The Backpack BCP

Well, we made it through another year!

It’s hard to believe the last 9 months have already gone by so quickly, but here we are. Looking ahead to summer and in the fall: a new incarnation of this class. We’ve talked about everything from Ordination to Confirmation to Baptism to everything in between! It’s been a delight and pleasure to get to be challenged by you, to get to share with you, to hear your experiences, to grow together in our faith. Thanks for being a part of it all.

Next year, we’re going to have a lot of fun as we combine these types of conversations with an on-going look at the Lectionary and the various texts of the week. Fr. Jim & Rev. Debra will join me and we’ll be co-facilitating this class, bringing our various perspectives and experiences with us as we walk together. We’ll dig into scripture in a new way, continue to look at the BCP and understand how reason has tied these two together over our history. Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the class to “The 3-Legged Stool”!

In the meantime, keep using your book. Take moments in your day to pull it out and read a quick prayer. Set it on your desk at work as a reminder of who you really are–a child of God. Touch it from time to time in gratitude for all the ways that it has shaped you over time and all the ways it will shape you in the future. What we pray becomes what we believe. And what we believe is what we pray. This is the book that is, in so many ways, second only to our Scriptures. Let it continue to be a part of your life.

See you in the fall!

And more importantly, thank you.

We got to spend a delightful last couple of weeks talking about all things Confirmation. With the bishop’s visit only a couple weeks away when we began, it made sense to talk about exactly what we’d be engaged in. Hence, 2 weeks on the topic.

We started with understanding the history of Confirmation. For a long time in the early church, bishops were the be all/end all. ( I mean that in the best possible way.) As the church was growing like crazy in the early centuries, bishops couldn’t keep up with all the baptisms that needed to be done (would that we could have that problem!), so the bishops started allowing presbyters to do baptisms too. But around Rome, the bishop there said that to make the baptisms ‘complete’, they should baptize them and then rush the newly baptized across town to wherever the bishop was to “confirm” the baptism by the laying on of the bishop’s hands.

So it came from the very best intentions, but then it got a little skewed. Then we thought that baptism wasn’t actually complete until confirmation took place. Those who’ve been around the church for the last few decades know that this has been a difficulty because there are still those who would consider withholding some of the rights/privileges of full membership in the church until Confirmation occurs. Luckily, the church at large has realized that Baptism is the Rite of full inclusion in the Body of Christ. There’s no Part Two.  Confirmation is a special addition–a decision to embrace and publicly announce your mature relationship with God to the church.

So we honor confirmation and are grateful for the ways that it grows us as Christians and as members of our local worshipping community. And we celebrate the 11 people–youth & adults–who will be confirmed at St. Barnabas on May 13. May their commitments to their faith be ones that are sustaining to them throughout their lives!

Well, we may not have intended a long Lenten break from the blog, but that is sometimes how things fall out during this busy time of year.

Our class conversations have been fruitful though, wouldn’t you say? Walking through Holy Week one service at a time has been a special way to go deeper into why the church offers these services and how we can engage them fully. Starting with Palm Sunday, then Maundy Thursday, then Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter, we’ve covered good ground.

We learned how Palm Sunday used to be a full-day of worship: triumphal entry service in the morning and then returning late in the day for the Passion reading. A bit easier to consume such highs & lows when separated by a few hours rather than a few minutes, yes?

We learned about how Maundy Thursday is about the mandatum: the new commandment–to love one another as I have loved you. That’s why we wash each other’s feet on this day in spite of how uncomfortable that makes us in today’s culture. And we remember the breaking of the bread–the institution of the sacrament–giving us our ancient tradition that we still observe today. We talked about stripping the altar–taking everything away except us: Christ’s representatives in the world as we go into…

Good Friday. This, the darkest day in our church year, gave us plenty to contemplate. How will we be present in the world on this day when Jesus is dead in the tomb–absent from the world– and we are all that’s left? The worship will invite us through the Solemn Collects & the receiving of the consecrated bread and wine to think most fully about the world who needs Jesus more than ever. Can we be the symbol of his love in this brokenness?

