Liturgy and Exhortations: Thoughts on the 1928 Prayer Book
Rev. Anita Wingert, Seminarian
I have been spending quite a bit of time lately with Episcopal liturgy that is done in traditional language. I am looking at ministry for nursing homes, realizing that the words of the 1928 Prayer Book and of a Rite I would be the most familiar to them. I have been studying and practicing Rite I in preparation for being a presider. And I have spent time recently in congregations that have chosen traditional liturgy for their worship.
This is for the most part new language for me, not having grown up with those liturgies, or even experienced them as a younger adult. And I find that I am drawn to the beauty of its Elizabethan language, a language of intimacy, language that I associate with Shakespearean love sonnets more than anything. Because it is unfamiliar to me, I need to pay close attention to it, hearing it over several times, so that I find I am listening with sharper ears that usual, sometimes finding things there that I might have missed otherwise.
And I have enjoyed it simply because I love liturgy so much. And because I am a person of insatiable curiosity.
Today’s readings drew me back to a part of the 1928 Prayer Book I had come across in my wanderings. I remembered it not for its language so much as for the special perspective it offered me about worship. It is one of the three exhortations/ encouragements/ admonitions, liturgical pieces usually associated with drawing the people to some kind of penitence. One is still in the current prayer book. But this one is an exhortation to receive communion, used when communion was not a weekly occurrence. And I would like to use it as a base for my thoughts this morning. Because we are only hearing it this once, I have changed it from the original to more contemporary language.
So, I might announce as the parish priest:
On [such and such a date] I intend, by God’s grace, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. I bid all of you present here, on God’s behalf and for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, not to refuse to come, being so lovingly called and personally bidden by God.
You know how unfeeling and unkind it is when someone has prepared a rich feast, filled the table with all manner of delicacies and dishes, so that the guests would need only to sit down and would lack nothing; and then to have those who are invited refuse to come?
Which of you in such a case would not be sorrowfully moved? Who would not think that a great injury and wrong had been done to them? Therefore, most dearly beloved in Christ, take heed lest you provoke God’s indignation toward you by withdrawing yourself from this holy Supper.
It is an easy matter to say, I will not come because I have other business to attend to. But such excuses are not so easily accepted and allowed by God. If any of you say, I am a grievous sinner, and therefore am afraid to come: why therefore do you not repent and change your ways?
When God calls you, are you not ashamed to say you will not come? When you should return to God, will you excuse yourselves and say you are not ready? Consider earnestly how little such feigned excuses will avail before God.
A wonderful mixture of challenge and tenderness. I thought of this passage because it is very appropriate for today. Sundays in Lent are peculiar kinds of days, as some of you know. They are surrounded by Lent but are not part of Lent. They are times to celebrate the Lord’s Day, they are days of resurrection surrounded by the inward-turning season of Lent A delicate balancing of love and challenge, tenderness and pain, just like this Exhortation.
We give ourselves so many reasons not to come close to God, not to come to the feast, not to accept those gifts. We could all make long lists no doubt, of things that swallow up our energy, drain our passion. Earthly things. We turn away from God’s tender love and demanding covenant. We close off our selves, even our most sacred centers, to God’s gifts, and the divine charge to act upon them, to make them part of ourselves
In the Genesis reading, we just heard Abram being told:
Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars. . . . To your descendants I give this land.
Land! Descendants as numerous as the stars! What a table spread with bounty that is! Uncountable blessings! But I imagine Abram looking around, without a child of his own in sight, with a VERY puzzled expression on his face. And still he says "Yes God, I believe you!" He may not have a clue about how these gifts are to come about, or how he is worthy, but he believes . . .
And one of the most poignant scenes for me in all of the gospels is the picture of Jesus in today's reading from Luke. I imagine him on a hillside overlooking Jerusalem. The city which above all others should have lived with God’s gifts held most closely to her heart
"Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem," he says, "how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"
One time after hearing this passage, I was inspired to make a small figure out of clay, that looked part angel, part human. A figure whose arms were broadly outstretched. Outstretched not in the agony of the cross which was to come but the agony of a rejected mother, the agony of a love for those would not come to the table, would not take the gifts.
