

In fact, the first of these prayers won’t be heard again in church on a Sunday for another 215 years. The next time Easter will be early enough will be March 23, 2228.

This year we begin the Season after Pentecost with the prayer and readings for “Proper 3,” which is church-speak for starting three weeks into the earliest possible date for Pentecost. Had Easter come three weeks earlier (like in 2228) we would have started on the Pentecost readings and prayers three weeks ago. Since we are not going to hear these prayers for a very long time on a Sunday, today I am offering you these prayers that you didn’t get to hear.

And since this coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, you don’t get to hear the prayer for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost either. So here are all four Sunday prayers – or “Collects of the Day” that you won’t get to hear:

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Proper 1    Week of the Sunday closest to May 11

Remember, O Lord, what you have wrought in us and not what we deserve; and, as you have called us to your service, make us worthy of our calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Proper 2    Week of the Sunday closest to May 18

Almighty and merciful God, in your goodness keep us, we pray, from all things that may hurt us, that we, being ready both in mind and body, may accomplish with free hearts those things which belong to your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Proper 3    The Sunday closest to May 25

Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be peaceably governed by your providence; and that your Church may joyfully serve you in confidence and serenity; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Proper 4    The Sunday closest to June 1

O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The First Sunday of Lent: Prayerful paths and slowing down

Lo, we descend into the valley of Lent…

This is supposed to be a time of simplicity, introspection, fasting and penitence. But it gets complicated quickly at St. Paul’s.

This morning we will chant the Great Litany, as complex an opening to worship as ever there was. We will be commissioning our new pastoral care Stephen Ministers at 10 am, and Pastor Ann Willms will be preaching today.

Later in the day, I will be offering the first in a seven-week course leading to adult baptism, confirmation or reception into the Episcopal Church.

Meanwhile, Pastor Heather Warren will be offering an introduction to the work of author-speaker Brian McLaren who will be joining us next Saturday and Sunday.

Lent is supposed to be a time of slowing down, but it does not yet feel that way for me. So I feel somewhat hypocritical in urging you to slow down and have a Holy Lent (as my mother used to put it, “Do as I say, not as I do”). So please let me offer a few brief ideas about what Lent should really be about, and I offer this to you much as a reminder for myself:

Lent is a gift to the heart. Lent can be a time not of obligation but of careful and prayerful discernment about our life path, and how God is calling us to live our life of faith in the world. It is a time of confession, of looking honestly at where we have fallen short. It is also a time to feel reconnected in our deepest self to God our creator and celebrate the gifts God gives us. This can be a time a feeling affirmed on our path, or feeling called to new directions, or maybe a combination of both.

Traditionally the Church asks that we “give up” something for Lent as a way of focusing on what is truly important. Fasting can nudge us into being less self-indulgent and more aware of the needs around us and the places God is calling us to go. Fasting that is falsely pious is no fast at all.

My suggestion is to make your fast something important and hard. Maybe instead of giving up chocolate, give up fear. Or instead of giving up meat, give up gossip. Or instead of giving up ice cream, give up petty complaining.

Lent is a time for renewal of prayer. There are many ways to pray, but all require practice. Find a regular time in your day to pray that works for you and stick to it. Get up earlier if you need to, or turn off the television or computer earlier in the evening. Use the prayer book or pray spontaneously from your heart. Reading the Bible daily in small doses can enrich your prayers and your life. Rather than getting hung up on the factoids of the Bible, let you imagination find the Holy inspiration between the lines.

You can get instant help on this: We’ve provided a series of reflections for each day of Lent written by members of St. Paul’s, and each reflection is connected to the Scripture readings for the day. All of this can be found on a special blog by clicking HERE, and the blog has links to each day’s biblical passages.

Sometimes the biblical passages fall flat with me, and that is perfectly OK. But sometimes they touch my deepest core. Today’s Epistle from 1 Peter 3:18-22 is written in coded first century language, but decoded it is a declaration of hope, that no one is beyond grace and redemption, that Christ went to the grave to find people in the grave:

“He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison.”

Finally, let me leave you with a poem for Lent that I rather like, by Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007), whose writing reflects her deep faith and her interest in science.

