SPEAKER_06: Good morning and thank you for being back.
SPEAKER_06: Great to see you all.
SPEAKER_06: Our topic today is the Book of Common Prayer.
SPEAKER_06: So this is one of those things that actually makes us pretty unique in practice as a denomination.
SPEAKER_06: Reminder historically that when we talked about this like a month ago, the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Church was Thomas Cranmer.
SPEAKER_06: Now he was the Archbishop of Canterbury as a Roman Catholic when England was a Roman Catholic nation.
SPEAKER_06: But remember, Henry VIII decided that he was going to be the head of the Church of England.
SPEAKER_06: He got Parliament to support that with the Act of Supremacy.
SPEAKER_06: And then, because he was in charge of the English Church and not the Pope, Thomas Cranmer really became sort of like the Pope in England, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_06: The Pope in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, I mean that the title stayed, the position stayed.
SPEAKER_06: Unlike the Pope, he is not elected.
SPEAKER_06: The Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed by the Crown.
SPEAKER_06: So if you know right now, the Archbishop of Canterbury is Justin Welby.
SPEAKER_06: He was not elected by anybody except for the Queen.
SPEAKER_06: The Queen of England picks the Pope of the Anglican Church.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas Cranmer's first idea of how to make the church not just this sort of uh English church that was completely Roman.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas Cranmer wanted to make a new kind of church, quite honestly, because Thomas Cranmer had been a monk, had been celibate, was a bishop, but fell in love with a lady and secretly got married.
SPEAKER_06: So he he he wanted that to work out.
SPEAKER_06: So these these are some of the ways that Thomas Cranmer started to change the Anglican church was clergy could marry.
SPEAKER_06: But his biggest insight was there could be something to unite Christians in prayer.
SPEAKER_06: Literacy was growing, the printing press had been invented, they were missiles and uh English translations in every church.
SPEAKER_06: Remember, uh, Henry VIII put a translation of the English Bible in every church.
SPEAKER_06: And what Thomas Cramer wanted was for the wealth of monastic living.
SPEAKER_06: If you were a monk or a nun, there were certain spiritual practices that almost were unique to you.
SPEAKER_06: He wanted that to be accessible to everybody.
SPEAKER_06: So Thomas Cramer went around the continent of Europe talking to Lutherans and Roman Catholics really, and compiled prayers and traditions that became the basis of this.
SPEAKER_06: So this is not a prayer book for monks and nuns, it's a prayer book for you and for monks and for nuns.
SPEAKER_06: It's common prayer because it's meant to unite us in a common set of spiritual practices.
SPEAKER_06: And in that way, Cranmer believed that if we were essentially being formed by the same prayers and traditions, even though we might have thought they meant different things, we would have community in the commonness of the words and belief.
SPEAKER_06: There's a book we always have to read in seminary called Praying Shapes Believing.
SPEAKER_06: It's because we understand that the way we pray shapes the way we believe in God and the way we live our lives.
SPEAKER_06: So if we pray every day, God get even get even with our enemies.
SPEAKER_06: God, we don't like those people.
SPEAKER_06: Strike them with lightning.
SPEAKER_06: If we believe that every day, we'll probably live our lives in such a way as to act like that.
SPEAKER_06: On the other hand, right, if we pray prayers like, Almighty God, in whose perfect realm no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, well, that might change the way we behave.
SPEAKER_06: So that was Cranmer's idea.
SPEAKER_06: Now I do want you to know that even though it's the book of common prayer, there's several prayer books in the world.
SPEAKER_06: So the Anglican Church, the English folks, have their own book.
SPEAKER_06: In the Episcopal Church, we have our book, and you should know that the Episcopal Church is not just in America, it's in places like Hong Kong and Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
SPEAKER_06: In fact, it's in 17 different countries.
SPEAKER_06: Um the South African Church has their own prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: Um, the most famous prayer book probably is the New Zealand prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: We've really come to fall in love with that.
SPEAKER_06: Um several different prayer books.
SPEAKER_06: There's not one book of common prayer, there are many, and what's interesting is that we now borrow from them.
SPEAKER_06: But I want to talk to you about our prayer book that we have now today and the richness of its contents, and let you know that this is actually the fourth book of common prayer in the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_06: So the first one was made in 1793, it stayed for a long, long time, and then they updated it in the late 1800s.
SPEAKER_06: They updated it again in 1928, and then we got this one updated in 1976.
SPEAKER_06: Updated, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_06: Well, um, theology might change a little bit, words and phrases might change a little bit.
SPEAKER_06: I think I told you before, before 1976, many churches had the Lord's table against the wall.
SPEAKER_06: And the priest did the communion like this.
