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Last Sunday after Epiphany: liturgical colors

In a couple days it’ll be the last Sunday before Lent begins.  I have seen, and participated in, a couple different conversations about the liturgical color appropriate for that day, and so thought it prudent to compile the different perspectives and their major arguments

Before we begin, though, there’s a prologue question that should be addressed: “Who cares?”  Granted, the Prayer Book tradition has never mandated a particular scheme for liturgical colors, and granted, the Puritan party of Reformers held the day for a while in Anglican practice whereby liturgical colors were not used by the majority of ministers.  If that is the way you like it then there’s not a lot we can do for you here.  The use of liturgical colors is one of the church’s many and ancient practices for providing visual aids to worship and teaching.  As long as the colors are used in a consistent fashion, they can convey different postures and moods befitting different occasions.  Black for mourning, white for joy, purple for penitence, and so on.  But the key here is that these colors have to be used consistently with their use and meaning, otherwise they will only ever be fashion accessories and a frivolous game of ecclesiastical dress-up.  That’s why getting the colors right, if you’re using them in the first place, matters.

The Traditional Option

If you’re using the historic calendar and lectionary, this Sunday is “Quinqagesima” – the last Sunday before Lent – and Western tradition is unanimously clear: the liturgical color is purple.  The Pre-Lent season is nearing its end, Lent is almost here, the Alleluias have already been “buried”, there is no question: it’s purple.  Easy!  Done.

The Modern Calendar

Anglicanism has no history of its own when it comes to the liturgical color tradition; we’re just one of the several pieces of Western Catholicism in this matter.  Therefore, when Anglicans switched to the modern calendar developed in the Roman Catholic Church, the standard color practice was also imitated.  So if catholicity is your primary concern in choosing liturgical colors, or you’re just looking for the quick and easy answer, then do what the majority of Western tradition does in the modern calendar: it’s white.  Done.

But, but, but…

Not everyone’s happy with this idea, though.  Some argue for green, others for purple.  So let’s look at these arguments and compare with them with the reasons for using white.

The argument for green stems largely from a concern for the integrity of the Calendar as a whole and a rejection of the way the Last Sunday after Epiphany is treated.  This Sunday, wrapping up the modern Epiphany season, is always about the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop.  But, Green Advocates point out, the Transfiguration is already a feast day in the calendar: August 6th.  To read it in the Gospel lesson this Sunday and wear white is basically to double that holy day in the calendar.  This is an inappropriate imbalance, they say, and this Sunday should be normalized to green along with the rest of Epiphanytide.

The argument for purple is a sort of hybrid approach to the modern calendar, drawing in some of the mindset of the old. Instead of looking at it as the Last Sunday after Epiphany it’s the Last Sunday before Lent, and the very observance of Christ’s Transfiguration as a prelude to Christ’s Passion supports this case.  This Sunday is basically the Pre-Lent Sunday of the modern calendar, and thus, in line with pre-1970’s liturgical practice, this Sunday is best characterized by purple.

So why does the Roman order (and all standard Protestant recommendations) appoint white for this day?  Part of the answer is a liturgical symmetry: both of the green seasons (after Epiphany, after Trinity) begin and end with a white Sunday (1st after Epiphany, Last after Epiphany, Trinity Sunday, Christ the King Sunday).  This may be rebutted by some: Christ the King Sunday shouldn’t be white either, and like the transfiguration is best left to its “proper” place in the calendar (Transfiguration to its feast on August 6th, Christ the King to its mini-season with Ascension Day and Sunday after).  But, I would point out, these arguments to take white away from these Last Sundays at the end of the green seasons, especially to replace them with green, are also arguments against the very nature of those Sundays in the modern calendar.  In short, a color scheme revision isn’t enough, these objections cut all the way to the lectionary, and will not be solved unless or until the lessons for “transfiguration” and “christ the king” Sundays are also changed.

Even the appeal for purple runs into trouble along similar lines.  The argument for purple has the advantage of befitting the readings – especially now in Year C where the Epistle lesson happens also to be the traditional Epistle for Quinqagesima! – but still requires a slight re-write of the calendar.  We have the Last Sunday after or of Epiphany, but purple requires the name to be Last Last Sunday before Lent.  It is natural, in the liturgical context of the modern calendar, to reconsider this Sunday as a Pre-Lent purple sort of day, but you have to change its name in the Prayer Book in order to justify it fully.

The Saint Aelfric Customary’s Recommendation

I sympathize with all these arguments.  It’s ecumenical to stick with the Roman order and wear white; it’s annoying to double a feast day like the Transfiguration; it would be nice to bring back some of the historic Pre-Lent purple.