For Lent, 1966
By Madeleine L’Engle

It is my Lent to break my Lent,
To eat when I would fast,
To know when slender strength is spent,
Take shelter from the blast
When I would run with wind and rain,
To sleep when I would watch.
It is my Lent to smile at pain
But not ignore its touch.
It is my Lent to listen well
When I would be alone,
To talk when I would rather dwell
In silence, turn from none
Who call on me, to try to see
That what is truly meant
Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be
It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.

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May your Lent be filled with holiness and hope.

"A New Version of the Psalms of David, in English Metre, fitted for publick Use"

Our Education for Ministry groups yesterday had quite lively discussions on all sorts of topics, from the nature of Christ, the theology of Paul, the English Reformation and much else.

We ended a long day of these conversations with a psalm we found in the 1776 Book of Common Prayer on my book shelf. I've never noticed this version of the 23rd Psalm; it is a translation done in 1696 by William Bridgeman, undersecretary of state for King William. He did the entire psalter in English meter, and as the introduction says, it "may be used in such Congregations as think it fit to receive it."

Here is Bridgeman's version of Psalm XXIII:

The Lord himself, the mighty Lord, 

vouchsafes to be my Guide,

The Shepherd, by whose constant Care 

my wants are all supply'd.

In tender Grass he makes me feed,

and gently there repose;

Then leads me to cool Shades, and where 

refreshing Water flows.

He does my wand'ring Soul reclaim,

and to his endless Praise,

Instruct with humble Zeal to walk

in his most righteous Ways.

I pass the gloomy Vale of Death,

from Fear and Danger free;

For there his aiding Rod and Staff

defend and console me.

In Presence of my spiteful Foes,

he does my Table spread;

He crowns my Cup with chearful Wine,

with Oil annoints my Head.

Since God doth thus his wond'rous Love

through all my life extend,

That Life to him I will devote,

and in his Temple spend.

Silence may be kept

Have you ever noticed the brief rubric before the “Confession of Sin” in The Book of Common Prayer?

Silence may be kept.

You will find that rubric in several places. In Lent, I begin my weekday Morning Prayer with the “Confession of Sin” found on page 79; after the introductory words (“Let us confess our sins…”) is placed this rubric:

Silence may be kept.

You will notice the same rubric about silence in the Sunday morning confession found on page 330 (Rite I) or page 360 (Rite II). Often in church services we whiz right through that silence and get on with the confession because, after all, we have business to do, places to go, and we want to get on with it.

Silence may be kept.

The other morning I had an insight during that moment of keeping the silence, and I want to share it with you. The insight, though not particularly new, has something to do with the silence itself.

Silence may be kept.

The purpose of the silence is for personal reflection and confession. If only for only a few seconds, it is a time to take a deep breath, and take stock. What is it that I need to confess? The confession that follows is something different, it is a corporate confession beginning “…we confess…” That is a confession about all us together.

But the short time of silence before the corporate confession is for personal confession. It is a time for you, and you alone with your God. No one else. That time of silence is a gift to you. It is your confession.

Silence may be kept.

The other morning I paused in the silence and I realized I’ve been whizzing through the silences in life lately. I’ve been rushing to the next appointment or responding to the latest email or getting to the next meeting. And in all of that rush, I have not taken the time to notice God in the ordinary, in the places and people around me. That realization in my time of silence became my confession for the day.

What came next in my confession was the realization that my not noticing the Holy in my day makes my prayers dry and lifeless. My prayers become a word machine, and my desire to have a Lenten discipline becomes idolatry. I end up worshipping the words and the discipline, and God becomes confined to pages in a book. Without realizing it, I’ve tried to put limits on my experience of God, and if ever there was a sin, that one is it.

With confession should come repentance (or, as Rite I poetically calls it, “hearty repentance”). My promise of repentance is to pause and notice God in my day, to put life in my prayers by looking for God not just on a page but in life all around me.

And with repentance comes forgiveness, which at its most basic, is reunifying with God. The promise of such forgiveness is mine, and yours, before we ask. Yet the experience of forgiveness takes noticing (and time in the silence).

