Book of Common Prayer
-
time to ditch the old church language
•
2 min read
One need not pray in another person’s language The language of the King James Bible and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is not ours, it is theirs. It doesn’t define church for me; it defines 17th Century English church. And it is alien to the 21st Century North American church. I have a devoted Rite…
-
a Homily for Proper 11B Text: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 [Sunday I preached without a script. This is an approximation of what I preached.] Sabbath Coming back from vacation, it is appropriate to get this gospel pericope about rest. Or lack there of it. It was just two weeks ago when we covered the story of…
-
The Imperfect Science
•
5 min read
God is perfect, but our worship isn’t, despite what we might think. The seemingly fixed nature of our worship belies the truth: worship throughout history has been spontaneous and full of joy. We have gone through eras, particularly the medieval period, in which liturgy (the work of the people) was done in a language unknown to its…
-
To Bless or Not To Bless
•
3 min read
That is the question I have for Monday. For the liturgical snobs out there, I know that it is Lent and we aren’t encouraged by Michno to bless in Lent, but to recite a “prayer over the people,” as was the most ancient custom of what would become the blessing much later. It is a…
-
To change is a sign of respect
•
4 min read
[A couple of weeks ago I began writing about change. I argued that we are called to change and that we actually like change. You may want to go back and read them both again. Now I’m going to write about another aspect of change: intransigence.] One of the aspects of our view of change…