Thursday sunset

An Evening Prayer Collect

Lord 

Jesus, 

stay 

with 

us 

for evening is at hand and  the day is past…  

Richard Hooker, Anglican Priest and theologian, 1553 – 1600

                                                  Psalm 71:5

              You 

              are 

              my 

              hope, 

              O 

              Lord 

              God, 

              my 

              confidence 

              since I was young.

Grant that we 

may maintain 

that middle way, 

not as a compromise 

for the sake of peace,

 but as a comprehension 

for the sake of truth

          -Collect

Wednesday evening

                                                     Psalm 119:76 

          Let 

       your 

     loving-

 kindness

             be 

           my 

 comfort,

              as 

           you 

         have 

promised 

The new name for today is All Faithful Departed. I prefer All Souls.

                                                      Psalm 72:6 

 God shall come down like rain on the mown field, like showers that water the earth.  

Happy Dia de los Muertos!

All Saints Day

                    Based on the collect

_you

 have

 knit 

 us

 to-

 gether 

 in one communion and fellowship 

 in the mystical body of your Son_______________ 

All Saints Day

                                               Saints and Seasons 

It’s all a matter of balance, isn't it? Which is hard for an all or nothing person like me. Luckily for us, the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal “branch of the Jesus movement” as Michael, our  Presiding Bishop, calls us, is often called the Via Media – the middle way. Our goal as people and as a Church is to thread the needle between two opposites, two extremes, worshiping and living in that tension which is “not a compromise, but a comprehension” between the Word, our Biblical Protestant focus, and the Catholic insistence on the primacy of the sacraments; between rational knowing and intuitive longing; between words and silence. But it goes further, seeking the middle way between our heart and our head, between being and doing, between the intellect and the soul. We live in a world that insists on our making binary choices - this or that. And so often, that is false choice. Our answer is always Both. 

One of the things I really liked about having one service this summer was being together, holding hands at the Lord’s Prayer with those I do not see on a regular basis, but love.  It was a wonderful mix of Rite I  and Rite 2, a weaving together of contemporary and traditional.  I loved saying again the words of The Prayer of Humble Access right before Communion, words so familiar to my childhood that they had seeped into my deep memory, as Bill Mahedy would say. 

“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.” 

I grew up in an era when the focus was heavily on sinfulness, on unworthiness, oftentimes lopsided on the breast-beating side. Luckily, in the years since Vatican 2, the focus has swung back to the Center. I am made in God’s image and so I am good, but I have misused that goodness and have turned it to my own selfishness. Both/and.  If I am the focus, the world quickly becomes out of focus, for the simple reason that I am not God. It doesn’t mean that I am not worth anything but I surely am not everything; t’s a matter of balance. 

Not being “worthy to gather up the crumbs under your table” used to sound harsh to me.  (“See, you’re no good!” the dark side of pride whispers seductively.) Maybe that’s what happens when you come in on the middle of things.  Because,  it turns out that those words do not stand alone, but are mitigated by those first words: “we do not presume to come…. trusting in own our righteousness,” which we know to be lacking.  We come not because we are faithful, but because God is faithful: we come by invitation of Another.

And come I do, week by week and year by year, trying to keep my balance and often falling to one side or another, alternately thinking too much of myself, or not enough. But if, when, I don't get it right, I have a lot of company. And that's the whole point of knowing myself as a child of God: I am not unique. I am not alone. 

I’m not better than you, I’m not worse than you, I am one of you. I'm not the best  or the worst or the only - I'm part of the whole. 

And All Saints Day is a reminder that we live in a family that is as long as human history and stretches forward as far as we can see, and farther. And that God is all in all. Only in God are all the tensions and opposites resolved, relaxed, removed. Only there, in the One who created me, called and redeemed me and welcomes me home can I find “a safe lodgings, a holy rest, and peace at the last.” Amen.                                       

Louise Buck 

The November  2016  Gospel at David's 

 

All Saints Day!

                               Hebrews 12:1 

 since we are 

 surrounded 

 by so great 

 a cloud of 

 witnesses, 

 let us also 

 lay aside 

 every weight 

 and the sin 

 that clings 

 so closely, 

  and let us run 

    with perseverance 

      the race that is set before us, 

          looking to Jesus the pioneer 

              and perfecter of our faith