Dispatches from Dean Dane
Dispatches from Dean Dane is a weekly blog from the Very Rev'd Dane Boston, dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. He welcomes your questions and commentary at dboston@trinitysc.org.
January 9, 2025
"And the light shineth in darkness"
καί τό φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καί ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” (King James Version)
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (Revised Standard Version)
Most variations in biblical translations are of little real significance. Some words become obscure and archaic as time passes and usage shifts, and so they are updated in new translations for ease of comprehension. Complicated sentence syntax, similarly, can trip readers up in our age of shortened attention spans, so modern translators often try to find ways to keep things short, sweet, and punchy. But as the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible were set down millenia ago and the English language reached its modern form in the 17th-century–largely as a result of the influence of those foundational Anglican texts, the King James Version of the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer–there is not much meaningful difference between one translation of Scripture and another.
So what, then, do we do with what looks to be a major variation in translations of one of the most important verses in the critical first chapter of the Gospel According to Saint John? Scholars call this passage the Prologue, and we get an awful lot of it in December and January. It is the culminating reading at Christmas Lessons and Carols, the appointed reading on both Christmas Day and the First Sunday after Christmas, and the opening reading at Epiphany Lessons and Carols. Indeed, one old custom appoints these verses to be read as “the Last Gospel” at the end of every Holy Eucharist. That’s a lot of the Prologue!
And it is for very good reason that we hear it so much. The Prologue of John is a passage unique among the accounts of the life of Jesus given by our four evangelists. Mark, urgently and economically racing toward the Cross, begins his Gospel with a short prophetic announcement and then launches into his narrative with the Baptism of Christ. Matthew, keen to demonstrate for Jewish readers that Jesus has fulfilled Jewish prophecy and comes from an unimpeachable Jewish pedigree, begins his Gospel with a genealogy from Abraham to Joseph, who is told in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, even though she is already pregnant by the power of the Holy Ghost. Luke, methodical and analytical, tells his readers that he has carefully consulted eyewitness accounts and all the best sources, and so begins his Gospel not with the conception and birth of Jesus but rather with his cousin and forerunner John the Baptist.
But John the Evangelist is different. His account of the Good News of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ begins at the beginning of all things: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now when John speaks of “the Word,” he does not simply mean some letters arranged on a page or some syllables uttered aloud, the ways we usually mean the word “word.” He is writing of ὁ λόγος–the logos. This is the Greek word from which we derive the word and concept of “logic,” and it contributes to our names for various fields of study: “biology,” the study of natural life; “anthropology,” the study of human beings and human cultures; “theology,” the study of God and the things pertaining to God. The Logos is not just some random utterance out of the mouth of God. He is the full disclosing of the plan and purposes of God. He is the fullness of God’s will, God’s authority, God’s power, God’s love. He is the very logic of God animating and ordering all that is. And, as John says, he is himself divine.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Some folks acknowledge the astonishing wonder of these words by bowing or even kneeling when they hear them read. While we may not all change the posture of our bodies at this announcement, it is a declaration that demands a change in the posture of our souls and hearts. All of who God is and what God desires for what God has made has entered what God has made and lived among human beings as a human being. The whole host of heaven marvels at this staggering announcement.
What makes this declaration so remarkable is that the Logos comes not to humanity as we ought to be–not to humanity as we were made at the beginning, in the Image of God, perfect material reflections of the Logos himself–but to humanity as we actually are in this world. That is the meaning of the Greek verse at the top of this message, and the two translations that I have given below it. In the Word is life, and this life is the light of all humankind, and this light shines in the darkness.
The deep meaning of God enlightens a world constantly descending into meaningless. The deep order of God continually orders our chaotic existence. The deep purpose of God perpetually corrects our twisted plans. The deep love of God claims and redeems our senseless hate.
But to return to the translation question with which we began, what exactly has our darkness done with this Light of the Logos? The Light shines into the darkness of our world and our lives. And the darkness οὐ κατέλαβεν. The Greek word “katelaben,” or “katalambano,” is a compound word meaning “to take hold of” or “to apprehend.” It is sometimes used literally, and sometimes figuratively. Some scholars and translators have proposed the English word “grasped” as a good rendering, as we use it in much the same way. A pickpocket might grasp a wallet, or a student might grasp a subject in school. Either use implies mastery over the thing that is grasped.
And what John intends to tell us is that the Light of the Logos of the Lord has not and cannot be grasped by the darkness of this world. It cannot be controlled or mastered by the powers that would control us and master us. It cannot be stopped even if we, out of fear or hatred, wish to stop seeing it. It cannot be understood according to the warped ways of thinking dominating human minds and cultures. The Light shines into this darkened world, into our darkened souls, and the darkness cannot grasp it, arrest it, extinguish it, or comprehend it.
But still the Light shines. We have heard the Prologue of John often in the last month. This Sunday, we will hear of the Baptism of our Lord from Luke’s Gospel. The Light of God’s Logos shining from before time and forever comes to a certain place of earthly geography at a certain time in human history within the context of a certain human culture and shines into the universal problem of human sin. We know how the story will progress. Sin and death and darkness will attempt to grasp the Light, and snuff it out.
But the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness οὐ κατέλαβεν.
Previous Dispatches
- December 26, 2024 - "On the Feast of Stephen..."
Merry Christmas on this the second day of twelve days of feasting and rejoicing! Today is also the Feast of St. Stephen, one of the first deacons of the Church and the first martyr for the Christian faith. Trinity is blessed with a beautiful window depicting St. Stephen in the staircase leading to the north transept balcony. Take a moment to appreciate it this coming Sunday. Remember, on this First Sunday after Christmas there is only one service at 10:00 a.m. We return to our full schedule on the twelfth day of (and Second Sunday after) Christmas, January 5!
Things are quiet at Trinity during the Twelve Days of Christmas as our staff and volunteers enjoy a time of celebration and rest with their families and friends. We are so grateful for all those who made our glorious Christmas celebrations possible on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Thank you, and thank you to all who worshipped with us on the Feast of the Incarnation!
For my Dispatch today, I wish to share three poems with you. One is a well-known carol that begins with a mention of this day–the Feast of Stephen. While it is otherwise unrelated to the day itself and really tells the story of the title character, King Wenceslas of Bohemia, it is notable that Stephen’s ministry as a deacon involved caring for poor and hungry folks just as Wenceslas does. We know the first stanza and the tune, but the whole carol is a powerful call to generosity and charity, especially at this holy time.
The second poem was written by the English Jesuit priest Robert Southwell on the Incarnation of Christ. I was glad to share it with the Men of Trinity Tuesday Bible study before Christmas, and I thought others might appreciate its delightful paradoxes and profound Eucharistic reflection.
The final poem today is by Sir John Betjeman, a 20th-century poet with a particular love and appreciation for Victorian architecture and English parish churches, who offers his own profound Eucharistic reflection in the words below.
God bless you, and Merry Christmas!
“Good King Wenceslas”
Good King Wenceslas looked out,
on the Feast of Stephen,
when the snow lay round about,
deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
though the frost was cruel,
when a poor man came in sight
gathering winter fuel.“Hither, page, and stand by me,
if thou know’st it, telling:
yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence,
underneath the mountain
right against the forest fence
by Saint Agnes fountain.”“Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
bring me pine logs hither.
Thou and I shall see him dine
when we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch, forth they went,
forth they went together.
Through the rude winds’ wild lament
and the bitter weather.“Sire, the night is darker now
and the wind blows stronger.
Fails my heart, I know not how!
I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, good my page,
tread thou in them boldly.
Thou shalt find the winter’s rager
freeze thy blood less coldly.”In his master’s steps he trod,
where the snow lay dinted.
Heat was in the very sod
which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure–
wealth or rank possessing–
ye who now will bless the poor
shall yourselves find blessing.The Nativity of Christ, by Robert Southwell
Behold the father is his daughter’s son,
The bird that built the nest is hatch’d therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.O dying souls! behold your living spring!
O dazzled eyes! behold your sun of grace!
Dull ears, attend what word this word doth bring!
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace!
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,
This life, this light, this word, this joy repairs.Gift better than Himself God doth not know,
Gift better than his God no man can see;
This gift doth here the giver given bestow,
Gift to this gift let each receiver be:
God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me,
God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.Man alter’d was by sin from man to beast;
Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh;
Now God is flesh, and lies in manger press’d,
As hay the brutest sinner to refresh:
Oh happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew!Christmas, by Sir John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare–
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.- December 19, 2024 - The Waiting is the Hardest Part
Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part.
I always think of that lyric this time of year, when the decorations are finally up and the packages pile daily on the doorstep and my children practically simmer with excitement. And why should I pretend that it’s just the children? I am simmering with excitement too!
It doesn’t matter how old we get. It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve decked the halls, and wrapped the presents, and baked the cookies, and hung the star on the top of the tree. It doesn't matter whether we are waiting for our tenth Christmas or our one-hundred-tenth…by the time we get to this point in Advent the waiting is the hardest part, isn’t it?
Waiting is a part of human life, and it may indeed be the hardest part. It is hard to have our hopes–or our fears–fixed on a future event that has been promised, assured, guaranteed, and foretold, but that has not yet actually come. Waiting is a necessary part of our nature as creatures made in the image of God–creatures blessed with memory, reason, and skill, able to recall years past and plan for the things we expect to come–who are yet bound by time. We can see the horizon, but we have no power to bring it nearer. We know the day will dawn eventually, but until it does we wait in the dark.
The waiting is the hardest part. We wait for the first day of school, and wonder whether we’ll make friends and be ok apart from mom and dad. We wait for the day of the big game, or the opening night performance, when all will see whether we were born with sufficient skill and have cultivated the necessary discipline to do our best. We wait for the final exam, when we will know at last through a teacher’s bright red ink whether we have sharpened our wits and studied our hardest.
We wait for the night of the first date, to see whether we really like the other person or, more terrifyingly, whether the other person really likes us. We wait for the wedding day, determining the details and checking off the RSVPs. We wait for the word whether our bid was accepted on the house we hope to share for the rest of our lives. We wait for the baby to come, and for the child to grow, and for the great moments of life to be lived all again in the next generation.
We wait for the promotion, the partnership, the invitation to join the social club. We wait for our vacations, or our sabbaticals, or even our chance to sleep in on Saturday mornings (but not, I hope, on Sunday mornings!). We wait for retirement, for the trips we have planned, for the grandkids to visit. We wait for the garden to grow, and the flowers to bloom, and the fruit to ripen, and the leaves to fall.
And we wait to die. (Though not all of us, of course. Some are snatched from this life suddenly and without warning. There is a certain mercy in that, to go without waiting, though I know from the experience of my own grandfather’s sudden passing years ago how very hard it is on those who are left behind.)
Each time it has been my privilege to watch with a family at a bedside while someone they love lies dying, as we wait together for that last breath, I have been struck by how alike it is to the wait for that first breath at a birth. We know it must come. It cannot tarry forever. The moment will arrive. Everything will be changed when it does. But until it does…we wait.
The waiting is the hardest part, beloved. That has been true for God’s people down through the ages. Through four centuries of slavery and toil in the land of Egypt the children of Abraham waited for the Lord their God to deliver them. Through forty days and forty nights of fire and smoke on Sinai’s height the newly-freed Twelve Tribes waited for Moses to bring them the Law of God. Through four decades of wandering in trackless wastes the stiff-necked and stubborn people waited to be brought into the Promised Land of Canaan. Through generations of turmoil and strife the nation of Israel waited for a king who would rise to rule their hearts in peace and purge their souls with love, as the prophets promised he would. For four more centuries the chosen people waited in silence, scattered among the Gentiles, subjugated to idolatrous empires, hearing not the Word of the Lord.
“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.”
The rather fitting irony of our eager annual waiting for Christmas Day is that Christmas is both the end of our waiting, and the beginning of a greater waiting. For on the one hand, Christmas is the fulfillment of all the waiting of a weary world that has been groaning in travail from the moment Eve and Adam first took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate. Christmas is the completion of all the long centuries of waiting through which Father Abraham watched for the promise by which God had bound him to himself: the promise that he and his vast and numberless family would be blessed, and would become a blessing unto all the families of the earth. Christmas is the dawning of that day seen of old by those prophets given eyes to see: that a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and she shall call his name Emmanuel, “God with us.”
