Pentecost 2020

Seasonal Journal Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Colorado Springs, CO

Pentecost 2020

1 On the cover: Pentecost Icon, c. 1497, Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery, Russia,

Table of Contents

The Liturgical Season 3 by Joan Klingel Ray

Is Pentecost the Birthday of the Church, or the Church’s Graduation? 5 by The Rev. John Drymon

Pentecost: “Tongues of ‘Us’ and Angels” 8 by The Rev. Sally Ziegler

The Politics of Pentecost: Embracing Diversity in a World of Conformity 10 by Gary Alan Taylor

Waiting in Hope with the Shamed and Rejected: A Sermon for the Feast of the Visitation 12 by The Rev. Dr. Judith Jones

Living our Baptism 15 by The Rev. Paul Lautenschlager

History of Our Prayer Book 18 by Mark Stewart Ross

The Holy Trinity 22 by The Rev. Kathleen Liles

The Feast of the Transfiguration: A Story of Revelation 25 by The Rev. Leslie Scoopmire

Change: A Sermon on Transfiguration 27 by The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Henry Martyn: “The first great missionary of the Church after Boniface” 29 by Scott D. Ayler

George Herbert’s “Denial”: A Poem that Models a Spiritual Truth 32 by Joan Klingel Ray

Christ: The King of Costly Grace 36 by The Rev. Julie Wakelee

Editor: Joan Klingel Ray, PhD Editorial Assistant: Susan Defosset Layout and Design: Max Pearson Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church at Tejon and Monument Streets (Nave), 601 N. Tejon St. (Office), Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Tel: (719) 328-1125 www.gssepiscopal.org The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson, Rector The Rev. Claire Esler, Curate (beginning June 2020) Pastor Jennifer Williamson, Youth Minister

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2 The Liturgical Season: This issue treats Pentecost (fifty days after Easter, the Pentecost and Ordinary Time. During this seventh Sunday after Easter). period, we will also celebrate the feast days of Trinity Sunday, The Visitation, The Pentecost: Transfiguration, and conclude with Christ Pentecost, derived from the Greek word, the King Sunday. For many terms, see pentecostē, meaning fiftieth, as in the fiftieth [https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary /all]. day, is a major feast day in the Episcopal Liturgical Year. Marking the end of the To Celebrate Religiously: Easter Season, Pentecost in 2020 falls on The Hebrew root-verb hagag May 31 and celebrates the outpouring of the חגג hagag describes “a gathering of people in order to Holy Spirit on the Apostles, fifty days after celebrate or hold a feast, specifically any of the resurrection of Christ, as told in Acts the three main pilgrimage feasts that Israel 2:1. In the British Isles, Pentecost Sunday is was to celebrate” (Exodus 23:14-16). called Whitsunday. (Abarim’s Online Biblical Hebrew In Acts 1, we read that the Apostles, Dictionary http://www.abarim- along with “certain women, including Mary, publications.com/Dictionary/ht/ht-g- the mother of Jesus,” were gathered in a g.html#.XI0SjxNKiGg Retrieved April 3, room, praying. The second chapter recounts 2020). When we celebrate in a religious how a sudden gust of wind filled the room, sense, we are honoring a day with solemn and “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared rites. In the Church, we celebrate feast days. among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Feast Days and Movable Feasts: Spirit and began to speak in other languages, Feasts in the Church are days of celebration as the Spirit gave them the ability” (Acts with solemn rites. “The seven principal 2:3-4). Some scholars interpret the speaking feasts (Easter Day, Ascension Day, the Day in tongues as symbolic of the Church’s of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints' worldwide reach. For this reason, Pentecost Day, Christmas Day, and the Epiphany) take is frequently called the “birthday of the precedence over any other day or Christian Church.” The BCP identifies observance” (Book of Common Prayer, 15). Pentecost Sunday as “especially appropriate Church Feasts are all Sundays, the fixed for baptism” (312). dates of Christmas (December 25) and Epiphany (January 6), and the “movable Liturgical Color: feasts.” Movable feasts on the liturgical On Pentecost, the liturgical color for the calendar are feast days that do not fall on the clergy’s vestments and the paraments same date each year. Easter is a movable (hangings on the altar, lectern, pulpit) is red, feast, as it falls anytime between March 22 symbolizing the tongues of fire as the Holy and April 25. Easter’s date determines Ash Spirit descended. Wednesday (forty weekdays before Easter), Ascension Day (forty days after Easter), and

3 Feast of the Visitation of Mary: season in the church year. We will see in our This feast falls on May 31 and celebrates church bulletins that Sundays are named in Mary’s visit to Elizabeth as recorded in relationship to Pentecost: for example, the Luke 1. In this chapter, verses 46-55, Mary Second Sunday after Pentecost, the Seventh recites the song of praise known as the Sunday after Pentecost, etc. “Ordinary” is Magnificat. likely derived from the word ordinal, meaning counted. Ordinary Time—the Trinity Sunday: season that begins after Pentecost Sunday— Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after is the time of year when we are not Pentecost: June 7, 2020. It is the only feast commemorating the major events in Jesus’ day in the church year that commemorates a life (his birth at Christmas; his death on doctrine—the Trinity—rather than a person Good Friday; his resurrection on Easter). or event. Trinity Sunday is the “Feast that Instead, we are reading Scripture about the celebrates ‘the one and equal glory’ of life Jesus led during his time on earth in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, ‘in Trinity of terms of what he said and did. Persons and in Unity of Being’” (Episcopal Glossary, 528; BCP, 380). The Liturgical Color: Green is the liturgical color after Pentecost The Transfiguration of Our Lord: Sunday. Green is the color of living, The Feast of the Transfiguration, when growing things, the color of hope and Peter, James, and John accompany Jesus renewal as we celebrate the Holy Spirit in upon a mountain and witness his face our lives. We are growing in our Christian become radiant with glory and his lives as we learn about the life of Jesus clothes turn dazzlingly bright, is celebrated Christ. on August 6th. God’s voice then proclaims from a cloud, “This is my Son, whom I Christ the King Sunday: love.” We read about this miracle in Celebrating the rule of Christ over all Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, and Luke creation, Christ the King Sunday is the final 9:28-26. 2 Peter 1:1-8 also refers to it. Sunday of the Liturgical Year: November 22, 2020. Pope Pius XI originally instituted Ordinary Time: it in 1925 as a “celebration of the all- The term “Ordinary Time” does not appear embracing authority of Christ, which will in the Book of Common Prayer; however, it lead mankind to seek the ‘Peace of Christ’ in is addressed in the Episcopal Glossary. The the ‘Kingdom of Christ’” (Oxford term is used in the Roman Catholic Church Dictionary of the Christian Church). Christ to describe that period after the Day of the King Sunday is the final Sunday before Pentecost through the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of the new liturgical Advent, which is the beginning of a new year, which will be Year B, on Sunday, liturgical year. Ordinary Time, also known November 29, 2020. as Early and Late Pentecost, is the longest

4 The Reverend John Drymon began his ministry with Trinity Parish in Findlay, Ohio on June 1, 2016. A native of Arkansas, he is a graduate of Colgate University and the General Theological Seminary in New York City. As a student, he traveled all over the world, including to the Middle East, China, and Pakistan. After graduating, he served as Deacon-in-Charge, and after his ordination, as Priest-in-Charge of St. Paul’s in Batesville, Arkansas, until being elected rector of the parish in 2010. John has focused particularly on pastoral care and adult Christian education during his tenure at both parishes. He has served as secretary of the Diocese of Arkansas and dean of its Northeast Convocation and on the Diocesan Council, the Commission on Constitution Canons, and the Board of Examining Chaplains in the Diocese of Ohio. In his time off, John enjoys reading, fly- fishing, exercising, and cooking. John is married to Annie Stricklin, who was born in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in Texas, New Orleans, and Arkansas. A graduate of Kenyon College, she has since worked as a freelance editor and fact-checker for publishing houses and private clients, and for libraries in Little Rock, Batesville, and Findlay. She, too, is an avid reader, a lover of the arts, and a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and plays. John and Annie were married in the spring of 2013. They have two nephews, a goddaughter, and four cats.

Is Pentecost the Birthday of the Church, or the Church’s Graduation? A Sermon Preached on Whitsunday, June 10, 2019 by The Rev. John Drymon, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church, Findlay, Ohio

Acts 2:1-21 Romans 8:14-7 John 14:8-17 (25-27)

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I saw a meme online earlier this week We often refer to Pentecost as “the that often gets shared around this time of birthday of the Church,” but why? There year, showing a toddler in a tuxedo looking seem other likely candidates. Take very insistent and saying, “If Pentecost is the Christmas: The Son of God is born in a birthday of the church . . . I expect to see manger in Bethlehem. He’s surrounded by some cake!” his Blessed Mother and her spouse, by

5 shepherds and angels, and all are engaged in direction is still provided, but it’s likely to reverent worship. That sounds like it might be to a different degree. A little more (or a have been the first Christian worship lot more) independence is expected of the service, the beginning of the church as we child and a little more (or a lot more) trust is know it—the church’s birth. Or, for that required of the parent. matter, what about Easter? Christ is risen from the dead, and it is by his resurrection Christ ascended into heaven [May 21, that the community of the disciples and all Ascension Day]. God is no longer Christians who follow are given new life. experienced in quite the same way as when a What’s more, it’s not only the faithful, but man named Jesus, who is God, was walking all of creation that is profoundly changed, is around in ancient Palestine, and you could radically re-created, by Christ’s conquest of touch him. The initial, natural response to death and his victory over the grave. It such a reality is the response of the seems like the church is born, at least in a disciples: feel abandoned, get frightened, sense, fifty days prior to Pentecost, if not lock yourselves up in a room in Jerusalem thirty-three years prior. just like when you thought Jesus was dead forever. The good news of Pentecost is that Perhaps something different from the God has not abandoned us at all. He is still “birthday metaphor” might capture the present and active in our lives and in the life essence of Pentecost more fully, or at least of the Church, albeit in a new and different in a new and interesting way. Maybe it’s just way. He still supports us; the support is just because it’s that time of year, but I wonder if a little different. Direction is still provided; Pentecost might be more like the it’s just in a different way. A lot more “graduation day of the church.” independence is expected, and a lot more trust is required. You see, it’s a little like Graduations have been on many of growing up—graduating and moving out our minds of late. Several of our own have and the rest. God’s still here; it’s just received degrees and diplomas in the last different, because we’ve grown up a little. few weeks. Graduations tend to affect the relationships between parent and child. We miss this if we take a purely Often, it’s the immediate precursor functional view of the Holy Spirit. We’ll to moving out, that bittersweet moment in explore this a little more next week, on which a child goes off to college or moves Trinity Sunday, when we confront the truth into a new apartment and gets a job or gets that the Trinity is not about division of shipped off with the service or whatever. labor, but, rather, the nature of relationship. For now, let’s just take the Holy Spirit as an The relationship between parent and example. We miss the point of Pentecost and child is changed. Hopefully, it remains a the Church’s life after it, if we think about supportive relationship for the child, but it’s the Holy Spirit entirely in terms of what He a very different kind of support. Hopefully, 6 does. We can start to think about the Holy must, come back to church week-by-week Spirit as some obscure agent who and feed on the goodness of God in the accomplishes tasks. He’s kind of like the sacrament, but we don’t have the luxury of universal translator in Star Trek (you know, staying put anymore. We don’t have the the device that let the crew of the Enterprise luxury of hanging out in Galilee with Jesus talk to Vulcans and Klingons and the like in all the time. We’ve got to get back into the more-or-less proper English). That’s kind of mission field, beyond these walls, to get on what he does on the first Pentecost. He’s with the work God has given us to do also kind of like a prayer partner. Paul says he cries, “Abba, Father” within us to bear The blessed assurance of God’s witness that we are children of God continued presence, which is the Holy Spirit, [Romans 8:14-17]. He’s also kind of like a rousted the apostles out of their fear and counselor. That’s what the word Advocate their complacency. It got them to grow up, (or Paraclete) from this morning’s Gospel to go out, and to spread the Gospel. That is means. He comforts us when we’re in pain the promise and the challenge of Pentecost (like a therapeutic counselor), and he for each of us and for the Church as a whole. intercedes for us in the court of heaven We’ve got the freedom to do God’s work (like legal counsel). and the promise of his presence. When we’re dismissed from Church, we’re But as I said, if we get bogged down dismissed with marching orders (pay in tasks that we tend to attribute to the Holy attention at the end of the service). Let’s Spirit, we miss the larger point. The actually make a point of “going in peace to important truth about Pentecost is that God love and serve the Lord,” of “going forth in is still with us, but not in the same way He the name of Christ” to do his will, of “going used to be. The Father has given us a little out into the world, rejoicing in the power of more line. God, the Holy Spirit, still directs the Spirit.” We may be assured that when us, but we’ve grown up and we’ve got to get we do, God will not abandon us, but he will on with the Christian life as adults. We can give us the room to do his work ourselves, if come back home from college for Christmas we have the courage and conviction to try. and sit at the dinner table for a while, but we can’t linger forever anymore. We can, and Amen.