And then the Great Vigil of Easter will inspire us as we light the new fire inside the tomb, we’ll hear the stories of our salvation by God over all the generations and then we’ll emerge from the tomb with Jesus proclaiming his resurrection! Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! We’ll celebrate baptisms & when there are none to be baptized, we will still take time to remember our own baptisms. This magnificent service reminds of who we are and whose we are in very distinct ways. And emerging from the darkness into the light makes our Easter celebration that much more delightful the next morning at Easter Sunday.

I hope we’ll see you all this week at the various services. I hope you’ll allow yourself to go deep into your prayers about each of these days and allow them to feed & nurture you in your walk with Jesus.

Maundy Thursday, 7pm
Good Friday, 1pm & 7pm
Great Vigil of Easter, 7pm
Easter Sunday, 7am, 9am, 11am, 6pm

See you in church.

Next week, (January 29) we’ll start a 3-week section on Ordination. Don’t forget that Matt Marino’s ordination to the priesthood is at 6pm on the 29th at All Saints Church down on Central Ave just south of Glendale. I hope I’ll see you all there and we can participate in the beauty and joy that is a member of the Body of Christ being set apart for a new kind of ministry. Alleluia!

Matt will join us in class on February 5 to talk all about the ordination with us–don’t miss it. And don’t miss his first celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 10:15 that day!

Hello again!

With our brief December lessons that gave us quick overviews of the other pieces in the Daily Office, followed by the holidays, followed by the launching of our 10:21 service, I’ve been a bit tardy in my attention to the blog! But here we are again with much to look forward to this spring.

We just completed our multi-week discussion of Holy Baptism. We spent time looking at it from a few different angles. First, we talked about the Episcopal approach to understanding baptism via the Outline of the Faith (Catechism) in the Book of Common Prayer. We parsed out the words and phrases and made connections to understand what it all meant in the context it’s presented to us. Then we spent a week sharing our baptismal stories. Part of holding liturgy dear is remembering it, sharing it, and engaging others in the story of how Jesus impacts us. We wrapped up by looking at pieces of the historical journey of baptism from its Jewish roots, through the early centuries, into the 1928 prayer book & then on into today’s liturgy as we know it.

The most poignant part of the historical exploration was how intentional and complete the transformation was for those who got baptized in the early centuries. People spent years in preparation, those in the community tested them and then testified for them, some changed careers to be suitable as a Christian! There was nothing about baptism back then that wasn’t all-consuming and life-changing. Leaving the world and turning toward Christ. Obviously, things are different today. And what does that mean for us? How can we take the example that was left for us so long ago and bring it into the reality of our daily lives?

Hey everybody! I hope we’ll see you for the next 3 weeks as we gather after 4 weeks apart! I’ve missed you terribly! I made some slight changes to the plan for December:

We’ll still talk about the Christ the King & Advent conversation, but I thought we should think about our New Year’s resolutions that are impending and perhaps give us some tools from the BCP to make it even more useable for you in 2012!

Since we’ve already done a thorough exploration of Morning Prayer, we can have a look through Evening Prayer, Noonday Prayer and Compline (night prayer) without the format being terribly foreign. So that’s what we’ll do!

See you this Sunday, December 4, in the library. Looking forward to study and fellowship with you once again!

Here is the schedule for the remainder of the year:

October 30  — Last class on Reconciliation of a Penitent (joining Fr. Phil’s class!)

November 6 –No class–Erika on study leave.
November 13 — Consecration Sunday: go have brunch–sign up on the patio after church on Sunday or by calling the church office!
November 20 — William Meninger will be our guest preacher and will lead a 9am Forum in Hutton Hall. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
November 27 — Thanksgiving weekend. No class.

December 4 — Celebration of the new Church Year! Looking at: Christ the King Sunday, Advent & Christmas.
December 11– The Book of Occasional Services–there’s more out there than just the BCP–a brief overview of other available liturgies for our life!
December 18 — Catechism Section on: The Christian Hope. As we prepare ourselves for the birth of God Incarnate, we’ll talk about our Christian Hope which is founded in this wee baby who changed the whole world…

What a fantastic couple classes we’ve had about the Reconciliation of a Penitent service! Getting to talk through how we got to the point of developing this liturgy, understanding how we poor humans came to approach sin, and remembering the goodness and fullness of God’s mercy and grace…it’s been a blessing to learn and grow with you all!