The arguments for green, I think, run into too many counter-arguments that create even more tension within the calendar, and ultimately lead in a direction of a complete overhaul.  I’m not opposed to a complete overhaul; for the most part I’d like to see the calendar restored to the way it was before the radical revisions of the 1960’s and 70’s.  But changing this one Sunday from white to green isn’t really going to help us get there.

The idea of using purple in the modern calendar may primarily be my own imagination; I don’t remember if I’ve actually heard anyone else suggest it before.  It’s less disruptive to the calendar’s color scheme as a whole than choosing green, but it’s still clearly against the spirit of the modern calendar.

So, honestly, I still think white is the way to go.  It may not be the best solution, but at least let’s think of it this way: this is our last hurrah before Lent, let’s do our best to enjoy it and sing Alleluia before we bury it for six and half weeks.

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Dealing with Psalm 137

It’s day 28, Evening Prayer… almost finished with the month, we’re zipping through all these short Psalms near the end of the Psalter, and then suddenly BAM! you slam into Psalm 137.

Oh it starts normally enough.  The lament of the community in exile in Babylon over the loss of Jerusalem is a sad thing; this month it is especially timely with the book of Lamentations at the same time.  How can God be worshiped away from His (destroyed) House, in the midst of a heathen land?  What will become of us if (and when!) memory fades of that glorious Temple?  Translated into Christian experience today, we see a world around us steeped in sin and ask similar questions: how long until the music of worship fades in our own hearts?  How much will we succumb to the paganizing forces in natural human culture?  Will churches and denominations continue to decline into obscurity?

Blessed shall he be who takes your children * and throws them against the stones

Wait, what? Where did that come from?  I thought this was a sad psalm, but all of a sudden it takes such and angry and sadistic turn at the end.  And it just stops there, like that’s a perfectly okay last word to have.  What does a Christian do with this?  This angry and vengeful rebuke of the Edomites who were complicit in the destruction of Jerusalem as they basically cheered the Babylonians on feels a little too extreme.  As the popular meme goes, “that escalated quickly!”

As Anglicans, we pray through the Psalter every month at least, so we really need to know how to tackle with this, lest we have a crisis of faith and biblical fidelity every month.

Reminder #1 – Vengeance is the Lord’s

Prayers for vengeance can be found in many places throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament.  This does not conflict with the also-biblical teaching that God is the one who avenges evil; indeed, such prayers reinforce the doctrine, putting our desire for revenge into the hands of the Just One.

In the New Testament, a new pattern emerges: prayers for mercy upon the evildoers, even as they kill the faithful.  Jesus prayed for those who arrested him and those who crucified him.  Saint Stephen prayed the same as he was stoned to death.  The readings for the Communion service on St. Stephen’s Day, by the way, highlight this interesting contrast between Old and New Testament tendencies regarding vengeance.  Regardless of whether the victim is praying for mercy or not, however, the New Testament upholds the doctrine that God will judge and avenge wrongdoing.

Reminder #2 – You can bring your anger to God

One of the frequent shortcomings in modern piety is the misunderstanding that you have to (or even just should) come to church happy.  Jesus is our lover and our joy, and therefore we must be happy in his presence.  Such an attitude can be very damaging for those who are hurting!  Thankfully there has been some popular movement toward recovering a sense of common lament before God, recognizing the pain and brokenness and drear of our lives.  But anger, I suspect, is probably not quite as readily accepted.  Wrath quickly turns to sin, as the Bible teaches, so perhaps it is understandable that we don’t have many examples of anger in the Psalms.  Psalm 109 is one of the angriest psalms besides this one.

So what about those babies dashed against the rocks?

Frankly, I hope this verse will always make you uncomfortable.  It takes a very deep and profound anger to wish such a curse on anyone.  The trauma the Judean exiles experienced – the trauma of many refugees to this day – is not an experience that most people have, and I hope you and I never do.  This verse is coming from that place of extreme pain.  It may not come from your own place of brokenness and hurt, but it does come from someone’s brokenness and hurt, and you and I are offering that pain to God with them.

Just as we pray the happy Psalms like 98, 99, and 100 whether we’re feeling joyful or not, just as we pray the penitential Psalm 51 whether we’re actually in a contrite mood or not, also do we pray Psalm 137’s profound anger regardless of the state of our own heart.
Ultimately, this psalm is one of the most helpful case studies in liturgical worship, as it puts into the mouth of the worshiping community words that likely none of us in a given church would ever say in our own extemporaneous prayers!  As rough ’round the edges as this psalm is, I thank God that it’s in the Bible.  It teaches us that we can pray even at our angriest.  It teaches how to pray with others at their angriest.  And it shows us anger that still faithfully conforms itself to the ultimate judgment of God.

