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Who shall dwell in thy tabernacle?

On the 3rd Morning of the month, the first Psalm is Psalm 15:

Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? or who shall rest upon thy holy hill?
Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth from his heart.
…
Whoso doeth these things shall never fall.

One of the many, many advantages to praying the entirety of the Psalter each month is that we have innumerable opportunities to hear the same psalms juxtaposed against various and sundry contexts.  With All Saints’ Day, and its usual transferred Sunday, awaiting us tomorrow, one might find this an opportune Psalm to reflect upon the universal call to sainthood upon all God’s people.  The opening question – who gets to live in God’s house – is asking point blank for the qualifications of a Saint.  What does holiness look like?  What kind of person gets to live in God’s new heaven and earth?

Verses 2 through 6 describe a litany of virtue – doing good, speaking the truth, humbly refraining from exalting oneself, respecting those who fear the Lord, who keeps his word and lends even at personal loss.  Of course, this is not a complete theological statement; we know that righteousness purely by works and deeds is impossible for us sinners.  But this Psalm shows us two things: it depicts the Righteous One (Jesus) and the end state of righteousness to which he has called us.  We are all invited to receive the Way, Truth, and Life; we are all invited to practice righteousness and to grow in grace.

Psalm 15 shows us where we’re going.  Let that sink in as you pray it in Morning Prayer today.

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Remembering the Faithful Departed in the Liturgy

November 2nd is the commemoration of the Faithful Departed.  For the Roman Catholics, this is a holy day of higher rank, equal (or almost equal?) to All Saints’ Day itself.  The distinction is that All Saints’ Day remembers the Church Triumphant – Saints with a capital S – and All Souls’ Day remembers the Church Expectant – those at rest, awaiting the resurrection on the Last Day.  In Protestant theology, most of us generally don’t make much (if any) distinction between these two groups.  Some might posit that the “Capital S Saints” are enjoying the beatific vision to a greater degree than others among the departed, but I’m not aware of much talk along those lines.

As a result, the All Souls commemoration has typically been rolled into the All Saints commemoration in Anglican practice and piety.

However, there is a good reason for distinguishing these two holy days.  Two analogies present themselves.  The first is in our Prayers of the People in the Communion service: historically the last petition of those Prayers acknowledges both the departed at rest and the saints in glory.  Even if one believes these are not two different groups of people, they are clearly presented to us as two aspects of people.  We remember the Departed in a joyful glorified state and in a mournful “we miss them” sense.  The second analogy is the funeral/Burial service: the interplay between giving thanks and mourning is intricate and (occasionally) controversial.

In the standard Prayers of the People we have now, there is a lovely inclusio wherein you can add the names of the departed to your prayers:

We remember before you all your servants who have departed this life in your faith and fear, especially ___, that your will for them may be fulfilled…

My congregation makes use of this on a regular basis, but if yours does not, this weekend is the perfect opportunity to do so!

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Remembering the Saints in the Liturgy

All Saints Day is upon us!  As one of the seven principle feasts of the Church Year this is (or ought to be) a grand occasion not only for celebration and worship but also for teaching and catechesis.  The greatest holidays of the year, after all, are built upon the greatest doctrines of the Christian faith.  All Saints’ Day draws our attention to the communion of saints, as the Apostles’ Creed puts it, that Body of Christ of which we are a part.  There are a few built-in features of the liturgy that can (or should) be highlighted to enhance the celebration:

  • The Collect of the Day is packed with Scripture and theology.
  • The heavenly multitude depicted in the epistle lesson from the book of Revelation is a beautiful picture of this holiday’s subject.
  • The Sursum Corda (or “Great Thanksgiving”) leads to a special Proper Preface for the occasion: “For in the multitude of your Saints, you have surrounded us with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, together with them, may receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.”
  • The usual prayers leading up to the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) are worth emphasizing today: “with angels and archangels and with the whole company of heaven“.

The unity of prayer and fellowship, between all saints in heaven and on earth, is wonderfully celebrated throughout the liturgy.

But is there something more we can do?