I hope everyone feels like this service is even more accessible to them than ever before. As we discussed, the ‘motto’ of this service is:

All Can.
Some Should.
None Must.

There is something special about our recognition of the “sometimes” nature of a need like this. It is human!

Next week, we’ll join Fr. Phil’s class to round out this conversation on Reconciliation. See you there!

This week, we’ll begin a 3-part discussion of the Rite of the Reconciliation of a Penitent, better known as Confession. In the Episcopal Church, we don’t require a private confession to receive Holy Communion. Instead, we say a general confession during our Sunday worship service. You might recall our conversation that confession consists of 4 parts:

1. The invitation to make your confession.

2. Silence–in which you would confess your sins to God in the silence of your heart.

3. The confession itself–all saying the same words to bring our common frailty as human beings before God.

4. Absolution–the pronouncement of the forgiveness of sin by God, through the Church, of which the Priest is a symbol.

But how we got to this point is a long and winding road filled with questions and mis-steps, movement forward and sometimes uncertainty. What we are missing today that seems to have been so special in centuries past is the involvement of the whole community in penitence. We’ll talk about this, the nature of sin and more during our 3 weeks on this topic. Until then, I’ll leave you with an exhortation used in the 1552 prayer book meant to call those who were sick to clear their conscious in case their death was imminent…it gives us a deeper look at what it meant to be a Christian at the beginning of our Anglican story…

“And because it is requisite that no man should come to the Holy Communion but with a full trust in God’s mercy, and with a quiet conscience, therefore if there be any of you which by the means aforesaid cannot quiet his own conscience, but requireth further comfort or counsel; then let him come to me, or some other discreet and learned minister of God’s word and open his grief that he may receive such ghostly counsel, advice, and comfort as his conscience may be relieved and that by the ministry of God’s Word he may receive comfort and the benefit of absolution, to the quieting of his conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.”

How about that to chew on for this week? Can you imagine laying in a hospital bed and hearing this nowadays?! Looking forward to seeing you Sunday…

1. The Address–We begin by calling on the name of God. By calling out to God by name, we invite God’s presence in these moments. 
   Examples: O God, Holy God, Merciful God, Almighty and Eternal God, God of all creation, etc.

2. Quality/Attribute of God–I think of this as a “why we’re talking to God” piece of the prayer–because God is powerful, merciful, compassionate, ruler over all, friend to strangers, who cares for those in need, etc.  We pray to God because God is all in all. So our prayer will focus on one or two of those attributes to guide our hearts in this particular moment.
   Examples: Merciful God, you look with compassion upon all people…;
           O God, who grants grace to all in need…;
          Great God, who created the whole world…

3. Petition–This is where we ask for something. It follows logically from the attribute you listed above and the name of God you started with. 
   Examples: Merciful God, you look with compassion upon all people, help me to be compassionate to all those with whom I live, work and play…; 
               Great God, who created the whole world, give me the strength of that creative energy as I work today…

4. Aspiration–We want God to help us be the best we can be. So our prayers will reflect that hope. Think of this part of the prayer as naturally flowing out of the phrase, “so that…”
   Examples: Merciful God, you look with compassion upon all people, help me to be compassionate to all those with whom I live, work and play, so that together, we can find joy in each other…;
Great God, who created the whole world, give me the strength of that creative energy as I work today, so that in all my works, I can show your love to the world…

5. Pleading–We ask everything from God through our Advoate & Mediator, Jesus Christ. And so we wrap up our prayer by saying that very thing! We can do it in short form, or in longer form.
   Examples:  Merciful God, you look with compassion upon all people, help me to be compassionate to all those with whom I live, work and play, so that together, we can find joy in each other, through Jesus Christ our Lord…;
Great God, who created the whole world, give me the strength of that creative energy as I work today, so that in all my works, I can show your love to the world, through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever…

6. Affirmation–The word, “Amen”, which means “so be it” or “I affirm that” is how we close all our prayers. It asks those who are praying with us to agree with the intent of the prayer or it acts as a reminder to us that we are fervent in our prayer. So now you can add the “Amen” and you’ve just written your own Collect! AMEN!

Feel free to post your Collects (in progress or in completion!) here…

See you Sunday!