Holy Week in Review

Well, we have come through the solemnity  of Holy Week and have come through to the other side into the brightness of Easter.  Our Easter celebrations were absolutely wondeful.

At our Easter Vigil we welcomed 12 newly minted Christians into the Body of Christ, about half of whom were adults.

Had the usual Great Red Neck Easter Brunch with SIR and some fellow southerners.  My dish of choice was the “Kentucky Hot Brown” at Bar Americain.  A Kentucky Hot Brown consists of a piece of French toast topped with turkey, cheese grits, some melted cheese, gravy, bacon and a tomato.

Gastronomical heaven.  Bliss.

We had a special guest at our 11am service on Sunday.  Former President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their daughter Chelsea attended services at Grace .   According to the rector, they were very attentive, engaged in the sermon, and genuinely seemed happy to be there.  The sermon was excellent (and, by coincidence, had a few of the same points I made in my own reflection) and one of his best.

Our evening service was well attended and the congregation was also more engaged than they usually are.  Our 6pm service on Easter is full of those who look at all the goings on and listen to the sermon and basically dare you to move them.  I wound up doing everything but preaching and celebrating as we didn’t have a crucifer scheduled for the night … so in addition to that I also had altar guild duties, was a lector and a chalice bearer.

It was a very busy day, but very invigorating and fulfilling on many many levels. Our attendance was also up from last year (about 2000 between the Easter Vigil, 9am, 11am and 6pm services).

Reports of the death of the Episcopal Church, I am happy to say, are greatly exaggerated, at least in one corner of the East Village in New York City.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Palm Sunday

Below is a paraphrase of a sermon delivered yesterday in  my parish.  I am going from memory, so apologies if i missed something or get something wrong … Once I get a transcript if there are any errors i’ll correct them …

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Consider a couple of stories ..

In one of Aesop’s fables, a group of mice wanted to keep watch on a cat.  One of the wise mice came up with an idea to put a bell around the cat’s neck so as to give clear warning when it was near.  The problem was that no one could figure out how to bell the cat without causing the death of one of their own.

There were two basketball teams, one from a Christian school in Texas and one for children with learning disabilities.  The Christian school slaughtered the other team, 100 – 0.  As the game progressed, the Christian school’s (called the Covenant School) enthusiasm for winning kept on getting stronger and stronger until when they reached 100, they went absolutely wild.  For days, local papers kept criticizing the poor sportsmanship of the Covenant School.

In both instances, the mice and the school for children with learning disabilities were perpetually on the defense against forces that were beyond their control.  We can call the cat “death” and the Covenant School’s advantage (not to mention their behaviour), “sin.”  Without having a good offensive strategy, neither the mice nor the children’s school stood a chance.  And so it is with our own subjection to the powers of Sin and Death.

Reset

Reset.   Reload.

Oy what a past few months!!!  Will go into parts of it later.  I don’t want my first post from such a long absence to be too heavy.

My rector led a class last night on the sacrifice of Isaac from the reading in Genesis.  He started off by asking whether the story was grounded in history or grounded in myth.

To clarify what he meant by “myth” he wasn’t talking about myth in the sense of Greek and Roman myths, but more along the lines of being in the sense of parables.  For example, we know that in all likelihood the story of The Prodigal Son isn’t a true story in the sense that it actually happened or contains facts.  It does however, contain truths which Jesus was attempting to teach the disciples and anyone else who was listening.

A question the rector asked was, so is the story of Abraham and Isaac grounded in history or myth?  Did God speak to Abraham on top of Mount Moriah, or did the story develop over time to teach the ancient Hebrews that human sacrifice is not something that God wants his children to participate in?

There was a bit of back and forth and then someone piped up and said “I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive,” to which my rector replied, “Andrew*, that is a very good Anglican answer!  Congratulations.”

The point my rector was making was that regardless of the factual-ness of the story, the important thing is what it teaches.  Our faith is grounded in history, and of course no one is denying Abraham and Isaac were real people, but the truths the Bible teaches may not be actual factual accounts.

Happy Birthday!

Today, December 21st,  is the 200th anniversary of the founding of my parish, Grace Church in New York. She is, for lack of a better phrase, a “spin-off” of Trinity Wall Street in lower Manhattan.  Back in the early 1800’s, Trinity’s pews were all rented, so they built the first Grace Church on the corner of Broadway and Rector.  Less than fifty years later, the congregation moved to its current location at 10th Street and Broadway, just south of Union Square.

Here’s a picture.

Grace is a bit of an anomaly in that her prinipal service on Sundays is Rite I, Morning Prayer.  On the first Sunday of the month and for special occasions or major feasts, we will have Rite I Eucharist.  Its other services during the week are Rite II Eucharists.