Oh how glorious the announcement of this holy time! The long wait of the people of God has not been in vain. The human race’s night of weeping shall not last forever. On Christmas, the dawn indeed begins to break and our eager eyes catch the first glimpse of light eternal.
And yet of course the dawning of Christ’s day leads us on to another, greater waiting. The King has come to us–first shivering in a stable, then crowned with thorns and enthroned upon the Cross of Calvary. He has won for us the victory for which our souls, and the souls of all our fathers and mothers, waited with longing but could not accomplish for ourselves. He has defeated Death, and conquered Sin, and has promised to complete his triumph at last by gathering us to himself and making the whole creation new.
And so…we wait, again. The waiting is the hardest part, O Church. But the promise of our eagerly awaited celebration next week of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is that we wait in hope. We wait in faith, knowing that the One for whom we wait is faithful. We wait for the full consummation of the Kingdom of God in our lives and in our world, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit now dwelling in us–the very downpayment that our waiting is not in vain–we strive to live and work as though that Kingdom were already here. For through the birth of a child in Bethlehem long ago, it is. And he is worth the wait.
And our eyes at last shall see him,
through his own redeeming love;
for that child so dear and gentle
is our Lord in heav’n above;
and he leads his children on
to the place where he is gone.Not in that poor lowly stable,
with the oxen standing by,
we shall see him, but in heaven,
set at God’s right hand on high;
when like stars his children crowned
all in white shall wait around.- December 12, 2024 - Telling God What To Do
This Sunday, I am going to tell God what to do.
Actually, we all are going to tell God what to do. Whenever we gather for the Holy Eucharist and pray the collect of the day–that first special prayer in the liturgy that changes from week to week as it “collects” the appropriate thoughts and themes of each Sunday, feast day, and fast day in the calendar of the church year–it is the celebrant who actually speaks the words. But he or she does so with and for the assembled congregation. We all pray the collect together, through the single voice of the person leading our worship.
And when we pray the collect for the Third Sunday of Advent we tell God what to do:
“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
We do not say, “O Lord, if it pleases you, won’t you consider possibly stirring up your power and maybe coming among us, whenever is most convenient?” We do not say, “Dear God, if you could perhaps find your way clear to helping us, according to whatever means or timeline seems best to you…” We do not even throw in a “grant us” or a “we beseech thee” to make our prayer sound a little more pious.
“Stir up thy power, O Lord.” Blunt, bracing, and to the point. “Get up and get moving, O Lord.” “Do something, O Lord!” Of course one could say that we are pleading as much as we are commanding. But in the end, the effect is the same. We are telling the Lord our God to gather his strength, put his power into motion, and set the cosmos astir.
Even more, we are telling him exactly where he should bring all his great might, his great power, his great glory, his great love: “come among us.” We want God to come into our midst. We want God to dwell with us and in us. We want God, if I may say it this way, to show up and show out.
“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
How dare we! Or rather, how dare we? How can we presume to tell the Almighty what to do? How can we expect God to come among us with great might? How can we ask the Lord to stir up his power?
The answer is simple: because he has promised to do it. Again and again in Scripture, as the people of God wrestle with the catastrophes of a broken creation and the consequences of their own bad decisions, God assures them that he will not leave them or forsake them, fallen though they may be. Indeed, again and again God promises to come among them in a new and powerful way just when they seem to have lost everything, when they seem without hope, when they seem least worthy of his regard, when they seem utterly unable to help themselves.
Each week in this holy season of Advent we have heard the prophets of Israel promise that the Lord will come to save his people. Jeremiah assured us on the First Sunday that he would fulfill his promise and “cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David,” the kingly line that God had said would abide on the throne forever. On the Second Sunday, Malachi declared that the Lord whom we seek “will suddenly come to his temple.” On this coming Third Sunday, Zephaniah will announce to us that “the Lord, your God, is in your midst; a warrior who gives victory.” Finally, just before we begin our celebration of Christmas we shall hear on the Fourth Sunday the comforting promise of Micah that out of Bethlehem–the lowliest and least of the cities of Judah–God will raise up a Shepherd who will “stand and his feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the Name of the Lord his God.”
So how dare we? We make bold to tell God to stir up his power and with great might to come among us because that is precisely what he has promised us he would do.
But why dare we? That is a somewhat more difficult–or at least more uncomfortable–question. And this collect for the Third Sunday of Advent answers it for us:
“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.”
We tell God to come among us with power and great might because without him we are a people captive and bound. We are hindered and hampered. We are stuck and stymied. Our sins have us cornered, crushed, and cowed.
Now one of the most lamentable failures of Christian preaching and teaching has been to give the mistaken impression that “sins” are a bunch of fun but naughty things that bad people indulge in and good people abstain from. Mind, I don’t know that I’ve ever really heard a preacher say it quite like that. But I have often felt that that is the impression given–and I have often feared that I myself have given people that impression, Lord forgive me.
But that is the wrong way to think of sins, and Sin more broadly. Sins are those things we have done and left undone that leave us less free to serve God and our neighbor.
When we overindulge in food or drink–gluttony is the besetting sin of the holiday season, speaking for myself at least!–we have less to share with others (it’s in our bellies, after all), and our self-indulgence threatens to harm the good health God has given us to do his work.
When we greedily gather up our end-of-year profits and then frantically waste them on consumer goods, we put our trust in things like money and possessions that will not abide unto eternity.
When we look with lust upon another person–whether under the mistletoe or not–we cease to seek the image of God in a fellow someone and begin to see only a something to be used for our own satisfaction.
When we lose our temper in a long checkout line at Target we betray the false and idolatrous belief that we are, ourselves, the center of the universe and that all creation should swirl around us, our schedules, and our own sore feet.
Our sins hinder us. They keep us from being who we are called to be, and from doing what we are called to do. Even if they are originally rooted in the enjoyment of a pleasure–the delight of holiday treats, the satisfaction of hard work well-compensated and well-enjoyed, the beauty of the human form, or even the temporary relief of letting off a little steam in a stressful situation–they move swiftly to imprison us. They capture our minds, our hearts, our time, our treasures, our bodies, our souls, ourselves. They would take away our humanity and, in the end, our life itself. For that, ultimately, is the aim of Sin: to hand us over, bound and beaten, to Death.
We need someone stronger than our sins–stronger than ourselves–to save us. We need someone stronger than Death to deliver us.
“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.”
In these waning days of Advent, make this your prayer. Dare to tell God what to do. Dare to tell him to do what he said he would do. Look to the coming of One who is mightier than anything that would presume to bind you. Call upon him to set you free from whatever hindrance is holding you from the fullness of his abounding life.
Then greet with joy your Deliverer: the Righteous Branch of David ruling over us, the mighty Warrior in our midst to guard us, the Shepherd satisfying every need of his flock…a helpless, shivering child, a crucified and risen Savior.
- December 5, 2024 - Anxiety and Gratitude
It was my privilege to preach and celebrate at our Holy Eucharist in the Cathedral on Thanksgiving Day. As I’ve often said in the past, that is one of my favorite services of the year. I love the quiet of the streets as I make my way to the Cathedral (though I did at one time find my way blocked by the Turkey Trot!). I love the Thanksgiving hymns, and the incredible cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables–signs of the earth’s bounty and human skill and God’s unfailing provision for our needs–bedecking the altar and the marble railing. I love the fact that the service is small, and includes parishioners I see every week interspersed with family and friends that they only get to see a few times a year, and also guests and visitors who come only on that day. “Come, ye thankful people, come…”
My son put only the slightest damper on my enthusiasm for Thanksgiving Day service when he asked, just as we were preparing to leave, “Who’s preachin’ today, pops?” When I cheerfully answered, “I am, buddy!” his countenance fell and he gave the rug a little kick. “But your sermons are always so LOOONG! We’re never going to get any turkey!”
So it was that, for Fritz’s sake, I preached a very short sermon on Thanksgiving Day. I share it here, for my dispatch this week, for while I trust the themes fit the day itself, I think they have broader application for the times in which we live.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on…for which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?” –Matthew 6:25, 27
Anxiety is the enemy of gratitude.
To worry over the the future–the things that might or might not happen; the things we might or might not get; the life we might or might not have–is to lift our minds off of the contemplation of the actual good things we have received in this moment and to throw them into a murky mess of hypotheticals. It is to set our hearts on things we can never control, and to forsake the things within our grasp: the blessings we have been given, and the good that we can do for others.
But there is hope today. For if anxiety is the enemy of gratitude, gratitude is the antidote to anxiety. That is the meaning of this celebration. In spite of all the thought and care that goes into our good food and good drink this day, the real purpose of Thanksgiving is to turn our hearts and minds–ourselves, our souls and bodies–to gratitude. It is to be mindful of all that we have, all that we are, all those we are given to love, and to refuse to dwell either in the regretful past or the anxious future. It is to be here, in this moment, with these people and the people we will embrace later today. It is to be grateful for all that we have received, and responsive to our opportunities to serve.
“For your Father who is in heaven knows you have need” of all the things that make this life good. Indeed, in his Son Jesus Christ he has met all our needs abundantly, more than we could ask for or imagine. For that most perfect gift we gather at this holy table for Eucharist, which is to say, thanksgiving. And we carry our gratitude, our Eucharist, to the other Thanksgiving tables we will enjoy today.
And so, beloved, let us this day accept the invitation to gratitude. Let us give thanks for all that we have received, and give over our worries about tomorrow to the one who holds tomorrow in his hands. Let us make thanksgiving, and live thanksgiving, and show forth our thanksgiving in all we say and do.
And may a people who are, in this moment, particularly grateful for short sermons say “Amen.”
- November 28 - Come, ye thankful people, come
Beloved, this Thanksgiving week I offer you a Dispatch entirely plagiarized from the Prayer Book and the Hymnal. Perhaps you will find one of the texts below useful for your own personal reflection in these days of gratitude, or as you prepare to offer the grace at your holiday table.
And please join us in the Cathedral on Thanksgiving Day at 10:00 a.m. for the Holy Eucharist, and on Sunday, December 1 for Advent Lessons and Carols at 4:00 p.m.!
The General Thanksgiving
As found in Morning and Evening Prayer, Rite I.Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we thine unworthy servants
do give thee most humble and hearty thanks
for all thy goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all men.
We bless thee for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for thine inestimable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ,
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we beseech thee,
give us that due sense of all thy mercies,
that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful;
and that we show forth thy praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to thy service,
and by walking before thee
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost,
be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.A General Thanksgiving
As found in the Thanksgivings beginning on Page 836 of the Prayer Book.Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.
We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side.
We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.
We thank you for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.
Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.
Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know Christ and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.
“Come, ye thankful people, come”
Hymn 290 in The Hymnal 1982.Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home:
all is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker, doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.All the world is God’s own field, fruit unto his praise to yield;
wheat and tares together sown, unto joy or sorrow grown:
first the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear:
grant, O harvest Lord, that we wholesomes grain and pure may be.For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take his harvest home;
from his field shall in that day all offenses purge away;
give his angels charge at last in the fire the tares to cast,
but the fruitful ears to store in his garner evermore.Even so, Lord, quickly come to thy final harvest home;
gather thou thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin;
there, forever purified, in thy presence to abide;
come, with all thine angels come, raise the glorious harvest home.- November 21, 2024 - Long Live the King
“We adore titles and heredities in our hearts, and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.”
So observed Mark Twain of his fellow Americans in his own day, and I think what he said still holds true today. We are a people proud not to have a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy, proud to exercise self-government through our elected public servants, and proud to live in a democratic republic.
And yet…whenever a royal wedding or funeral or coronation is broadcast from the United Kingdom, a great many Americans are willing to get up at 4:00 in the morning to watch all the coverage live. Millions more watch the recording later. And surely it’s not for lack of interest in “titles and heredities” that folks will scour their genealogy throughout all generations searching for even the most distant link to a regal–or at least noble–relation. Even in this age that shows less and less interest in or patience for traditions and formality and pomp and circumstance, a crown still commands a certain undeniable cachet.
We can ridicule all we want with our mouths, but the truth is that some little corner of the human heart–even the American human heart–continues to adore kings and queens, royalty and social rank. Why is that?
