Daily Scripture Readings; bookofcommonprayer.net/daily_office.php
See the different options. There is full morning and evening prayer. There is also the option of the readings only. There is also an app for receiving the daily readings by email, or on a mobile device
Sunday Scripture Readings: bookofcommonprayer.net/lectionary.php
Set it for 1979 Contemporary, and the Bible version used in Church is Revised Standard Version
If You See Something, Say Something Fr. Bob
In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Columnist Bret Stephens was scathing in his criticism of Donald Trump’s actions revealed in a video tape from 2005. He was equally if not more scornful of those he called, Mr. Trump’s enablers. There has been a lot of discussion about this subject in the news media: print, public radio, and electronic from all political persuasions. Conservative Christian supporters of Mr. Trump have weighed in with their disapproval, yet nevertheless many continue to support his candidacy.
However there is one group whose silence on this issue has been simply deafening. This is mainstream Christianity. I may be wrong about this, due to the fact that I’m not much of a social media person, and could have missed any number of blogs or tweets. Still, I’ve not run across any comments from Pope Francis, our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, our own Bishops Jon Bruno and Diane Bruce, or other women bishops in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as well as the increasing number of women in senior positions of ministry and leadership in other denominations.
So as one mainline Christian, let me share some observations with the goal of putting out some resources from the Christian Tradition to assist us in our thinking about all this.
First of all Christianity has a particular “take” on what it means to be a human being. Everyone knows that Genesis tells us that we, both male and female, are created in the image of God. Over the centuries, the Christian Tradition reflects on and expands this idea. My favorite theologian, Karl Rahner puts it in these words. “God wishes to communicate himself, to pour forth the love which he himself is…And so God makes a creature whom he can love: God creates the human. God creates the human in such a way that she can receive the Love which is God himself, and that she can and must at the same time accept it for what it is: the ever astounding wonder, the unexpected, un-exacted gift. The human, made for mystery, must be such that this mystery constitutes the relationship between God and the human, and hence the fulfillment of human nature is the consummation of its orientation toward the abiding mystery.”
If Karl Rahner is not your cup of tea, if you are waiting for his brother Hugo Rahner, a scholar of early Church history who said that when he retired he was going to translate Karl in to German, then have recourse to The Book of Common Prayer for something more succinct. “Holy and gracious Father, in your infinite love you made us for yourself. And when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us.”
So, the Christian “take” on what it means to be human is that the human is created for love. In the homily I give at weddings I say this: “Being loved grounds the inviolable dignity of the human person. The dignity of the human person rests on our being loved, first by God, and then because of that by each other.”
Love of course means relationship. Our humanity is constituted by our relationships with God and each other. The person who was the unfortunate object of Mr. Trump’s actions was a person constituted by significant relationships. She was certainly someone’s daughter. She may have been someone’s mother. She was also someone’s spouse, all in addition to in infinite love having been created for God’s Self.
You can sum up Christian ethics in a very short phrase. “People are not things.” When we use anything in creation for a purpose other than God intends, that is by definition, immoral. The word Christians use for this is sin.
There is something else important to keep in mind about the Christian understanding of sin, especially in the case of turning people into things. In the Confession of Sin that we all say together Sunday by Sunday we speak of “having sinned against You in thought, word, and deed. Indeed it is possible to turn people into things in how we think, how we speak, and how we act. It usually starts with a thought, then proceeds to a word, and then an act. Consequently, the explanation of “locker room talk,” does not eliminate, but rather illuminates the problem.
In the DVD, The Story of Anglicanism, there is a sequence with Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says, that “if we really took seriously what we believe about the Incarnation, then we would genuflect to each other the way we do to the Sacrament on the Altar.” He goes on to say that “Consequently Apartheid is not merely unjust, but actually blasphemous. To treat people this way is a sacrilege.” Pretty strong words from one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
So what is the meaning of this recent turn of events in our political life? All kinds of opinions are making the rounds. As Christians, from our particular take on what it really means to be a human being, what should ours be?
Annual Parish Retreat: Friday October 14- Sunday October 16
Some 20 Adults and 12 Children will attend the Annual Parish Retreat this weekend at Camp Thousand Pines in Crestline. Parishioner Kelly Brandt will give a presentation Saturday morning on the reality and experience of loss in the many dimensions of our lives. The rest of the time will be spent deepening fellowship among everyone with fun activities and uninterrupted leisure time for extended conversation. This is probably the 30th year we’ve done the Annual Parish Retreat. We’ve always had a good time. It will be the same weekend in 2017.
