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 The Seasonal Journal does not receive funds from Grace and St. Stephen’s. The Journal’s publication is made possible through the parishioners’ generosity. If you’d like to donate to the Journal’s publication costs, please note “Journal” in the memo section of a check made out to GSS Episcopal or on an envelope with cash that says “Journal Donation.” Permission to reprint: Unless noted, articles in this issue of the Seasonal Journal are available for use, free of charge, in your diocesan paper, parish newsletter, or on your church website. Please credit the author and Grace and St. Stephen’s Seasonal Journal. For sermons by clergy and members of other churches, please contact the appropriate church / party . Any copyrighted image is so noted. Permission to reprint any copyrighted work must be obtained directly from the creator. Let us know how you’ve used the Seasonal Journal by emailing [email protected] 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.