There are many ideas that could be brainstormed, but this is probably the simplest one.  The final petition of the standard Prayers of the People reads:

We remember before you all your servants who have departed this life in your faith and fear, [especially ______________,] that your will for them may be fulfilled, and we ask you to give us grace to follow the good examples of [N., and] all your saints, that we may share with them in your heavenly kingdom.

This is a direct invitation to fill in the blank, and All Saints’ Day (or Sunday, when most of us will be celebrating this holiday) is the perfect opportunity to expand the second blank.  You could draw up a list of saints who are well-loved in your congregation, or list all twelve apostles (replacing Judas Iscariot with Matthias), or list the Saints celebrated as Major Feast Days in the Prayer Book.  My church this year will just be listing categories: “give us grace to follow the good examples of Joseph and Mary the holy family, your Apostles and Evangelists, your holy Martyrs and Confessors, and all your saints…”

If you do include a list therein, note that the traditional ordering of Saints is basically:

  1. the Blessed Virgin Mary
  2. Joseph
  3. Apostles (not just the twelve, but including Paul)
  4. Evangelists (Mark and Luke)
  5. Martyrs
  6. Confessors
  7. Doctors (that is, “Teachers of the Faith”)
  8. Bishops and Kings
  9. Monastics or members of other religious orders
  10. Other Saints

The point of this is not simply “to be traditional” and “get things right,” but the general ordering tradition exists to denote a sort of hierarchy.  This is not to say that a Martyr is more holy than a Monk, per se, but that the witness of the former is generally greater than the latter, and so deserves a place of greater significance when presenting such names to the congregation.  If this sort of ordering offends your theological sensibilities, then be sure to use a different-but-clear ordering, such as alphabetizing their names, so it doesn’t just look like a hodge-podge thrown-together list.  Liturgy and worship always benefits from transparent forethought!

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The Week’s Collect

Now that Saints Simon & Jude’s Day is behind us (assuming you celebrated it yesterday), you might be wondering what to do about the Collect of the Day for the rest of the week?

The custom, as you probably know if you’re following these posts, is to repeat the Collect of the Day from the Sunday Communion service in the Daily Office for the subsequent week.  The custom, as far as I understand it, is that most Major Feast Days, like Sts. Simon & Jude, only impact their day and the evening before.  That means that today, and for the rest of the week, we return to the Collect of the Day for the Sunday that we skipped.

If you’re using the draft Prayer Book of the Anglican Church in North America, then here’s the Collect of the Day for the rest of the week:

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

If a mid-week Communion service is held early this week, it would be advisable to use the omitted Sunday’s lessons to sort of “make up for” what the Saints Day overrode.  Bear in mind, though, that All Saints’ Day is on Thursday, so its Collect will step into the Office on Wednesday evening through Thursday.  More on that later, though…!

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Kings & Chronicles mixed together

The Daily Lectionary of the Anglican Church in North America is nearing its final form.  It has gone through two extremely different editions in the past couple years, and has seen two or three version of its third incarnation this year.  You can tell from the nature of its revisions that the committee and the bishops are getting very close to finalizing it.

If you’ve been reading along with it lately, you’ve been in the historical books for a while, currently in the middle of 2 Kings.  There has been the occasional interruption from 1 & 2 Chronicles last month and this, there’s another one coming tomorrow, and several more over the next two weeks.  Especially if you’re using a physical copy of the Bible (as opposed to reading the Office online) this might be something of a nuisance.  But the reasons for this minor inconvenience are actually quite sound.

  1. Although the overlap between the books of Samuel and Kings and the books of Chronicles is enormous, there is unique material in each of them.
  2. The books of Samuel & Kings together cover more detail than the books of Chronicles, so they get the primary coverage.
  3. The books of Chronicles, therefore, have excerpts interspersed among Kings & Chronicles in order to fill the few gaps left.

There are two simpler alternatives to this plan:

  1. Skip 1 & 2 Chronicles entirely.  This is what the original Prayer Book daily lectionaries did.
  2. Read 1 & 2 Chronicles all the way through.  This brings the lectionary’s average reading length up, as there’s more to cover in the year.