7 Tongues of “Us” and Angels “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Corinthians 13:1) A Pentecost Sermon by The Rev. Sally Ziegler, Deacon

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; the battle began, David, speaking as a father, sent Ephesians 4:25-5:2, out the word that his son was to be dealt with Psalm 130 “gently.” Too late—the angry words had already spread their virus and fueled the killing of May the words of my mouth and the Absalom as he hung from the tree. And then the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable to pain of regret as we hear David: “O my son, you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. would I had died instead of you” [2 Samuel Amen. [Psalm 19] 18:33]. A word spoken in haste can never be Familiar words. All my life I have heard taken back preachers pray for this blessing before their How many times have I—and probably sermons. It is a gift that sometimes I have also many of you—regretted something spoken in a prayed in everyday life because I tend to talk a moment of rage or because of our own hurt lot, and we all know what power to hurt or heal feelings or to cover up some misdeed. How often our words can have. And now we are living in a do we massage the truth a little? A classic time when angry bitter words are thrown around example from my family happened years ago: We with abandon. had two little boys aged three and five, hopefully The gift of language is in itself a miracle so named for apostles. The younger was the it’s no wonder that we so often misuse it. In the stubborn one, and he had no interest at all in Book of Proverbs [25:11] there is this lovely being toilet trained. One day I saw that he had wet verse: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold himself, and I said crossly, “Matthew, you wet in pictures of silver.” The mental picture is your pants again.” He looked at me and said with immediately calming—close your eyes, turn off assurance, “Not me—Andrew did it!” Recently a whatever device you’ve got, and imagine this parishioner who had been part of a class we had peaceful scene. Take a breath. And then we get on Christian child-rearing said that the best advice more good directions in our reading from she ever had was my statement that all teen-agers Ephesians [4:29]: “let no evil talk come out of lied most of the time. And now both she and I are your mouth.” Does this mean no talk of hate, no thankful for the grown-up—well, really middle dirty jokes, maybe no gossip that undermines aged—solid citizens who were those problems in friendships? Maybe bringing up inflammatory the past. politics? What can we say? Here’s what it says: Unlike the progress and development of “no evil talk…but only what is useful for building most children and generally accepted customs of up as there is a need so that your words may give language, nowadays in this time of mass and grace to those who hear.” unending communication we seem to have come As we continue the story in Samuel about to a time where language has become a weapon in David and his son Absalom, we see the any disagreement, and the lies that are told seem frightening power of language. Father and son shameless and often destructive. Think of had been caught up in Absalom’s revolt against Absalom hanging in a tree as the result of past his father, and now they are really at war. But as verbal attacks between father and son. How fitting

8 to read these wise words in the Letter to the model of life that will strengthen us to “be kind to Ephesians: “Putting away falsehood, let us all one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are another” as we have been forgiven [Ephesians members of one another” [4:25]. And then these 4:32]. One way we can begin practicing this commonsense words accepting our human nature: kindness is by listening to the other person, be it a “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go babbling toddler, a cashier at the store, a teen-ager down on your anger” [4:26]. with a question. Listening is a rare gift in today’s Some of us seem to collect and save up rushed tempo, so slowing down also gives us time resentment of old hurts and insults—that’s what to hear the fullness of the other person’s thoughts. led to Absalom’s death. Scripture realizes that as In Psalm 130 we hear another reason for the flawed human beings we will be angry; we will importance of listening: “Out of the depths have I tell falsehoods, but we are members of one called you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; let your another. If we hold on to our bad feelings, they ears consider well the voice of my supplication.” will make room for the devil—that’s when we lie When Jesus promises us that he is the bread of awake counting up our reasons to be mad, life let us hear that: if we listen, we will not repeating our feelings of unfair treatment that lead hunger or thirst; if we can learn to stop to the desire for retaliation. Is payback really a complaining among ourselves and remember that healing act? How timely is today’s warning to we are members of one another. put away these destructive feelings: “bitterness, We as Episcopalians are people of the Book wrath, anger, wrangling and slander and malice” of Common Prayer that contains some of the most [Ephesians 4:31]. The very air of our country beautiful English language in the world. Aside seems polluted with name-calling. The headlines from enriching our worship, it keeps our history every day are filled with this darkness. alive. If I may, here’s one more family story that Sometimes the news reports on quotations illustrates the influence that listening to lovely from our public figures that are totally language can have. About 30 years ago my contradictory to what they said yesterday, while daughter called me to say she and her new friend the personal degrading seems an accepted part of were going to get tattoos the next day. Back on political life. How can we find models for our the east coast I was horrified and began to list all young people to learn the art of respectful debates the dangers: hepatitis, infections, morning after of differing points of view? Another story about regrets, what it would look like when she was 50. our sons seems to me an example of many of Nothing changed her mind, and so finally I said, today’s arguments. The boys were then about six “Oh, honey, I beseech you not to do this.” When and eight, and I heard their voices getting louder we hung up, I thought she was still determined, so and louder, so I went to referee and asked what I was amazed to hear later that she had backed the matter was. Matthew, crying with rage, yelled, out. When her friend asked her why, she said, “Andrew says it’s not Tuesday! I know it is “Because my mom beseeched me.” Thanks be to Tuesday.” When I asked why that made him so God and to Thomas Cranmer’s wonderful mad, he yelled, “He says it’s September!” All language in the Prayer Book. that misguided energy seems very like today’s Now we will go out into a world filled with debates except that nobody wants to admit that noise, disputes, crudeness and rudeness, and evil there are sometimes two right answers. talk. And so, let us take with us time to listen to While the world around us feels like it’s our neighbors and to speak with kindness as soaked in destructive competitiveness and toxic beloved children of God and members of one partisan divisions, we as Christians are given a another. Amen. 9

Gary Alan Taylor grew up in Arkansas but has lived in Colorado since 2001. He, his wife Jennifer, and their three children are active members of Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. Gary Alan graduated from Milligan College, a Christian liberal arts institution in Tennessee, and earned an M.A. in European History from East Tennessee State University. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of The Culture Translator, a weekly online tool to assist parents in navigating the pop-culture world of their teens, and is currently Co-Founder of The Sophia Society, an organization seeking to invite, inspire, and nurture individuals into deeper union with God by embodying the radical love of Christ in and for the world.

The Politics of Pentecost: Embracing and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). A list of Diversity in a World of Conformity every tribe from the Japhethites, Hamites, by Gary Alan Taylor and Semites is mentioned along with their corresponding languages. And yet, in If there is one unifying, yet chapter 11 we read: overlooked theme running from Genesis to Revelation, it’s this: the people of God The whole world had one almost always find themselves living in, yet language and a common being at odds with, the empires of this speech. As people moved world. From Egypt to Babylon, Persia to eastward, they found a plain in Rome, the clash between the Kingdom of Shinar and settled there. They God and the kingdoms of this world said to each other, “Come, let’s provides the backdrop to the larger biblical make bricks and bake them narrative. One could argue the Scriptural thoroughly”…Then they said, witness is a divine manifesto against empire. “Come, let us build ourselves a For our purposes, an empire is any city, with a tower that reaches superpower that believes it has the manifest to the heavens, so that we may destiny to conquer, control, and conform the make a name for ourselves” world into its image. Where God has blessed (Genesis 11:1-4). unity amid diversity, the empire forces unity at the expense of diversity. In the Hebrew What happened to the multiplicity of Scriptures Babylon becomes the prophetic, languages and tribal diversity? Why is the iconic image of imperial ideology, but we “whole world” suddenly speaking one find imperial origins back at Babel. common language? There seems to be more to this short story than meets the eye. To At the beginning of Genesis chapter start, ancient Near East towers or ziggurats 10, where we read of Noah’s numerous were generally built by enslaved descendants, we learn Noah’s sons obeyed populations. George Orwell has even God’s command “to be fruitful and multiply

10 suggested empires are in essence, “nothing a beautiful blessing to be embraced. The but mechanisms for exploiting cheap Holy Spirit still unites us amid our diversity, colored labor.”1 And much like today, wedding believers worldwide to share in the language was a tool of imperial coercion, one, living Body of Christ. Divisions that forcing indigenous populations to abandon once caused fear and prejudice are overcome their native tongue and speak the language by love. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas of empire. Such forced assimilation, whether reminds us, “We are new people who have in ancient Mesopotamia or on the plains of been gathered from the nations to remind the the American West, seeks the same world that we are in fact one people.”2 endgame, the eradication of native identity, replacing it with a totalizing imperial But from Brexit to border walls, the identity. The sin of Babel was the arrogant empire is striking back. Harvard professor imposition of human-made conformity in a Harvey Cox writes, “We don’t just live in 3 world divinely created for diversity. In this the empire, the empire lives in us,” forming mythic tale of Babel, God comes down and domination systems and ways of life that blesses the people by returning diversity to a exclude, oppress, and squash any dissenting world forced into conformity. voice. Nationalism is on the rise. Fear of the other and prejudice toward the stranger is That’s why during this season of encouraging otherwise rational individuals Pentecost we celebrate the gift of diversity, to believe race, religion, language, and not only within the Episcopal Church, but national distinctions are worth killing for. within the global Kingdom of God. In Acts As citizens in the Kingdom of God, who just we read that the disciples were huddled happen to find ourselves living in a global together in one place when suddenly the superpower, our task isn’t to make the Holy Spirit descended upon them, sending empire great again, but rather to make the them out to proclaim the Gospel. Church countercultural again. In the words Miraculously, everyone from Parthia, of Old Testament scholar Walter Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia all Brueggemann, we are called “to articulate “heard in their own language” (Acts 2:6), the alternative world that God has promised, subverting Rome’s use of and the dominant and that God is birthing before our very 4 language of Latin as the imperial linguistic eyes.” st choice. Pentecost unifies people from every Like those 1 -century Apostles, the tongue, tribe, nation, gender, sexual Holy Spirit continues to move us onward orientation, and nation without forcing and outward in open embrace. As Pentecost anyone to give up their distinctiveness. people living in the empire’s world, may we continue to learn that viable unity must As citizens in God’s global Kingdom, always find a way to include the very people diversity isn’t a problem to be overcome, but we prefer to exclude. Amen.