I’d like to propose an answer that you might find offensive: it is because we are meant to be subjects. We relish being ruled. We crave a king.
Now let me make very clear right off the bat that I am not advocating or defending monarchy! The fact that we are drawn to regal authority does not mean that it is a good or desirable concept. The long and shameful history of human tyranny rather proves otherwise. Our Founding Fathers were right to reject the claims of earthly royalty. They were right to establish a system of government “of the people, by the people, for the people”–even if we acknowledge that their vision of “the people” was time-bound and far too narrow. They were right to gird and guard our nation with checks and balances against the consolidation of too much power in the hands of any individual or faction. Fervently may we pray and tirelessly may we work to preserve what they bequeathed to us, and may we never cease to defend our republic against every enemy foreign or domestic.
But the fact that we Americans ought never to accept the dictates of any earthly prince or potentate does not change the fact that we human beings are creatures meant to be ruled. It is a necessary condition of our nature.
For we are made in the image and likeness of Almighty God, and are intended to be in relationship with him. That the maker of the earth and stars should be at all interested in us–as individuals and as a race–should bring us inexpressible wonder and awe and joy. But it should not lead us to make the false inference that because God desires and intends relationship with us that we are, in turn, equals with God. Indeed, that is precisely the lie that leads to tyranny and oppression and to every other form of human brokenness.
You see, we are creatures meant to be ruled and governed by One who truly is above us in dignity and rank–in title and heredity, if we can presume to apply the image of such earthly pretensions to him. He was before us and before all created things, for he has no beginning. He shall abide after us when we have returned to the dust from which we were taken, for he can have no end. Our only hope of eternity is found and bound up in him, because he was and is and ever shall be the same. He is higher than us in glory, goodness, grace, and grandeur. Indeed, none of those words can have any real meaning for us apart from their revelation in him. We crave a king because we were made to be subjects of the Lord our God.
The trouble is that we have forsaken our rightful ruler for a tyrant, and the vast administration that serves him. For the tyrant holding sway over us has numberless regents ready to rule in his pretended title and exercise his usurped authority. For some people, the regent is called “greed.” For others, the regent is called “lust.” For others, the regent is called “status.” For others, the regent is called “indulgence.” For others, the regent is called “perfectionism.” One most insidious regent reigning in many, many hearts today is called “self-hatred.” Another is called “self-pity.”
Only you and the Lord your God know the name of the regent–or, if you are anything like me, the many competing would-be regents–most eager to subjugate your soul and mind and heart. But the tyrant himself is always the same. He is called Sin, which is simply the name for what happens when we reject God’s rightful rule and authority and place ourselves on the throne of our own lives. Sin is the one who seeks to wrap tight around us the chain of our own unbridled appetites. Sin is the one who seeks to supplant the freedom God intends for us with slavery to self. Sin is the one who seeks to seduce some of us to puff ourselves up with power, and others of us to bow in shameful obeisance before the same.
And Sin, rather sneakily, is behind all those misuses and abuses of human authority that would lead us to reject the notion of any rightful authority at all. It is Sin that teaches earthly tyrants the art of oppression, that they might propagate their improper power. It is Sin that has made human beings hate and harm one another in the most inhumane ways. It is Sin that drives us to divide ourselves from others into different groups that have no meaning in the eyes of God.
Because of Sin, we both crave the fleeting certainty promised by earthly rulers and princes, and rightly fear the evil they are inclined to do. We desire authority because we were made for it, and hate authority because no human leader can be trusted to wield it aright.
But abusus non tollit usum. “Abuse does not take away use.” Though all earthly rule and power is tainted by Sin’s influence, we who have been called and claimed in Baptism find that we have become subjects of the One True King. We who worship the God who calls us to obedience find that he has walked the way of obedience himself before us, and gives us his Spirit to strengthen us to follow. We who are continually disappointed by the desire to find and adore authority in other human beings find that our deep drive is fulfilled at last in the One who is both human and divine.
Come to Trinity on this last Sunday after Pentecost as we keep the Feast of Christ the King. Depose the tyrants and usurpers falsely claiming rule over your heart. Whatever they are called, cast them from the throne of your life. Come and worship Jesus, our Sin-conquering King.
- November 14, 2024 - Events in the Life of the Church
This week saw two significant events in the life of the larger Church. One was routine and encouraging, the other shocking and saddening.
The routine, encouraging event was the 102nd Annual Convention of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina hosted here at Trinity. I was so proud of and grateful for the extraordinary welcome that our staff and volunteers extended to the clergy and lay delegates of our diocese. While we always count it a privilege to serve as the cathedral–the church where the Bishop’s cathedra, Latin for chair or throne, resides–a major diocesan event allows us to live in that vocation fully and visibly. In gracious hospitality, with stirring worship and music, and through our beautifully-maintained facilities, Trinity was indeed “a house of prayer for all” the people of EDUSC. Thank you to all who made the weekend possible!
And while Annual Conventions do include a lot of procedural and bureaucratic work–one gets a little tired of hearing the phrase “Is there a motion?”–they are also encouraging, even joyful times, especially in this diocese. Upper South Carolina’s clergy fellowship is uniquely warm and friendly, and it is always good to see friends and leaders from across the wider Church. We were particularly blessed by the presence of the Right Reverend Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina (a.k.a the Lower Diocese) based down in Charleston. Bishop Ruth and our own Bishop Daniel work closely as the two Episcopal bishops in our state. Her participation in our convention was a wonderful reminder of the ties that bind Episcopalians and Anglicans across the country and across the world.
But that leads to the shocking and saddening event of the week: the news on Tuesday of the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, over the manner in which he handled heinous abuse allegations against a now-deceased lay leader of boys’ camps in the Church of England.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior leader in the Church of England, from which our own Episcopal Church is descended. We pray for Archbishop Justin in our Prayers of the People every Sunday, acknowledging him as the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. While the Archbishop has no actual authority in the American Church, the mere fact of being in communion with him is one of the historic, essential markers of the Anglican way of following Jesus.
The accounts of the abuse suffered by generations of boys at the hands of John Smyth are sickening. That such crimes were committed in the name of Christ makes them unspeakably worse. That the chief shepherd of our particular communion within Christ's flock failed adequately to address the needs of the survivors of this abuse or to ensure that Smyth was brought to justice is utterly unacceptable, and it would seem that Archbishop Justin's decision to resign is the only appropriate response.
It is hard to hold together these visions of the Church presented, on the one hand, by a joyful, successful convention, and on the other by a shameful, heartbreaking revelation coming in the same week. The Church is the Body of Christ, given to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth. And that Body is composed of sinful human beings: those who do awful things to one another, and those who fail to hold their brothers and sisters accountable to the demands of God's justice.
Beloved, we must never accept harm done to God's people–especially God's children–in God's Name. Neither must we allow ourselves to abandon our hope and faith that the Church is a reconciled, reconciling Body. We must continually acknowledge our brokenness, continually seek forgiveness, and continually work to protect each member of Christ's Body.
Pray in thanksgiving for the healthy life of our Diocese. Pray in mercy for Archbishop Justin and his family. Pray in compassion and sorrow for the victims of all who have been abused by members of the Church. And pray in penitence for those who have abused others in the Name of Him who bore the abuse of our race, and still died for poor sinners such as we are.
- November 7, 2024 - Vote for Jesus
Now that Election Day has come and gone, I think it’s high time that I tell you who to vote for.
“Well it’s a little late for that, Dane.” I suppose it would be, if I were going to tell you to support a specific political candidate for dogcatcher, or school board, or some federal office or other.
(Lord knows there are plenty of preachers eager to tell their flocks which candidates and parties they should and shouldn’t support. Some apparently believe that the plain proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds and consciences of individual Christians lack sufficient power to form and move thoughtful, faithful citizens. Others have strayed further into a “gospel” which is no good news at all, the proclamation that a politician will redeem us. Make no mistake: anyone who would point the people of Christ to put their hope for salvation in a mere sinful human being is in grave error. May the Lord grant to all such proud false prophets and deluded self-promoters the grace of a convicted conscience and a repentant spirit–and may I, too, find mercy and restoration for all my own numberless failings as a servant of God.)
But I’m not talking about the vote that you cast this past Tuesday (or by mail, or through early voting). I’m talking about the vote you are casting right now this morning. And later today. And tomorrow. And each and every day of the next year, and four years, and beyond. I’m talking about the vote you cast with your every thought, by your every word, through your every deed. I’m talking about the vote you cast with the things you have done and left undone–the things you did that you ought not to have done, and the things you ought to have done but have failed to do. I’m talking about the vote you cast each time you fail or fall, and then ask forgiveness, and then get up to keep moving forward. I’m talking about the vote that really matters.
The word “vote” shares a Latin root with the word “vow.” You could say that a vote is a promise, a dedication. It is a commitment that reveals something of what matters to you, whether that’s a principle, a party, a platform, or a person. And however you may feel about the vote that you cast this week–however you may feel about the vote that roughly half of your fellow citizens in this nation cast this week–I want you to vote, right now, for Jesus. And I want you to keep voting for him every moment you draw breath.
Vote for Jesus in your public life: in the way you comport yourself, and conduct your business, and care for your corner of creation. Vote for Jesus in the way you speak to people–especially people who are helping you, or providing you a service, or who are weaker or less powerful than you are, or from whom you could not expect to gain anything. Vote for Jesus in the way you speak about people–even public figures, even public figures you cannot stand. Yes, that means the current President and Vice President, as well as the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect. Vote for Jesus in the messages you endorse, and the ideas you promote, and the conversations you conduct–especially online when you cannot see the human face or hear the human voice with whom you are engaging. Vote for Jesus.
Vote for Jesus in your private life: in the way you order your household, and spend your time and money. Vote for Jesus in the way you sacrifice for your spouse, and raise your children, and care for your elders, and love your friends. Vote for Jesus in the way that you serve the poor, and help the needy, and ask for help from your brothers and sisters in Christ when you find yourself poor and needy in mind, body, and spirit. Vote for Jesus by forsaking the illusion that you have it all together all the time. Vote for Jesus by being vulnerable with the people you love, and inviting their vulnerability in turn. Vote for Jesus by admitting when you’re wrong, and forgive others when they are. Vote for Jesus.
Vote for Jesus in your heart of hearts, where no one but God the Father who made you, God the Son who redeemed you, and God the Holy Spirit who dwells within you and is at work through you knows the deep truth of what you dream of and dread–what you despise and desire. Vote for Jesus by confessing your sins, and by actually accepting his assurance that your sins are forgiven. Vote for Jesus by earnestly asking his grace to forgive others, and by truly accepting that he has the power to release you from bitterness and wrath, which worketh not the righteousness of God. Vote for Jesus by trusting in his strength, and leaning not on your own understanding. Vote for Jesus by placing your hope for your future, your family’s future, the world’s future, not in our meager, halting efforts, but in his nail-pierced hands. Vote for Jesus by rising up to love prodigally, to serve sacrificially, to give gratefully. Vote for Jesus.
I know there are members of Trinity who feel shattered and shaken by the electoral outcome this week. As your priest and pastor, let me call you from despair: for we know that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I know there are members of Trinity who feel victorious and vindicated by the electoral outcome this week. As your priest and pastor, let me call you to humility: for we desire a better country, that is, an heavenly one, and we know not to put our trust in princes, nor in any child of earth.
Beloved, let us never forget that we are gathered in this Cathedral Parish as one Body called together by the Holy Spirit. That cuts through every other identity that would try to claim us. That ties more firmly than any other bond. It was accomplished by Christ on the Cross. It is sealed by the Spirit in our Baptism. It will be completed on the Last Day. Let us then hold fast to our deepest dedication, and our most fundamental commitment.
Vote for Jesus. Early and often.
- October 31, 2024 - Welcome to the Revolution
AccordWelcome to the revolution.
Or did you not know that that is what the Church is? Perhaps when you opened your Tidings today you did not realize you were receiving the newsletter of some dangerous radicals? (Beautifully laid-out, and in full color no less!) Perhaps when you step inside the Cathedral every Sunday and settle into your usual seat in your usual pew you did not know that you were arriving for a protest, a demonstration, an act of outrageous defiance against oppression and tyranny? (In splendid surroundings and accompanied by phenomenal music!) Perhaps you were not aware that each day, each week, year-in and year-out, from the highest Holy Days to the lowest low Sundays, what we gather for at Trinity is a resistance movement—a radical society, a grand conspiracy—with news that will topple the mightiest powers that hold sway over this world?
