Welcome to Anglican Kossacks, a group for Anglican/Episcopalian Kossacks to meditate on weekly scripture readings, discuss developments in the worldwide Anglican Communion, the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Canada as well as issues related to social justice and church polity, liturgy and music in a mutually respectful and tolerant online environment.Open to all, regardless of religious affiliation. Some of our diaries are action, informative or historical diaries and others are meditative and prayerful. We, like the Episcopal Church, welcome you! Thank you for joining us.
Anglican Kossacks has been on a bit of a hiatus while I have been up at my place in Mid-Coast Maine for the last six weeks. We have a little summer chapel which we affectionately call "St. Bede's-in-the-Weeds" where I have been attending services, as well as at St. Thomas in Camden. Today, however, I was back in Portland and it was wonderful to attend St. Luke's Cathedral and sit in the pew where a number of my church friends and I all sit together on Sundays. It is nice to see friends you haven't seen in a while and great when they are glad to see you, too. Worshiping together with people you like, with your friends, involves a special kind of intimacy. To my mind, anyway, a very transcendent kind.
After the fold, we'll explore today's readings and I have some music for you, too!"
It was so pleasing to see the Mass, this Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, opened with one of my favorite hymns in the Hymnal 1982, "All my hope on God is founded" to the great tune MICHAEL by Anglican master Herbert Howells. The tune, by the way, was named after Howell's son. (One of these days I will do a diary on hymn tunes and how some of them got their names...)
This clip is from an ecumenical service at Westminster Abbey in 2010. Near the beginning there is a good shot of His Lordship the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. The other thing I like about it is the Anglican and Roman Catholic Bishops standing together (the Anglican ones are the ones in the purple cassocks, for you non-Anglicans out there). If you look closely, you can see who does and does not have intimate familiarity with this hymn...
">
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Today's Propers, Readings and Prayers: The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
According to the Revised Common Lectionary and the Book of Common Prayer (collect).
Collect (BCP pg. 231):
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
First Lesson: Genesis 28:10-19a
Jacob dreams of the ladder to heaven: "Surely the LORD is in this place--and I did not know it!"
The Psamody: Ps. 139: 1-11, 22-23 Domine, probasti
Where can I go then from your Spirit?* where can I flee from your presence?--v. 6.
Second Lesson: Romans 8:12-25
"We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit...[F]or in hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? Bit if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
The Gospel: Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43. The parable of the wheat and the weeds.
Proper Preface: Preface of the Lord's Day.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meditation
I have always loved Ps. 139. In fact I have set it to music as a choral piece, based on the American hymn tune TENDER THOUGHT from the Kentucky Harmony of 1816, a shape-note hymnal. Today's Collect echoes the sentiment of the psalm with the idea that God knows, before we can even articulate it, our innermost needs, our innermost worries. And as the Psalmist writes, "Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, * but you, O LORD, know it altogether". That indeed, in life, God is with us, and even in the grave, so God is also there. In fact, I love this Psalm so much that it is, indeed, my funeral Psalm. Hopefully, in my own musical setting...
The Gospel reading for today from St. Matthew presents an interesting idea: in the parable, a sower of wheat is undermined by an enemy, who sows weeds in with his wheat. The solution? let them grow together, and separate them at the harvest. This is one of the few times throughout the three-year pericope that it is suggested "the Devil did it!".
One of our parish's postulants for Holy Orders gave the sermon today, and pointed out that, traditionally, this parable is interpreted as an admonition to the Church to nurture all of its flock without judgment, those devout and those less devout, and, to put it in the vernacular, "let God sort 'em out". Essentially, an admonition against arrogating to the Church the judgment which belongs to God and individual conscience alone.
But then she went in a very different direction: she asked the question "since we all have both wheat and weeds in us, what is YOUR wheat? What is YOUR weeds?". This, after giving a gentle admonition to the Anglican Communion at large to remember this parable when grappling with the issues surrounding the full participation in the life of the church by LGBTQ persons.
So I got to thinking: can the Communion at large and the Episcopal Church in specific practice real tolerance and acceptance? I wonder. It's almost like a Daily Kos pie fight--someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong; both sides can quote and quote to prove their righteousness; and if someone gets run out on a rail, well, that heightens both the entertainment value and the righteous indignation on both sides. But what is the Spirit trying to say to the Church in this parable?
I think I might have a suggestion. I stand for the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks in the Episcopal Church and in the entire Church at large. I can also understand how some people who's entire church experience has been based on a fixation surrounding sexual issues of all kinds can be experiencing some cognitive dissonance over this matter. The Gospels, as I read them, certainly would suggest that the inclusive view is far closer to what Jesus was trying to teach than the exclusive view. However, that does not mean that I am right and they are wrong. What it does mean, though, is that schism and separatism is not the answer. It was not the answer to the sower in the parable. So I say, let us grow together, not apart. Let us leave the last word up to God. And in the meantime, let us grow together, let us worship together, let us take our Sacraments together, let us go to seminary together. Let us walk together. As St. Paul says in the Epistle for today:
When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Let us grow together. Let God worry about the judgment. For now, let us wallow in the unconditional love for all of us which is God. Amen.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Liturgical Etiquette For Anglicans: Genuflection
Go into any Episcopal church of any size and you'll find all sorts of different practices relating to what I like to call the "manual acts of the people". Some people make the sign of the cross, some do not; some do it at the end of the Creed or during the Benedictus, some do not; some bow at the name of Jesus, some do not. As we like to say, "All may; some should; none must". Lutherans like to call this stuff "Adiaphora", which comes from the Stoic tradition and basically refers to a practice that neither impacts nor detracts from devotion or obligation. Genuflection, the bending of one knee in the presence (and in the direction of) the reserved Blessed Sacrament falls into this category. In most Anglican circles, a profound bow to the Altar is the norm when crossing in front of it or approaching your pew. Genuflection, however, is normally reserved for an altar where on or nearby is reserved the Sacrament. How can you tell?
Well, while this is not always true in Episcopal churches, it's pretty close to universal, and a good rule of thumb when visiting a new parish: look for the Sanctuary lamp(s). If they are in red glass, it is likely that the Sacrament is not reserved or if it is, it is reserved in a side chapel or other place. Bowing is then appropriate. If it is in white glass, it is likely that the Sacrament is reserved in a Tabernacle or Aumbry in the Chancel. Bowing is still acceptable, but Genuflection is appropriate. And, of course, neither is always acceptable accept in the most high of high church parishes.
Anyone in a liturgical procession would simply bow with one exception: anyone who is carrying anything--a crucifer carrying the cross, a deacon or other person with the Book of Gospels, someone carrying a torch or a verge, does not bow. Thurifers often make a slight bow with their heads but this is not necessary.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We ended today's Mass with another of my favorite hymns: the great hymn tune "ORA LABORA" of T. Tertius Noble to the hymn "Come, labor on". To end, I will quote from it, from Stanza 5:
Come, labor on,
No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
till the long shadows o'er our pathway lie,
and a glad sound comes with the setting sun,
"Servants, well done!"
Pax, and Shalom, peace and goodwill, and above all, love.