As I say, none of this is particularly new or profound – many other people more eloquent than I have written books on this theme. But for me, the other morning, it was in the Silence may be kept that I rediscovered that insight. Thankfully, there will be other moments when Silence may be kept that I will learn this once again. I pray you may also.

Painting by Claude Monnet, 1906

Standing at the font; breaking bread, loving our neighbors as ourselves: the centrality of our baptismal covenant

Last week, I reported to you about a baptism of four-year-old Isaiah, who stood at the baptismal font, put his hands in the water, and helped me bless the water of his own baptism.

Isaiah was fascinated throughout, and it was one of those wonderful experiences that I will remember forever. And I would guess Isaiah will remember his baptism forever. Isaiah's grandmother, Virginia Germino, shared a few photos, and I share them with you. The second photo shows retired Associate Rector Paula Kettlewell as she baptized Isaiah.

That experience underlined for me again the centrality of baptism in the life of The Episcopal Church. That was not always true; it is really an outgrowth of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

The baptismal covenant from the 1979 prayer book is now firmly foundational to our life of faith. The covenant is really proclamation of the ministry that we share together as the people of God. That is probably the single most important change brought about by the adoption of the prayer book 31 years ago, much more important that some of the other changes including moving the altar out from the wall.

Our baptism, and the vows we take together each time we baptize a new Christian, represent a declaration that we are all in this together; that we are ministers, and not consumers of religion; that we will take our faith beyond our walls into the world; and that our faith is not just something we do for an hour on Sunday. We may not always get it right (but sometimes we do!); we will keep returning to that covenant, pledging together to share our ministry as God lights our path and shows us the way.

The baptismal covenant begins with our reciting the Apostle's Creed, which is an ancient statement of the Trinitarian faith. Note that is inclusive in tone; there are no statements that you must believe something or you are out; it is simply a statement of how Christians since ancient times believe God came into the world to be with us in the person of Jesus Christ, and how by his death he crumbled the boundaries of death.

Then the covenant shifts into vows about how we will live out our life of faith by continuing to break bread and pray together; by loving our neighbors as ourselves; by "respecting the dignity of every human being." The vows are practical, not doctrinal; they are practices that everyone from the youngest to the oldest are capable of doing as God gives each of us the maturity and ability to do so.

Here again is the baptismal covenant (Book of Common Prayer, pages 304-305):

The Baptismal Covenant

Celebrant Do you believe in God the Father?
People I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

Celebrant Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
People I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Celebrant Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
People I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Celebrant Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and
fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the
prayers?
People I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever
you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant Will you proclaim by word and example the Good
News of God in Christ?
People I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving
your neighbor as yourself?
People I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant Will you strive for justice and peace among all
people, and respect the dignity of every human
being?
People I will, with God’s help.

Prayer Part II: Spontaneous or written? How about both?

Yesterday I wrote about my daily prayers with the Bible, and the texts assigned for each day in the Episcopal Daily Office. Today is a continuation of that conversation, and again, this is personal, and what I mention may not work for you.

Today I am writing about the weekday “offices” and how these ground my prayer so that it is not merely embedded in my imagination. It may help if you have handy a Book of Common Prayer while reading this; you can access the on-line version of the prayer book by clicking HERE or by scrolling down aways on the left side of your screen and clicking on the red prayer book photo.

It may help to know something of Jewish prayer tradition from whence ours comes (after all, Jesus was Jewish). Judaism honors the concept that prayer can be both spontaneous and fixed words on the page.

Both ways of prayer have value, and can give balance to each other. Spontaneous prayers are immediate and represent the longings of our hearts and minds. But such prayers can become shallow and too self-focused. Fixed written prayers represent the wisdom of the ages, often are elegantly written, and are words said by millions of other people, giving us a connection to all those who have prayed the same words. But written prayers can become dry and rote.

Each way of prayer can bring life to other. The Spirit, I am convinced, enters both.

My spontaneous prayers tend to be those in the mediation I described yesterday. When I have finished my silent mediation, I then return to the prayer book and read the fixed written prayers of Morning Prayer, from page 96 onward. The prayers, or “collects,” on the page somehow seem more vivid to me after my meditation. Sometimes a phrase or word will jump off the page in a way that it had not on another day.