11 Endnotes 1 Ed. Note: The Collected Essays of George Orwell. Eds., Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. Harcourt, Brace and World: 1968. 2 Stanley Hauerwas. In Good Company: The Church as Polis. University of Notre Dame Press: 1995. https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_Good_Company/FV0FDgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=We+are+new+people+who+have +been+gathered+from+the+nations+to+remind+the+world+that+we+are+in+fact+one+people&pg=PT156&printsec=frontcover Stanley Hauerwas (1940-), PhD, Yale, an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual, was a longtime professor at Duke University, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. 3 Ed. Note: Until retiring in 2009, Harvey Cox (1929-) was Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. 4 Ed. Note: Walter Brueggemann (1933-), an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, has held the title of William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA, since his retirement in 2003. A prominent scholar of the Old Testament and prolific author, he argues that the Church must provide a counterweight to “The dominant script in our society . . . of technological therapeutic military consumerism”: this is the third of his “19 Theses.” https://www.religion- online.org/article/counterscript/ Retrieved April 29, 2020. See the transcript of his speech delivered at Sojourners in 2018 at sojo.net where he states, “And the third task of prophetic imagination is to articulate the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is birthing before our very eyes. If we have eyes to see it.” Accessed April 29, 2020.

The Rev. Dr. Judith Jones is vicar of both St. Luke’s by the Sea Episcopal Church, Waldport, Oregon, and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Newport, Oregon. She earned her M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary and her Ph.D. in New Testament with secondary emphases in Old Testament and in Preaching at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Judith sees the Divine in the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys hiking, camping, and kayaking, especially when joined by her husband Brian, her daughter, her two grown sons and their wives, and her grandson. As a pianist and singer, she worships and serves through music as well as through preaching and tending to those in need. Born in India to medical missionary parents, Judith grew up with a strong faith. During her first nine years in India, she saw the reality of poverty and hunger in the faces of the people around her. Some children had little to eat, while others (including herself) had plenty. Her early experiences made her aware of social injustice and sparked a desire to alleviate suffering through action and prayer. Before coming to Oregon, Judith was a professor of religion at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, and priest-in-charge at the local Episcopal Church. In addition to teaching classes in biblical studies and other religious topics, she took small groups of students to Honduras, the Dominican Republic, or Costa Rica for a service-learning course entitled “The Church in Latin America.” The course focused on the Church’s role in combatting poverty and systemic social injustice (https://www.ststephenepiscopal.org/our-priest.htm)

Waiting in Hope with the Shamed and The intimate conversation that Rejected, follows portrays Jesus as more important A Sermon for the Feast of the Visitation than John. It also shows God already at by the Rev. Dr. Judith Jones work to overturn the world’s structures and

Luke 1:39-45, (46-55): Having learned expectations. The spotlight shines on Mary from the angel that she will give birth to and Elizabeth, two lowly and shamed ones the Son of God, Mary hurries to visit her through whom God has chosen to begin the pregnant relative Elizabeth in the hill transformation of the world. country.

12 Women—so often overlooked or Mary is blessed not only for her status ignored both in society at large and in as the mother of the Lord, but also for her biblical narratives—have the only speaking trust in God’s promise. Our English roles in this vignette. Mary’s first words translations obscure the fact that Elizabeth prompt an immediate, silent, response from uses more than one word for “blessed.” Elizabeth’s unborn child. John leaps, When she pronounces Mary “blessed . . . acknowledging both Mary’s presence and among women” and proclaims that the fruit the significance of the child she carries in of Mary’s womb is blessed, she uses her womb. John’s reaction to Mary’s voice eulogemene/o, a term emphasizing that both fulfills Gabriel’s prophecy, “even before his present and future generations will praise birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” and speak well of her and her child.1 But (Luke 1:15). Already John points to the when Elizabeth says, “Blessed is she who coming one. believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (v. 45), Though Luke clearly signals that the she uses the word makaria, the same term unborn child’s leaping is prompted by the that Jesus uses to bless people in the Spirit, it is Elizabeth, John’s mother, who Beatitudes.2 We might well translate takes on the role of prophet by speaking the Elizabeth’s words as “Happy is she who prophetic words in this scene. She is filled believed….” Mary is blessed because with the Holy Spirit and proclaims what despite all expectations, her social status has Mary has not yet told her, and what is not been reversed: she will be honored rather yet visible to the eye: Mary is pregnant. than shamed for bearing this child. But she Furthermore, through the Spirit she knows has also been blessed with divine joy—with who Mary’s child will be, for she calls Mary beatitude—because she has believed that “the mother of my Lord.” Her prophecy will God is able to do what God promises to do. soon be fulfilled when her own son, John the Baptist, prepares the way for the Lord. When Elizabeth says, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a Elizabeth not only prophesies but fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the blesses. By declaring both Mary and the Lord,” she implicitly contrasts Mary’s trust fruit of Mary’s womb “blessed,” she begins in God’s power and promise with her own a series of blessings that weave through husband Zechariah’s skeptical questioning. Luke’s birth narrative and intensify its tone Zechariah asked for proof that the angel’s of joy, delight, and praise. Mary, Zechariah, word was true. Mary asked for an and Simeon will all add their blessings to the explanation of what was going to happen to chain, praising God for what God is doing at her, and then gave her willing consent. this moment in history and recognizing that Zechariah, the religious professional, those who are privileged to be instruments doubted God, but Mary, the peasant girl, of God’s saving work have been richly believed, and her trust in God’s word blessed.

13 opened the door for God to bless her and to celebrates her, treating her as more bless the whole world through her. Elizabeth honorable than herself. Thus, the pregnancy celebrates Mary’s willingness to say “yes” that might have brought Mary shame brings to God. joy and honor instead. When Elizabeth welcomes Mary, she practices the same kind By greeting Mary with honor, of inclusive love that Jesus will show to Elizabeth overturns social expectations. prostitutes and sinners. She sees beyond the Mary is an unmarried pregnant woman. She shamefulness of Mary’s situation to the might expect social judgment, shame, even reality of God’s love at work even among ostracism from her older kinswoman. Yet those whom society rejects and excludes. Elizabeth knows from her own experience the cost of being shamed and excluded. In Elizabeth’s words and actions invite her culture a woman’s primary purpose in us to reflect on our own openness to the life was to bear children, so as an elderly ways that God chooses to act in our world. infertile wife she had endured a lifetime of What is God doing through unexpected being treated as a failure. Her response to people in our society today? Where is God her miraculous pregnancy emphasizes that at work through people whom our neighbors God’s grace has reversed her social status: and fellow church members often exclude or “This is what the Lord has done for me treat as shameful? Will we listen to the when he looked favorably on me and took Spirit’s prompting when the bearers of away the disgrace I have endured among my God’s new reality show up on our doorstep? people” (Luke 1:25). At long last, in her old May we, like Elizabeth and Mary, age, she is an honorable married woman, trust that God is coming to save and free us. pregnant with her husband’s son. May we, like them, give thanks that God has Elizabeth continues the pattern of taken away our shame and then respond to social reversal by opening her arms and her God’s love by welcoming the shameful. home to a relative whom her neighbors May we, like them, become a would expect her to reject. Instead of community that supports each other as we shaming Mary, she welcomes, blesses, and hope and wait

(This article was first published on WorkingPreacher at the following link: http://www.WorkingPreacher.org. Thanks to Working Preaching for allowing us to publish it in our Seasonal Journal.)

Endnotes 1 In Elizabeth Nagel, SSL, SSD; Elaine Park, SSL, SSD; and Mary Pat Haley, Workbook for Lectors, Gospel Readers, and Proclaimers of the Word. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2019, we read: “The Greek for ‘blessed,’ eulogemene, expresses thanks to God for gifts given and promises kept. Elizabeth’s words echo those of Deuteronomy 28:2, 4, which promise the blessing of fruit of the womb to those who obey the Lord” (233). 2 Nagel, Park, and Haley state, “A different Greek word, makaria, which appears in the Beatitudes, conveys Elizabeth’s last blessing: ‘Blessed are you who believed…’ Makaria recognizes a state of righteousness before God that is accompanied by the profound happiness that comes from sharing in divine life. Mary experiences this joy because she believes the Lord’s word to her” (233-234) 14 “Living Our Baptism” in church, and later that day put on white- A Sermon Preached on January 12, 2020 hooded robes and burn crosses.4 by The Rev. Paul Lautenschlager, I do not believe Jesus came to give us a Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church new theology. He came to save us from lives bereft of lasting meaning and fulfillment. He This Sunday in the church year provides came so that we might find lasting fulfillment in us with the opportunity to think about our own following him. He came to not only show us the baptism as it relates to the community of the meaning of God’s kingdom, but to empower us church, so I shall do so. As a springboard, I to participate in the building of that kingdom. share something from Bill Frey, former bishop The baptized are first and foremost called to be of this diocese.1 He wrote: servants of the kingdom of God. This is the I recently redecorated my office road down which baptism, our primary identity, and the first thing to come down should take us. Like most every endeavor in off the wall was my ordination life, we invariably fall short without the help of certificate. It’s not that I am others. That is why we need the church. The ashamed of it…It is rather that I business of the church is making followers of want to put things in their proper Jesus, who, in turn, encourage others outside perspective. Our primary identity the church to follow in the Jesus way. is our baptism, not our ordination I just read something that is both jolting or lack of it. When by God’s and dismaying. The November issue of The grace, I pass through the pearly Living Church magazine reports on the gates, I expect to remove both my precipitous decline of the Anglican Church of shoes and my miter. If they need Canada. In 2016, the Canadian Church clergy up there, I have misread embarked on a survey dealing with both church the story! participation and church membership. If the Our primary identity is our baptism. The present trend continues, in just twenty years, more I think about this statement, the more I there will be no more members of the Anglican wonder if both the clergy and laity of the church Church in Canada! Now, you might be saying have taken this to heart. The late Episcopal something like this to yourself, “That’s Canada biblical teacher, Verna Dozier,2 wrote a book and not us.” If so, let me relieve you of your called The Dream of God. In that book, she delusion. The article went on to say that the suggests that the most important question for American Episcopal church (us) is not very far Christian believing is not so much what behind the Canadian church.5 someone believes, but what difference does it The bottom line is certainly this: we get a make that you believe.3 I think she is on to failing grade when it comes to making disciples. something there. Now, I am very much aware that all churches We can believe all the right things about are rowing against the strong waves of God, but if those beliefs do not form us into secularism, which accounts for some of the persons living for God and the things of God, decline in the institutional church. But I am also our believing is just cheap rhetoric. For aware that some churches, including some example, not too long ago, in certain parts of Episcopal churches, are growing. “Why is this country, men would spend Sunday morning this?” you might legitimately ask. A sermon can only scratch the surface. I start by saying that

