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Sword Points Jesus Transforming Lives Through Sword Points Jesus May 10, 2012 www.saintpaulsbrookfield.com (203) 775-9587 † 1937 St. Paul’s Fire Sparked Controversy eventy five years ago on Valentine’s Day, St. Paul’s was destroyed by fire. We have S three pictures of the fire on our website as well as a Danbury News article. Recently Stuart Terrill, a parishioner whose family was active at the church in 1937, brought in another article from the Bridgeport Post with a picture we hadn’t seen before. Apparently there was a political twist to the fire that has been forgotten with time. The fledgling Brookfield Volunteer Fire Department had been trying get money to purchase equipment, but the County Commissioner didn’t want to tax citizens for it. The town voted to override his decision. As a result delivery of a new fire truck was delayed until March 1st, 1937 … 16 days after the fire! Ooops. See page 2 of Sword Points for a copy of the Post article. Also, here’s a link to the history of the Brookfield Fire Department. † This Week at St. Paul’s Thu., May 10 - 1:00 pm - Dorothy Day, Danbury 7:30 pm - Property Committee 7:30 pm - Music Night, Sanctuary Sat., May 12 - 7:30 am - Men’s Prayer Breakfast, Parish Hall 6:00 pm - Marriage Course, Parish Hall Sun., May 13 - Sixth Sunday of Easter 8:00 am - Traditional Eucharist 9:15 am - Adult Christian Education, Guild Room 9:15 am - High School/Young Adult Bible Study, Youth Lounge 9:45 am - 1st Holy Communion Class 10:30 am - Sunday School 10:30 am - Contemporary Eucharist 5:00 pm - Youth Group 6:15 pm - Vespers Tue., May 15 - 9:15 am - Ladies Bible Study, Guild Room Wed., May 16 - 10:00 am - Holy Eucharist and Healing 7:30 pm - Music Night, Sanctuary Thu., May 17 - Ascension Day 7:30 pm - Holy Eucharist 2 3 † Happy Birthday to You! endy Cavagna celebrates today! W Sunday is the big day for Ryan Friedly. Juliet Barbieri will be expecting your card on Monday. David Hock, Preston Powell, Pamela Franklin & Pamela Koniecki will be blowing out candles on Tuesday. Mason Sampson will be another year older and wiser on Wednesday. Have a blessed day each one of you! 4 † Scholarly Speaking Where do we get the Creeds? t our service on Wednesday we celebrated St. Gregory of A Nazianzus, a leading theologian among the Eastern Orthodox, and a strong defender of the faith as taught by Athanasius which became normative for traditional Christianity. This in turn led to some discussion of the creeds, particularly the Athanasian, and the request that I write a little more on this subject. The term creed, incidentally comes from credo (I believe), the opening word (in Latin) of the Apostles and Nicene forms; but the older term, symbol (in the now archaic sense of a token of identity-a) refers to the use of the Creed as identifying those who professed the faith of the Church. Our Prayer Book, of course, includes three Creeds, the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian-b. The first two are provided for actual use in our services – the former at Morning and Evening Prayer and at Baptism (here in a question and answer form), and the latter at the Eucharist – while the third dropped out of the American Prayer Book in 1789 but now appears among the Historic Documents. Although its present form first appears in the eighth century, the Apostles’ Creed is an only slightly modified form of the Old Roman Symbol that apparently dates back to the second century. An early (but historically unlikely) tradition records that the Apostles each contributed one of the twelve clauses into which it was commonly divided. This, of course is the source of the common name for the present Creed. The most significant differences between the two are the addition of “creator of heaven and earth” as a description of the Father, “Catholic” as a note of the Church, and “the Communion of Saints” as an additional item of belief. The early origin of this symbol is seen in the fact that it does not deal with the later controversies about the divinity of Christ (even though they arose before it took its final shape) and thus has been used by Arians in early Church history, and by some Unitarians today. The Nicene Creed is strictly speaking the Symbol adopted in 325 at the Council of Nicæa, but the form we use today also includes language adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381 (our Gregory of Nazianzus presided over that council) and is technically known as the Nicæno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The accompanying icon, ironically, shows Constantine and bishops from Nicæa but the text they are holding is the 381 version. The council had been summoned to resolve differences in understanding the nature of Christ between Arius and his followers who saw Christ (and the Spirit) as inferior to the Father, and Athanasius and his followers who viewed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as separate but equal members of the one Godhead. The key word in the text of the Creed that made this point was ὁμοούσιον (of one Being) while the Arians would have preferred ὁμοούσον (of like Being). It is from the difference between the two words that we get the expression ‘an iota (ι) of difference.’ The Icon of Constantine and the Council of Constantinople deleted a few phrases (mostly explanatory rather than Nicene fathers with the Creed separate statements) and added several more including the whole final section beginning with “the Lord, the giver of Life.” The Western version of the Creed differs from the Eastern by adding two phrases. The first occurrence of “God of God” was in the 325 text but not in that of 381; it was restored in the Latin version. The Latin version also added “filioque (and the Son)” to the description of o you have a question you the Holy Ghost as “proceeding from the Father” and this D would like answered by our became a source of considerable controversy. The change Scholar-in-Residence? Send your was only gradually adopted over a period of some 400 ecclesiastical, liturgical, doctrinal, years, and with various explanations. The modern historical or other inquiries to: (Continued on page 8) [email protected]. 5 † Israel 2012 By Pam Szen Mt. Carmel rom Caesarea, we continued on the F first day to Mt. Carmel where Elijah challenged King Ahab and the prophets of Baal. Mt. Carmel is often cited in the Old Testament for its beauty and fertility. The view of the Jezreel Valley as seen from the Muhraka ast year Fr. Joe & Tara sanctuary at the top of Mt. Carmel L and our rector was spectacular with the emeritus Fr. Crocker toured Mediterranean Sea in the distance. the Holy Land. This past April It is one of the most scenic panoramas in Israel. Dave & Pam Szen completed Many of our travel mates were ministers from churches far and wide. the same trip and are planning Teachings and meditations were done at most of the sites we visited. At Mt. a pilgrimage to Israel for our Carmel, we found a peaceful grotto for a time of reflection led by Fr. Mic, an parish for 2013. Each week Episcopal/Anglican minister and the Rector of the Church of the Resurrection in Hopewell Junction, NY. Pam is writing a summarySword Points. of their journey in As a sacred location Elijah In mainstream Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, Elijah is indelibly associated with the mountain, and he is regarded as having sometimes resided in a grotto on the mountain. Indeed, one name for Mount Carmel is Jabal Mar Elyas Mount Saint Elias. In the Books of Kings, Elijah challenges 450 prophets of a particular Baal to a contest at the altar on Mount Carmel to determine whose deity was genuinely in control of the Kingdom of Israel; since the narrative is set during the rule of Ahab and his association with the Phoenicians, biblical scholars suspect that the Baal in question was probably Melqart. Elijah’s challenge came during a period after successive kings “did evil in the sight of the Lord.” He had married the Phoenician princess Jezebel and she turned his allegiance from Yahweh to her god Baal and had Yahweh’s prophets slaughtered. According to the Bible in 1 Kings 18, the challenge was to see which deity could light a sacrifice by fire. After the prophets of Baal had failed to achieve this, Elijah had water poured on his sacrifice several times to saturate the altar, prostrated himself in prayer to God, fire fell from the sky, and In Elijah, we seem to have found a patron saint for Sword Points! (Continued on page 7) 6 (Continued from page 6) immediately consumed the sacrifice and the water, prompting the Israelite witnesses to proclaim, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!” In the account, clouds gather, the sky turns black, and it rains heavily, ending a long drought. Though there is no biblical reason to assume that the account of Elijah's victory refers to any particular part of Mount Carmel, Islamic tradition places it at a point known as El- Maharrakah, meaning the burning. In ancient Canaanite culture, high places were frequently considered to be sacred, and Mount Carmel appears to have been no exception; Thutmose III lists a holy headland among his Canaanite territories, and if this equates to Carmel, as Egyptologists such as Maspero believe, then it would indicate that the mountain headland was considered sacred from at least the 15th century BC.
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