"When God calls you," the Exhortation says, "are you not ashamed to say you will not come. When you should return to God, will you excuse yourself and say you are not ready?"
This is a powerful message. It’s one of the ones that keeps Christianity honest and real. That reminds us that faith is not just fluffy sayings about love and angels for protection on our dashboards. This is a message that I apparently needed to hear lately and wasn’t doing a very good job listening to. Until Ash Wednesday.
As many of you know, I was ordained priest last month. I am thrilled and moved and awed and confused by much of it but one thing I do know clearly is that I will spend the rest of my life living into this calling. I AM clear that I really am supposed to be doing this ministry.
But along with the awe and the delight, I am also scared stiff. WHO DO I THINK I AM? to do these things? Priestly blessings? Absolutions of sins? the Holy Mysteries, the consecration of holy food for God’s holy people? I think about what seem like impossible tasks and I look around like Abram and say, but God, there are no children of mine here! Where can all those descendants come from? But unlike Abram, I am ashamed to say, sometimes it seems I really don’t believe in the gifts.
That evening of Ash Wednesday something happened in the middle of listening to Bruce’s sermon. If he had written it down I could probably tell you just what part because it was very good stuff. I was listening and really taking it in. But I was also feeling terrified knowing I would be the Presider at the Table in just a few minutes. So the Holy Spirit hit me over the head. "STOP SNIVELING!" she said! "God called you to this. God gave you the gifts! How dare you doubt them! God has shown through the discernment of lay people and bishops and committees and professors and seminarians, in field ed and chapel and hospitals, what those gifts were and what to do with them. STOP SNIVELING. Feed my people! Get up to that table!"
Now we’ve all probably heard that saying, the one that says that "God doesn’t make junk." Well, besides that, I don’t think God gives out empty gift packages either, not to me or to you or anyone else – they’re full. Now sometimes we forget where they are, or we let others make us forget where they are. Sometimes we try to forget where they are. And some, I’m sad to say, may never get opened. But we’ve all got them. It’s part of the plan, I’m sure of that. Go look at some of the inspiration for the Visioning Project. Look at what people do at their work, with their families and friends. Come see the gifts at the Wild Things service.
My reminder from God that evening has become my Lenten discipline this year - to believe in God’s gift package, to be more like Abram and less like those whom Jesus mourned and ached for. To respond more to being lovingly called and personally bidden by God.
And so finally I offer all of you here two pieces of Lenten discipline one easier, one harder. First I want you to glance around you right now and I want you to think of a gift that someone you see has - just one person, just one gift - small or large - guess about someone if you need to, or if you’re new here. And I want you to name that gift out loud - quietly, but out loud. I want you to give that gift life by your naming it, voicing it. And if you feel called to, today or some other time perhaps, tell that person what you see in them.
In any case, I want you to hold that person’s gift in prayer occasionally over the next week. Pray for it to come alive, pray for its fruitfulness, give thanks to God for the blessing it is for us all.
Secondly, I want you to do the same thing for yourself. (You can decide whether that is the harder or easier task!) Name a gift of yours, speak it out loud. OUT LOUD. Sometime, somewhere. Tell someone about it. Do something about it. Just one gift. Just one out of that packageful. Thank God for being a person with that gift. Thank God that you can receive God’s holy gifts at the holy table. Thank God for the loving arms of Christ reaching out enfolding you.
So, in my priestly exhorting role:
according to my office, I bid you in the name of God, I call you in Christ’s behalf, I exhort you, as you love your salvation, that you be partakers of this holy communion [and all God’s gifts]. . . If you earnestly consider these things, you will by God’s grace return to a better state of spirit: for that blessing, let us all not cease to make our humble petitions to Almighty God.
Amen.
Return to Top Return to Sermons Page
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."
Luke 13:(22-30)31-35
Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"