Here is a morning collect that often does just that for me (page 100):

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I usually alternate between the two versions of the Lord's Prayer (page 97), and then read the collects on the next pages. The General Thanksgiving (page 101) is a good way to wrap together all of these prayers. Sometimes I wait to do that prayer until later, making it my Evening Prayer. I also highly recommend the simple but elegant Compline prayers, beginning on page 127, as a way to end the day.

There are other prayer books and devotional works that I sometimes use, just to change up my routine. There are poems I've meditated upon as well. Many years ago I meditated every morning on Gary Snyder's poem, Endless Streams and Mountains and I return to that from time to time (I wrote about that here in October; you can see that by clicking HERE).

I think it important to underline that the Christian tradition of “offices” or “hours” has it roots in Judaism. Beginning in about 100 AD, the rabbis developed a structure of prayers in increments throughout the day. The rabbis spoke of such prayer as a “service of the heart”

(avoda shebalev). You can read more about the Jewish history of prayer by clicking HERE.

Christians developed their own practices of regular hourly fixed prayer, with echoes from their Jewish forebearers.

One of my seminary professors once said that all that is really needed for Morning Prayer is a candle and a psalm from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). I think that is true.

Most of our church history is Medieval history. We cannot escape it – it is a single era that lasted more than 1,000 years in the collective memory of Christians. While much of that history is ugly – the Crusades against Muslims and Jews in particular – there was considerable development of Christian spirituality and mysticism in those centuries. The incubators for Christian spirituality were the monasteries and convents of Europe.

The Rule of St. Benedict is the model upon which all monastic orders and structured, and Benedict had a cycle of work and prayer. The monks and nuns prayed the “offices” or “hours” each day, in three hour increments. The chants typically were of the psalms.

We still live in the echo of their prayers. Spiritual giants from the Middle Ages, including Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Hildegard of Bingen to name only a few, have left us a rich legacy of their prayers, songs and practices.

In the English tradition, from whence the Episcopal Church comes, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer authored and edited the first two versions of the Book of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552). Cranmer retained the monastic offices, hoping that ordinary Christians would adopt the monastic practice in their daily lives. But to make this practical, he simplified it into two offices, Evening Prayer and Morning Prayer. And he took it out of Latin and put it into English.

However, by the 19th century, Morning Prayer had become the primary worship on Sunday, with Communion occasionally celebrated once a month or maybe once a year. That was far from Cranmer’s intention, nor the practice of the Early Church. Cranmer wrote his prayer books with the idea of elevating the Eucharist as a weekly celebration for all the faithful (and not just for the clergy). Cranmer’s idea was that the prayers of the weekday offices would lead to the Sunday Eucharist and enfold the Eucharist in prayers throughout the week.

Next week we will take few more turns in the labyrinth and see where we go with some of the big-hard-questions.

The treasures of the Book of Common Prayer: A special Lenten course at St. Paul's and on-line

Today I am launching a Lenten course on the Book of Common Prayer, its history and its treasurers.  Join me every Lenten Wednesday at noon or at 7 pm as we explore the Book of Common Prayer. Did you know that the book is more than a Sunday worship book? Our prayerbook holds treasures for living every day of the week and every time of the day. And embedded in the book is the foundation for a church with a broad range of theological beliefs and practices. The book is an amazing resource for living.

I have also set up a special blog for this course. On it I will post all of class notes and handouts, and you can continue our class conversation on the blog. And those from afar can participate via the blog. The address for the blog is:  

http://bookofcommonprayer.blogspot.com/

You can also access the blog by clicking BCP and when you return to Fiat Lux, you can find on the left side of this blog  a trapdoor to the class blog. All you need do is click the image of the prayerbook that looks like the one on this posting and you will find our class blog.

Hope to see you later today or on the class blog!

Scripture, gender and that which divides us in the Anglican Communion

Last week, the Anglican primates (the bishops worldwide who head each national province of the communion) met in Alexandria, Egypt. There was no single focus, though the troubles over sexuality and ordination issues were, as always, on the table. The bishops now have gone home, the official communiques issued.