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George Herbert, the Country Parson

George Herbert (1593-1633) lived a short but saintly life, remembered for being a caring pastor in the English church, and as one of the great metaphysical poets of the day.  If you are a student of literature, especially poetry, Herbert is (or ought to be) a familiar name to you already.

But in the memory of the Church, his commemoration in our calendar, and especially to a liturgy blog such as this, George Herbert’s greatest gift to posterity is his short book A Priest to the Temple or, the Countrey Parson.  It went through multiple publications including well after his death, and was a classic manual for pastors for centuries.  I made a point of reading this book annually for four or five years, and it has made its way into my own pastoral mindset, practice, and writing noting…

This lovely short book briefly walks through all sorts of subjects: the pastor’s lifestyle, education, study, and household, his prayer life, preaching, and handling of the church building and people, his teaching and ministering to the sick and his circuit of visitations, pastoral discipline, legal counsel, and medical aid, his leadership, library and love for others.

I’ll leave you with chapter 6 on the pastor’s prayer life and liturgical example (with modernized spelling).

The Country Parson, when he is to read divine services, composes himself to all possible reverence; lifting up his heart and hands, and eyes, and using all other gestures which may express a hearty, and unfeigned devotion. This he does, first, as being truly touched and amazed with the Majesty of God, before whom he then presents himself; yet not as himself alone, but as presenting with himself the whole Congregation, whose sins he then bears, and brings with his own to the heavenly altar to be bathed, and washed in the sacred Laver of Christs blood. Secondly, as this is the true reason of his inward fear, so he is content to express this outwardly to the utmost of his power; that being first affected himself, he may affect also his people, knowing that no Sermon moves them so much to a reverence, which they forget again, when they come to pray, as a devout behaviour in the very act of praying.

Accordingly his voice is humble, his words treatable, and slow; yet not so slow neither, to let the fervency of the supplicant hang and die between speaking, but with a grave liveliness, between fear and zeal, pausing yet pressing, he performs his duty.

Besides his example, he having often instructed his people how to carry themselves in divine service, exacts of them all possible reverence, by no means enduring either talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or leaning, or half-kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them, but causing them, when they sit, or stand, or kneel, to do all in a strait, and steady posture, as attending to what is done in the Church, and every one, man, and child, answering aloud both “Amen,” and all other answers, which are on the Clerks and peoples part to answer; which answers also are to be done not in a huddling, or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even in he midst of their answer, but gently and pausably, thinking what they say; so that while they answer, “As it was in the beginning, &c.” they meditate as they speak, that God hath ever had his people, that have glorified him as well as now, and that he shall have so for ever. And the like in other answers.

This is that which the Apostle calls a reasonable service, (Rom. 12:1). when we speak not as Parrots, without reason, or offer up such sacrifices as they did of old, which was of beasts devoid of reason; but when we use our reason, and apply our powers to the service of him, that gives them.

If there be any of the gentry or nobility of the Parish, who sometimes make it a piece of state not to come at the beginning of service with their poor neighbours, but at mid-prayers, both to their own loss, and of theirs also who gaze upon them when they come in, and neglect the present service of God, [the parson] by no means suffers it, but after diverse gentle admonitions, if they persevere, he causes them to be presented [chastised]: or if the poor Church-wardens be affrighted with their greatness, notwithstanding his instruction that they ought not to be so, but even to let the world sink, so they do their duty; he presents [chastises] them himself, only protesting to them, that not any ill will draws him to it, but the debt and obligation of his calling, being to obey God rather then men.

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Reading the Lamentations

Our Daily Office readings for the evening continues through the Jeremianic literature with the book of Lamentations.  We’ve worked our way through the book of Jeremiah itself already, and touched upon the book of his assistant, Baruch, and are now reading from Lamentations, which is traditionally attributed to Jeremiah’s hand.

An unusual amount of biographical information about Jeremiah himself is preserved in the middle of the book bearing his name; it relates his dicey interaction with the leadership of Jerusalem.  He prophesies doom and gloom for Jerusalem, and the leaders of the people generally see this as an act of treason – how can it possibly be God’s will to lead the Gentiles to victory and destroy His own temple?  The end of the book of Jeremiah is another historical note about the fall of Jerusalem largely repeating material in 2 Kings 24.