Beloved, I say it again: Welcome to the revolution!
Some of you are rolling your eyes. Some of you are preparing to delete this email. Some of you are asking yourselves “When did that nice young dean get so political?” Some of you are wondering whether there’s still time to change your pledge.
But before you do anything rash, let me remind you of the season. I don’t mean the election season, or even the stewardship season. (Both are tremendously important, and in the days to come we will mark both seasons. Commitment Sunday for the 2025 Stewardship Campaign is this Sunday, and I do hope you will join us to make your pledge for the year ahead! And don’t forget our 24-hour Prayer Vigil for our nation in the Cathedral from 6:30 p.m. on Monday, November 4 to 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 5, concluding with a magnificent and meaningful Choral Evensong.)
Today is, in the secular calendar, Halloween. That curious word has a pretty simple history: it was originally “Hallowe’en,” which was itself a contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve”–the day (and especially the night) before All Saints’ Day. “Hallows” is an old-fashioned word for “saint” or “holy” or “blessed,” and we still use it every time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed–holy, blessed, surpassingly good–be thy Name.” The three days of All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallows’ Day, and All Souls’ Day have sometimes been called “Allhallowtide,” making a short but deeply meaningful–even revolutionary–season in the church year.
For when we celebrate the communion of saints, we engage in a stunning act of defiance. You see, when we celebrate All Saints’ Day–Allhallowtide–we remember and give thanks for all of God’s servants down through the ages. But we do much more than merely remember the saints. In this little season, we rejoice in their fellowship as current companions and present realities in the ongoing life of the Church. All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days are not holidays of history: a time to look back through two millennia of the Christian faith in order to pick and choose heroes and recall famous people long dead. Rather, in this short season we remember that God has “knit together [his] elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of [his] Son Christ our Lord.”
Consider what those words mean. In these days, we profess that we who are still in our earthly pilgrimage—we who walk as yet by faith and not by sight—nevertheless are one with those who walked this path before us: one communion, one fellowship, one Body still with numberless companions and encouragers and partners in prayer who seem by any earthly measure to be separated from us by an incomprehensible and unbridgeable distance. We who plod along day-to-day in these fleshly bodies (some more fleshly and fleshy than others) are fellow travelers with ghostly companions all around us. (Here I use “ghostly” in the historic sense of “spiritual,” and not the modern sense of “spooky”). We who struggle still each moment with temptation and sorrow and suffering and sin are accompanied and supported by a whole cloud of witnesses who have passed beyond the reach of those things into the eternal triumph of the Risen Christ.
That assertion is what makes this season revolutionary. For to make such an assertion requires us to defy an oppressor and a tyrant.
Now, the power that we repudiate in this season is not a political one, though it has always been wrapped and mingled in and through the practice of politics. But no, this Allhallowtide we defy a ruler before whom the President of the United States (every President of the United States!), the King of England, and the Secretary General of the United Nations all stand subject.
The power that we reject in the days ahead is not an economic power, though greed and wealth will always try to wield it, and will always find themselves serving it. But no, this All Saints’ Sunday we renounce a creditor to whom the CEO of General Electric, the Chairman of Microsoft, and the President of the New York Stock Exchange must all pay their final debt.
No, beloved, the enemy against whom we gather on All Saints’ Day stands over and above all manifestations of human power and authority. For the great and terrible foe we defy in this season is Death itself. That is the revolutionary meaning of Allhallowtide. That is the substance of our protest. That is the radical movement of which we are part.
But if we are to grasp the full force of our rebellion tomorrow and Sunday, we must begin with a sober acknowledgement of Death’s power. We must give Death his due—for his horrors confront us everywhere we turn.
In the last few weeks we have read news of innocent people in our own region perishing in storms and flooding. We have also heard news of the leader of the terrorist group Hamas being “taken out” by the Israeli Defense Forces. Death’s reach is global, and he is happy to ally himself with natural disturbances and disasters as readily as with human plans and powers.
Or consider the radio story I heard some years ago, but can never forget, about a twenty-three-year-old woman waiting on the results of a test that would determine whether she has Huntington’s Disease. (Huntington’s is a hereditary condition similar to Parkinson’s, except that symptoms typically begin in one’s late thirties, progress very rapidly, and are always, eventually, fatal.) The young woman was accompanied to her appointment by her twenty-one-year-old sister, who already knows that she has the gene that will inevitably lead to the disease. They talked bravely and casually, with a sort of gallows-humor, about how they hoped their siblings would care for them when their bodies began to rebel and their minds began to deteriorate. After all, they had watched it all happen before to their own mother. Now, in their early twenties, these two women knew that the same fate awaited them.
The story sticks with me because HD runs in my own family, and it is merely the luck of the genetic draw that my father did not inherit the gene, and so I and my own children are spared. Death’s power is personal, and he is a subtle, patient enemy: hiding in our genes and family histories as much as in our choices, or in the changes and chances of this life.
Or consider the advertisement that I seem to see every time I open the YouTube app on my phone these days: a plaintive plea from the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School twelve years ago this December, asking viewers to sign a petition banning assault weapons. That terrible day—and all of the terrible days like it, before and since, that have shocked our nation and our world—reminds us that Death’s approach is random, and his touch unspeakably cruel and capricious.
Beloved, this is the enemy whom we defy this season, and we must not doubt for a moment that his reach is universal and his power is terrible.
And yet defy him we do. For in Allhallowtide we make bold to claim that untold generations of Christians whom we love but see no longer have not, in fact, been conquered by Death. On All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, we stand with the seventeenth-century priest and poet John Donne who wrote these mocking, defiant words:
Death be not proud, though some have calléd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.How can Donne speak so confidently? How can we join in this celebration, and joyfully declare that the saints whom Death thinks he “dost overthrow / Die not”? What gives us the courage to keep this feast, and say to waiting Death, “nor yet canst thou kill me”? What gives us the strength to shake our fists in the grim face of Death?
We dare to defy the great power that rules this world only because a greater power has broken into this world. As Saint Paul prays for the Church in his Epistle to the Ephesians, “...with the eyes of your heart enlightened, may you know what is the hope to which [God] has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe...”
These are words of promise, words of hope, words of encouragement. But, Christians, they are also words of defiance, words of upheaval, words of revolution! For how can we know the extent of God’s power that is at work in us? Because, as Paul continues, “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion...”
Brothers and sisters, here is our hope and glory. Here is the source of our strength on All Saints’ Day–the source of our rejoicing in the company of all the saints–and the source of our strength everyday. Here is the root of John Donne’s confidence, and our confidence. May it indeed take root deep within your heart, and bear fruit unto eternal life.
We topple Death, our mighty and dreadful enemy, with two little words: Jesus lives! We sing those words in our hymns, and receive those words in our sacraments, and serve God’s people in the world by the power of those words. We stand and shout our words of defiance in the Creed when we say that, “Yes, Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate—Yes, he was crucified—Yes, he died—Yes, he was buried…but on the third day he rose again!” Where, O Death, is thy victory? Where, O Grave, is thy sting? Jesus lives! Death, thou shalt die.
And the promise of our Scripture and celebration in this season is that, in Christ, the saints too shall rise. This is no vaguely spiritual promise—no sappy, sentimental assurance that “our loved ones live on forever in our memories and our hearts.” No! This is a battle cry. This is a declaration of independence. This is an act of defiance, of strength. In the resurrection of Jesus, Death’s power is broken. In the resurrection of Jesus, Death’s reign is ended. Because of the resurrection of Jesus, you and I need not fear the grave, nor cower before Death’s forces at work in our world. For we have become joint heirs with the One who has conquered. We are brothers and sisters with the saints in light. And we look to live and work now for the praise of his glory.
And so, dear friends, welcome to the revolution. Upheld by the prayers of the saints, encouraged along our way, “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us: looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Let us, with John Donne and with all the saints of every age who share in Christ’s eternal victory, look defiantly on the grim, proud face of Death and with a revolutionary sneer ask the old tyrant,
…why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.ion content.- October 24, 2024 - The Power of Prayer
I sometimes get a little uncomfortable when folks talk about “the power of prayer.” That’s certainly not because I don’t believe that prayer is powerful. As the punchline of the old joke about infant Baptism says, “Do I believe in it? Why, I’ve seen it!” I have seen the power of prayer in my own life, in the lives of my family members, and in the lives of the people it has been my privilege to serve as priest and pastor.
But often people speak of “the power of prayer” in a way that makes it seem as though it were a matter of sophisticated method or sufficient effort. That is, we make it sound as if those who have received what they were praying for must have put in more time, more eloquence, more fervor, more holiness, more…something, and so their prayers worked. By implication, the people who pray and do not receive what they prayed for–or don’t receive it in the time they wanted, or the way they wanted–well, they must just not be very good people, or at least not very good pray-ers.
That conclusion is unintentional, but incredibly insidious. It seeps into our thinking both because of our nature and because of our culture. We are results-oriented creatures living in a very results-oriented society. Forces deep within us and all around us drive us to discern and do whatever will get us what we want. We reason that if an idea or a practice is true and effective then we ought to see its impact in the real world. So if prayer really is powerful, then surely its power is most clearly manifested when we get what we ask for.
This way of thinking forgets that prayer is not a transaction, but a conversation. We’re not simply inserting our spiritual debit card into the cosmic ATM, punching in the proper pious code, and then waiting for a nice stack of blessing bills to drop into our waiting hands. Rather, when we pray we are talking with Someone–and it so happens that this Someone knows the needs of the world, our own needs, and indeed our own selves, better than we could ever hope to do.
You might reasonably ask, “Well then, why pray at all? If all I’m doing is talking to God, and God already knows all about me and what I want and whether it’d be good for me to get what I want…why not just sit silently waiting for the inevitable to happen?” I think there are a few good answers to these good questions.
First, our God is a communicative God. Indeed, the mystery of the Holy Trinity teaches us that within the eternal oneness of God himself there is an everlasting communication–an everlasting exchange of love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. God refuses to sit in monolithic, inscrutable silence. Rather, God the Father eternally pours forth his glory, his splendor, his compassion, and his deep love to and through his everlasting Word, whom we call God the Son. And this eternal pouring forth, blowing like a mighty wind from before time and forever is, himself, God the Holy Spirit, plumbing the very depths of the mind of God the Father. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be (world without end. Amen.), communication is at the heart of who God is.
And as creatures made in the image of God, we too are meant to be communicative. We are meant to receive communication, as we wonder in the glory of God written in the stunning beauty of the world he has made, in the unshakeable laws governing the cosmos, and in the astonishing secrets hidden in our own DNA. Our capacity to wonder, to reason, to learn, and to comprehend is part of what makes us unique among God's creatures as his own icons in the world. We are made to hear, to marvel at, and at last to learn the song that all creation is singing all around us.
And we, too, are meant to sing–to respond to what God is saying with communication of our own. This means telling our children and one another of what God has done: his love and faithfulness declared in the natural world and his love and faithfulness declared in the written Word and his love and faithfulness declared in our own lives. We are meant to communicate with one another the fullness of who God was, and is, and always will be, and to do so through the fullness of who we were, and are, and are still becoming by his grace.
This means an honest and unflinching communication with the people the Lord has placed in our lives. We must tell the deep truth of what we have learned in our brokenness as well as in our beauty, in our sins as well as in our service. We must tell one another what we fear and what we hope for, what we love and what we hate, what we dread and what we desire.
And if we would tell all this to our brothers and sisters in the human race of divine image-bearers, we should tell it all, also, to God. This is prayer, beloved. It is to take the fullness of who we are as communicative creatures and to pour that fullness back to our ultimate source–the ground of our being, and of all being. And in so doing we find that our singing and pleading and wrestling and weeping does not just go into the void but rather is heard by the One who wrote all songs, who knows all pleadings, who will wrestle everlastingly with the dust-creatures he has made like himself, and who will at last wipe away all tears.
