Sunset
Wednesday morning: this is the day, under my durational +Time rules of no politics or social or anything else personal or needling, rules which I established myself and no rule I make myself is binding on me; indeed most everyone else’s rules and rubrics are not binding on me either, you know what you can do with your rules and red ink, when (I was afraid I’d lost my antecedent but I didn’t) I committed to write something holy, or at least ABOUT something holy. I am neither holy nor wise nor a yuródivyy though closer to that. Honing in on self, a sophomore about life. A moron given to sophistry.
The Collect
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.
What comes to mind is the house down the block and second door west from The Old Place, across Beach Drive on the south (Bay) side of the street, that in my growing up years had long been nobody’s home, but still recognizably a house; long abandoned; in bad weather, shelter for shabby unwashed men carrying a brown paper sack. In due decades the property changed hands and the new owner, with a permit for remodeling, demolished the structure down to a corner of about two concrete blocks, and built a new home that bore no resemblance to, and shared no substance but that “cornerstone” with, what had been there before.
Twenty-first century people with overwhelming sociological, political, health/medical, economic and other concerns of our own, we drop the KJV and Rite One for modern translations while clinging, for reasons that I know full well but won’t bother slamming again, to prayers of the 6th/7th century church. Hatchett (Commentary on the American Prayer Book, page 194) reports that dating to the Gelasian Sacramentary, our Collect for Proper 24 (October 18, 2020) was one of the solemn collects of Good Friday. In Jesus, God has revealed his glory among the Gentiles. It’s a lovely collect that we will speak but no one will hear, much less pause to bother working out. A lifelong Episcopalian, I know, I fully understand, That and Why we don’t bring our church liturgically into our own day and age, but what I have instead of words is a paragraph of question marks and exclamation points.
"Becoming relevant" does not mean updating 6th/7th century prayers from Elizabethan English into Contemporary English. We ARE the Times: people change and force the church to change with the Times - - sociologically, that is, as time makes ancient good uncouth (James Russell Lowell). Liturgically though, which, lex orandi lex credendi, in our church is also theologically, change drags axe because we never run out of old-timers, or romanticists, or the latter generations of those whose ancestors gave the lightbulb. Moreover, and standing hidden in the shadows, if we start fooling with the collects, relevantly and especially theologically, instead of Canterbury or Salisbury Cathedral, we could soon find ourselves standing in a pile of rubble that could not be rebuilt. But hey! maybe that’s not an entirely bad prospect: look at what Panama City is determined to become after Category 5 Hurricane Michael. 850Strong could be an inspiration for the church. Always determined to hold on to what was, old furniture, old prayers, old buildings, memorial prayerbooks and hymnals, we are not like our Southern Baptist adelphoi who face it when they have outgrown, and build a new church. Or, like a nearby UMC congregation whose enormous sanctuary was ruined on October 10, 2018, will be downsizing into reality. Covid19 with all Her implications brings cause to pause and rethink relevance, mission, ministry, even words.
IDK&PTL
T+