This rather depressing ending sets up for a sort of appendix, which we know as the Lamentations. This is a series of five Hebrew poems, alphabetic acrostics of varying length and elaborateness, each bewailing the destruction of Jerusalem from a different point of view, be it the third-person perspective of an observer, personifying the city itself, and others. Despite the mournful subject of all five laments, some very famous glimmers of hope shine through: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness” (3:22-23).  You may be familiar with a famous hymn inspired by these verses.  Perhaps, after reading chapter 3, you may be so moved to sing that hymn as an Evening Prayer Canticle, or an Anthem after the Collects.

Structurally, the book of Lamentations is very simple.  Each chapter is its own poem.  Apart from the Hebrew acrostics, other elements show up from time to time: there are call-and-response elements pop up, as if some of these poems were used for a liturgical community lament around the wrecked Temple.  The varying of perspective, too, enables one to embody the experience of the city itself, or the Temple itself, looking at the destruction and devastation from several angles.

Spiritually, one of the simplest appropriations of this book in a Christ-centered manner is to connect the Old Testament Temple building to the New Testament Temple of Christ’s Body, which was destroyed on that first Good Friday and “rebuilt in three days” as Jesus promised (John 2:21).  Indeed, parts of this book will be read again during Holy Week, in which that bewailing of the destruction of all we hold dear is given an explicit Christocentric context.

This time around, perhaps it’s best to try to keep the historical setting of the Lamentations in mind for now; walk with Jeremiah and/or the Hebrew survivors of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586BC, and mourn with them.  Come Holy Week, we’ll use some of these words again to mourn with the disciples (and all of faithful humanity) over the even more grievous destruction of the Temple that is Jesus himself.

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Less-than-Occasional Prayers

In both Morning and Evening Prayer, after the three Collects, the rubrics in our liturgy states:

The Officiant may invite the People to offer intercessions and thanksgivings.

In older Prayer Books, a handful of suggested prayers and collects were printed in this place, indicating those certain prayers for the crown, state, society, and so on, were appropriate for that point in the Daily Office.  In the 1979 and 2019 Prayer Books, no such collection is provided immediately, but a larger collection of “additional” or “occasional” Prayers and Thanksgivings is provided in an appendix of sorts near the back of the book.  This is, basically, the modern equivalent of the earlier, traditional, collection.

UPDATE — This order has been revised: https://wordpress.com/post/saint-aelfric-customary.org/1898

On the ACNA page for Texts for Common Prayer, and thus what will probably show up in the 2019 Prayer Book, is a list of 123 prayers and collects.  A few of them are occasion-specific (like for a birthday, or for someone’s healing) but most of them are perfectly appropriate for general use.  To this end, it is the recommendation of this Customary to work through all (well, most) of these prayers on a regular basis towards the end of Morning and Evening Prayer.  This is a two-week rotation of prayers, averaging about 4 or 5 prayers per Office.

Week I                              Office                          Week II

95-96, 107-108             Sunday Morning          97, 99-102
98, 103, 106, 109-110   Sunday Evening           104-105, 111-113

1-5                               Monday Morning         6-10
11-15                           Monday Evening          16-19

26-31                           Tuesday Morning         25, 32-37
70-73                           Tuesday Evening         38-41

48-53                           Wednesday Evening     42-47

78-82                           Thursday Morning       90-94
114, 120-123                Thursday Evening        115-119

54-58                           Friday Evening             59-63

20-24                           Saturday Morning        64-69
85-89                           Saturday Evening            74-77, 84

Let’s look at why this scheme is recommended the way it is.

Sunday, being the principle day of worship for the church gathered, has the section of prayers labeled At Times of Prayer and Worship as well as the prayers on Death, the Departed, and the Communion of Saints, as that is when most of the saints on earth are gathered.  The assigned prayers skip around, numerically, in order to avoid prayers that are too similar from being read at the same Office.

On Monday the prayers start at the beginning of the list, covering the section For the Church.  In general, the prayers for the morning are more specific and the prayers for the evening are more general or topical.

Tuesday morning covers the next section, For the Nation, again arranging the prayers so that too-similar collects aren’t prayed on the same day.  Depending upon which country you hail from, certain prayers along the way will be appropriate to omit (mainly in the USA versus Canada distinction).  In the evening, one day dips into the Personal Devotions list and the other starts the For Society section.

Wednesday morning is omitted, because that’s a traditional time for saying the Great Litany.  The evening finishes the For Society section and begins the next section, Intercessions For Those in Need.

Thursday morning skips ahead to more of the Personal Life and Personal Devotions sections, while Thursday evening (in light of the day’s traditional Eucharistic theme) covers most of the Thanksgivings.

