Dear members of Calvary and friends,
Well, we are a full week into fall, at least meteorological fall. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the weather that, but then our seasons have not been typical for a while. On the news Monday one of the broadcasters commented that it was time for school to start. Growing up in New Jersey, classes always started after Labor Day, but then, we didn’t have the tradition for closing for a week or so to go deer hunting or to cut and hang tobacco. The school year there also did not end until June. We tend to orient our lives around the seasons, as we understand them. Fall, winter, spring, summer. We are accustomed to the shortening of days and the falling leaves as we move towards December. I wonder, how I would view the time of the nativity if I lived in the southern hemisphere where their longest day of the year falls just a few days before we celebrate Christmas? The church too has its seasons. For us Episcopalians, we color code them: purple or blue for Advent, white for Christmas, green for Epiphany, purple or blue again for Lent, only to return to white for Easter, throw in Red for the day of Pentecost and then the lengthy season after
Pentecost, the altar guild’s favorite for they get to keep green for several months. We have many traditions and customs that go with our seasons of the church year that we come to expect are universal. One you have at Calvary is turning and facing towards the entrance of the church house, actually watching the procession leave, which I cannot recall ever seeing anywhere else. I am sure that some who have not worshiped in other Episcopal churches think this is done everywhere. We become accustomed to where we are and what we have seen, and any alteration can make us uncomfortable. Much of the conflict Jesus had with the Jewish leadership was because he was not bound by some of their traditions. He was willing to change them, to help others understand what was truely important, the essence of loving God and loving neighbor. Some find changes in the church very upsetting, but change has been a part since the start. Some find the passing of the peace disruptive, but I suspect few would want to return to the days when the passing of the peace was given by an open mouth to mouth kiss so the Holy Spirit could pass from one person to the next, or when baptism entailed wading naked into a pool, being baptized and then having a white robe placed on you as you walked out, or having the bread and wine mixed in the chalice and being given communion from a spoon, (we did this once at St. John’s. The operative word here is once. And yes, I know, these were ancient practices. Some today do not come to church unless there will be communion. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most only received communion once a year, on Easter. Growing up, we had a full-time rector and curate and still only had communion twice a month. We had a box of tissues by the door of the church in case a woman forgot her hat, so she could have her head covered in church. The first time I was supposed to receive communion was the day I was confirmed. When I was ordained, no women were ordained to the priesthood in this and many other dioceses of the church. In some portions of the Anglican Communion, they still are not. We become familiar with where we are, what we do, and have done and far too often see change as a disruption of our lives. I have tried not to change much as your interim at Calvary. The next rector will likely change things which to some will be welcome and others disturbing. Rather than being unsettled, we might be better off asking why we do what we do. It might be helpful to ask is what we do essential, in keeping with helping us and others grow closer to God and our neighbors or are they just part of the “tradition of our elders” Jesus speaks of in Matthew Fifteen?
Peace,
Bryant+