So yes, although book-skipping like this can make the narrative a little tougher to follow, and the logistics of using your bookmarkers a little more complicated, this lectionary is following a sensible plan with good reason.  If you’re the kind of person who wants a perfectly “completionist” daily lectionary, then the liturgical tradition is inevitably going to disappoint you a little bit.  However, there’s nothing stopping you from “filling in the gaps”, as it were, on your own.  Midday Prayer, for example, is an excellent daily opportunity to read from material that the daily lectionary omits.

If that’s something you’re interested in, be sure to check back in here next year, because once the daily lectionary is finalized and published I’m going to be working on a supplementary daily lectionary for Midday Prayer that inserts all the chapters from the Old Testament and Ecclesiastical Books that the daily lectionary leaves out.  It’s already outlined, I just need to see the final edition before I can build around it.  So if you’re a fan of the books of Chronicles, hang in there, I’ve got your back!

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Mindful of death in the evening

One major hallmark of historic Christian piety surrounding eventide is the mindfulness of death.  Going to bed, the lights going out, going to sleep, is both culturally and biblically a metaphor for death.  Countless evening hymns and prayers make reference to death, keeping the singer or pray-er mindful of his or her mortality.

Modern and post-modern culture does not encourage us to be mindful of death, rather, we are told to put death out of our minds entirely.  Don’t worry about it, don’t obsess over it; it is morbid, we are told, to think about death.  As a result, even at Funeral or Burial services we pressure ourselves and one another to think about life instead – it’s  Memorial Service or a Celebration of Life, rather than mourning for the dear departed.

But the Prayer Book tradition continues faithfully on the track of historic Christian awareness of death.  For example, the Wednesday Evening Collect, for Protection, reads thus:

O God, the life of all who live, the light of the faithful, the strength of those who labor, and the repose of the dead: We thank you for the blessings of the day that is past, and humbly ask for your protection through the coming night.  Bring us in safety to the morning hours; through him who died and rose again for us, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Even though death is not the central theme or subject of this prayer, its reality is present and unavoidable.  God is identified as “the repose of the dead” and Jesus specifically is invoked as the one “who died”.

Don’t breeze past prayers like these.  It is not morbid to reflect upon your future death.  It is wise, it is healthy, it is biblical!  We do not know the day or the hour of Christ’s returning, and we hardly ever get forewarning of the the day or hour we finish this life either.  It is good to be prepared, to have a last will & testament, to have funeral wishes written down, to be at peace with our brethren, to be ready to meet our Maker.  Let these death-aware devotions each evening bring that moment of sobriety into your spiritual life… the world certainly won’t!

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Communion without Communion

One of the realities of modern church life is that the vast majority of us only open our doors for public worship on Sunday mornings.  A lot of churches have mid-week programs, sometimes even worship services, but it takes a great deal of searching, nation-wide, to find a church that actually offers the full pattern of Prayer Book worship: daily Morning and Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion every Sunday and major feast day listed in the Prayer Book.  It would take a radical, serious, and long-term effort to restore the ancient rhythm of Christian worship to the public space of our church buildings.

Instead, the Daily Office is commonly perceived and treated as a family or private devotion.  Indeed, the Office can work that way – the English Reformers intentionally simplified precisely so anyone literate could pray it!  And although the Office is grossly underused today, it is at least available wherever a Prayer Book is to be found.

What is less accessible is the service of Holy Communion.  You need a priest or bishop to preside and celebrate the sacrament.  Oh, actually, you could just have a Deacon lead the service and distribute pre-consecrated bread and wine.  Wait, no, even a licensed lay minister can do that.  Ah, but even that requires planning, resources, and trickiest of all, an open place to gather and people to gather.  The majority of us simply do not have access to a Communion service on most major feast days throughout the year.  What to do?

