yes we do
++++++++++
This is our Collect for the upcoming Sunday. "Collect" is an archaic Episcopal word for the prayer of the day that we say at the beginning of our Liturgy of the Word. It was meant to order (collect) the thoughts and hearts and minds of worshipers into a common prayer offering. Archaic is my word as I continue to poke at our want to hold onto ancient things, apparently "for old times sake." When I was growing up, we said this particular collect on the second Sunday in Lent; in commenting that it was moved to the third Sunday in Lent, Hatchett (page 175) dates the prayer and its placement in the liturgy to the 10th century Gregorian Sacramentary of the Roman Catholic Church, which has long since moved on. It is beyond me why we cling to these things that take us out of relevance to the ongoing world and its prayer needs but leave us content that we have been to church.
Can I suggest better? Well, 7734 yes: the little, authorized, book "Prayers for an Inclusive Church" (OMG, there's that nine letter DEI word that could get me deported) has this collect for Lent 3, Year C:
Living Mystery,
whose way is not ours,
whose name cannot be bought or sold:
lead us from
justice without compassion
and sacrifice without mercy
to a love which nurtures
and a grace without price;
through Jesus Christ, the true Bread.
Amen.
+++++++++++
Jeepers. Jiminy Jeepers, is it any wonder that so-called Mainline Christianity continues its slide into irrelevant oblivion. (That's a rhetorical question, I can leave off the question mark if I DWP, but it's not funny, so I won't use an exclamation point either)
Actually, we do have power in ourselves to help ourselves, certainly on the church front, yes we do, but we've bound ourselves up in bureaucratic quagmire that moves slowly on the liturgical front but with cutting edge speed on the political-sociological front. Half the Church breaks free from the canon that forbids Holy Communion being served to unbaptized persons, as we welcome everyone present to God's Table, while Wise Old Men stand as the bulwark of Tradition, the obstacle to deleting that law. They revise marriage and ordination traditions with self-righteous defiance while hospitality is on Hold. WWJD? He had no rules. When Taking and Blessing and Breaking and Giving, Jesus never sorted out the folks who qualified and those who did not qualify; nothing else matters.
Wandering again, Bozo. And saying way too much. Cool it.
Yes, we do. We DO have power in ourselves to help ourselves; if nothing else, that power is part of what we gained in taking a bite of the forbidden fruit: no longer are we basic animals who live by instinct, we have minds to think and freewill to act. That story of our disobedience is actually a story of the Lord God leading us into our future by tempting us: why do we think God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the center of the Garden?
But the Collect, I was grousing about the 10th century Collect - - - not to even mention the 4th century Nicene Creed.
Oh well.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
image again: JWST deep space look into the Universe. why do I keep using it? for one thing, it suggests that we need to revise more than just our Collects.