Friday morning (like Wednesday morning) is omitted so you focus on the Great Litany.  The evening covers the rest of the prayers For Those in Need where Wednesday left off.

Saturday covers the prayers about Creation and Family Life, as well as Personal Life and Devotion.  The creation theme matches the Morning Prayer Collect recommended for Saturdays (Collect for Sabbath Rest), and the family section is chosen to match the fact that Saturday is often a “day off with the family” for much of the working world.  The remaining personal devotions also serve as a sort of introspective preparation for corporate worship on the following morning.

For sake of simplicity, “Week I” should line up with odd-numbered weeks in the liturgical calendar, and “Week II” with even-numbered weeks.  For example, yesterday was (in modern reckoning) the 7th Sunday after the Epiphany, so this week could be considered an odd-numbered week.

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Book Review: An Anglican Prayer Book

Welcome to Saturday Book Review time!  On most of the Saturdays this year we’re looking at a liturgy-related book noting (as applicable) its accessibility, devotional usefulness, and reference value.  Or, how easy it is to read, the prayer life it engenders, and how much it can teach you.

In 2008 the Anglican Mission in the Americas (then AMiA) published An Anglican Prayer Book to provide their congregations with historic Anglican liturgy in contemporary idiom.  The project was aided by the late Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, then President of the Prayer Book Society of the USA.  I don’t know how widely-used this book ended up being, given the colorful and complicated history of AMiA’s founding, leaving, and partially re-joining the ACNA, eventually splitting from its parent province Rwanda, and the complicated leadership debacle surrounding its founding Bishops.  Their Prayer Book, sometimes nicknamed “the blue book”, however popular or obscure, was a gem of a resource.  It contains an entire Prayer Book, omitting only a Psalter, and very closely preserves traditional Anglican liturgy in contemporary English.

Its language style is plain and simple, and strikes me as a little less awkward than that found in Common Prayer 2011.  It might even go in the other direction, feeling a bit calm and informal by comparison.  Also in contrast to CP2011, this book seems to produce more of a low-church feel to it.  Take, for example, this excerpt from the Absolution in the Daily Office:

He has commanded and authorized his Ministers to assure his people that they will receive absolution and forgiveness of their sins when they repent of their sins.

Compare this to the historic wording:

[He] hath given power, and commandment, to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the Absolution and Remission of their sins…

The language of the original may be understood to say that the Minister actually declares or enacts God’s pardon upon the penitent, whereas the language of An Anglican Prayer Book specifies that the Minister merely assures the penitent of God’s pardon.  Similar subtleties can be found throughout this book, especially in its contemporary version of the 39 Articles of Religion, where the minutiae of wording and grammar have sparked centuries of theological debate.  Thankfully, this book isn’t trying to re-write the Articles of Religion according to a particular agenda (in this case low-church evangelical), but admits up front that this translation is provided for ease of reading, and only the original text is authoritative.  Still, the nature and style of this book is clearly better-suited to the evangelical than the anglo-catholic.

One of the unique features of this book is that it combines Morning and Evening Prayer together into one liturgy, noting which Canticles and Collects belong to which time of day.  Because it sticks with the traditional material and adds nothing of what is supplied in the 1979-2019 tradition, this doesn’t take up a ton of space, and very much helps to shorten the length of the book overall.

Another interesting feature of this book is that it the Communion liturgy has three Prayers of Consecration: one based on the English 1662, one based on the American 1928, and one based on the Canadian 1962.  This allows for variation in churchmanship, local tradition and familiarity, and just plain variety.  The first half of the liturgy is the same, and the last section is presented one version at a time; you have to skip to the correct page in order to follow along.

Because of its simplicity, small size, and traditional brevity, you’d think that this book should be easy to use.  But it actually isn’t all that user-friendly.  Part of it is the typeface: the rubrics are in a lighter grey color, and not in italics, which often makes them harder to distinguish from the regular spoken text.  The page-flipping, while not as complex as in the 1979 Prayer Book, is more cumbersome than the historic Prayer Books, and there are no page number guides within the liturgy texts to tell you where to go.

The greatest triumphs of this book, however, are the lectionaries.  The Daily Lectionary (bafflingly stuck near the back of the book instead of the front near the actual Office liturgy) is very simple to use.  It is the 1871 version of the 1662 Prayer Book’s daily lectionary, which sticks close to the original one-chapter-per-read method, but breaks up the longer chapters in half so they’re less cumbersome for the average reader.  I haven’t studied it carefully (let alone used it before), but I think it may give the new ACNA daily lectionary a run for its money in terms of overall quality.