15 the common denominator of all thriving itself away in ministry in a world desperate to churches is that they know they are in the know the healing power of the gospel. business of making disciples of Jesus and are The cultural narcissism and spiritual passionate about service and ministry beyond malaise of which I just spoke surely includes their church walls. Furthermore, these churches our children. Psychoanalyst and therapist Erica thrive because they value and encourage the Komisar says that she is often asked to explain development of lay ministry and leadership. why depression and anxiety are so common in Here, I return to that quotation from Bishop our children and adolescents. She points to Frey about lay ministry. some recent studies indicating that children and It wasn’t until the adoption of the current teens “who reported attending a religious Prayer Book that our catechism even service at least once a week scored higher on acknowledged the ministry of the laity. For psychological well-being measurements and centuries, the catechism said there were only had lower risks of mental illness. Weekly three orders of ministry: bishop, priest and attendance was associated with higher rates of deacon. “The persons wearing the collars were volunteering, sense of mission, forgiveness, and doing real ministry,” was the thinking. Lay lower probabilities of drug use…Nihilism is members were just add-ons, helpers. We have fertilizer for anxiety and depression…The belief paid a very heavy price for this mistaken, in God…is one of the best kinds of support for unbiblical understanding of ministry, which still kids in an increasingly pessimistic world…[She has a hold on us. Have you ever wondered why goes on:] I am frequently asked about how the Mormons and the Jehovah’s witnesses are parents can instill gratitude and empathy in their growing? I’ll tell you why: the spine of those children. These virtues are inherent in most all groups is not clergy, but spiritually transformed religions…these are building blocks of strong laity. What is needed now more than ever are character…Today the USA is a competitive, spiritually transformed lay disciples of Jesus scary and stressful place that idealizes who want to be a blessing in a nation that is perfectionism, materialism, spiritually bankrupt in a multitude of ways. selfishness…Spiritual belief and practice When asked the question, “Are we on the reinforce collective kindness, empathy, right track or wrong track as a nation?” poll gratitude and real connection.”6 after poll says that we are on wrong track. I find much truth in what she says. During the present economic boom and ever- In all of this, our churches are confronted rising stock market [i.e., in January 2020], how with the sobering question, “Where have our do we account for this? Here is how: I think this children gone?” All too many of our own is a sign of our culture’s spiritual emptiness and children and grandchildren have abandoned the malaise. There is a hunger for a way of life that church and are drifting in this tide of secular is spiritually empowering, a way of life that humanism. Someone once said that a runs counter to the profound narcissism and Christianity that does not change us in our consumerism of the present culture. What an homes will never change the world.7 Christian opportunity for the Church! However, all too discipleship must begin in the home. All too often non-Christians have not seen this quality often it doesn’t, and this is another reason for of living in the church. Instead, all too often the present decline of the church. they see a church caught up with itself, turned So, there’s work to do, isn’t there? I inward, rather than outward, unwilling to give believe that this work must turn us inward, beginning with some honest soul-searching,

16 acknowledging the truth of the present reality. That church circle reminds me of the Prayer must surely undergird this process. In time I saw a ceramic table sculpture with about the earliest days of the church, non-Christians ten or so people holding hands, forming a circle. made this observation of Christians, “See how The circle had the people with their backs they love one another.” Their love and way of toward each other, so they were facing/looking life was so compelling that many became outside, beyond the circle. Is that not a powerful curious, and many of the curious chose to metaphor of the church when it is being true to become Christians. This is partly the reason for itself? I think so. The baptized, joined, the phenomenal growth of the early church. The supporting each other, empowered/motivated by story of God’s great love in Christ Jesus moved love to move into the world for which Jesus from their heads and spiritually transformed died. their hearts and wills. A Christianity that is Craddock’s baptism story is about God’s confined to ideas/formularies—in other words, dream for this church and every church in this our heads—has no power to change ourselves land—a dream about the church that has a or this nation. passion to give itself away, serving, caring, Fred Craddock8 tells about an experience loving in this broken nation and world. This he had while serving a congregation in rural lovely, majestic building, the liturgy, the Prayer Tennessee. The church had the tradition of Book, the Scriptures, the creeds that we affirm, doing baptisms in a lake. After the baptisms, the hymns that we sing and prayers that we pray they moved off the sandbar to the shore where exist primarily so that more and more we might the rest of the congregation was gathered. The mirror the mind, heart, and will of Jesus. These newly baptized gave their names and told are gifts given to us so that our life in Christ something about themselves. Then the rest of Jesus becomes the lens by which we see the congregation formed a circle around them. everything else. That is the goal of the Christian Then each person in the circle would give her or life and that is why this place and the institution his name, and say something like this: “My of the church exists. name is…and if you ever need somebody to I am very pleased to be an associate babysit, I would be happy to help. My name priest of this parish. Signs of growth, is…and if you ever need anybody to help you faithfulness, and discipleship abound. Emphasis rake your leaves, I would be happy to help. My on the Catechumenate, the ongoing process of name is…and if you ever need a car to go to Visioning, and the Community of Hope lay town…” Around the circle like that it went. pastoral care ministry come to mind. I think Then they ate and fellowshipped together. At also of the fall reverse offering challenge, a one of those baptisms Craddock remembers terrific effort to mobilize the power and energy someone from the congregation saying to him, of lay ministry. Let this parish continue to raise “Fred, folks don’t get any closer than this.” Fred the bar. The Baptismal Covenant [BCP: 304-05] Craddock’s commentary on the story is this: In that we will affirm following this sermon that little community, they have a name for that. encapsulates the heart of what is meant by I’ve heard it in other communities too. In that discipleship. So much of what I have said this community, their name for that is ‘church.’ morning flows from it. They call that ‘church.’”9 My friends, I believe May God give each of us individually, with all my heart, that the world is crying out and this church corporately, the holy desire to for that kind of church. not only say the words of the Covenant but live them.

17 Endnotes 1 Ed. Note: William (Bill) Carl Frey (1930-), the 8th Bishop of Colorado, served in that position from 1973 to 1990. Bishop Frey confirmed the editor of this journal, and I fondly recall his powerful sermons delivered in a resonant voice. 2 Ed. Note: Verna J. Dozier (1917-2006), a leading African American lay theologian, was born in Washington, D.C. Earning her B.A. and M.A. from Howard University, she taught English in the Washington public schools for more than thirty years. Between 1968 and 1972, she served as the curriculum specialist for the Urban Teachers Corps. From 1972 until her retirement in 1975, she was the assistant director of the English Department of the Washington public schools. A member of the vestry and senior warden of St. Mark's Church, Washington (1970-1972), she was an adjunct instructor in New Testament at the Virginia Theological Seminary and adjunct staff for the College of Preachers, located at the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, more familiarly known as Washington National Cathedral. A member of the Board of Examining Chaplains and the Board of the Alban Institute, Dozier was also chairperson of the Commission on Ministry and a member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Washington. She was a freelance consultant in Bible study and the ministry of the laity. She was a popular retreat leader and made presentations in every state in the United States. Among her books are Equipping the Saints: A Method of Self-Directed Bible Study for Lay Groups (1981); with Celia A. Hahn, The Authority of the Laity (1982); The Calling of the Laity: Verna Dozier's Anthology (1988); and The Dream of God: A Call to Return (1991) (Episcopal Glossary:154). 3 Ed. Note: Verna J. Dozier, The Dream of God: A Call to Return. NY, NY: Seabury Classics, a Division of Church Publishing, 2006: 79. 4 Ed. Note: The Southern Poverty Law Center presents a reliable account of the history of the Ku Klux Klan at https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#rrigins%20of%20the%20klan 5 Ed. Note: Mark Michael, “New Statistics Show Dramatic Decline for Canadian Anglicans,” The Living Church. November 22, 2019 https://livingchurch.org/2019/11/22/new-statistics-show-dramatic-decline-for-canadian-anglicans/ Father Mark Michael, editor of The Living Church, is rector of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Potomac, Maryland. “Published by The Living Church Foundation, a non-profit organization serving the Episcopal Church,” the non-profit The Living Church, founded in 1879, is based in Milwaukee, WI. (Episcopal Glossary: 308-09) 6 Erica Komisar, “Don’t Believe in God? Lie to Your Children: The alternative is to tell them they’re simply going to die and turn to dust.” The Wall Street Journal. 12.6.2019. 7 Ed. Note: This quotation is attributed to Howard E. Butt, Jr. See Sam Roberts, “Howard E. Butt, Jr., Grocery Empire Heir Who Spread the Gospel, Dies at 89” in The New York Times. 9.17.2016 (Retrieved 4.2.20. Go to the following link: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/business/howard-e-butt-jr-heir-to-a-texas-grocery-empire-dies-at-89.html) 8 Ed. Note: Fred Craddock (1928-2015), an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ and Bandy Distinguished Professor of Preaching and New Testament Emeritus in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, was known for his “folksy” preaching style. His non-profit Craddock Center serves the Appalachian region. 9 Dr. Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Michael Graves and Richard Ward, eds. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001:151

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Colorado, Mark Ross received his B.A. in 2012 from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he studied under such faculty as Professor Joan Ray. A cradle Episcopalian (with some detours along the way), Mark, his wife Katie, and their children Audrey, Milo, and Quincy have attended Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church since Advent of 2017. Mark serves as a lector and an intercessor at the 8 am services.

On Saturday, June 13, 2020, the Episcopal Church remembers the first Book of Common Prayer. Mark Ross writes about the history of our Prayer Book.

History of Our Prayer Book in a familiar worship service. The Prayer by Mark Stewart Ross Books that grace our pews contain the prayers, psalms, devotions, readings, and Episcopal church services, whether services that form the liturgy of the Protestant simple or elaborate, follow those presented in Episcopal Church of the United States. This The Book of Common Prayer. This is why an treasured book is the proverbial tie that binds Episcopalian can enter any Episcopal—and Episcopalians with the wider Anglican usually any Anglican—church and participate Communion. Because of its importance, we 18 should be aware of how it came into being, elements. In England, laypeople would which takes us back to the Protestant receive Holy Communion only one to four Reformation in 16th-century Europe. times a year. But the 1549 Book of Common Prayer encouraged priests to give One of the great accomplishments of Communion to the congregation weekly and the Reformation was the translation of the discouraged them from celebrating Bible and the liturgy into the vernacular. Communion privately. Furthermore, the Rather than a strict translation of the Latin sacrificial language surrounding Holy Mass, the English Reformers saw the need for Communion was changed. This was not a liturgy— “liturgy” meaning “the work of the because Cranmer did not believe the Eucharist people”— that reflected the direction that they to be sacrificial, but because he believed it to wanted the Church of England to take. be a sacrifice of thanks and praise that brought Though there were earlier English liturgies, us closer to Christ. the first complete liturgical book in English was The Book of Common Prayer, published In creating The Book of Common in 1549. This book was largely the work of Prayer, Cranmer also drew from Eastern Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury Orthodox sources. The epiclesis (Greek, “to and a leading figure in the English invoke”) is one such example: this is the Reformation. moment during Holy Communion when the priest invokes the Holy Spirit to bless the Take a look through the 1549 Book of elements of the Sacrament and those who take Common Prayer, available online at it. An explicit epiclesis had fallen out of favor [http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/ in the Western Church but was incredibly BCP_1549.htm], and you’ll see a number of important in the Eastern Church. In the 1549 influences. It takes much of its shape and edition of The Book of Common Prayer, an language from the Medieval Latin rites, explicit epiclesis was added into the including the use of the term “Mass” for the celebration of the Eucharist: Eucharist and the incorporation of traditional vestments, chanting, and reception of the Host Here us O merciful father we on the tongue. Because of this, it was often beseech thee; and with thy holy seen as too Catholic by the more radical of the spirite and worde, vouchesafe to Reformers. Nevertheless, it also contains blesse and sanctifie these thy thoroughly Protestant elements seen as gyftes, and creatures of bread necessary to combat the perceived excesses of and wyne, that they maie be unto the Medieval Roman Catholic Church. The us the body and blood of thy saints, while still honored, were given less moste derely beloved sonne emphasis, and individual confession to a Jesus Christe. priest became optional rather than mandatory for receiving Holy Communion. An explicit epiclesis was actually removed in later editions of The Book of Common Prayer. While medieval practices like elevation The Episcopal Church in the United States of the elements and Eucharistic Adoration gets its epiclesis from the Scottish Prayer were banned, the importance of Holy Book tradition. Communion to the community was increased. In the Medieval Western Church, priests Of course, though the Eucharist is the would often be the only ones to take center of Christian worship, the Book of Communion, while the laity would adore the Common Prayer concerns itself with more

