Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Service Bulletin for Easter Day

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Homily for the Great Vigil of Easter - How Shall We Live?

Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Genesis 22:1-18 [Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea]
Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]

Homily by Fr R Chrispher Heying

In the late fourth century—50 or so years after Constantine’s Edict of Toleration for Christianity—a woman from Galicia, Northwest Spain, named Egeria made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and described what she witnessed in a letter she sent back home to a circle of women friends. 

It is from this letter—maybe the earliest example of formal writing by a Western European woman—that we are given a glimpse of the shape of worship and liturgy in Palestine, indicating among other things the observances there in the late fourth century of  Epiphany, Lent and each day of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter.

From Egeria’s letter, of which there is a later extant copy, we know, for instance, that celebration of the nativity—Christmas—was not yet universal, but the events of Holy Week and Easter are given in surprising detail.¹

In Jerusalem, Egeria writes²

Paschal vigils are prepared in the great church. . . . The Paschal vigils are kept as with us [back in Galicia], with this one addition, that the children when they have been baptized and clothed, and when they issue from the font, are led with the bishop first to the Anastasis.

By anastasis, Greek for “resurrection,” Egeria apparently means a chapel in the cave believed to the empty tomb.

Egeria continues:

The bishop enters the rails of the Anastasis, and one hymn is said, then the bishop says a prayer for [those who have been baptized], and then he goes with them, where, according to custom, all people are keeping watch.  Everything is done there that is customary with us also, and after the oblation has been made [that is, communion is celebrated], the dismissal takes place.  After the dismissal of the vigils . . . they go at once with hymns to the Anastasis, where the passage from the Gospel about the Resurrection is made.  Prayer is made, and the bishop again makes the oblation.

So what we do this night, this holy night, is fully consonant with Christians all over the globe for at least some sixteen hundred years. 

Service Bulletin for the Great Vigil of Easter

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Homily for Good Friday - Naked, exposed, vulnerable.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25 or
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

Good Friday. Naked, exposed, vulnerable.

We have entered a church that has been laid bare.  Gone are the customary hangings and ornaments that adorn, beautify, even obscure.  As we gather tonight we are stripped of customary labels—Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian—with which we clothe ourselves.

We encounter a God who in Christ is laid bare and vulnerable.  Naked between thieves, he is mocked, rejected, despised, by some he is admired, perhaps by others he is even loved, but stripped, vulnerable, hands and feet nailed to the cross, a wound in his side, the crown of thorns tearing at his head. 

Before the God unto whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid we too are exposed and vulnerable.

Service Bulletin for Good Friday

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Service Bulletin for Maundy Thursday

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The Triduum Sacrum designates the three most sacred days in the church’s calendar—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. The liturgy on these three days is one extended service (thus no dismissals in the Maundy Thursday or Good Friday liturgies).

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus gives us a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you, signified in the washing of the feet. We remember (anamnesis, to “recall and make present now”) the institution of the Mass. The altar is stripped in preparation for the desolation of Good Friday, and we are invited to watch with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane before the blessed sacrament at the altar.

On Good Friday, we go with Jesus from his arrest to the cross where he gives his life for our sins and the sins of the whole world, then dies and is laid in the tomb. We will observe the veneration of the cross and join in solemn prayer for the church and the whole world before taking communion together.

At the Easter Vigil, we engage the full sweep of salvation: creation, fall, redemption, and end (in resurrection and re-creation). Along with candidates for baptism, we renew our own covenant whereby we die and rise with Jesus Christ. In this service, we move from darkness to light, rejoicing that in Jesus resurrection life triumphs over death and makes the whole creation new. Our celebration continues through the Eucharistic feast, where we partake of his body and blood that we may live in him and he in us.

Service Bulletin for Palm Sunday

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New Archbishop of Canterbury to be Enthroned March 21st

The Right Reverend Justin Welby was announced as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury on Friday 9 November 2012.

Archbishop Justin Welby's public ministry will commence on Thursday, March 21st when he is enthroned - or 'installed' - in two special seats in Canterbury Cathedral.

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Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent - Servant of Servants

Former Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, lovingly washing the feet of a young person living with HIV/AIDS

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

As I read the gospel story about Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and then wiping them with her hair, I thought to myself, I want to do that, but then I remembered that I have no hair.

Much like when on Wednesday white smoke following the fifth ballot made clear that I would not only not be pope but that my eBay purchase of red shoes and a white zucchetto was in vain.

But when I got over the bitter disappointment of yet again being passed over for the See of Peter, I—maybe not unlike many of you—was charmed by this man, formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected to be the 266^th successor of Peter, the first from South America, the first from the Society of Jesus (founded in 1534), and the first to take the name Francis.

We can’t know if he was the first in two thousand years to ask for the prayers of the people in the Square and to bow low on the balcony as some 100,000 people were instantly silent.  We don’t know if he was the first bishop elected who had sold a bishop’s palace to live in a simple apartment, cook his own food, take public transportation, and care for a disabled priest. 

We don’t know if he is the first pope to go in person within twenty-four hours to pay his own hotel bill.  Nor yet do we know if he is the first to wear a simple, plain iron pectoral cross or to keep the black shoes that were given him shortly before he departed for the conclave because there were those who were concerned that the shoes he was wearing were particularly dilapidated. 

But together with his choice of the name Francis in honor of the thirteenth-century saint who stripped himself from the life of luxury into which he was born in order to embrace the radical discipleship of a life of poverty and service, the new pope has endeared himself not only to the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics but to Christians of all denominations, adherents of other world religions, and indeed all people of good will.

In the new Pope’s first sermon on the day’s propers given in Italian without notes to the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel he made clear the values by which he lives and intends to lead:

We can walk all we want, we can build many things, but if we don’t proclaim Jesus Christ something is wrong . . ..

When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly.  We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord . . . .¹

It matters not who we are if we are not first and foremost disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It matters not what we do if we do not first, as Saint Paul says, proclaim Jesus and him crucified.

The Pruden Parish Press for March 2013 Is Now Online

The March 2013 issue of The Pruden Parish Press, a periodic newsletter containing news and information for parishioners and friends of Emmanuel, is now online. The current issue includes:

• Emmanuel Prepares for Holy Week,

• Prayer Shawl Ministry,

• A Lot to Celebrate!

• Calendar Notes for Mar - May,

• Chatham Concert Series Continues,

• Sunday Forums Become Fireside Chats, and

• Emmanuel Blood Drive.

 

Click  here to read the March issue online.

Earlier issues may be viewed at The Pruden Parish Press.

To receive future issues by mail, please call or email the Parish Office.

Service Bulletin for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

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Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent - Finding True Joy

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Homily by F R Christopher Heying

This man’s grandson murdered this man’s son, and today they brought us all here in the power of compassion and forgiveness. ^[1]

Those are the words whereby Azim Khamisa and Ples Feliz are introduced to students at Gompers Charter Middle School in the 2007 documentary The Power of Forgiveness.

Azim Khamisa explains that when introduced this way it is often the first time in their young lives these children have actually seen an alternative to violence.  Most of what they have seen is an eye for an eye. 

Azim tells the middle schoolers that on the evening of January 21, 1995, his twenty-year-old son Tariq, an art student at the University of San Diego, delivered a pizza to a group of teenagers who had been drinking and using drugs all day and planned a robbery.  It was Ples Feliz’s fourteen-year-old grandson Tony who pointed a gun at Tariq and demanded the pizza. When Tariq refused, Tony pulled trigger and killed him with a single shot.

Daylight Saving Time Begins Today

Service Bulletin for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

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Service Bulletin for the Third Sunday in Lent

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