Come Build a Church
Proper 24 The Sunday closest to October 19
Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed
your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your
mercy, that your Church throughout the world may
persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your
Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your
mercy, that your Church throughout the world may
persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your
Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Perhaps all prayer is good prayer, yet to me as celebrant our collect for yesterday felt and sounded like something plain vanilla being said because it was the place to say something. New to the 1979 edition of The Book of Common Prayer, it dates at least from the 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary (Book of Sacraments of the Church of Rome) according to Hatchett.
My feeling about the collect instantly went away though as the choir of Grace Episcopal Church, PCB so beautifully sang their offertory anthem, Ken Medema’s, “Come Build a Church.”
Come build a church with soul and spirit, come build a church of flesh and bone.
We need no tower rising skyward; no house of wood or glass or stone.
Come build a church with human frailty, come build a church of flesh and blood.
Jesus shall be its sure foundation. It shall be built by the hand of God.
What would have made it perfect would have been singing “The Church’s One Foundation” as either the opening or closing hymn.
A dozen years ago the bishop asked me to come out of retirement and go to Grace Church to help them deal with a crisis, and then they called me to serve as Interim Rector for the nineteen months of their calming down and then search process. It was a spiritually rich time for me, which I enjoyed tremendously. So much so, that a bit later when the good folks at St. Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach asked me to come be their Vicar, and my family were encouraging me to stay home retired, I said that if serving at St. Thomas was just half as wonderful as Grace Church had been, I didn’t want to miss it. The nineteen months at Grace and five years at St. T were bright spots of my life.
My prayer this morning is that God will bring to pass yesterday’s collect and anthem at Grace Church.
TW+