19 than that. In addition to Holy Communion, the Prayer. A province is a group of 1549 Prayer Book includes a variety of geographically adjacent dioceses that form an services and calendars relating to the life of ecclesiastical unit. So, for example, we see the Church. Most of these, including the The New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, liturgy for Baptism, Marriage, and the The Scottish Book of Common Prayer, The Visitation of the Sick, remain in The Book of Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Common Prayer today. But one of the other Church of United States of America, etc. major accomplishments of the 1549 Book of Some editions, like the 1662 Book of Common Common Prayer was a re-simplification of the Prayer, which remains the official Prayer Daily Office: an ancient tradition that appoints Book in the Church of England, have more a set of specific prayers and readings for set Reformed elements. Others, like our very own times each day. In the ancient Church, laity 1979 Book of Common Prayer, were and clergy would participate in prayer in the influenced by the 19th-century Liturgical morning and evening. By the middle ages, a Movement that incorporated ancient liturgies more monastic Daily Office had arisen, with rediscovered within the past few centuries. eight Offices. Cranmer viewed these to be The prayer books informed by the Liturgical suitable for monastic life, but too onerous for Movement incorporate not just traditional the laity. In order to provide a Daily Office in Anglican wording and liturgical elements, but which laypeople could participate, he also those of the more ancient liturgies. In condensed the Daily Office into two great doing so, they continue the method that Offices: Matins and Evensong. Under the Cranmer used in creating the 1549 Book of names “Morning Prayer” and “Evening Common Prayer: drawing upon the best Prayer,” these two are the chief Offices in the sources to create a liturgy that is rooted in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. However, the ancient liturgies of the undivided Church, 1979 BCP also includes three more Offices: while still reflecting our current language and An Order of Service for Noonday, An Order distinct traditions. After the Revolutionary of Worship for the Evening (a service retained War, the first American Prayer Book was in Eastern Orthodoxy, which can either authorized in 1789. New editions were ratified supplement or replace Evening Prayer), and in 1892, 1928, and 1979. Compline. One can access “The Daily Office Tutorial,” a blog of St. George’s Episcopal Despite the differences in theology and Church in Ardmore, PA at practice from Province to Province, there is still a theme of commonality—and the 1549 https://stgeorgesardmore.wordpress.com/2010 Book of Common Prayer is the text that set /10/18/the-daily-office-tutorial-part-i/ the tone for Prayer Book editions over the centuries and across the continents. Today, each Province of the Anglican Communion has its own Book of Common

Works Consulted

Hatchett, Marion J. Commentary on the American Prayer Book. San Francisco: Harper, 1980.

“Book of Common Prayer, The (BCP).” The Episcopal Church, https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/book-common-prayer-bcp. Accessed 22 April 2020.

“Daily Office.” The Episcopal Church, https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/daily-office. Accessed 22 April 2020.

20 “Epiclesis.” The Episcopal Church, https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/epiclesis. Accessed 22 April 2020.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Book of Common Prayer.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 18 September 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Book-of-Common-Prayer. Accessed 22 April 2020.

The 1549 and 1760 printing of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-1555, executed in 1556 under the reign of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (Tudor) I, aka “Bloody Mary”) Portrait by Gerlach Flicke (1545)

Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, The Reverend L. Kathleen Liles is the first female rector of Christ and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church (120 West 69th Street, NYC). She worked in graphic design and public relations before moving to the East Coast to attend Yale Divinity School in New Haven. Following her studies, she remained in the Diocese of Connecticut where she served as Assistant Rector of St. Peter's Church, Cheshire; Interim Rector of Zion Church in North Branford; and Senior Associate Rector at Trinity Church, Southport. She accepted a call to serve as Rector of Christ and Saint Stephen's Church in the fall of 1998. Kathleen has long been associated with the visual arts, having been a painter and student of art history as well a professional graphic designer. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute; a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School; and a Master of Sacred Theology in Medieval Religion and Art from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Her graduate thesis was directed by the world-renowned Romanesque art historian Walter Cahn in the History of Art Department of Yale University. Her thesis research centered on a previously unidentified manuscript housed at Yale’s Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts. She was honored when Dr. Cahn presented portions of her thesis titled, A Pilgrim's Guide to the Churches at Rome; A Late Medieval Manuscript at Yale's Beinecke Library, as part of a more encompassing lecture at a Getty Museum Symposium on Medieval Manuscripts in Los Angeles. Kathleen spoke about her work at a national conference of medieval historians held in New Haven. Although she still occasionally lectures on religion and art topics, she departed from academic pursuits in 1990 to devote herself to parish ministry on a full-time basis. In addition to her ministry at Christ and St. Stephen’s, Mother Liles chairs the Board of Trustees at St. Hilda’s and Saint Hugh’s High School, an Independent Episcopal School in NYC, and serves on the Board of the Anglican Centre in Rome.

The Holy Trinity know something about the fundamentals that A Sermon Preached on May 27, 2018 undergird their existence. But in the church, by The Rev. Kathleen Liles, we readily admit that we come together each Christ and Saint Stephen’s Church, week to celebrate events and notions about New York City God that we cannot explain. I think of the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, or if Year B you want to put most of the mysteries into Isaiah 6:1-8; one basket, the incarnation of God Himself. Psalm 29; But the idea of the Holy Trinity takes the Romans 8:12-17; cake, because most would agree it is the John 3: 1-17 most obscure doctrine the church holds. And yet that does not faze us in the least. We go Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity. right on celebrating it anyway, and I think And it says so much about the church that that’s great. we continue to celebrate it on the Sunday following the Day of Pentecost as we have In contrast, the world we live in does for well over a thousand years, even though not allow much time for mystery. Most of us no one really knows how to talk about it. I awaken when the clock tells us to wake, and love that about the church; we can do things we keep our attention on that clock all day. like that. Other organizations are expected to We eat at a certain time; we meet with others at particular times as we go about our 22 very scheduled day. Even most retired notwithstanding, there is only one people stay heavily scheduled. The days of God. rocking under the old maple tree like my Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean grandfather did, thinking about the meaning that the mystery beyond us, the of life, are long gone. There is no time for mystery among us, and the mystery mystery in our day-to-day lives; everything within us are all the same mystery… that is not concrete—or explainable—is set If the idea of God as both Three and aside or relegated to a time when we will One seems farfetched and “think about that later,” never to be thought obfuscating, look in the mirror of again. So, in a way, the church stewards someday. all these mysteries for us—keeps them alive. There is (a) the interior life known You will remember the summary of only to yourself and those you choose the doctrine of the Trinity from your to communicate it to (Father). confirmation class: God is one Substance, There is (b) the visible face, which in Three Persons, in Unity of Being, co-equal, some measure reflects that inner life not to be confused or divided. (the Son). And there is (c) the invisible power I remember the professor who taught you have, which enables you to my preaching class telling us very clearly communicate that interior life in such not to try to explain the doctrine of the Holy a way that others do not merely know Trinity on this day. Inside I laughed at the about it but know it in the sense of its idea that someone would even try to, but becoming part of who they are (Holy then saw defiance on the faces of some of Spirit). the other students who thought they would Yet what you are looking at in the like to give it a go. I have no idea how that mirror is clearly and indivisibly the has turned out for them. Even the theologian one and only You.2 Saint Augustine of Hippo thought it was too much. Nevertheless, he could not resist I think Buechner is on to something. attempting an explanation, referring to the sun, its light, and its warmth. Saint Patrick When thinking about the Trinity, I used the shamrock as a metaphor when have always been struck by the relationship converting the Irish. The great modern between the Father, and the Son, and the theologian Karl Barth spoke of “Revealer, Holy Spirit—the mutuality, or “unity of Revelation, Revealedness,”1 although I am being” as it is expressed. It would seem that not convinced that sheds much light on the Holy Trinity and love have a lot to do things. with one another. We might even say the Trinity models love for us. The ordained Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner in his book Wishful When we say, “God is three persons,” Thinking used this analogy to talk about the most fundamentally we say that we believe Trinity: in a personal God. That word “person” was chosen very carefully by the Fathers of the The much-maligned doctrine of the ancient church and it has implications. The Trinity is an assertion that, biblical witness tells us that the Father loves appearances to the contrary

23 the Son, the Son loves the Father; they are Perhaps you noticed the first line of bound together in the Spirit, and love unifies our lesson from the writings of the Prophet them. And these three persons are cognizant Isaiah this morning. of us and love us. And since we are made in God’s own image, we are able to love God In the year that King Uzziah died… in return. Isaiah tells about a vision of God he We see an expression of God’s love had and begins the story by telling us it was for us on a grand scale when we consider the in the year 742 B.C. That line from Isaiah scriptural witness from Genesis through says that God enters our time, our lives, our Revelation. Many of you hearty souls read world, and so God is accessible as well as the entire bible a year and a half ago under mysterious. the tutelage of the late Mother Richards.3 We will never be able to explain God. And you will recall that the entire story—or But we can experience God by being in collection of stories—centers on God’s relationship with the world God has made. desire to draw us closer. No matter how Look around to see God at work in the often we strayed, God has always called us world. Look back on your lives to see how back. God has participated in your unfolding days. God’s love for us was never confined Open your heart to see God at work even to some abstract philosophy detached from now, through the power of the spirit, in the our overly scheduled lives. It was made relationships you have. Then you will see earthy and concrete time and again—as real with the eyes of faith. You still will not be as that alarm clock that wakes us each able to explain God, but you will be able to morning or the calendar that seems to rule know God, where He lives and reigns, our lives. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and to the end of the ages. Amen.

Endnotes 1 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.2. Eds., G.W. Bromley and Thomas Torrance, trans. G.W. Bromley, 2nd ed. Edinburgh: T.& T Clark: 1975: 203-207. Theological scholars usually name Karl Barth (1886-1868), an ordained minister in the Swiss Reformed Church, among the most important Christian thinkers next to St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. Despite lacking a doctorate, he was Professor of Systematic Theology in Bonn, a position he lost when he refused to swear allegiance to Adolph Hitler. He was a key intellectual voice in Germany’s Confessing Church, a Protestant cohort that included Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Barth traveled in 1962 across the US to lecture at the University of Chicago, where his son was a Professor of New Testament, Union Theological Seminary, and San Francisco Theological Seminary. You can learn more about Karl Barth at http://barth.ptsem.edu/karl-barth/biography, the website for the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton University. 2 Frederick Buechner. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. NY: Harper and Row, 1973: 93. Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), author of over thirty books, Presbyterian minister, founder of the Religious Studies Department at Philips Exeter Academy, essayist, and autobiographer, “has been a source of inspiration and earning for many readers” https://www.frederickbuechner.com/ Retrieved 4.30.2020. 3 The Rev. Anne F. C. Richards (1951-2017), an Episcopal priest for over 30 years, studied at Smith College (B.A.), New York University (M.A), and General Theological Seminary (M.Div.). Her obituary in the New York Times observes: “A true scholar and enlivening teacher to all, throughout her career she instructed courses not only in Bible study, but on a wide range of subjects from parenting to responsible aging in parishes in Connecticut and New York.” https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=anne-f-richards&pid=187944295 Retrieved 4.30.2020

24 The Rev. Leslie Scoopmire has been Priest-in-Charge of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, since August 2018. Prior to St. Martin’s, Mother Leslie served as assisting priest at Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis, MO. Before discerning a call to the priesthood, she enjoyed a 24- year career teaching Advanced Placement U.S. History, English, and Gender Studies, as well as guitar. In 2017, she earned her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary, St Louis, MO. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Education from the University of Tulsa, which she attended on a music scholarship, and an M.A. in U.S. History from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Leslie enjoys playing guitar, photography, bicycling, softball, and reading (especially poetry). Leslie and her husband Bill have three wonderful young adult children and three dogs (all good boys!). A native of Tulsa, Leslie is a fourth-generation Oklahoman.