The Episcopal Church of the United States was represented by our presiding bishop and primate, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is the only woman primate in the world. After she got back (or maybe while she was on the plane returning) she wrote a fascinating essay about what she saw and how much of what divides us in the communion is rooted in cultural differences over gender; and much of that is reinforced by the English prayer book of 1662 still in use in many regions (history still matters). I highly commend her essay, and it is posted in full below. You can also access her essay it at Episcopal Life HERE. 

Varied understandings

Different lenses provide different views of Scripture

By Katharine Jefferts Schori, February 24, 2009

[Episcopal Life] The primates' meeting has come and gone, and I'm sure there will have been abundant commentary by the time this is published. I'd like to reflect on some of the deeper issues behind our conversations about sexuality, particularly the influence of our understanding of gender.

The most intriguing conversation I had in Alexandria was with a primate who asked how same-sex couples partition "roles." He literally asked if one was identified as the wife and one as the husband, and then wanted to know which one promised to obey the other in the marriage ceremony. Several of us explained that marriage in the West is most often understood as a partnership of equals, and has been for some time.

Those of you with a few more years on you may remember that the marriage service in the 1928 (and earlier versions) of the Book of Common Prayer did indeed have language about the wife obeying her husband. It's pertinent here to note that the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer is still the norm in many provinces of the Anglican Communion, and it uses the same kind of language about obeying in the marriage service.

As I traveled from the airport to the hotel where we met, I noticed that almost every woman on the street past childhood was veiled, with at least her hair covered with a scarf, and in a not-small number of cases, covered head to toe in a long, flowing garment. I even observed a couple of women whose coverings were so thorough that I couldn't even see a slit for their eyes -- the fabric must have been thin enough for them to see through, but not for others to see in. The hotel had only a handful of female employees, mostly professional women who worked behind the desk. Only a couple of them wore no scarf.

The striking thing was that the meeting room where the primates' deliberations took place, the hotel's largest and principal conference room, was bedecked with several large paintings of half-naked women. It was a space that, in normal circumstances, apparently was used only by men. I found it striking that public expectations of women are modest dress and covering, yet there is evidently a rather different attitude toward men's entertainment.

These complex and conflicting gender expectations have something significant to do with attitudes there and in other parts of the world toward male homosexuality. The greatest difficulty in many cultures, including parts of North American society, is the perception that one of the partners in such a union must be acting like a woman -- and that is most definitely not a socially desirable status! It is an attitude directly involved in the handful of scriptural references to male homosexuality in the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament references have more to do with abusive and exploitative behavior.

At the same time, one could readily observe public behavior in Egypt that would be identified as same-sex affection in our own culture -- women and men holding hands with others of the same gender. Yet in that culture it is seen merely to express friendship and is not associated with sexuality.

All of which is to suggest that all of us read Scripture through the lenses we have -- our cultural norms, our scientific understanding and our theological understanding of the purpose of marriage. We also privilege particular parts of Scripture in the way we build our lectionaries.

One morning at worship at the primates' meeting, we heard the reading from Corinthians that says women should be quiet in church and ask their husbands at home if they have questions (1Cor 14:33b-35). It was followed by the Gospel passage that recounts Salome and Herodias' request for the head of John the Baptist. I don't believe that section of the Gospel, alone, is ever read at Eucharist in the Episcopal Church -- because there is precious little good news in it.

I had one other pertinent encounter in Fort Worth, Texas, after the primates' meeting. I was greeting a long line of people at the end of the day of the reorganizing convention for the diocese. I spoke with a man in a wheelchair who appeared to have had a stroke.

The next person in line began by telling me that the guy in the wheelchair was a retired obstetrician/gynecologist and that "he's the most interesting gay man I know, and I'm proud to call him a friend." Rather an unusual conversation starter. And then he went on to say, "All of this is really about male supremacy, isn't it?" His words, not mine, but worth consideration.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

-- The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Special Lenten course

Treasures for Life: Exploring the Book of Common Prayer

Come join me each Wednesday evening in Lent, beginning March 4, as we explore the Book of Common Prayer. Did you know that it is more than a Sunday worship book? Our prayerbook holds treasurers for living every day of the week and every time of the day. And embedded in the history of the book is the foundation for a church with a broad range of theological beliefs and practices. Join me as we learn about this amazing resource for living.