Consider taking a page from historical Anglican practice: Antecommunion.  First of all, make sure you don’t pronounce it so it sounds like “anti-communion.”  This ante-Communion, that is, the Service of Holy Communion before the actual celebration of Communion.  If you don’t have a church to go to, offering the primary liturgy of the holy day, you can read the first “half” of it yourself!  Let’s look at how to do that:

First, grab one of the Communion services from the ACNA website.  The Collects for the Christian Year and the Sunday, Holy Day, Commemorations Lectionary are further down the page.  Today is the feast of St. James of Jerusalem, so find his Collect & lessons.  Grab a Bible, and you’ve got everything you need.  The order of service will look basically like this:

  • Acclamation: “Worthy is the Lord our God…”
  • The Collect for Purity
  • The Summary of the Law & The Kyrie
  • The Gloria in excelsis
  • The Collect of the Day
  • The Lessons (Acts 15:12-22a, Psalm 1, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Matthew 13:54-58)
  • Instead of a sermon, perhaps you can spend a minute in quiet reflection on the lessons… maybe look at some study notes if your Bible has them.
  • The Nicene Creed
  • The Prayers of the People
  • Confession of Sin
  • If you’re not a priest you shouldn’t declare the Absolution, and if you are a priest but praying this on your own, it might seem inappropriate to absolve a non-existent gathering, so perhaps use the Prayer for Forgiveness from the Daily Office.
  • Wrap up with a blessing from the Office and/or a Dismissal from the end of the Communion service.

Side note: if you’re using a classical Prayer Book, this works almost the same way.  Conclude with the Words of Comfort after the Confession, and either add a Blessing from the end of the Daily Office, or, if you’ve got the 1662 in hand, there are a few Collects provided at the end of the Communion service to say in place of the Communion prayers for this very scenario.

If you’re a priest, this is an excellent way to deepen your Eucharistic devotion at the altar even when you’re unable to celebrate Communion on a given day.

But for anyone, this is a marvelous devotional opportunity, one of the best ways to strengthen your roots in our common life of worship if your church isn’t open that day, and also a really good Bible Study opportunity, as a feast day’s readings usually speak together with one voice more clearly than the average Sunday morning’s lessons.

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Which James do we celebrate tomorrow?

Tomorrow, October 23rd, is the major feast day commemorating Saint James of Jerusalem.  This is a “new feast”, in that it was introduced in the mid- or late-20th century, not being found in the classical prayer books.  The reason for this is, in part, a shift in scholarly understanding of who is who in the New Testament.

Saint James of Jerusalem, or “James the Just”, is the man we read about in Acts 15 who presided over a council concerning the status of the Gentiles in the Christian Church – a landmark event both in the confirmation of the Gospel being for everyone, and in the practical working life of Church leadership.  James functioned essentially as the diocesan bishop in Jerusalem, other apostles and elders were gathered, they heard arguments and agreed upon a final ruling – it’s literally the first Synod in Church history.

Many scholars today identify this James also as the author of the New Testament Epistle of James, who self-identifies as “brother of the Lord.”  In the Protestant world this goes with the assumption that this James is one of Jesus’ brothers, though the force of historical interpretation of Scripture would suggest that this James is at most simply a relative of Jesus, perhaps a cousin or a half-brother.  In the past, though, James the Just (or, of Jerusalem) has sometimes been identified as one of the twelve apostles, especially James the Less, whom we commemorate with St. Philip on May 1st.  Wikipedia has a handy list with references.

So, as you begin his commemoration tonight at Evening Prayer with his Collect of the Day, keep the James of Acts 15 in mind.

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Introducing Isaiah

Isaiah, the first of the Major Prophets, has been appointed to be read at the end of the year in every Anglican Prayer Book I’ve ever looked at.  The reason for this, I have long assumed, is that it contains many prophecies of Jesus that are well-known, well-loved, easily recognizable, and often associated with either Easter or Christmas.  And since there is so much Scripture clamoring for our attention through Holy Week and Eastertide, and those dates are not fixed anyway, the Old Testament slot of the lectionaries have always concluded the year with the book of Isaiah.  Normally this wouldn’t begin until mid or late November, but because the current draft ACNA daily lectionary appoints separate reading tracks for the Morning and Evening Offices, we end up starting the book of Isaiah today, on October 19th.