The Feast of the Transfiguration: with God, and when he came down, his face A Story of Revelation shone so brightly that the people begged him by The Rev. Leslie Scoopmire, to wear a veil because the light radiating from St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, his visage scared the daylights out of them. Ellisville, MO Readings: Exodus 34:29-35, Psalm 99, 2 Luke often portrays Jesus as going up on a mountain to pray, and this week’s gospel Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-43a is no exception. Jesus takes along three of his

disciples—Peter, John, and James—and goes Way back in the days of the Scoopmire off from them to pray. He is at it so long that family BC—before children—Bill and I went they have started to nod off a bit, perhaps. Yet in with some friends and rented a cabin in even if they had been drowsy, the sudden Silverton, CO, during the first two weeks of change to their eyes of Jesus’ appearance August. One of the most amazing things we probably hit them like a bolt of lightning. Yet got to experience during that time there was there is also a Biblical pun here: the text says the Perseid meteor shower, when the Earth they see not actually Jesus but his “glory”—a passes through the tail of a comet every year word associated with God Godself. But in (July 17-August 24) and lights up the night Hebrew, the word for glory is kevod, or sky. “heaviness.” So, they see the weight of God’s Being at 10,000 feet made it all seem majesty shining out while they are weighed much more immediate. The stars already down with sleep. seemed close enough to touch—and when In a moment, and note that it was those meteors started whooshing and flaring during prayer, Jesus’ face and indeed whole through the midnight sky, it felt like they body and garments become blindingly white, zinged right overhead. light radiating out from him in a way that No wonder, then, that the ancients perhaps we modern people cannot fully believed that mountaintops were “thin appreciate, what with our spotlights and places”—and they weren’t just talking about stadium lights and so on. Our text says that oxygen levels. So many cultures associate they saw two men with Jesus, and somehow mountain tops with coming close to the knew it was Moses and Elijah, which has divine. The Jewish faith is no different. In always puzzled me—did they have nametags Exodus, Moses ascended a mountain to talk on? But it is obvious that what is again being

25 revealed here, eight days after Jesus has truly is without the weight of his illness foretold his passion and death, is the joining burdening his health and wholeness. of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God embodied by Jesus, to the law, represented by I think in placing these two stories next Moses, and the Prophets, represented by the to each other, Luke is reminding us that greatest prophet of Biblical times—Elijah. merely experiencing closeness to God is not And the disciples could hear that Moses and enough. Even when one person around us is Elijah are talking to Jesus about what awaits experiencing the mountaintop, another person him eventually in Jerusalem. But as soon as next to us may be experiencing the torment of they are spotted by the disciples, they depart. the valley.

Peter is so overcome in his senses that It’s like that reminder that everyone he begins babbling about building three around us is carrying invisible burdens we do dwellings and staying on the mountain not know about; so, be kind. Yet Jesus is more forever. Then, to top it off, a cloud descends, than kind: even with the glory of God still and from it the voice of God is heard, echoing clinging to him, he rolls up his sleeves and Jesus’ rise from the water of baptism, gets about the real work of God's kingdom— declaring Jesus’ status as the Chosen and which is not showy lights or voices booming urging them to listen to him. Then poof! from clouds, but rather is dedicated to Moses and Elijah are gone, and the four men restoring people to wholeness and shalom, are once again alone on the mountain. healing and ministering to others on account of the love of God that sustains us all. Now, if our story stopped there, that would be enough of a story on its own. Those We are meant to allow God’s love to of us who have ever had a sublime reveal our true natures, lifting the weight of experience, whether secular or religious, can cynicism and self-centeredness that is so all probably relate to the wish that it never lionized in our culture, and instead bearing ends. Peter and James and John get to see with God's glory down from the mountain into the their own eyes Jesus as he really is—as the valley where so many people struggle— Son of God—and it overwhelms each and empowered by our encounter with the Holy every one of their senses, it seems. It’s One to be fully human, and therefore fully important to remember that Jesus is not children of God. changed here but revealed. This is not a story As we leave behind Epiphany with its of transformation but of revelation. emphasis on light, with this last brilliant arc Transfiguration is the revelation of Jesus’ true against the stillness and darker hues of Lent, nature, an insistent exclamation point on all may we always bear this reminder, and seek the signs he has embodied that point to his Christ’s face, not just for ourselves, but as a divine nature that is dwelling in the same way of empowering our healing presence in space as his human nature. the world. May we invite in the light of Christ And then Jesus comes down and is to transfigure us to reveal our true natures as confronted with the child in need of healing. children of God. May we remember that the In a few moments, Jesus, without a word to mountaintop and the valley are always the demon or indeed to the father who has alongside each other and be unafraid to enter begged his help, restores the boy to full into the unfamiliar world both represent. health. In a way, this is yet another miraculous Amen. transfiguration, a revelation of the boy as he 26 us further and further away from our treasured Change: memories. And so, we find ways to hold onto A Sermon on Transfiguration the most beautiful, precious moments of our by The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson lives. We try to keep them alive in two dimensions. 2 Kings 2:1-12 Mark 9:2-9 5”Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it And in our hearts, in our minds, is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one somewhere, we believe that if we can just hold for Elijah.’ 6 He did not know what to say, for on to those moments, it will make the rush of they were terrified.” time and the pain of loss a little bit more Don’t let the Gospel fool you: Peter bearable. It seems impossible to believe that knew exactly what he was saying and why he every moment fades into the past as quickly as was saying it. I have no doubt that he was it appears. And it is hard to admit that we can awestruck and terrified, and so I can concede never get them back. that perhaps his response to the Transfiguration was not terribly well thought out. But then that Change is indiscriminate. It violates the probably just means his response was actually best and the worst moments of our lives. It is honest, not pious, not guarded, but the honest true that sometimes change is a blessing— expression of his heart. trading trauma for healing and injury for pardon. But that is not the change we struggle The word “transfiguration” comes from a against, is it? The change that hurts lives in this Latin word that means a “change of form.” And moment of Transfiguration—a moment that so, I believe Peter’s response to Jesus’ Peter watches dissipate right before his startled transfiguration was a very natural human eyes. response to the change he witnessed, to change in general: don’t. Don’t change. After a lifetime It is the pain that drips from today’s Old of fishing for something, Peter found meaning Testament lesson from Second Kings. Elisha is and purpose in Jesus, and change was watching it slip away, and he is powerless to threatening that. Change reminds us that stop it. He doesn’t want to think about the loss he is about to experience, but everything nothing beautiful can be frozen in time. Each reminds him of the unwanted change around the moment brings a change with it that transports corner. He tries to quiet the voices, to block us into the next changing moment; and those them out, but there are reminders moments carry us right up to the final everywhere. And he cannot seem to silence moment. Ever constant, change always moves them. He walks through the water just to be us in the same direction, relentlessly—and near Elijah, to be close enough to touch, to always in the direction of death. reach, to hold onto. But he cannot stop the momentum any more than one can defeat Peter’s blurted-out sentiment is no gravity. The future is like a vortex pulling us into its center. different than our own tendencies. It is inside each of us. It is that thing that makes us take One moment he is there, and the next he pictures; that drives us to shoot videos; that is gone. And Elisha is left alone— stuck in a compels us to save old love letters and keep moment filled only with absence. One moment journals. Because the changes in life will drive his mentor Elijah was there, but change brought

27 a new moment into the present, and Elijah was only way to keep it, to hold onto something gone. And the most painful thing about change beautiful. If you can pause the moment nothing is that it cannot be undone. And so, like Peter, changes. And if nothing changes, nothing Elisha reacts, perhaps not in the most composed dies. We’ve been trying to hold off the pain of way, but in the most human way: he tears his clothes in two and weeps because things were change forever. Some things never change. perfect but then they changed. It is hard in some ways to imagine that Even our happiest moments carry with there could be pain in the moment of them a hint of grief. It is not right or wrong; it is Transfiguration—such a perfect, beautiful just built into the system. We are finite moment. But that’s the thing, right? Even our beings. We carry change in our cells and death happiest moments carry with them a hint of in our genes. And we know it. grief. Because we are always aware, even as it is happening, that the moment is fading into the I watch my children grow and learn, and past. And there is nothing we can do to stop it. I am so proud, but also, I miss who they were, when we first fell in love. And I look at my They had to walk back down the dad; I met him a couple of weeks after his mountain. Change was in the air. And grief, you 23rd birthday; he was so young, and there was see, was appropriate. It wasn’t just that the so much life ahead of him. And now thirty- vacation was over, and they had to go back to seven years have changed him. And thirty- work. It was much more existential than that. seven years have changed the way I see him and They were falling down the mountain the way he sees me. And I look at myself in the into Lent. And into Holy Week. And into Good mirror, and in this middle age, I can no longer Friday. Gravity always wins. And that is why decide if I am young or if I am old. I suppose it you stay on the mountain; that is why you grasp depends on the day. And I think about all that for the moment. This is where change has changed in my life and in me. I think about leads. Change keeps changing until it reaches its all I have forgotten; all of the perfect memories final destination. It is not right or wrong; it is that have slipped through my fingers, lost to just built into the system. We are finite time. And then I think about all that is before beings. We carry change in our cells and death me, change that will happen, and I am in our genes. And we know it. And so also, we confronted by my mortality, a confrontation I carry some grief in our hearts. never asked for but was given anyway. Some days I am Peter, and I just want it to stop, to If you can pause the moment nothing pause the film, to get stuck in a perfect moment changes. And if nothing changes, nothing and build a house there. Because I know how dies. But if nothing dies, there is no this story ends—for me and for everyone I resurrection. And so, because of our Easter love. And I am not quite ready for the ending. God, sometimes change is not so much a threat as it is a promise from the One who loves us That is why Peter wanted to build the through eternity with a love that will never dwellings: to live in that moment. It was the change. Amen.

28 Editor’s Note: I attended Scott Ayler’s excellent talk, “Walking with Henry Martyn,” on February 23 at the Rector’s Forum because Martyn’s name was familiar to me from having taught Jane Eyre. Many Brontë scholars agree with Clement King Shorter’s speculating that “the real prototype to St. John Rivers [in Jane Eyre] existed for [Brontë] not in life but in literature; that she had read from the Keighley Library1 Sargent’s Memoir of Henry Martyn, that devoted missionary from Cornwall,2 of whom her aunt must have constantly spoken, and her father also, for he was practically contemporaneous with him at St. John’s College, Cambridge, a fact which probably led her to give Rivers his Christian name of St. John.” Urging Jane Eyre to study Hindoostanee in order to accompany him as his wife to India, St. John earnestly desires “to enlist” her in his service to God in a self- sacrificing path to heavenly glory: “‘If you reject [my offer], it is not me you deny, but God’” (chapter 33). Jane rejects St. John Rivers’ proposal to accompany him to India, where he dies after ten years of arduous missionary work. St. John’s name is pronounced SIN-jun. See Shorter’s Charlotte Brontë and Her Sisters. London: Hodder and Stoughton: 1896, 169-170. Other Brontë scholars suggest that Henry Nussey, brother of Charlotte’s best friend Ellen Nussey, was her model for St. John Rivers. In 1839, Rev. Henry Nussey wrote to Charlotte proposing marriage so that she could take care of his pupils: he dreamed of becoming a missionary. She declined his proposal; later a horseback-riding accident caused a head injury that put an end to Nussey’s missionary ambitions.