This is the true power of prayer. It is not the bending of the universe to our own wills by mystical incantations and muttered rites. It is, rather, the offering of ourselves into those hands that first shaped the stars and that hold them still today, only to find that those hands are holding and shaping us, too. It is the slow and steady growth in communication from the first mewling cries of an infant (able only to squall out our own needs and wants, and unable to understand the sweet, soft words of his parents), into the halting discourse of adolescence (learning who we are and how we should talk, and even more importantly how we should listen to the people around us), into the full, free conversation of the most intimate friendship imaginable (at ease as much with silence as with speaking).
As in any true conversation, there will be surprises and unexpected statements. There will even be disagreements and disappointments. We will be told “No,” as a loving mother must sometimes (often?) deny even the earnestly stated, appropriately reasoned request of her child, whether for the child's own well-being or for the greater good of the whole family, unimaginable though those perspectives and reasonings may be to the child's mind. We will be told “Maybe,” or “Not yet,” just as two friends may argue cheerfully and lovingly and forcefully over a contested proposition, continuing to talk with and engage one another until clarity is reached. And we will also hear “Yes,” and know it to be not the grudging, stinting “Yes” of obligation but the glorious, electrifying “Yes” of two rational minds fixed on the same good and gracious end. Oh, the astonishing power of prayer!
I want to invite you into this kind of powerful prayer at Trinity in the coming days. We have two separate 24-hour prayer-vigils planned for the near future. This is no accidental overlap. Rather, in this full and fraught season, we are turning to the power of prayer both for the sake of our parish community, and for the sake of our nation.
On October 29-30, the people of Trinity are invited to pray in their homes and offices, either individually, with their families, or with fellow parishioners, through a whole day and night for our common life as a Cathedral Parish, asking that God would bless us as we seek to do his work, and especially that he would bless abundantly the 2025 Stewardship Campaign that will enable us to do his work.
Then, on November 4 and 5, the people of Trinity and all the people of Columbia are invited to come and pray for our nation at the time of the 2024 elections. We will begin a public prayer vigil with the chanting of the Great Litany at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, November 4. The Cathedral doors will remain open that night, and all through the next day, as we invite parishioners and our whole community to come in and pray. Finally, we will conclude with a magnificent and moving Choral Evensong at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 5, as the polls close.
Beloved, prayer is powerful. I believe it, because I have seen it. In these two incredibly important prayer vigils, won't you come and see it, too? And having seen it, won't you offer yourself in a prayer of thanksgiving to the God who speaks his gracious Word to us, and also hears us when we call upon him?
- October 17, 2024 - “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Those words from the Book of Proverbs are so familiar as to border on the cliche. But what exactly do they mean? How can a lack of vision lead to perishing? Or, to put it in positive terms, what connection is there between vision and flourishing?
Modern translations of that verse make clear that the vision in question is, in fact, the prophetic word from the Lord: the declaration by God’s servants of God’s will to God’s people. What’s more, the Hebrew phrase traditionally translated into English as “the people perish” apparently means something more like “the people cast off restraint,” or “the people are scattered.” One contemporary paraphrase even renders the verse as “When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild.”
Whichever translation we turn to, the meaning is clear: a community deprived of discerned and declared Divine purpose will dissolve, dissipate, and ultimately disappear. Again, to recast the point in positive terms, we need to understand and articulate who we are and what the Lord requires of us if we are to thrive as a people.
One of the ways your leaders at Trinity have sought to discern and declare God’s vision for this community in this moment is through our strategic visioning process. Don’t let that somewhat corporate-sounding term turn you off! Through a great deal of deeply prayerful conversation about our past, our present, and our first faint forecast of our future, the wardens, vestry, canons, directors, and I sought to render a vision of who Trinity is as a people, and have wrestled with the question of who God is calling us to be.
The result of that process was this strategic vision. Adopted by the vestry just over a year ago, in August 2023, it looks ahead to a significant milestone in the life of this Parish: our Golden Jubilee–50th anniversary–as the Cathedral of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina in 2027.
We set for ourselves some ambitious goals as we approach that celebration in just a few (short!) years. Some of those goals, I am delighted to say, are already accomplished or are well underway. Some remain on the horizon. All of these goals reflect the vision that your leaders have discerned together. And all of these goals depend on your support.
That is why our annual stewardship campaign is so important. I am convinced that there is no limit to what this community can achieve together when the people of Trinity give, and give sacrificially, toward the fulfillment of God’s call for us. Pledging is not about checking a box or carrying out an annoying obligation. It is about joyfully joining in a vision of what this place is, and what it shall be.
The Lord has called us to his work in this moment. He has granted us a vision of what the future holds. By his grace, our people are neither unrestrained, nor running wild, nor indeed are they perishing. Rather, we see new signs of life and thriving and full flourishing in our midst all the time. Won’t you take a moment to read–or, I hope, re-read–the strategic vision established by your vestry for your Cathedral? And, reflecting on this vision, won’t you prayerfully make your sacrificial commitment to support this work through your pledge?
- October 10, 2024 - Doing the work we are called to do in this place
How do we keep on keeping on, doing the work we are called to do in the place we are called to do it, when our hearts and minds are far away, with people and places we love that are suffering or in danger?
As I write this, Hurricane Milton is churning towards the west coast of Florida. I was born and raised in the city of Dunedin–“delightful Dunedin,” as tourism materials and the signs welcoming folks to downtown put it–just north of Clearwater in the Tampa Bay area. It really is a delightful place, with a picture-perfect Main Street leading to a lovely little marina on the Intracoastal Waterway. Statues of bagpipers wearing the city tartan greet visitors at the town limits, whimsically celebrating our proud Scottish heritage against a decidedly Florida backdrop of palm trees and sugar-sand beaches.My parents, grandmother, brother and sister-in-law, and uncle are all still there right now, riding out the storm in their homes. While I am thankful that none are in flood or evacuation zones, I confess that I fear for them as I recall what the winds and rains of Hurricane Helene did so recently to our own city, and to our brothers and sisters in regions northwest of Columbia. As we continue to pray for the victims of Helene and communities facing a long and difficult recovery, please also pray for my family, and for all of those in harm’s way as Milton makes landfall.
One challenging aspect of our information over-saturated way-of-life in 2024 is that we get minute-by-minute news from distant places dear to us, even when the only thing we can do for those places is to pray, and pray more, and pray yet more fervently. Prayer is never wasted, of course. But when it really is the only action available to us and the flood of upsetting information never seems to cease…well, what can we do to keep our focus on the tasks before us right here at home? Here are a few suggestions, in no particular order:
- I know this first one will cement my well-earned reputation as a Luddite, but unplug! Not all the time, and not from connection with the real people you care about and are praying for. But our brains are overwhelmed by the constant flow of data pouring into them from our devices. Turn off those notifications buzzing on your phone or tablet. Set–and stick to–limits on how often you’ll check your favorite news sites. Delete social media. (Seriously.)
To be sure, unplugging is a discipline to be cultivated. Our brains want the information that is overwhelming them, just as our bodies crave the unhealthy foods that deliver little dopamine hits of sugar, salt, and fat. Nobody ever resisted temptation by denying it was there, and no perfect practice of discipline and temperance ever arrived in an instant. Acknowledge how hard it is to unplug, be kind to yourself when you end up doom scrolling anyway, and resolve, by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, to try again. - Help, love, and comfort the people actually within reach. One of the most insidious aspects of being bombarded with news from afar is that we can find ourselves filled with compassion and concern for folks we cannot practically assist, then turn around and be short, unkind, and dismissive of people physically present with us. Again, begin with acknowledgement of that possibility. Then put your hand to the plow and set to the work before you that you really can do.
It has been incredibly inspiring this week to see the response of the people of Trinity to the needs of our neighbors in other parts of this state and across our region. Room 114 has been filled and refilled with an array of supplies and necessities. Generous contributions from our parishioners have poured into the Dean’s Outreach Fund, the Diocesan House, and Episcopal Relief and Development, and have gone right back out again to the people who need it most. I was deeply moved when your Vestry took action at its meeting last Thursday (rescheduled due to the storm) to commit up to $100,000 in funds from the Trinity Foundation to relief and rebuilding efforts across our Diocese. I have been even more deeply moved by the numberless acts of grace, kindness, and care I have seen the people of this parish extend to hurting members of our community in this difficult time.
Some people say “Charity begins at home” as a way to avoid helping people far away. But that misunderstands the expression. Charity–ἀγάπη, caritas, self-giving love–really does begin at home, cultivated in the daily work of showing love to the people we really do have to live with and deal with–and who have to live with and deal with us! If your heart is breaking at the thought of people suffering far away, do something lovely and loving for a person nearby. Make the conscious choice to show kindness to your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings, your neighbors, your coworkers, your checkout clerk at the grocery store, your waiter, or even the person on the Spectrum customer care line as you call yet again to see when your internet will be restored. You will find that the reach of your love exceeds its grasp, and the time and means to serve even the distant sufferers will come. - Pledge. Now don’t get mad and stop reading! I’m not trying to milk natural disasters to boost Trinity’s giving. Heaven forbid it. But I know from personal experience how hard it can be to fulfill my basic duties and responsibilities because I’m worrying over something big and distant…like a hurricane hitting my hometown. One good way to avoid falling into that trap is to focus more determinedly and intentionally on completing those same duties and responsibilities that I was facing before I began to fret over things I cannot control.
Making your pledge–or for that matter making your bed, or your children’s supper, or your neighbor’s day by bringing in his trash barrels for him–is one practical way to keep your mind and heart and will on the work you really are called to do. To complete the basic tasks before us is an act of orderly defiance in this chaotic and tumultuous world. So shake your fist in the face of Milton, and everything else that fills you with fear and worry, and make your pledge. - Pray. I know I said at the beginning this was a list of things you could do other than prayer. But it really is that important. When we pray–whether alone, with family or friends, in Keenan Chapel for Morning Prayer on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8:30 a.m., or in our many services on Sundays–we are returning our anxieties and fears and information overload to the only one who can bear them, and sanctify them. We may not get the answer we want, or in the time that we want it. But when we pray we cease to spin ourselves around in all our swirling illusions of responsibility and control. We give those things back to God, and remember that they were really his all along.
I make bold to offer you these thoughts and suggestions, beloved, because I am actually preaching to myself. I’m not really very good at unplugging, or showing practical charity to the people closest to me, or fulfilling my responsibilities (like pledging), or maintaining a disciplined prayer life. I struggle mightily to follow my own advice when I am afraid or in grief, or even just when I’m weary or bored.So let’s make a pact. I ask any of you who have read this far to keep me accountable in these practices, and to the other ways of staying sane, focused, and faithful to our work that we will surely discern together as a community. Checking in on one another isn’t scolding or shaming. It is to remember that we are not alone. It is to recall that we are all in this together. It is to heed the exhortation of Saint Paul, who told the Galatian Christians, “bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
My heart and my mind are in Dunedin right now. And yet our Lord’s work continues here in Columbia, too. Let us keep our hands and feet stubbornly doing the work that lies before us. Let’s keep on keeping on, and trust the rest to God.
- I know this first one will cement my well-earned reputation as a Luddite, but unplug! Not all the time, and not from connection with the real people you care about and are praying for. But our brains are overwhelmed by the constant flow of data pouring into them from our devices. Turn off those notifications buzzing on your phone or tablet. Set–and stick to–limits on how often you’ll check your favorite news sites. Delete social media. (Seriously.)
- October 3, 2024 - O pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And Asheville. And Beirut. And Greenwood. And...
O pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And Asheville. And Beirut. And Greenwood. And...
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
–Romans 8:19-21The word “devastation” comes to us from the Latin devastare, which means “to lay waste completely.” It is an old-fashioned and somewhat dramatic word. We usually use it to speak of an individual who is deeply and inconsolably upset, whether that use is in earnest–“She was devastated when she heard that her friend had died”–or sarcastic–“We ran out of coffee?! I’m devastated!”
Devastatingly, this week has given us ample occasion to use the word in earnest, and not just about individuals but about whole towns, and cities, and regions. We have seen–and continue to see–devastation up close. Parts of our city, our state, and our neighboring states have been truly devastated–laid waste, completely. For those who have lost loved ones, livelihoods, homes, and communities, I can only imagine the heartbreak of enduring such devastation. For those of us who have been left relatively unscathed but who wish desperately to help, I can attest to the heartbreak of witnessing such devastation. Our prayers are with those affected, as are our supplies, our sweat, and our sure and certain promise to walk alongside them in the days and months and years of recovery ahead.
