Septuagesima Sunday - Rector's Rambling for 2/16/2025

     As human beings constrained to time and space, we are “calendar” people.  In other words, we are people who keep time.  The Church Year helps us to do that.  We started with Advent and then had Christmastide and Epiphanytide, and now have yet another new season, known as the Gesimas.

This is the Pre-Lenten season, which you can read more about in the teaching notes on page 4.  We are using three weeks to ease into the full-on onslaught of Lent.

At first thought I would say that I don’t want to be scheduled, but in reality I crave having a set framework to work within.  The looseness of scheduling of pastoral needs and emergencies is guided by the firm scheduling of the Daily Offices and Daily Holy Communion Service.  Having the regularity of the later helps to form and inform the former.  I do that part of my vocation better because I am regular about prayer.

And even though life can be hectic, and unexpected surprises can throw one for a loop
, the regularity of the calendar keeps me focused on the big picture, and well as all the little things contained in it.

The Pre-Lent, Lent, and Passiontide seasons are a perfect example of this.  We know that Easter is April 20 this year.  Ash Wednesday is March 5.  We have from now until Ash Wednesday to prepare for Lent, the first five weeks of Lent to be thorough about our devotion and self-evaluation, and then it gets ramped up another notch when we get into Passiontide (the two weeks before Easter).  And then we have the uber-intensity of the Sacrum Triduum (three Holy Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday) to take us to the finish line!

In the coming weeks the liturgy will reflect these different stages: purple vestments, disappearance at different stages of the “alleluias”, the Glory be to God on High, choir and server surplices and cottas, and flowers on the altar.  Eventually the “Gloria be to the Father…” goes away and we are faced with the starkness of those last days.  Be ready to follow along as we head toward the Resurrection!

 

Absalom Jones - Rector's Rambling for February 9, 2025

     On Thursday we celebrate Absalom Jones, the first black American ordained priest in the Episcopal Church.  Following is a biography of  him, cobbled together from www.satucket.com and 1997 Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

"In 1786 the membership of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia included both blacks and whites. However, the white members met that year and decided that thereafter black members should sit only in the balcony. Two black Sunday worshippers, Absalom Jones (1746-1818) and Richard Allen (1760-1831), whose enthusiasm for the Methodist Church had brought many blacks into the congregation, learned of the decision only when, on the following Sunday, ushers tapped them on the shoulder during the opening prayers, and demanded that they move to the balcony without waiting for the end of the prayer. They walked out, followed by the other black members. 

     Absalom Jones conferred with William White, Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia, who agreed to accept the group as an Episcopal parish. Jones would serve as lay reader, and, after a period of study, would be ordained a deacon (1795) and a priest (1802) and serve as rector. Allen wanted the group to remain Methodist, and in 1793 he left to form a Methodist congregation. In 1816 he left the Methodists to form a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).

 Jones was an earnest preacher.  He denounced slavery, and warrned the oppressors to “clean their hands of slaves.”  To him, God was the Father who always acted on “behalf of the oppressed and distressed.”  But it was his constant visiting and mild manner that made him beloved by his own flock and by the community.  St. Thomas Church grew to over 500 members during its first year. . . Jones was an example of persistent faith in God and in the Church as God’s instrument."

 St. Thomas African Episcopal Church continues to this day as a congregation in Philadelphia, their website being  www.aecst.org.  Today (February 9) at 4 PM Christ Church in Detroit is hosting the diocesan Absalom Jones celebration and all are invited.