Scott Ayler became a member of Grace and St. Stephen’s Church in late 2018. Previously, he had worked 22 years as an English language instructor overseas with the Qatar Foundation and the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Scott grew up in Colorado and attended UCCS, where he took “Introduction to Literature” with a very young Professor Klingel (later Ray); he later completed a M. Ed. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at the University of Newcastle in the UK and a Ph.D. in History at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He has recently published The Letters of Henry Martyn, East India Company Chaplain with Suffolk, England’s Boydell Press. He presently works with Mosaic, a faith-based organization providing community access and life-skill training to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Charlotte Brontë Sargent’s Memoir of The Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D.

29 Henry Martyn: “The first great missionary of the Church after Boniface”3 by Scott D. Ayler

On October 19, we celebrate the day of remembrance of Henry Martyn, a trailblazer of the Protestant Missionary Movement and an important architect of Christian encounter with Islam. Martyn was the product of the Evangelical Anglican Movement that had a profound influence on Britain’s spirituality and social fabric in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, most famously in the campaign to end was opposed by his mentor, Charles Simeon, as the slave trade. The influence of the movement a distraction to his missionary purpose and also far transcended this goal, however, impacting by Lydia’s mother, who deemed marriage to an education, animal protection, alcohol abuse, and overseas chaplain as beneath her daughter’s the creation of both the British and Foreign prospects. The pain of separation never passed Bible Society and the Church Missionary for either Henry or Lydia, and ultimately, Society. neither ever married.

Martyn was born in Cornwall, England Henry arrived in India to face a multi- in 1781 and early showed great academic cultural, multi-religious and multi-lingual promise, though not particularly great piety. environment, portions of which were governed His father’s unexpected death early in Martyn’s by the ascendant East India Company, whose studies at Cambridge proved to be the catalyst fitness to rule Henry at times clearly doubted. to a revolution in his own spiritual life, and he He was stationed at Dinapore, and later at soon determined he was called to ministry, Cawnpore, serving successive regiments of particularly to overseas missionary service. British and East India Company soldiers as Shaped and vetted by some of the central chaplain, as well as civilians within a several figures of Evangelical Anglicanism—William hundred square mile radius. But Martyn’s own Wilberforce, Charles Simeon and John Newton intent was to engage the local population, and to (composer of “Amazing Grace”)—Martyn that end he established a string of schools and sharpened his training in languages, created regular services for the local women mathematics and theology, receiving ordination who followed the British regiments and co- in 1804 and a commission as an East India habitated with the soldiers. Martyn soon Company chaplain in 1805. developed a vernacular liturgy for their services. Intense language study marked each Perhaps Martyn’s greatest difficulty in day, building on work begun in Britain. In this departing Britain for India was saying goodbye context, it was natural that Martyn’s colleagues to Lydia Grenfell, the woman he had come to and the British and Foreign Bible Society love deeply and wished to marry. The match commissioned him to translate the New

Testament into Hindoostanee (modern Urdu), number of leading Persian Islamic clergy in with a Persian and Arabic translation intended which each presented arguments for their to follow. respective faiths. Martyn produced three Persian pamphlets arguing the basic foundations Translation with local language of Christianity and responding to their assistants took every moment he was not arguments on behalf of Islam. These were later engaged in formal ministry, and this arduous translated and used in South Asia, powerfully task soon began to tell on his health. shaping the nature and content of Christian- Tuberculosis, which claimed both of Martyn’s Islamic encounter. sisters in the next five years, was already showing evident signs. Despite his weakened Martyn determined to attempt a journey health, Martyn produced the first New to Britain to recoup his health, see Lydia, and Testament in Hindoostanee in 1810 and encourage others to join him in returning to succeeded in translating much of the Old India. Too ill to present the Persian translation Testament. He himself to the Shah of Iran, Martyn left it with continued to expand the British ambassador, who presented it to ministry to locals, much praise. Martyn succumbed to fever while preaching to weekly in what is now Tokat, Turkey, at age 31. crowds of up to 700 at Cawnpore, Martyn’s early support team amongst the resulting in the Evangelical Anglicans of Britain became, not conversion of Abdul surprisingly, his chief mourners. Charles Massee [Rev. Abdul Simeon lamented “what a loss which India, and Masih, pictured] who was later ordained an the world has sustained!” Wilberforce deemed Anglican priest, the first Muslim convert to “excellent Martyn’s death” a “mysterious 4 receive ordination. Providence.” John Sargent, a former fellow- student of Martyn, drafted a memoir of his With Martyn’s health near collapse, it friend; this included large selections of was deemed best to send him on a sea journey Martyn’s personal journals. These journal to recover, if possible. Characteristically, passages introduced Martyn to the eyes of the Martyn saw it as an opportunity for further Christian public throughout the English- progress in the translation work. He had begun speaking world. Simeon’s response was work on the Persian New Testament in India but indicative: “Truly it has humbled us all in the was not satisfied with his progress. Martyn dust. Since the Apostolic Age I certainly think determined to seek permission to set up in that nothing has ever exceeded the wisdom and Shiraz, Persia, and begin again with local piety of our departed brother: and I conceive assistants. He spent the following year in Persia, that no book, except the Bible, will be found to deepening his understanding of Persian and excel this . . . the inexhaustible richness of his completing the New Testament and Psalms— a ideas, gives to his relations an interest superior remarkable accomplishment. More remarkable, to anything I ever read.”5 Sargent’s biography however, was that Martyn simultaneously would inspire hundreds of individuals into engaged in a public written encounter with a ministry, hoping to emulate the spirituality and

service of Martyn. Bishop Eyre Chatterton, in is also a reminder that great enterprises, whether his History of the Church of England in India, sacred or secular, are not merely the result of suggests that Martyn achieved more than any one individual's vision. His life’s work was missionary since Francis Xavier.6 The Church equally an eloquent expression of the vitality of Times stated more boldly that he was “the the faith of the Evangelical Anglican greatest British missionary since Boniface.” movement. The work of a dedicated team of supporters had first shaped Henry Martyn for Beyond these accolades, there is his future work and then insured that the impact something of this lively, passionate man that of that work was preserved and endured to continues to move us with its force 200 years reflect upon. In Henry Martyn's life, we are able on. His life bears the stamp of mixed suffering to witness how the aspirations of a devoted and and joy that has been the hallmark of many of gifted genius converged with the deeply felt God’s foremost servants. Martyn remains an commitment of others to produce a life's work inspiration to us as an individual, but his story worthy of joyful remembrance

Editor’s Endnotes 1 Members of the Brontë family frequently walked to the lending library in the town of Keighley, four miles from the Brontë parsonage in Haworth. 2 John Sargent, Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. London: Hatchard, 1819. 3 Saint Boniface (c. 675 in Wessex, England-754 in The Netherlands), Benedictine monk and priest, is known as the Apostle of Germany for his role as a missionary in Christianizing that country. A mob of pagan Frisians (tribe in northern Germany and what is now The Netherlands) killed him as he was reading the Bible to new Christians on Pentecost Sunday. The Church of England and the Episcopal Church remember him on June 5. Numerous Church publications compare Martyn in the superlative to St. Boniface. See for example, The Spirit of Missions, volume 70, 1905: 519; “Henry Martyn,” Article II, The Church Quarterly Review, vol. 13, 1881: 29; “Notes from the Wild Field: India,” Missionary Herald, vol. 101, 1905: 359; William Canton, A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society: First Period 1804-1917. London: John Murray, I: 275. 4 Wilberforce journal entry, 16 March 1813, in Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, 5 vols. London: John Murray, 1838, 4: 100. 5 Simeon to Thomason, 20 November 1816, in William Carus, ed., Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Charles Simeon, M.A., 3rd ed. London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1868: 305-6. 6 Francis Xavier, S.J. (1506-1552), one of the first seven members of The Society of Jesus or Jesuits under St. Ignatius Loyola and recognized as “the greatest Catholic missionary of modern times,” established Christianity in India, Japan, and the Malay Archipelago” (Britannica online). See Eyre Chatterton, D.D., Bishop of Nagpur, A History of the Church of England in India since the early days of the East India Company. With thirteen illustrations. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1924:115. George Herbert’s “Denial”: A Poem that Models a Spiritual Truth by Joan Klingel Ray, Ph.D.

I am working on this issue of our have confided such to me. Crises of faith are, of Seasonal Journal during the “stay-at-home” course, not unique. Even seventeenth-century time of the coronavirus outbreak—a period Anglican priest and poet, The Rev. George when many individuals are feeling more Herbert, whose faith was so profound that he connected to God and to each other, even with was known around the countryside where he social distancing. Yet some troubled persons are lived and served as “Holy Mr. Herbert,” knew questioning whether God hears their prayers, times of doubt, when he felt that God was enduring crises of faith. Indeed, some friends unresponsive to his prayers. Recall that on his

deathbed, he described his poetry as “a picture ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed call” (NRSV). A “denial,” as the Merriam- between God and my soul, before I could Webster Dictionary states, means the “refusal to subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in satisfy a request or desire.” whose service I have now found perfect freedom.” Consider his statement: he admits Notice as you read the poem the irregular spiritual struggles, but he ultimately “subjects” formatting and lengths of the lines, as well as his will to that of Christ “in whose service I how the final word in each of the first five have now found perfect freedom.” What a stanzas has no rhyme with any of the final splendid end to his spiritual journey! words of the stanza’s previous four lines—that is, until the final stanza where “chime” and His poem “Denial” reminds us of the “rhyme” rhyme. These poetical devices of words we hear from the afflicted speaker in disorderliness in the text reflect the speaker’s Psalm 102: 1-2, “Hear my prayer, O Lord; let spiritual disorderliness until he reaches the end my cry come to you. Do not hide your face of his poem / prayer / personal psalm. from me in the day of my distress. / Incline your Denial I

When my devotions could not pierce Thy silent ears, Then was my heart broken, as was my verse; My breast was full of fears And disorder: 5

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, Did fly asunder: Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, Some to the wars and thunder Of alarms. 10

III

“As good go anywhere,” they say, “As to benumb Both knees and heart, in crying night and day, Come, come, my God, O come! But no hearing.” 15

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, 33

And then not hear it crying! All day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing. 20

Therefore my soul lay out of sight, Untuned, unstrung: My feeble spirit, unable to look right, Like a nipped blossom, hung Discontented. 25

O cheer and tune my heartless breast, Defer no time; That so thy favors granting my request, They and my mind may chime, And mend my rhyme. 30