The Communion lectionary, too, is assembled in what I consider the best way possible: united with the Collects.  The traditional Prayer Books printed the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel each in full text together for every Sunday and Holy Day of the year.  This makes a book quite lengthy of course, so the space-saving option (and especially smart in this age of multiple options for Bible translations) is to print the Collect with the verse references for the lessons.  Behold:

win_20190222_19_21_08_pro.jpg

In my opinion, this is what the 2019 Prayer Book ought to do.  Granted, with a 3-year lectionary you’d need to specify “Year A: OT, Psalm, Epistle, Gospel“, but that wouldn’t take up a ton of space and would cut out an extra bit of page-flipping situation from having the Collects and Lectionary in two different places (like the 1979 book does).  I fear this is not a lesson our book will learn, though I did suggest it to them a couple times.

Also, this book is noteworthy for adding an Old Testament lesson & Psalm to the historic lectionary which featured only an Epistle & Gospel.  This, I believe, was the right way to contemporize the Communion lectionary, not rehash another version of the modern (or modernist!?) 3-year lectionary, as the 2019 book is doing.

The ratings in short:

Accessibility: 3/5
While not as simple as traditional Prayer Books, this book still has a relatively small learning curve.  As I noted above, its primary hindrances are due to presentation, not structure.

Devotional Usefulness: 4/5
Although some features in this book lean in the low-church direction, it still has everything you need for an Anglican devotional life.  The lectionaries are sound and the daily prayers are thorough.  It lacks all the bells and whistles of modern Prayer Books (such as special liturgies for Palm Sunday and similar days), but that’s not an issue for personal use.

Reference Value: 2/5
This book has had a relatively low impact in American Anglican liturgical development; I’ve never met anyone who uses (or used) it as their congregation’s primary prayer book.  I’ve known someone who used its daily lectionary, and I’ve known a church that uses its additions to the historic Communion lectionary, but never the book wholesale.  Really, apart from the added lessons to the Communion lectionary, this book has nothing to offer the liturgical world.  There are quite a few modern adaptations of the old liturgies out there, these days, making this book feel like one of the most redundant prayer books on my shelf.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a book I’d recommend adding your liturgy collection unless

  1. you really like collecting different prayer books, or
  2. your parish uses the historic lectionary and you want an OT & Psalm added, or
  3. you like studying different ways traditional language can be modernized.

 

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A Pre-Lent Hymn: Come, labor on!

Although we don’t officially have the Pre-Lent season on the books, there’s no reason we can’t learn from that mindset and explore ways of incorporating the old wisdom of the church into modern practice.  For example, let’s consider a hymn that encapsulates something of the Pre-Lent spirit.

Come, labor on.
Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain
while all around him waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the Master say,
“Go work today.”

Come, labor on.
The enemy is watching night and day,
To sow the tares, to snatch the seed away;
While we in sleep our duty have forgot,
He slumbered not.

Come, labor on.
Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here;
By feeble agents, may our God fulfill
His righteous will.

Come, labor on.
Claim the high calling angels cannot share;
to young and old the gospel gladness bear.
Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The night draws nigh.

Come, labor on.
No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
till the long shadows o’er our pathway lie,
and a glad sound comes with the setting sun,
“Servants, well done!”

This song links to the Gospel both on Septuagesima Sunday (Matthew 20, the parable of the successively-hired laborers in the vineyard) and on Sexagesima (Luke 8, the parable of the sower and four types of soil).  The call to join in the Lord’s labor, to bear fruit, to put in our all for Christ, is excellent preparatory thematic material to rally the troops, as it were, before the spiritual disciplines of Lent begin.

It may already be too late to appoint this hymn for your Sunday morning worship services in the next two Sundays, but there’s nothing stopping you from using it on your own and recommending it to others as a great-ready-for-Lent sort of devotion!

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Those wicked long readings…

Something great about the ACNA Daily Office Lectionary is that it has a return to the fantastically simple style of our 16th and 17th century lectionaries of reading one chapter at a time.  Back then, that reading pace typically applied both to the OT and NT daily readings, whereas for us it’s mostly just the OT readings that are thus treated.  It’s so much easier when you don’t have to fiddle about with “what verse to stop with” – just read one chapter at a time, and continue it tomorrow.  Simple!

The downside with this approach, of course, is that some chapters are longer than others.  When I tried a 1662-inspired lectionary, at first I found this irritating.  But eventually I came to appreciate the variety of length: sometimes you get a longer story, sometimes it’s short and sweet.  Nevertheless, some chapters are just really long compared to others.