SPEAKER_06: You saw the priest's back, which is why, in general, on the chazu, when you see the fancy seal that's on the back, because you were looking at the priest's back most of the service.
SPEAKER_06: What we haven't figured out, like with the garments, is now we do this, the seal needs to go here.
SPEAKER_06: I sometimes wear the garment backward, but it it's funny, like it rides up on the neck.
SPEAKER_06: But I do it anyway, because you you really should see the seal the whole time, because now I'm frontward facing.
SPEAKER_06: So the prayer book has had to respond to changes like that.
SPEAKER_06: As I told you way back when uh we we're still trying to figure out in the prayer book and in the service, is it an altar or is it the Lord's table?
SPEAKER_06: Of course, it can be both things, but those terms of phrases are a little bit different.
SPEAKER_06: Anyone grow up with the 28 prayer book?
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
SPEAKER_06: Then you you probably know that there's this interesting thing called the prayer of humble access.
SPEAKER_06: Oh Lord, we're not worthy to gather the crumbs from your table.
SPEAKER_06: Now we didn't pray that here at St.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas.
SPEAKER_06: It's in the right one service, it's in there, but it's one of those vestiges from the 28th prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: The reason I don't do it is because it's we've already been forgiven, right?
SPEAKER_06: In the service, we've already confessed and been forgiven.
SPEAKER_06: So we in fact are worthy to approach God's table.
SPEAKER_06: Before the confession, maybe we weren't.
SPEAKER_06: You you you you understand what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_06: Before the confession, in a state of sin or abandonment, we weren't worthy.
SPEAKER_06: But see, once you're absolved, you are.
SPEAKER_06: I and that's why I don't do it.
SPEAKER_06: Because it's it's like going backward theologically to something we already did in the service.
SPEAKER_06: Now, that I don't know what's going to happen to that particular prayer when we update the book again.
SPEAKER_06: And we're going to do that.
SPEAKER_06: We voted at General Convention.
SPEAKER_06: We're going to study to update this book.
SPEAKER_06: But again, this is our fourth iteration.
SPEAKER_06: And again, part of what changes is there are theological trends that we want to have reflected in here so that they can be common prayer.
SPEAKER_06: Let me let me just pause on that.
SPEAKER_06: At any point you're gonna say, Mike, I don't like what you said.
SPEAKER_06: Tell me more about the other editions, whatever you want, right?
SPEAKER_06: You're gonna tell me that?
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
SPEAKER_06: So then let me start with how this is composed.
SPEAKER_06: You may not know this, but monks and nuns, I mean people who live in monasteries or convents, they gather to worship seven times a day.
SPEAKER_06: Now you probably know some of these things.
SPEAKER_06: There's like matins in which you get up at like four in the morning and you do this service, and there's vespers, it's three in the morning, sorry, and there's vespers, which is like at midnight.
SPEAKER_06: Now, monks and nuns, they didn't stay up all the time.
SPEAKER_06: They went to bed and then they got up and they did vespers.
SPEAKER_06: So don't think they stayed up till midnight and then had a worship service.
SPEAKER_06: By the way, they did that every day, seven days a week.
SPEAKER_06: And don't think that then they stayed up till three in the morning.
SPEAKER_06: They went to bed and then there was a gong, get up for matins, and they got up and they ran, they did matins, and they went back to bed.
SPEAKER_06: And that was so that their day was punctuated consistently with prayer and scripture, and this is still true in monastic communities.
SPEAKER_06: Seven.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas Cranber thought that was unreasonable for people who were farmers and um butchers.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, they're just tired, you know, you'd be tired all the time.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas Cranmer decided that every Christian should pray four times a day.
SPEAKER_06: I don't mean like, God help me through my homework or Lord help me, you know, butcher this pig appropriately.
SPEAKER_06: No, uh hear scripture, confess sins, and be absolved, pray with other folks.
SPEAKER_06: So Thomas Cranmer decided that should happen in the morning when you woke up.
SPEAKER_06: People wake up at different times.
SPEAKER_06: So when you woke up, morning prayer, prayer at noonday, which is uh sort of lunchtime.
SPEAKER_06: Note now, you know, has anybody ever been to Spain?
SPEAKER_06: If you go to Spain at lunchtime, nothing's open.
SPEAKER_06: Have you noticed this?
SPEAKER_06: They have a siesta, right?
SPEAKER_06: Um, this would be really great.
SPEAKER_06: Uh in Spain, things open at 9, they close at 12, they open back up at 3, they close at 4:30, right?
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's really difficult to conduct business there.
SPEAKER_06: Um, but that was sort of the older habit of living because lunch was the big meal and dinner was the small meal.