What has particularly struck me this week is that the scenes of devastation coming to us from places close to home look so similar to the scenes of devastation coming to us from places far away. For alongside recent images of devastation from Aiken, Saluda, Greenwood, Asheville, and Swannanoa, we have seen images of devastation from Beirut, and southern Lebanon. We feared this week that we might see similar images from Jerusalem–and we thank God that, as yet, we have not, even as we fervently pray that we shall not. But we continue to see images of devastation from Gaza. And, as we mark a grim anniversary this week on October 7, we recall the scenes of devastation that we saw following the shocking and despicable terror attacks on Israeli civilians carried out one year ago.
Devastation often looks the same, wherever and whenever we find it. But its causes are not always the same. Though images from a community destroyed in a natural disaster may look eerily like those from a community destroyed in violence and war, there is a difference. Though the human toll exacted by a hurricane may seem indistinguishable from that enacted by a hellstorm of missiles, there is a critical distinction to be made. Though the suffering endured, and the courage required, and the compassion elicited may all be similar, we must rightly recognize and learn from the different causes of devastation.
The devastation of a natural disaster reminds us that we live in a broken world. That truth is written just as plainly in the ordinary sufferings that we and the people around us are called to endure each day as it is written in the great and devastating tragedies of peoples and nations. But the humdrum of normal life can lull us asleep to this reality, and to the compassion that suffering should always engender in our hearts. Disasters awaken us again.
To be clear, those who suffer acutely because of a natural disaster are not worse people than we are. Nor are they better. They are people just like us. If a few details were different–a shift of wind, a few extra inches of rain, an unexpected dam failure–their fate could be our fate. And we know that it might yet be, one day–though we pray God forbid it.
Victims of natural disasters are not victims of the wrath of God, but of the brokenness of a fallen creation that has become hostile toward God’s image-bearers–just as those image-bearers, through disobedience, became hostile toward their Creator. When natural disasters strike, we remember that “the earth, and all that therein is” has been subjected to futility–“to vanity,” as the King James Version puts it, using a word related in its root to “devastation.” And yet, more profoundly, we remember that this world has been subjected “in hope,” looking to that day when the redemption of all nature is at last completed in the full and final redemption of our human nature: when the creation at last “itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
The devastation wrought through violence and war, though, is different. For when we see images of suffering that come from human action, we know that a malevolent human will is, somehow, involved. When people kill people, someone has chosen the devastation. Human hands made and deployed the weapons, even when they are wielded from a great distance. Human minds devised strategies and counter-strategies for the express purpose of destroying other human beings. Human hearts nursed grievances and bitterness and hatred, and handed them down from one generation to another like radioactive heirlooms to poison the hearts, and minds, and wills, and hands of their children and their children’s children, and to turn them into killers in their own day.
To be very clear indeed, this is not because the people who suffer or the people who must defend themselves against aggressors are worse people than we are, or better. They, too, are people just like us. If a few circumstances were different–a shift of fortune, a twist of culture, a breakdown of laws and customs–their fate, too, could be our fate. And we know that it, too, might yet be, one day–please, Lord, forbid it!
But war and violence are not, like hurricanes, inevitable consequences of living in a beautiful, broken world. They are, rather, the likely but tragically evitable consequences of bearing a beautiful, broken human nature like ours. If natural disasters remind us of the fallenness around us, human bloodshed reminds us of the fallenness within us. All of us. And even if the devastation caused by both may look the same, and require of us the same compassionate response, the latter should call forth from us a special lament. For even as we give thanks that hearts are brave and hands are strong in the defense of the innocent–and we do, every day, as we pray for the safety of those who serve in our armed forces–we should grieve that the innocent of this world need defending in the first place. Even as we pray the Lord’s protection on those who protect us, our lives, and our liberties from evildoers, we must resolutely repent of our own evil deeds, and acknowledge our own capacity to deprive others of their lives and liberties.
Images of devastation in war-torn places must lead us not only to compassion, but also to self-examination and confession. When we see the destructive power that is unleashed when hatred of brother or sister boils over into bloodshed, we must recall our Lord’s admonition “that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment,” and consider the state of our own hearts. When we are reminded of the horrible cost of violence elsewhere, we must reflect on the astounding blessing that we should dwell in a time and place where human beings do not ordinarily resort to violence to resolve our disputes.
But we must never imagine that any perfection or purity inherent to us has won for us this privilege! To do so would be to forget our own painful history, and our own fallen nature. That we, according to the inscrutable and unsearchable grace and purposes of God, do not now dwell under the constant threat of violence cannot become something to make us puffed up with pride or conceited in our own presumptions of divine favor. Rather, the blessings we enjoy should make us a people profoundly thankful for what we have received, perpetually prepared to show mercy and pity to those who suffer, and always praying and working for that day when swords shall be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks, and war is studied no more.
Beloved, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And Asheville. And Beirut. And Greenwood. And Gaza. And Swannonoa. And Kiev. And Aiken. And every other place where the image-bearers of God have been wounded by our broken world, or are busy wounding one another. May the devastation that we see, both natural and man-made, drive us to our knees in fervent prayer for the human beings who have been harmed, and in humble thanksgiving for “our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.” May it move us to confess our sins and amend our lives. And may it lift us again to our feet, that we might hasten to work for the relief of the suffering, the defense of the innocent, and the coming reign of the Prince of Peace.
- September 26, 2024 - "Therefore let us keep the fast. Alleluia."
“Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia.”
Every Sunday we mumble those words in response to the celebrant’s announcement that “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” If we are honest, it’s usually a pretty paltry reply.
You see, our answer to the celebrant’s declaration is meant to show that we not only understand what is happening but that we are thrilled for it. After all, a person dressed in a bright silken poncho standing at a carved marble table laden with stunning, bejeweled silver has just shouted to us that the incarnate Son of God, the prophesied Messiah of the Jewish people, the anointed Redeemer of the world, offered himself once for all upon Calvary’s Cross as the final fulfillment of the saving sacrifice foreshadowed millenia before when the plague of Death deployed against the enslaving Egyptians “passed over” the homes of God’s chosen people Israel because their lintels and door-posts were marked with the blood of a spotless slaughtered lamb–and that by eating the bread and wine that has been consecrated upon the altar we share in his life, death, and resurrection, and all the promises and covenants of the Lord. “Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”
We should be ecstatic to reply “YES! That’s the party I want to be at! Praise the Lord!” (which is what we are actually saying when we answer “Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia.”). Instead, we mutter our perfunctory response and check our watches to see how much time Communion is likely to take this week based on the number of people in the pews.
I have a theory about why this is. And it has nothing to do with modern attention spans or the way people respond to different worship styles or all the other things we usually blame for lackluster participation in the liturgy. My theory runs deeper:
Ours is the first society in human history that has forgotten how to feast.
Let me be clear, I do not mean that we have forgotten how to eat, and overeat. Ample statistical evidence confirms what is obvious from ample American waistlines: we consume food (and, indeed, we waste food) at truly astonishing rates. Most of us eat well, and too well, most of the time, at most every meal, in most every setting.
(Not all Americans all the time, to be sure. Even in our culture of staggering abundance many people go to bed hungry. Trinity’s incredible tradition of Sunday breakfast helps to assure that many of our neighbors who would otherwise not be fed are nourished. Beyond that, Trinity’s incredible kitchen ministries feed our own community every Wednesday night, every Satterlee Night Live, and on so many other events throughout the year–and ensure that every bit of remaining food goes to support local shelters and outreach efforts.)
Our broad cultural expectation of abundance has made us forget how to feast. Historically, human beings knew what it was to live hand-to-mouth–to scrape out a subsistence existence day-to-day and to rely only on the blessings of the Lord our God and the kindness of our brothers and sisters. Most of our ancestors across the world experienced life largely as a struggle, and knew more difficulty than delight. Our faith and our traditions were formed in a time when most human beings had to work for their daily bread, to watch for whether their crops would fail, and could not be sure whether their lives would be as comfortable and pleasant tomorrow as they were today. For those who came before us, a feast came once a year–like the feast of the Passover, the feast of Christmas, the feast of Easter, the feast of All Saints–or once in a lifetime–like a baptismal feast, a wedding feast, or a wake.
But when we expect overflowing grocery store aisles and groaning restaurant tables and a constant, unflagging drip of dopamine doses on our electronic devices…well, what does a feast mean? Yes, we ritually overindulge on the cultural feast of Thanksgiving, and to some extent on the Christian feasts of the Nativity (Christmas) and the Resurrection (Easter). But we also ritually overindulge on the feast of the Gamecocks most Saturdays in the fall, and the feast of Beach or the feast of Mountains or the feast of the Lake most days in the summer. And we also regularly overindulge on the feast of A Stressful Tuesday when it presents itself (as it does almost every week). So our comfort and our abundance means that we struggle to understand what a feast truly means.
And thus we find an opportunity and an invitation to recover something critically important. Human beings need to feast, and if we are not extended that grace by our culture we must cultivate that discipline by our actions. There are two things we can do: we must deny ourselves and refuse to overindulge our regular habits and practice self-discipline. (I know this is not easy for me, and I suspect it is not easy for many of you.) But to live simply day-to-day is one important way to prepare for the joy of a feast.
Most importantly, though, is that we resolve to keep our feasts in full. That begins each Sunday when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus by shouting back “Therefore let us keep the feast! Alleluia!” It continues when we choose to observe with our own friends and families and with our Trinity parish family wonderful occasions for feasting like the Bazaar Bash on this Friday, September 27 at 6:30 p.m., or on the great feasts of the Church, like Saint Michael and All Angels this Sunday, September 29, at 4:00 p.m. with Choral Evensong and a shrimp boil and touch-a-truck to follow.
Beloved, at the heart of our faith is the joy of the eternal wedding banquet of the Lamb. At our core is a command to party. Won’t you come and celebrate with your sisters and brothers? Won’t you rejoice?
“Therefore let us keep the feast. ALLELUIA!”
- September 19, 2024 - “God is our hope and strength: a very present help in trouble.”
Bomb threats in Ohio. Guns on the golf course in Florida. Pagers and radios exploding in Lebanon. And all God’s people said…“What on earth is going on?”
Beloved, it has been a week. Our own Trinity family has been deeply touched by several painful losses. The national news has left us reeling. Our political process continues to descend into ugliness and chaos. And violence—or the looming threat of violence—persists at home and abroad.
In times like this, perfect strangers will stop a person in a clerical collar on the street and ask, “What on earth is going on?” Plenty of parishioners ask it, too. And, in case you are wondering, I ask it myself.
The Scriptures directly answer our common question: “God is our hope and strength: a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed: and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea.”
Psalm 46–and the whole arc of the sacred story–reminds us that the Lord our God is still in control, even when the whole planet seems to be spinning off its axis, and everything around us is shaken to its foundation. When the world has gone mad and our institutions don’t make sense and people are being awful and the waters rage and foam…even then, “the Lord of hosts is with us: the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
Do not give in to despair. Do not believe the lies that would make you hate your neighbor. ( If you are asking “And who is my neighbor?” I refer you to Luke 10:25-37.) Do not let your hearts be troubled.
“Be still then, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, and I will be exalted in the earth.”
We are planning a 24-hour prayer vigil in the Cathedral to wrap all of Election Day (November 5) in prayer. Everyone in our city, our diocese, and our state is invited. We will begin on the eve of the election with the praying of the Great Litany, and we will conclude with Solemn Evensong with prayers for our nation as the polls close. Please plan to be with us, and please plan to bring someone to pray alongside you.
Because it has been rather a full week here at Trinity, I hope you will not mind if for my Dean’s Dispatch today I reshare the message I sent you all from England this summer. Though I wrote it in response to events in July, I’m afraid I don’t see much to change. You may find this demoralizing. I do. And yet when I do, I hear the Psalmist say again–it’s said twice in Psalm 46, after all– “The Lord of hosts is with us: the God of Jacob is our refuge.” And then I remember that nothing on this earth can shake the salvation of the citizens of the City of God.