This morning brings us to one such example: Genesis 41.  Clocking in at 57 verses, this chapter packs a punch with two lengthy pieces of the story of Joseph in Egypt.  The first 36 verses detail his interaction with the Pharaoh and interpreting his dreams about the coming bounty and famine; the last 21 verses detail Joseph’s rise to power through the implementation of his vision-based proposal.  It’d be nice to be able to break these up into two different readings, but there just isn’t enough space in the calendar to play with chapter divisions like this.

If you’re a completionist, using the lectionary to read as much of the Bible as possible each year, then you’ve just got to tough it up and read 57 verses in one go.  If, however, you’re praying the Office with a lighter devotional approach, and concerned more about getting the sense of the Scriptures without necessarily reading each word – or if for some reason you need to shorten the reading or have a time limit for the Office as a whole – there is another way.

The ACNA lectionary comes equipped with an “Optional abbreviation” for a number of the larger chapter readings throughout the year.  The entry in the lectionary table for this morning’s Old Testament reading is:

Gen 41 † 1-15,25-40

This means that if you want to shorten the chapter, simply read verses 1-15, then skip to 25 and read through verse 40.  In so doing, you cut out a fair bit of repetition (which is very common in Hebrew storytelling), and abbreviate the lengthy description of the honors Joseph went on to receive, as well as cut out the implementation of the plan that was already described and approved.

Here’s an interesting analogy: reading chapter 41 in its entirety is like reading a sermon, whereas reading the shortened version (vv 1-15,25-40) is like reading the blog post summary of the sermon.  The full version has a beginning, middle and end: “This is what we need to do, this is what we will do, this is what they did.”  A good sermon format is often similar: “This what I’m going to say, this is me saying, this is what I said.”  The blog post version is much more succinct: “Ain’t nobody got time for dis, so here’s the deal.”

Personally, I’m a big fan of reading the Bible in full throughout the year.  If we seriously believe it is the Word of God in literary form then we really ought to be poring through its pages diligently, consistently, and completely.  But as a stay-at-home parent with young children I have come to appreciate all the more how truly difficult it can be for many people to carve out that time for the longer Scripture readings.  So while I see the full-chapter readings in lectionaries like ours to be the ideal to reach for, I must assure you that there is no shame in opting for the shortened version as need arises.

Posted on by Fr. Brench · 1 Comment

Canticle of the Martyred

For perhaps the first century of the life of the 1662 Prayer Book, January 30th was a national holiday (literally, holy day) with its own special liturgical observances.  Morning Prayer, the Communion, and Evening Prayer each had their own unique edits for this day.  The commemoration appointed was for the Martyrdom of King Charles I at the hands of the Puritan Parliament that went on to outlaw the Prayer Book and suppress the office of bishops, in addition to temporarily ending the monarchy in England.  This holy day, with its special liturgies, was eventually removed from the Prayer Book, I suppose it was a bit too nationalistic.

Check it out for yourself, if you have the time; it’s very interesting!  But let’s just glean a couple things from this defunct holy day to see what we can learn about the potential in Anglican liturgy for special occasions.

Observation #1 – the Anglican Church called for prayer and fasting

Stereotypically we think of appointed fast days as a Roman Catholic or East Orthodox practice.  Yet the Church of England does have a tradition of such days also.  Most Fridays, technically, were intended as such.  And January 30th was, for a time, an additional day of fasting.  Here is the introductory text in the 1662 Prayer Book for this day:

A FORM of PRAYER with FASTING, to be used yearly upon the Thirtieth Day of January, being the Day of the Martyrdom of the Blessed King CHARLES the First; to implore the Mercy of God, that neither the Guilt of that sacred and innocent Blood, nor those other sins, by which God was provoked to deliver up both us and our King into the hands of cruel and unreasonable men, may at any time hereafter be visited upon us, or our posterity.

¶ If this Day shall happen to be a Sunday, this Form of Prayer shall be used, and the Fast kept, the next Day following. And upon the Lord’s Day next before the Day to be kept, at Morning Prayer, immediately after the Nicene Creed, Notice shall be given for the due observation of the said Day.

While the intersection of State and Church might be a bit too much for our palate today, the idea that the Church can call for a day of fasting and prayer is clear.  There are occasions in the life of a country or region when special prayer and fasting can (and should) be called for.  However one feels about the appropriateness or execution of this particular example, it nonetheless stands as an example of how we might go about such an occasion.  It substitutes a number of prayers, lessons, and canticles for the usual ones appointed, giving the liturgy of the day a different flavor and emphasis without breaking from the ordinary flow of worship.

Let’s zoom in on just one of those liturgical changes from the old January 30th material.