Chapter 1 is a fantastic opening chapter for such a rich book.  Many people might find it frustrating that it doesn’t introduce us to the man Isaiah himself – that doesn’t happen until his commissioning account in chapter 6.  But think of chapter 1 as the opening scene of a movie or television show: it’s action-packed, it draws you in, it gives you a taste of what’s to come and stuns you with the intensity of the book as a whole.  Then in a few chapters it’ll step back and give you a little of Isaiah’s backstory and character, once you’ve gotten the teaser at the beginning.

What does chapter 1 have that makes it so great an opening?  The first verse gives us an impressive array of kings under whom Isaiah ministered, hinting to us of his longevity and long-suffering. Verses 2-17 then launch into a blistering accusation against the kingdom of Judah, denouncing their sinfulness, discrediting the efficacy of their sacrifices, comparing them to the long-ago-destroyed city-states of Sodom and Gomorrah, and imploring them to repent, wash themselves, and act justly once again.

God offers a word of hope in verses 18-20: “let us reason together.”  If you just think about what you’re doing and come back to me, I will make you clean!  Otherwise, in the meantime, God calls the condition of his people to be akin to that of a whore in verses 21-23.

And finally verses 24-31 describe the blessing of a future restoration.  When God has finished punishing them, and they finally repent and turn to him, he will rebuild Jerusalem, restore the efficacy of the sacrifices, strengthen his people, and punish their enemies.

Isaiah is a long book to get through; but if you really soak in this chapter at the beginning, you will find its content, tone, and themes echoing throughout the next 65 chapters, all the way to Christmas!

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Extra readings for St. Luke

Happy Saint Luke’s Day!
If you’re following the current ACNA liturgy, the Morning Prayer readings include Luke 1:1-4, which is a break from the usual pattern of lessons inserted to celebrate the holy day.  There, you’ll be introduced to Luke’s intention as a writer of Scripture.  If you attend Holy Communion today you’ll hear other readings pertaining to the feast day.

Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 38:1-14 is a passage of Jewish wisdom literature extolling the virtues of the role of a physician in society.  It addresses both the worldly function of healing and wellness as well as the spiritual aspects of prayer for healing and care for the soul.  Luke, being known as a physician as well as an Evangelist, is an excellent embodiment of this wisdom text.

2 Timothy 4:1-13 serves a dual purpose on this feast day.  On the more basic level, it mentions Luke toward the end of the reading.  We learn that Luke was among St. Paul’s final companions during his incarceration in Rome.  But the larger part of the reading is a sort of “last charge” to Paul’s son-in-the-faith, Timothy, who himself was at that point a local bishop elsewhere.  The instructions to preach and teach the faith without wavering, for the benefit of his hearers’ souls, are not unlike the role of a spiritual physician, tending to the spiritual health of the flock.  The Collect of the Day is largely informed by this dynamic:

Almighty God, you called Luke the physician to be an evangelist and physician of the soul: We pray that we, by the wholesome medicine of the doctrine which he taught, may have all the diseases of our souls be healed; through Jesus Christ our Lord…

Finally, Luke 4:14-21 brings this back to Jesus.  In these verses, Jesus reads an Old Testament prophecy concerning himself: that he would minister to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed.  Those who need healing will find their health in him.  Saint Luke was a great physician of body and soul, but Jesus is the great physician, through whom all who come to him find wholeness and strength.

But if you want to sit with this holy day in greater depth and search the scriptures further, here are some other passages you could read on your own time (or perhaps at Midday Prayer or Compline).

  • Isaiah 55 (various pictures of life and healing that God offers)
  • Isaiah 61:1-6 (the text Jesus quoted from, with more context)
  • Colossians 4:7-end (a “greetings” passage that identifies Luke as a physician)
  • 2 Timothy 3:10-end (more of St. Paul’s “last charge”, leading up to the epistle lesson at Holy Communion)