Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Service Bulletin for the First Sunday of Advent

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Homily for the Feast of Christ the King

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

This Sunday is a significant milestone, marking our first full Christian year together.  

A year in which we have journeyed through “extraordinary time,” waiting with expectancy in Advent, celebrating God’s enfleshed presence with Christmas, walking the Way of the Cross during Lent, finding new life through Easter, receiving a fresh anointing of the Spirit at Pentecost: “extraordinary time” where we celebrate those “mighty acts of God.”

But the year has also included the long slog through “ordinary time,” moving not from season to season, but from Sunday to Sunday—after Epiphany and after Pentecost, the latter stretching from late May to late November to the last Sunday after Pentecost where we crown the year with this feast of Christ the King: “ordinary time” where we learn to be disciples of Jesus, not only on the mountaintops or even in the valleys but in the choices and actions of everyday life.

Discipleship is living in an intentional, disciplined way.  By daily discipleship we grow more and more into the full stature of Jesus Christ.  Discipleship reveals what we believe, who really is King for us.

So on this final Sunday of the church year it is meet and right that we get a spiritual check up, have a look at our spiritual vital signs, see just how this discipleship thing is working out for us.

Service Bulletin for the Last Sunday after Pentecost - Celebrating the Feast of Christ the King

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Service Bulletin for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

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Service Bulletin for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

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Chatham Concert Series - A Concert of Song: Broadway to opera, Nov 17, 3 pm

Homily for All Saints' Sunday - Created in the image and likeness of God

Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

In one of the “proper prefaces” for a saints’ day (the short prayer indicating the particular occasion for our eucharist is celebrated), we thank God:

For the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all your saints, who have been the chosen vessels of your grace, and the lights of the world in their generations. (BCP 380)

But we recall that in John’s gospel Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (8.12). 

So these saints are the lights of the world not because they have their own light, some secret illumination unique to them, but because in the midst of whatever circumstance they find themselves however dark, they shine forth with the piercing light of Jesus Christ.

Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthian church, speaks about his own ministry underscoring that Jesus is the focus:

We do not proclaim ourselves but we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. . . .  For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (4.5-6)

Paul goes on to say that “we have this treasure [this ministry] in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that . . . power belongs to God and does not come from us” (4.7). 

These lights, these blesséd saints of God, get that.

Service Bulletin for All Saints' Sunday

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Sermon for All Saints' Day: A Joint Service of Chatham Baptist Church and Emmanuel Episcopal Church

 Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

 Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying

Greetings to the Reverend Doctor Charles H. Warnock III and the saints from Chatham Baptist, to the saints at Emmanuel Episcopal, and any saints that may have come from other traditions. I greet each of you in the Name of Jesus Christ and with the kiss of peace, notionally and symbolically if not literally.

I am so thankful that we saints have come together this All Saints’ Day to celebrate all the saints of God and to give glory to the one who gives them and us life without end.

I want to begin and end with this use of the word “saints”: how it is used in holy scripture to refer to those who have been baptized, born again, put on Christ, share in his death and resurrection, are members not so much of this church or that church but the one church, the very Body of Christ, that lives and dwells under the headship not of Chuck nor of Christ but of Jesus Christ and him alone.  This, I think is the foundational meaning of the word saints.

This is certainly how it is used some 68 times in the New Testament.  The first time we stumble across the word saints is when after Saul-turn-Paul is struck down on the road to Damascus and Jesus asks “why are you persecuting me,” so closely does Jesus identify with all who have “put on Christ.”