Guest Celebrant and Preacher: Sunday October 16
We welcome back The Rev. Mary Ann Zahn to COA this Sunday. Fr. Bob will be at the Parish Retreat. Mother Mary was the supply priest for Fr. Bob’s vacation in the summer and she really enjoyed being here, and everyone here liked her as well. So we’re glad to have her celebrate and preach this weekend
All Saints Day Remembrance
On Sunday we will have out the sign up sheets for people to write the names of loved ones they would like to have remembered in the Eucharistic Prayer on the Sunday of All Saints. The Sunday of All Saints will be November 6. Feel free to put names on the sheets. There is one for each of our Sunday liturgies.
Music with the Angels: Jouyssance Early Music Ensemble Presents:
The Greatest Hits of 1525
Thomas Tallis. Josquin des Prez. Christobal de Morales. Heinrich Isaac. Claudin de Sermisy. Jacob Arcadelt. These are only some of the composers who dominated musical life in the early 16th century. Join Jouyssance as we explore the early and middle Renaissance, and present early (and beloved) examples of such great genres as madrigals, chansons and Lieder.
Sunday, October 16, 2016 at 4 p.m.
Church of the Angels
1100 Avenue 64, Pasadena
Tickets
$25 General Admission
$20 Seniors / SCEMS members
$15 Students
Available at the door or in advance.
Church of the Angels New Film Website goes live
Check it Out At: www.churchoftheangels.film
Church of the Angels has been used as a movie location for the past 70 years. The longest sequence is in the 1943 classic film, Since You Went Away. Since then there many films, TV shows, and commercials have used the church as a location mostly for weddings and funerals, but other things as well, like a baptism for the TV show The Office, and President Jed Bartlett voting in his home town in West Wing.
When we have a film shoot and it’s on the calendar we write underneath it, Capital Giving. That means that the income from movie locations is put back into the church’s infrastructure. Normally a parish has to do a capital campaign every ten years in order to maintain its facility because Annual Giving is never enough to cover that cost. Thanks to the movies, Church of the Angels has not had to do a capital campaign since the Centennial in 1989, and our infrastructure is in good shape.
COA has been chosen for locations because location scouts, people who look for sites for directors and producers search out appropriate settings, photograph them, and then present them to the movie makers. COA has been well known in the location scout community and so most of our filming has come by word of mouth. However as with so much these days, things are moving from the real world to the digital world, or as one geek puts it, from “Meatspace,” to Cyberspace. People are looking on the web to find places to film.
So COA has produced a film website to make ourselves known to a new generation of film makers. Our film liaisons Tim Down and Kenny Ryan have worked on presentation in terms of photos and text in order to make us both accessible and attractive. The result is fantastic. We’ve been working on this project all summer, and the result is fantastic.
We owe great debt of gratitude to Tim and Kenny for making it possible for us to have resource for a source of income, that few other churches enjoy.
Das Boot: Working on the Boat that is Church of the Angels
In the homily last Sunday, I commented on feeling that I’m getting crabby in my old age because I get irate when things that should work, don’t work, even though I endeavor to be responsible in having good equipment and maintaining it.
Well, that was the case this week when I began to attend to the Winter Tasks, those things that need doing to prepare our buildings for (we hope) the winter rains. I went under the Parish Hall to inspect the sump pump. ( I shared with you the adventure with that piece of equipment last year) It looks fine. Having my 10,000 lumen LED flashlight with me, it seemed a good idea to take a quick look at the rest of the area underneath the house. The beam lit on a dark spot on the ground, and on further examination I could see a patch of mud. Looking up I saw, as it says in Genesis, “but a mist went up and watered the face of the ground.” Actually it was going down, coming from a pin hole in one of the copper water pipes.
We had spent a significant sum of money re-piping the Parish Hall some years back, replacing the galvanized pipe that Jesus and his dad Joseph installed, (They did plumbing on the side when the carpentry business was slow!) with copper which we were led to believe would last until the Parousia. But no. This is actually the second such repair needed to be done to the Parish Hall plumbing in this year.
Oh well, at least thanks to the sub-floor, I didn’t hit the ceiling.
The Financial Page
Statements of your giving to Church of the Angels to the end of the Third Quarter will be mailed out this week. We appreciate everyone’s support of the parish. If there is a mistake on your statement, just let us know and we’ll correct it. Please catch up on your Annual Giving Pledge if necessary.
Annual Giving will begin shortly. We will be mailing out the Annual Giving Letter and Pledge Card. We are also working to make it possible for parishioners to fill out a pledge card online and return it to us electronically. When that is up and running we’ll let you know.
Emmaus Road: Monday October 17, 7:00 p.m.
We continue reading Fr. James Martin’s book Between Heaven and Mirth. Fr. Martin has been a favorite author for the Emmaus Road Group. We’ve read his books, The Jesuit Guide to Everything, Jesus, and My Life with the Saints. The book is available from Amazon. We will read the Introduction and Chapter 4