Observation #2 – the Invitatory Canticle

“¶ Instead of Venite Exultemus, the Hymn following shall be said or sung; one Verse by the Priest, another by the Clerk and people.”  To translate it from the 17th century language to that of the ESV Bible…

Righteous are you, O LORD, and right are your rules.
You have been righteous in all that has come upon us,
for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.
But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
my steps had nearly slipped.
For I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed.
They conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant.
For I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side,
as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.
Speaking against me with lying tongues,
they encircle me with words of hate, and attack me without cause.
Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread,
has lifted his heel against me.
They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft.
Those who watch for my life consult together and say, “God has
forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him.”
The breath of our nostrils, the LORD’s anointed,
was captured in their pits, of whom we said,
“Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.”
Foe and enemy enter the gates of Jerusalem, saying,
“When will he die, and his name perish?”
“A deadly thing is poured out on him;
he will not rise again from where he lies.”
Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know.
This was for the sins of her prophets
and the iniquities of her priests,
who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous.
Let my soul come not into their council;
O my glory, be not joined to their company.
For in their anger they killed men.
The man of your right hand,
the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be an affliction.
We fools! We thought that his life was madness
and that his end was without honor; but he is at peace.
For though in the sight of men he was punished,
his hope is full of immortality.
Has he not been numbered among the sons of God,
and his lot among the saints?
O LORD, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance:
do good to Zion in your good pleasure.
Accept atonement, O LORD, for your people Israel,
whom you have redeemed,
and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst
of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.
Do not sweep my soul away with sinners,
nor my life with bloodthirsty men.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!
Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself,
you despise them as phantoms.
Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!
Righteous are you, O LORD, and right are your rules.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.

This is a fantastic Canticle, working together a wide range of verses from throughout the Bible.  The old Prayer Book even had the courtesy of giving us all the references:

Ps. 119:137, Neh. 9:33, Ps. 73:2-3, 2:2, 83:5, 31:13, 109:2b-3, 41:9, 35:12, 71:10b-11,
Lam. 4:20, 4:12, Ps. 41:5b, 41:8, 35:11, Lam. 4:13, Gen. 49:6, 80:17, Wis. 3:2, 5:4b, 3:3b, 3:4, 5:5, Ps. 94:1, 51:18a, Deut. 21:8, Ps. 26:9, 51:14, 5:4, 5:6, 73:19, 73:20, Rev. 15:3b,
and Ps. 119:137.

Although this Canticle is officially defunct, the style of its arrangement has been copied in later developments, perhaps most notably for Remembrance Day in the Church of England, which has its own special liturgies with unique Canticles and so forth.

I heartily recommend reviving this Canticle for appropriate occasions.  If you’re not as big a fan of observing the martyrdom of Charles I, then perhaps you can use it for the commemoration of a different martyr.  We have no shortage of martyrs in our calendar of commemorations, after all!

Posted on by Fr. Brench

The Double-Duty Collect

The up-and-coming 2019 Prayer Book appoints this Collect for the third Sunday after the Epiphany, and thus for this week in the Daily Office:

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This Collect does double duty; it comes back for “World Mission Sunday,” which the calendar recommends for the penultimate Sunday before Lent (though authorizes for any Sunday in Epiphanytide between the first and last).  I’ve mentioned here before my preference to omit the World Mission Sunday option, but let’s take a look at this Collect.

As far as I’m aware, this Collect originated with the 1979 Prayer Book; it certainly has no previous life in the historic prayer book calendar tradition.  It is one of the several “mission-themed” Collects that comprise the Epiphany season in the modern liturgical calendar.  Arguably it is a favorite of the mission themed Collects, since it was selected for the World Mission Sunday option, too.

It begins with a rare switching of order – the petition precedes the address: “Give us grace” before “O God.”  Some Collects have a longer address than others; this is one of the shortest.  In fact, not only is the address brief, but the petition is brief too.  It is the third part of this collect (the purpose) that occupies the majority of its verbiage.  We pray for grace “to answer readily the call” and to “proclaim to all people”, so that “we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works.”

It’s not an unusual thing to pray for the mission of the church.  Making it personal (“give us grace, O God…”) is a good step up from that.  And taking it further to describe the purpose of such missional prayer – that all may glory in the marvelous works of God – sets before us a sort of destination.  We don’t pursue evangelism and missions for the sake of “saving souls”, as it were, but so that all may see God.  One of the challenges of stirring up the call to evangelism and outreach is the trap of self-aggrandizement: “look how successful we are because of all the people we’re reaching for Christ!”  Keeping the purpose of evangelism and mission firmly fixed upon the glory God, not ourselves, is a helpful reminder indeed.