Rector's Rambling - August 1, 2010 - More Founders Day

What great fun we had last Sunday with our Founder’s Day celebration. It will certainly be an on-going annual event!
As I mused about the day before its approach, and have thought about it since. I continue to be struck by how much some things have changed about St. John’s in the past 151 years, and yet how much really is the same.
Ninety-five percent of the wording of the service was the same, even if it was a bit tricky to read whether a letter was an “f” or an “s” at times. At the 8:00 AM service I drew a complete blank while trying to interpret a word during the 10 commandments – and I know them off by heart!
The re-ordering of parts of the service was also interesting. Putting the prayer of humble access at the beginning of the Communion Canon seems very odd to me, but then when it was changed to where it is in the1928 Prayer Book it must have seemed strange to them too! And although the full text of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) and the Exhortations are found in the 1928 Prayer Book, they are seldom if ever used. Yet they contain GREAT theology about what we are doing in Church each Sunday and why it is so vitally important that we receive Communion regularly.
That same good, biblically sound theology as promulgated by the Anglican prayer book tradition continues to be in full effect here at St. John’s. What was true about Jesus and His Church in the 1860’s continues to be true today. The Word of God is the Word of God.
Unfortunately, our denomination continues to move further from her moorings. Every few weeks I read something else happening in our denomination and just shake my head that so many have moved so far from the “Faith once delivered to the Saints”.
Pray, pray, pray for the Episcopal Church, for our world-wide Anglican Communion, and for all of us caught in the middle between those standing firm and those moving away.