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2024
Beloved in Christ,
I awoke this morning in the beautiful and peaceful cathedral city of Hereford, England, to the news that violence had broken out yesterday at a rally for former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. As you have doubtless already heard, a would-be assassin and one other person are dead, and several people, including Mr. Trump, were injured in the shooting. Human beings made in the image of God will carry physical and emotional wounds and scars from yesterday’s events for the rest of their lives. Many are now worrying that our nation itself will similarly be wounded and scarred in the months and years to come.
It is strange and painful to be away from home at a moment like this. The Trinity Choirs and their adult leaders have had an amazing week here in Hereford. They have learned much, worked hard, prayed daily, had lots of fun, and done us all very proud. But as the week has worn on, homesickness has inevitably begun to settle in for all of us. And that feeling became much more acute when we looked and saw, from afar, our homeland in crisis.
The divisiveness and discord of American politics has given much fodder to chattering pundits and pontificating preachers for years now. But something seems to have changed. Difference of opinion has given way to disgust and denunciations and ad hominem attacks. The two parties have become defined less by their policy proposals and more by the consuming need to vanquish the other side. And that ominous “other side” is increasingly painted as a threat to our nation’s very existence.
We all decry it. But none of us seem to know how to fix it. We have little hope or expectation that our elected leaders or our news media commentators can or will provide solutions. We only know that the best of them are bewildered along with us at what is happening to American democracy, while the worst of them are doing all they can to profit from the chaos. And ordinary Americans feel swept along into a vortex of deepening division and hatred, pulled down behind the ideological barriers that we have erected to divide us.
Beloved, this must stop. We who are blessed to call Columbia, South Carolina, our home know deep in our bones what happens when the political process breaks down into violence. The legacy of the Civil War will always linger in the collective memory of our community. We know what happens when young men take up arms to settle disputes that should be resolved at the ballot box. We know that killing begets killing, bloodshed begets bloodshed, violence begets violence, and death begets Death.
If the cycle is to be broken, it must begin with us. It must begin with those of us who have passed already from Death into Life by our sharing in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ through Baptism. It must begin with those of us who bear upon our brows the mark of the Cross–that instrument of violence and death now transformed by the self-giving love of Jesus the Son of God into the very sign of our hope and our salvation. It must begin when we who know ourselves to have been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness also recall that we are imbued with the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It must begin when we show forth those fruits in our lives not only as Christians, but as citizens.
That is the only thing that can and will redeem our common life. And we cannot wait for our leaders, our “opponents,” or “the other side” to begin living and sharing those fruits. It must begin with us, with each of us, with all of us.
As your Dean, I am calling on the people of Trinity to take these tangible steps today, and in all the days leading up to the November elections.
- PRAY. This week has brought a profound renewal of my own prayer life. By the mercy of God it has been effected by the extraordinary young people of the Trinity Choirs as they have led me and all of us in prayer through their music. As they have sung Evensong each night in the ancient quire of Hereford, where numberless generations have prayed before them, I have felt the presence of God powerfully in our midst. I have been reminded of something that can be so easily lost in the rush and busy-ness of life: prayer changes us. It softens even the hardest hearts. It turns even the most dour countenance. It consecrates even the most bitter moments. Prayer is powerful.
So please, beloved, pray! Make a commitment to come pray Morning Prayer Tuesday through Thursday in Keenan Chapel, if your schedule allows. Pray with your spouse, your children, your friends, your family, your neighbors. Form a prayer group specifically interceding for our country with members of other parishes or denominations. Use the Prayer Book, the Bible, or whatever words that rise from your heart to your lips. Use prayer beads or the Anglican rosary if it helps. Pray silently if you like. Try to pray for and with someone you know holds completely different political views from your own. Pray in the morning, or at lunchtime, or in the evening, or while you lie in bed. The time, place, or shape don’t matter. Just PRAY. - Turn away from your accustomed news outlets. This is a big ask, I know. But try to turn off your cable news, stop listening to your favorite talk radio, don’t visit the website you ordinarily refresh twenty-five times a day. Delete or deactivate your social media accounts. Maybe even consider ditching your smartphone entirely, or at least put strict limits on it. Covenant with someone else to help you on that. Whatever you choose to do, offer it as an act of devotion and intercession to the Lord our God, pleading on behalf of our country.
Some of you may find a sudden expanse of free time if you take me up on this pastoral challenge. If that’s so, go back and re-read my previous point for inspiration of how to use it! Or use it to have real conversations with real people. Call someone you haven’t talked to in ages. Don’t talk politics. Ask them how they are and really listen. Laugh with them. Weep with them. Write a letter to an old friend. Tell them you love them and are thankful for them and don’t bother wasting time apologizing for not having been in touch more recently. Go for a walk (if the temperature will allow it) and don’t let any device distract you. Take someone to lunch, or coffee, or for a different sort of beverage. Endeavor to be fully human, relishing that you are made in the image and likeness of God. Invite others to share their imago dei with you even–especially if you ordinarily find that image hard to see in that person. - Baptize your politics. What I mean is, let your Christian faith inform your political convictions. Don’t let yourself be blinded by partisanship and tribalism. Remember that the people you disagree with–even the people who think and say awful things, or who believe the things you think and say are awful–are still people before all else. Pray for the grace to forgive them. Pray for their forgiveness where you may have wronged or offended them. Don’t post a Facebook post or stick a bumper-sticker on your car or contribute to a political campaign if you find, after thought and prayer, that there is a tension between a political statement and who you know yourself to be in Christ Jesus. Be a Christian first, and remembering that Jesus of Nazareth is the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord of all creation, don’t buy into all the doom and gloom nonsense that makes it seem as if the world will end if “the other side” wins–whoever that “other side” may be in your mind.
- When November does come, please VOTE, and help others to vote. Offer your elderly neighbor with a prominent MAGA sign in his yard a ride to the polls. Remind your hyper-progressive college-aged cousin that she can vote by mail while she’s off at school. Take pride in our democratic process, whatever the outcome of the election. Unity will never mean unanimity, and to be free Americans means we must be free to suffer defeat and disappointment in an election cycle and yet not cease to hold our convictions firmly and faithfully. As Christians, we will still pray and work for the redemption of this world, knowing that that redemption ultimately lies in the nail-pierced hands of our savior.
Beloved I am homesick, and I am heartbroken for my home. I miss you, my people. The gathering darkness over our land is indeed great. Yet it is nothing at all compared to the surpassing brightness of the Church of God, a shining city on a hill, proclaiming to all the nation and all the world that there is indeed a way forward that does not lead to Death, but rather passes through it to the endless love and grace of the Lord. It is a way forward that is possible when the Spirit of God moves women and men to live their faith boldly, publicly, and even politically. If for such a time as this we have been called to Trinity to live as Christian citizens, then let our light so shine before the face of all people that they will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. Let us lay down our lives, ourselves, our souls and bodies, for the good of our neighbors. Let us declare in word and deed our sure and certain hope: Jesus lives, Jesus reigns, and all shall indeed be well.
With a heart that longs for you, and that covets your prayers as we fly home tomorrow, I remain
Your Faithful Dean,
Dane- PRAY. This week has brought a profound renewal of my own prayer life. By the mercy of God it has been effected by the extraordinary young people of the Trinity Choirs as they have led me and all of us in prayer through their music. As they have sung Evensong each night in the ancient quire of Hereford, where numberless generations have prayed before them, I have felt the presence of God powerfully in our midst. I have been reminded of something that can be so easily lost in the rush and busy-ness of life: prayer changes us. It softens even the hardest hearts. It turns even the most dour countenance. It consecrates even the most bitter moments. Prayer is powerful.
- September 12, 2024 - Be ye hearers of the Word, and not doers only.
At the coronation of King Charles III last May, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland played a unique role. After the king had been formally recognized by the congregation filling Westminster Abbey, before he took the solemn oath of his office and before the sacred rites of anointing and crowning were accomplished within the celebration of Holy Communion, the senior cleric of the Scottish Church presented the king with a copy of the Holy Bible. As he did, he spoke these words: “Sir, to keep you ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God as the rule of the whole life and government of Christian princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.” He concluded, “Here is wisdom; this is the royal law; these are the lively oracles of God.”
What an astonishing assertion! Amidst all the trappings of grandeur and pomp that the British monarchy and Westminster Abbey can furnish–the glittering crowns and rich gowns, jeweled swords and shining scepters, sacred vessels of gold and silver and all the countless historic treasures of the ancient building itself–a mere book was pronounced “the most valuable thing that this world affords.” There is something fitting in the fact that the words were spoken by a Presbyterian minister in a plain cassock, standing as he did among the bishops of the Church of England all swaddled in their rich copes. There is a hint of Scottish defiance in it all: kingly power and earthly wealth may awe and impress us, but “the lively oracles of God” are to be found in a humble book.
That declaration of the Bible’s supreme value was made at the summit of earthly grandeur (even if it is no longer the summit of earthly power in this democratic, post-colonial age). But the truth of it is proved in circumstances far removed in setting and splendor. The truth of it is seen in the devotion of Chinese Christians in the underground church, who risk life and limb to produce hand-written copies of the Bible for their countrymen. The truth of it is seen in the unending efforts of those who seek to translate the Scriptures into the most remote and obscure languages on earth, driven by the desire and conviction that every person should have the chance to read “the lively oracles of God” in the tongue of his or her birth.
And the true value of the Bible can be seen even in the privileged churches of North America. The transformation that can take place when cradle Episcopalians open and begin to read “the most valuable thing that this world affords” is extraordinary. New efforts for church growth and congregational development in mainline churches highlight Scripture reading and study as among the most powerful tools available to us. Deep-set and long-held fears of fundamentalism and literalism are, in many places, melting away in the light of a growing awareness that the answer to bad Bible reading is not to forsake Bible reading but rather to initiate good and faithful Bible reading. Lives are changed as folks who formerly knew the Scriptures only through the short lessons in Sunday worship begin daily to dig deeper into “wisdom…the royal law…the lively oracles of God.”
But there’s a problem. Whether we know it or not (and if we are honest about our biblical literacy levels, most of us do not), we Episcopalians are actually devoted disciples of St. James. Just a few weeks ago, we heard the admonition of his epistle: “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.” And oh how we strive to be doers! As Bible studies proliferate and individual Christians begin to explore the amazing library of the Scriptures, the inevitable questions of “practical application” begin to grow more urgent. Time and again, folks who have dipped only the tip of their toe into the deep pool of the Bible immediately begin to task, “Well, how do we do this? What does this look like in the real world? How do I apply this to my life?”
Those are not bad questions at all. Indeed, those are natural and necessary questions whenever we grapple with Scripture’s awesome scope and overwhelming declaration of the power and purposes of God. The Bible compels a response. It impels us to action.
But the problem is that those practical questions, when posed in the merest infancy of a person’s Bible reading life, rest on a faulty foundation. For many Americans, action is our natural state. We are bodies in motion. We want to be doing something, always. And we define ourselves and determine our worth on the basis of the things we do. The perennial cocktail party question “So, what do you do?” says an awful lot about the way we regard one another and ourselves. Activity—work—doing: these things give us the measure of a man or a woman. And the way others respond to our description of what we do gives us a clue as to how we should evaluate ourselves.
So for people like that—for people like us—opening the Bible can cause enormous anxiety. Just re-read the Sermon on the Mount, or St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. For people who determine our worth by our doing, how can we read words such as those and not immediately see how far below them we fall each and every day? Scripture—and especially a first encounter with Scripture—convicts us. Matthew 5-7 makes me squirm. I Corinthians 13 shows the selfishness and inadequacy of most of what I usually call “love.” And my standard response to that feeling is to try to find a way out of it as fast as possible.
That dynamic is, I believe, the driving force behind the desire to turn immediately from “hearing the word” to “doing the word.” The early inclination to find a way to apply the words of Scripture to my life is a bit like the immediate recoil of a child who has touched a hot stove. Seared by hearing or reading the sacred words, we seek a soothing balm in our doing. And so “applying the text” actually becomes a way of silencing the text. If I can do something, I can quiet my feelings of conviction and inadequacy. If I am doing something, then the Bible can be made to fit within the ordinary, expected patterns of my existence. If I can just do something, I’ll be able to check “Bible reading” off my list, and go on in confidence and comfort to the next thing “to do.”
