FROM THE RECTOR: ENCOUNTERING JESUS

When Jesus read from Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21), he was the only person in the room who had the text in front of him. Until the industrialization of printing, “listening” remained a normative experience across many settings of life. It’s not surprising that the act of listening is significant in all of the gospels. Two examples: Jesus concludes the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-9; Matthew 13:1-23; Luke 8:4-15) with the words, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” and in John Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

FROM FATHER SMITH: “A BROKEN AND CONTRITE SPIRIT”

Sydney Harris (1917-1986) was a journalist and syndicated columnist whose work, at one point, appeared in more than 200 daily newspapers. In his column, “Strictly Personal,” and in a recurring feature entitled, “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things,” he shared with his readers various discoveries, insights, observations, and bits of wisdom. He was particularly good at constructing the short, terse, well-balanced sentence that said a great deal in very few words (not a bad strategy when your typical reader is reading your column while eating her breakfast cereal). One of Harris’s aphorisms, often quoted, goes like this: “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”

FROM THE RECTOR: REASSESSING LENT

Nicholas Russo is a liturgical scholar and an assistant undergraduate dean at Notre Dame. While looking online to see if his dissertation, “The Origins of Lent” (Notre Dame, 2009), had been published—it has not, I discovered a short essay he wrote last year for the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University. It’s called, “The Early History of Lent.” Russo begins with what we thought we knew about Lent just a few decades ago and continues with what we know about the origins of Lent today. I quote from the last paragraph:

FROM THE RECTOR: PREPARATION FOR EASTER

The fundamental purpose of the gospels is to proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything else is secondary to this Good News. For all of their commonality, each of the evangelists writes about Jesus very much in his own way. If the purpose of Lent is to prepare to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter, one way to prepare could be to try to hear again what Mark, Matthew, Luke and John wanted us to know about Jesus so we could have faith in his death and resurrection. If I may make a suggestion for you for Lent: read a gospel, and then read another. Keep reading—they aren’t long—until you bring Mark, Matthew, Luke and John (read in this order) to Holy Week.

FROM THE RECTOR: “MOST HOLY OF SEASONS”

This morning when I read an advertisement which describes Lent as “the most holy of seasons,” I read it again to make sure I was reading it correctly. I was—and it made me wonder if someone had unintentionally said something about his or her experience of the church year. Lent “more holy” than Easter, Christmas or Advent? Then I thought about what Saint Mary’s will be like on March 5, 2014, the First Day of Lent.

FROM THE RECTOR: LOOKING AHEAD TO LENT

For some years now I have been thinking about how we might once again make use of what the present Prayer Book calls “The Great Litany.” Its principal governing rubric states it is, “To be said or sung, kneeling, or standing, or in procession; before the Eucharist or after the Collects of Morning or Evening Prayer; or separately, especially in Lent and on Rogation Days” (The Book of Common Prayer [1979] 148).

FROM THE RECTOR: SERMON ON THE MOUNT

We missed the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount on Sunday, February 2, because the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord took precedence. Our Sunday gospels will continue to be from this sermon until the Sunday before Lent when the gospel is the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. The Sermon on the Mount is the longest of five speeches Jesus gives in Matthew. It begins famously, “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 5:1).

FROM THE RECTOR: CANDLEMAS 2014

The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, commonly called Candlemas, is celebrated on Sunday this year. The Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold, XXV Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, will be with us for the 11:00 AM service, Blessing of Candles, Procession & Solemn Pontifical Mass. Blessing of Candles & Said Mass will be celebrated at the Saturday Vigil Mass and at the 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM Sunday services.

FROM THE RECTOR: JUST HUMANITY, NOT AGENDA

Last Sunday I sang the gospel at the Solemn Mass. I don’t get to do that very often. When the choir finished singing the acclamation, I sang the announcement and censed the book in the usual way as the congregation responded, “Glory to you, Lord Christ.” Then, I froze. It took me several moments to recover myself. What I saw printed in the book was clearly wrong. I couldn’t think fast enough to change it—or to recall exactly what I had read when I celebrated the 9:00 AM Mass earlier in the morning. So, I went ahead with it, “The day after John had baptized Jesus . . . ”

FROM THE RECTOR: ECUMENICAL RELATIONSHIPS

Last week while preparing to preach on the baptism of Christ I ended up pulling out a lot of books from my shelves, among them an important study of baptism by an evangelical scholar, Baptism in the New Testament (1962) by George Raymond Beasley-Murray (1916-2000). Beasley-Murray was British and a Baptist minister. He taught at seminaries in England, Switzerland and the United States. The book remains a significant advocate for what is called “believer’s baptism.” What that means can be a rather large subject, but it always means that only those who are old enough to confess their faith (in other words, not infants and young children) can be baptized.

FROM THE RECTOR: RADICAL CHANGE

Until 1928 Episcopalians never heard an account of Jesus’ baptism on Sunday mornings or at celebrations of baptism. For the first time in the Prayer Book tradition, the 1928 American book appointed Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism for the Second Sunday after Epiphany. Massey Shepherd described this as “the original Epiphany gospel” (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary [1950] 111-12)—and certainly it is one of the gospels anciently associated with the feast.

FROM THE RECTOR: EPIPHANY 2014

Epiphany is Monday, January 6, this year. If you are new to the Episcopal Church or Saint Mary’s, you will want to know it’s one of the great days of the year, a “principal feast.” Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson write that the earliest mention of the feast is from Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 210) [The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity (2011) 137). In the Christian West it comes to be associated with Matthew’s account of the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:1-12). But Jesus’ birth, baptism, and first miracle at Cana also have ancient associations with the celebration. It’s a day when many friends of this parish join us.