The speaker begins his prayer / poem / “disorder” rhymes with nothing—the word psalm to God claiming that his “devotions could “disorder” is just hanging there, isolated in not pierce / Thy silent ears.” That’s a shocking terms of rhyme, in a disorderly way. His prayer image, “silent ears”! Are ears silent? No, / poem (verse) / psalm is as “broken” as his mouths’ voices are silent. But what ears hear “heart” (l. 3). may be mere silence; ears can be deaf. And devotions piercing the ears? To pierce is to He continues his complaint: his “bent make a hole with a sharp instrument. A piercing thoughts, like a brittle bow, / Did fly asunder:” sound is very loud or high pitched—certainly, “Bent” means “constrained or brought into an uncomfortable sound to one’s ears. Our tension by a string (a bow)” (Oxford English speaker, then, evokes a disturbing but evocative Dictionary [OED], bend. Def. 1). A “bow” can image of God’s ears failing to hear our vocal be a bow for archery (a bow with a string that speaker—or at least, the speaker believes that one draws back to shoot an arrow) or a bow to God is not listening. The result of God’s play a musical instrument. If an archery bow is apparent silence is a broken heart for the “brittle,” it’s fragile, non-resilient, and thus speaker, which has, in turn, affected his poetry: liable to break. The archer will not shoot his verse, too is broken—those irregularly accurately, not hit the target. placed lines of irregular length. However, George Herbert was an Spiritually and poetically dislocated, the excellent musician: he played the lute and the speaker consequently experiences a “breast . . . viol, the latter being a stringed instrument held full of fears and disorder.” Notice that while vertically and played with a bow. As a string “pierce” and “verse” are slant or off-rhymes, player, he knew tuning his instrument was and “ears” and “fears” are true rhymes, important. Not surprisingly, music pervades his poetry. Thus, I suggest that he is referring to a

musical bow: he knew that a brittle musical bow silence. Indeed, if his broken heart is numb, not only fails to produce a good tone, but is also maybe instead of God not listening to him, he is liable to break. Our speaker, then, is spiritually not listening to God. out of tune: the instrument of his soul, one might say, is out of tune with God. No wonder By stanza four, our speaker grows his “bent thoughts . . . Did fly asunder”: his overtly sarcastic, accusing God of creating “bent thoughts” fly in all different directions. humans out of dust, giving humans a tongue “Each [thought] took his way; some would to “To cry to thee, / And then not hear it crying!” pleasures go”: thinking about pleasures distracts Again, he complains that God is not listening to his prayerful purpose. Other “bent thoughts” him. He has assumed a posture of prayer, “My went “to the wars and thunder / Of alarms.” heart was in my knee” for the entire day: “But “Alarms” means “call to arms or warning of no hearing.” Not only is his poetry disordered imminent danger” (OED, def. A). The “wars with its irregular line lengths and unrhymed and thunder / Of alarms” recall the world of his final words in the stanzas, but his anatomy is, elder brother, Edward, a soldier. Again, his too: his broken, benumbed heart is in his knee. mind is distracted from his praying. Notice, Perhaps the mere physical posture for prayer is again that “alarms,” the last word in stanza two, insufficient for divine attention and rhymes with none of the end sounds in the responsiveness: his heart and knee are stanza: “bow” and “go,” “asunder” and benumbed from too much genuflecting. Indeed, “thunder” show rhymes in alternate lines, but his complaints of God’s “no hearing,” his “alarms,” the last word of the second stanza, crying (l.18) may even be drowning out God’s just hangs there, isolated from the sounds that responses to him. end any of the four previous lines. His verse Because of God’s apparent remains broken. unresponsiveness, his “soul lay[s] out of sight, / His “bent thoughts” now speak: “‘As Untuned, unstrung:”—we return to the musical good go anywhere,’ they say, / ‘As to benumb / motif introduced by the brittle bow of the Both knees and heart, in crying night and day, / second stanza. Suffering sensory and spiritual Come, come, my God, O come! / But no deprivation, our speaker says his benumbed hearing.” The speaker’s “bent thoughts” are broken heart was in his benumbed knee, and distracted, not fixed on the object of his poem / now his soul is “out of sight” and out of prayer. His “bent thoughts” are going harmony with God—his soul is “untuned, everywhere, anywhere, but where they should unstrung.” His spirit is “feeble,” weak, “unable be focused. While on his knees, which have to look right, / Like a nipped blossom, hung, / grown numb in the posture of prayer, his heart, Discontented.” His spirit is nipped in the bud, also numb, cries night and day, “Come, come, frostbitten (and thus benumbed), and my God, O come!”—echoing Revelations “Discontented.” 22:20, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” The poet But by the final stanza, his prayer / poem urgently repeats “come” three times. “But no / psalm takes a positive turn. Note, too, that hearing”: the speaker continues to complain that we’ve moved from the past tense in the first God is not listening to him. Yet perhaps he is five stanzas, to the present tense (“Defer no experiencing, but fails to realize it, divine time”), and then to the future tense (“They and

my mind may [i.e., in the future] chime”). other rhymes have been in alternate lines (for Instead of complaining about God’s perceived example, “ears” and “fears” in stanza one unresponsiveness, our speaker asks Him to rhyme lines 2 and 4, which are alternate lines “cheer and tune my heartless breast”—his separated by line 3). His “broken” verse (1.2), breast, is of course “heartless” because his his “rhyme” or poetry has been mended, as has broken heart has moved to his knee! —and do it the speaker’s relationship with God. In the first now: “Defer no time.” This way, God’s “favors stanza, recall, the poet said “my heart was granting my request, / They and my mind may broken, as was my verse” (l.3). chime, / And mend my rhyme.” With a cheerful breast that is in tune with God, “They” (God’s The final word “rhyme” is an apt word “favors”) and the speaker’s mind, which has for our poet to use to end his poem because, as been highly distracted, can “chime”—or accord observed, the first five stanzas’ final words harmoniously— “And mend my rhyme.” failed to rhyme. In fact, I suggest that God has Finally, we have poetical rhyme for the 5th line been listening all along, because the poem in a stanza: “chime” in line 4 rhymes with smoothly closes with two lines that rhyme, a “rhyme” in line 5: “chime” and “rhyme” form rhyming couplet. The poem is mended as is the the only rhyming couplet (i.e., two consecutive speaker’s relationship with God. lines that rhyme) in the poem, while all the

The Rev. Julie Wakelee is on sabbatical following ten joyful years as rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Albany, CA. She has also served as interim rector at Church of the Epiphany in San Carlos, CA, and associate rector at St. Luke’s, Long Beach, CA. Julie earned a B.A. in political science from Occidental College, an M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and an M.A. in ethics and social theory from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. Prior to ordination, she spent time in non-profit and higher-education administration, the latter at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. She is a trainer in Asset-Based Community Development and a certified interfaith disaster chaplain. Gardening, knitting, bicycling, and building wood furniture are among her hobbies, and she is (as of press time) longing to get back to lap swimming once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. She is engaged to Mr. Brad Pierce of Chico, CA. Between them, they have three young-adult children, one teenager, and two sweet dogs.

Christ: The King of Costly Grace responding to this newly shaped world, published A Sermon Preached on Christ the King Sunday, the encyclical Quas Primas1 (Latin: in the first) in November 26, 2018 which he created the feast of Christ the King by The Rev. Julie Wakelee, Rector, Sunday, which we mark today. The Pope had a St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Albany, CA number of things on his mind when he published this letter to the Roman Catholic bishops. What has The end of WWI saw the fall of many royal carried down to us today, as this feast has been families across Europe, and a rising number of adopted in many mainline Protestant churches, is nationalist movements. In 1925, Pope Pius XI, this reminder that, as Christians, our first and primary allegiance must be to Christ. This call 36

precedes any national identity, and necessarily Nigerians, or Germans, or Russians, or Italians, or reconfigures our priorities. Mexicans, or any human-constructed political If we claim Christ “the King,” we are entity, we are first citizens of God’s reign. And this choosing to follow one who disregarded long- places responsibilities of allegiance on our hearts. It standing tribal identities, who sought healing for ought to shape decisions that mark our lives, every those on the farthest margins, and who questioned day: How do we treat the earth? How is our food even the rules of his faith tradition when they got in raised? How do we know, treat, and love our the way of healing, feeding, and worshiping. neighbors? How do we see those labeled “other”— I wish it was called something that reminds especially those from other places, other racial us a bit more of the irony of the title, maybe “the groups, or those with views or practices we find Feast of Christ, the Lord of the upside-down challenging? kingdom,” lest we get confused about what kind of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who famously went to royalty we’re talking about here. his death for plotting the assassination of Adolf Pilate, asking Jesus political questions, is Hitler, wrote, taught, and died for his belief that looking for political answers that fit his frameworks Christians have a higher allegiance than nationality, for power and authority. They are having a kind of and that his fealty to God meant acting to stop parallel conversation: Jesus is not looking for what tremendous evil. Meanwhile, here in this country, Pilate understands as a “kingdom”—his revolution today, people are being housed like little more than is built on pretty much the opposite of everything cattle, families are being stripped apart for being that shaped the Roman Empire. Jesus’ building foreigners, and those who have come here from blocks, his strategic plans, his roadmaps, and his countries deemed something by our president that I foot soldiers (so to speak) are all rooted in won’t dignify with repeating are persecuted largely something very different: they are built of the power for the color of their skin. of love from which flows justice, wrapped in In Durham, NC, this week, a man who has mercy; strength, knit of compassion; and boldness, been living in his church until he can receive a fair empowered by understanding that God, and not immigration hearing went as required to report to Caesar, is the ultimate arbiter of our lives. immigration officials. Entering the court building, With this kind of ultimate authority comes a he was tackled by plain-clothes officers, freedom unknown in any earthly realm: no one handcuffed, and taken to jail. He was reporting to needs to fear the healing, merciful, unshackling fulfill requirements leading to the hearing for his power of God’s love. God does not seek to appeal.2 overthrow our self-centeredness or lack of love with We’ve been down this road before: we have might, but instead to turn us around to grace, with imprisoned entire racial and ethnic groups, breath-taking experiences of abundance where we kidnapped and enslaved the offspring of many least expect it; of overwhelming gratitude when we nations, with their surviving generations continuing get those glimpses of what the gift of life really to be abused and killed for the color of their skin, means; and of mercy—in our everyday interactions and we build political capital off the backs of the with others, and when we risk love and sometimes oppressed. Multitudes have lived and continue to more to stand up for Gospel values. live well off the proceeds of these transactions. When Pope Pius wrote his encyclical, one of But through the lens of God’s love, all are his concerns was that ALL people should call on diminished by the reducing of some as “other,” as Christ as King and Lord. This had, as it turns out, “not worthy.” Through the lens of God’s love, the political implications for him as the head of the first questions to measure a community, a state, a Papal States. Now, I have no aspirations for any nation, ought to be, “How does love direct us to kind of religious office that involves a funny hat, love and serve all?” How does mercy tend her but I can tell you that I’m a lot less concerned with children here? Does justice offer a fair hearing for the whole world becoming Christian, and a lot more everyone? convinced that it’s past due time for Christians to Or as Bonhoeffer reminds us, in his simply act as though Jesus is the Christ and thus the book The Cost of Discipleship, following Jesus model after whom we ought to pattern our lives. Christ means opting for “costly grace,” and saying This, too, has political implications: it means no to the “cheap grace.” In Bonhoeffer’s words: that before we are Americans, or Brits, or

Cheap grace means grace sold on the sake a man will pluck out the eye market like [a huckster’s] wares. The which causes him to stumble; it is sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the call of Jesus Christ at which the the consolations of religion are thrown disciple leaves his nets and follows away at cut prices. Grace is represented him. as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with Costly grace is the gospel which generous hands, without asking questions must be sought again and again, the or fixing limits. Grace without price; gift which must be asked for, the grace without cost! The essence of grace, door at which a man must knock. we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been Such grace is costly because it calls paid, everything can be had for nothing. us to follow, and it is grace because Since the cost was infinite, the it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is possibilities of using and spending it are costly because it costs a man his life, infinite. What would grace be if it were and it is grace because it gives a man not cheap? the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it Cheap grace is the preaching of justifies the sinner. Above all, it is forgiveness without requiring costly because it cost God the life of repentance, baptism without church his Son: “[you] were bought at a discipline, Communion without price,” and what has cost God much confession, absolution without cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it personal confession. Cheap grace is is grace because God did not reckon grace without discipleship, grace his Son too dear a price to pay for without the cross, grace without our life, but delivered him up for us. Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will Costly grace is Emmanuel—God with us, go and sell all that he has. It is the the Prince of Peace, Christ the King. Our pearl of great price to buy which the allegiance to this King costs us everything merchant will sell all his goods. It is and gives us back life in the fullest.3 the kingly rule of Christ, for whose Endnotes 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quas_primas 2 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/samuel-oliver-bruno-immigrant-arrested-by-ice-durham-north-carolina-church/ 3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship [Nachfolge, 1937], trans. R.H. Fuller. London: SCM Press, 1948, 1959, 2015: 3-5.

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