But the Bible’s worth can never be reduced to the actions it inspires. “The most valuable thing this world affords,” is not chiefly valuable because it somehow baptizes our ordinary patterns of frantic activity, of working and doing, and our tendency toward measuring ourselves and others according to all our busy-ness. The “lively oracles of God” are not primarily concerned with creating a class of do-gooders busily building the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through their own herculean efforts. The Bible is not an instruction manual wherein we can read step-by-step the proper processes for becoming good, decent, upstanding people. The true reason for reading the Bible has nothing to do with us at all.
Rather, we read the Bible because through it God reveals himself to us. The Holy Bible is an announcement. It is God’s self-disclosure. The Scriptures are an unveiling of the power and purposes of the Almighty. That is what makes the Bible “the most valuable thing this world affords”: it points to and speaks of and makes manifest things beyond the scope and imagining of this world. That is what makes the Scriptures “the lively oracles of God”: not because they represent God’s anthropocentric (human-centered) pleading to an unheeding humanity, but because they shine forth with the brilliance of the Lord’s own theocentric (God-centered) announcement to an unworthy world. The true value of the Bible is not in the words printed on its pages but in the Word printed in the shining letters of Scripture’s great story, made incarnate in Jesus Christ.
All of which is why, in our time and place, the great Jacobean injunction must be reversed: we must become “hearers of the word, and not doers only.” It does no good to take a superficial, appropriating glance at the surface of Scripture’s deep waters and then to spin off into our own frenzy of doing. What we need instead is to dive in—to plunge ourselves into the depth of the Bible’s grand announcement. We need to learn to hold the essential, inevitable questions of “application” at bay, and to surrender ourselves instead to the great arc of Scripture’s story. We need to learn to live in the world of the Bible—not the historical world in which it was written, but the new Creation announced and enacted in its every word.
That is my purpose in initiating the Dean’s Big Bible Study as our Sunday morning Satterlee Hall offering. In setting the goal of teaching through all of Scripture, my hope and prayer is that we will remember that we are the humble recipients of the most valuable thing this world affords. I am excited to see what the Holy Spirit will accomplish in us here at Trinity as we dive into God’s Holy Word, and remember that its story is our story.
For it is only when we inhabit that story—only when we swim in Scripture’s strange and wonderful depths—only when we truly become “hearers of the word,” that we will find grace to “do” in a way that will last: to announce the Word Incarnate—Jesus our Lord—in our every word and deed.
So be ye hearers of the Word, and not doers only.
- September 5, 2024 - “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide…”
Are you afraid of the dark? My children are, especially when it comes time to go to bed. Each evening they insist that Debby and I walk with them up the stairs and down the dark hallway, turn on the nightlights in their rooms, and make sure that their closet doors–those gloomy gateways into pitch blackness–are shut tight.
The truth is that all people are afraid of the dark to some degree or another. We have to be. At night we lose, or find significantly diminished and distorted, our sense of sight. Electric lights notwithstanding, when the sun goes down we simply cannot see as well or as clearly as we do in broad daylight. Familiar objects cast strange and ominous shadows. Doorways through which we pass without a thought ten times in the morning and afternoon suddenly become portals to the unknown. Obstacles we easily overcome and avoid during daylight hours–table-legs and floor lamps and, most treacherous of all, Legos scattered on the rug–become downright dangerous. And that’s all within the relative safety of our own homes! To venture outdoors at night when the moon is new or the clouds are thick is to enter a world utterly unlike the world we know during the day. Even the strongest and calmest among us rightly fear who or what may lurk in the shadows, or cry in the darkness, or come hurtling down the dimly-lit road toward us.
Night makes us think of death. The rhythm of light and darkness, dawn and dusk, day and night, is a reminder, every twenty-four hours, of our own mortality. We are afraid of the dark because we are afraid of the unknown, and death is the last and greatest unknown that all who are born must face late or soon. Each time we close our eyes in sleep we are confronted with the fact that we will one day close our eyes forever. So the darkness that looms before us each evening is a shade and likeness of that deeper, deepest darkness of the tomb.
A cheerful reflection, I know! But the Church has an answer to our daily dose of dusk and darkness, just as she shouts “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” even at the edge of the grave.
For thousands of years–pretty much as far back as we are able to trace human culture, in fact–people have set apart and sanctified the hours of the day and night with prayer. In the ancient Jerusalem Temple and through the synagogues of the Jewish diaspora, in monasteries and convents across the Christian world, and in countless parish churches where ordinary folks gather, God’s people have greeted each dawn and blessed each nightfall with Psalms and Scripture, hymns and canticles, petitions and praises. We have declared, even in the face of that which might make us most afraid, that “the darkness is not dark to thee, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to thee are both alike.” (Psalm 139:10, 11)
In our own Anglican tradition, we call this ritual and rhythm “the Daily Office,” for it is the officium–the work–of sanctifying each day with prayer. And we especially pray at the turning points of each day, both when the light rises triumphant from the dying darkness of the previous night, and then again when the shadows begin to lengthen, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Each morning we offer Morning Prayer–sometimes called “Mattins”–and each evening we pray Evening Prayer or, as it is called when the service is sung, Evensong.
To pray the Daily Office, whether together or alone, is to consecrate our days and our nights to God. We remember that all we do, all we are, all we have, including even time itself, comes as a gift from the hand of the Lord and, through the blessed work of prayer, can become an offering, however meager, that we return to him. We are taught by the words of holy Scripture and our own sacred tradition that the darkness, though frightening to us because it is unknown and unknowable, is not bad. For just as the death of Jesus has made our own eventual death not a doom to be dreaded but the very gate of grace and life, so the sanctification of each day’s descent into darkness assures us that our God is Lord of all things known and unknown, seen and unseen, familiar and frightening–and nothing can separate us from him. Though our eyes must close at last on this world of sunshine and shadow, they shall open again to behold the everlasting brightness of the face of our risen Savior.
So, beloved, don’t be afraid of the dark. Take time each day to pray, and particularly in the morning when you rise and in the evening when the darkness falls. Explore the Daily Office in The Book of Common Prayer, and ask one of our priests to help you learn to pray it. Join us for Morning Prayer at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in Keenan Chapel. Come and bless the close of the day through Choral Evensong at 4:00 p.m. on Sundays in the Cathedral, a very special offering sung by our incredible choirs each week in the program year.
Most of all, I hope that you will not be afraid of the darkness or the light. For our Lord holds our days and nights, our times and our seasons, our lives and our deaths, in the palms of his nail-printed hands.
“Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
shine through the gloom, and point me to skies;
heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”- August 29, 2024 - “Please, can't we just stay with the single 10:00 service?!”
I get that question every year around this time. Indeed, I get that question every year around this time. Nothing feels better than a full church, and the Sundays in late August after school has gone back to session and folks have returned to town from their summer activities are wonderfully full. In fact, these late summer Sundays–excepting the Sunday of Labor Day weekend–are consistently second only to Easter and Christmas for attendance. And it’s a wonderful thing to see a packed church!
So…why do we got back to our full schedule–what we sometimes call our “program year”?
The first reason is straightforward and practical: there just isn’t room for everybody! As a large and growing congregation, Trinity’s active membership cannot all safely and comfortably fit into our beautiful and historic Cathedral for a single Sunday service, let alone welcome newcomers and visitors in our midst. This is a wonderful problem to have, of course, and it makes it necessary for us to offer additional services throughout our busiest seasons.
But there is also a much more important and meaningful motivation behind our annual schedule expansion. We Episcopalians are deeply blessed with a rich variety of liturgical and musical resources, all firmly rooted in the texts of The Book of Common Prayer and the traditions of the Anglican Communion. As the Cathedral of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, it is our responsibility and our privilege to glorify God and edify his people through a range of worship styles, treasuring and sharing the precious gifts that are unique to our heritage. Our full schedule allows us to worship in ways that are all joyfully and distinctly Anglican, but that suit different schedules and different tastes.
Our 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. services in Keenan Chapel begin and end each Sunday with the Holy Eucharist offered in a quiet, contemplative manner, using the traditional language of Rite I in the morning and the more modern language of Rite II in the evening. Our joyful 9:00 a.m. service in the Cathedral varies with the seasons of the Church Year, utilizing all of the different versions of the Great Thanksgiving available to us in the Prayer Book, and inviting the congregation to sing settings of the service music–the Gloria (or Kyrie, or Trisagion), the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei.
Our 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. services offer prayers and praises to God through the glories of our Anglican choral heritage and the timeless words of the historic Prayer Book liturgies. At each of these services one of Trinity’s extraordinary choirs sings portions of the liturgy set to some of the most beautiful and meaningful music ever composed. Whether at the choral celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the morning or at Choral Evensong on Sunday afternoons, these liturgies offered during the program year exalt our Lord in the full splendor of our rich tradition.
Though these ways of worship have deep roots in our tradition, there are very few cathedrals and parishes in this country and around the world that have the capacity to offer worship in these special ways. Trinity is truly blessed by the rich architectural legacy of our worship spaces, the poignant words of our Prayer Book and Hymnal, the majesty of our Anglican choral tradition, and above all the incredible array of joyful worshippers who gather here to lift hearts and minds and voices before the throne of grace.
So how do we keep the energy and excitement of these late summer Sundays going all year ‘round? Simple: COME TO CHURCH! Come and be part of this strong and vibrant community. Come and live into our traditions, ancient and ever new. Come and be equipped to go and serve the world in the name of Christ. Come and worship the Lord with us!
Whichever service you attend and whichever style of worship nourishes your soul, I invite you to be with us every week…and I want you to invite someone to come with you.
- August 22, 2024 - “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?”
At every celebration of Holy Baptism the people of Trinity enter into a covenant: a solemn, sacred, self-offering commitment both as individuals and as a congregation. Before we reaffirm the Baptismal Covenant–the expression of our common Christian faith and life–we first bind ourselves to the candidates that have been presented that day and make a special covenant with them. We promise to “do all in [our] power to support these persons in their life in Christ.” And, through us, the whole Church Universal in every place and every time pledges to uphold, sustain, challenge, inspire, nourish, equip, and love with Christ’s own love all those who come to him in faith at the font–and the parents and godparents who bring them, too.
The people of Trinity have made this covenant thousands of times over the years. We will make it, God willing, many thousands of times in the years to come. We made it again this past Sunday when three sweet babies became, by water and the Holy Spirit, the newest members of the Church and of Trinity Cathedral Parish.
So…how are we doing? How are we, as a community, keeping our covenant? Are we really doing all in our power to support the children and adults who have been baptized at Trinity as they grow in their life in Christ? How can we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, do more?
The strength and vitality of our programs for children and youth are profoundly encouraging manifestations of Trinity’s commitment to that covenant we have made. In children’s programs, fellowship offerings, Sunday school classes, liturgy preparation worship services, Vacation Bible School, and a bustling array of parent gatherings, the Cathedral is supporting our youngest members as they grow in their life of faith. And through weekly EYC (Episcopal Youth Community) groups for middle and high schoolers, diocesan retreats and events, mission trips, Bible studies before and after school, and the inclusion of young people as leaders in worship as acolytes, choristers, ushers and lectors, Trinity continues to sustain our youth as they come to full and mature ownership of their baptismal promises at confirmation.
And remembering that there is no expiration date on our covenant, how are we doing with adult members? Here, too, we find vibrant gatherings and meaningful growth. Daily services of Morning Prayer, weekday offerings of the Holy Eucharist, lunchtime Bible studies, evening small groups, fellowship events and opportunities for service all abound. “Will you…do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?” We sure seem to be trying!
But the fulfillment of our covenant with every baptized member of the Church cannot and should not be accomplished by staff members and program offerings alone. Because we all have promised “to do all in [our] power to support these persons”, we all must find a way to keep our common commitment. Not everyone has the gifts or abilities (or patience!) to be a Sunday School teacher or a youth leader. But every member of Trinity can and must find a way to support the critical, covenantal work of supporting our members, young and old, as we grow together in faith.
How will you do your part to help keep our community’s covenant in this new program year? Pray about it, think about it, and then contact Director of Children and Family Ministries Leila Barwick, Director of Youth Ministry Taylor Gibby, or Trinity's Canon Catechist the Rev'd Mia C. McDowell to offer your support and get involved. I know the amazing Trinity congregation will do it–with God’s help!