SPEAKER_06: We had this cultural change about 200 years ago.
SPEAKER_06: Um, nobody cares about that.
SPEAKER_06: But umday was this pivotal moment where you were going to get nourished, so that became a pivotal time for prayer.
SPEAKER_06: There's prayer at evening when you had your evening meal, which was usually just sort of like bread and cheese, quite honestly, and then prayer at bedtime.
SPEAKER_06: That was Thomas Cranmer's idea.
SPEAKER_06: Every Christian should pray those four times.
SPEAKER_06: Okay, not just priests or bishops or monks or nuns, everybody.
SPEAKER_06: So the way the prayer book is written, actually, is that the first things you run across are those.
SPEAKER_06: Well, actually, I should tell you, the calendar you get first.
SPEAKER_06: The calendar tells you which days are feast days and whom we're celebrating.
SPEAKER_06: It'll tell you, you know, St.
SPEAKER_06: Patrick's Day is March the 17th, and St.
SPEAKER_06: Agnes is January 21st, etc.
SPEAKER_06: So you get to hear what the holy days are and the feast days, and then it tells you what you do every day.
SPEAKER_06: Morning prayer.
SPEAKER_06: You notice that's the first thing.
SPEAKER_06: If you notice, and I'm just sort of flipping through, not in a not necessarily at beginning, but on page 37, morning prayer Roman numeral one.
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
SPEAKER_06: Now, this prayer book we've got has a morning prayer one and a morning prayer two.
SPEAKER_06: Morning prayer one maintains that sort of Elizabethan English, and you'll see it most characteristically in the words the thou thy.
SPEAKER_06: If you're an eight o'clocker, that's the language of your service.
SPEAKER_06: The thou thy.
SPEAKER_06: The reason there's a morning prayer too is because most of us, as we go about the day, do not use those words.
SPEAKER_06: How is thy day?
SPEAKER_06: How go it with thee?
SPEAKER_06: Thou should knock before thy comest to my room, mother.
SPEAKER_06: Very few of us use that parlance.
SPEAKER_06: Now remember, thee, thou thy is actually the you personal greeting.
SPEAKER_06: It's the more intimate of the words in English.
SPEAKER_06: We've lost that tradition.
SPEAKER_06: Now we just use the word thee.
SPEAKER_06: But thou, the, thy was were words you used only for family and intimate relationship folks.
SPEAKER_06: So what's kind of sweet, right, is that we address God that way.
SPEAKER_06: The Lord be with you, says the priest, formally, and you say to the priest, and with thy spirit.
SPEAKER_06: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_06: I use the formal address to you, and you use the intimate address back.
SPEAKER_06: Some people, I'll be honest with you, um, I think part of the reason we do this is because we find this language, which is starting to become a little bit obsolete.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_06: I mean, we don't speak this.
SPEAKER_06: Uh we find it to be this high ideal of elocution and rhyme and meter.
SPEAKER_06: Many, many folks, I'll tell you, who um, when there's a funeral, they pick right one language because they believe it's more proper.
SPEAKER_06: I'm not sure that they're wrong.
SPEAKER_06: Um, but you'll see in morning prayer.
SPEAKER_06: Anybody done morning prayer before?
SPEAKER_06: Um, remember, Thomas Cranmer didn't think you should do this once a week.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas Cranmer believed you should do morning prayer every single day.
SPEAKER_06: Whatever your job was.
SPEAKER_06: Let me ask you this, and this is not to get a jewel in your heavenly crown or anything.
SPEAKER_06: Anybody done morning prayer every day for a week before?
SPEAKER_06: I mean, for a week.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, a week.
SPEAKER_06: Anybody done it for a month before?
SPEAKER_06: Anyone done it for well, obviously a few people then have maybe done it more for more than a month.
SPEAKER_06: It's kind of an interesting experiment, even if you only did one of these, to do it every day for a week.
SPEAKER_06: Um and particularly if you do it every day for a month, you start to anticipate what's coming next.
SPEAKER_06: You get used to this rhythm of what's happening.
SPEAKER_06: And uh, sure enough, what Thomas Cranmer set up, he's really thoughtful, is that every season has a different emphasis.
SPEAKER_06: Right?
SPEAKER_06: During Easter, we think about the resurrection, and during Advent, we think about the Lord's coming.
SPEAKER_06: So he's got different things for us to meditate on in each season.
SPEAKER_06: You always start with a with a prayer for the season.
SPEAKER_06: And then you start with a confession.
SPEAKER_06: Now, you'll see this when we do the end of the day.
SPEAKER_06: You confessed your sins before you went to bed.
SPEAKER_06: This is in case something happened between then and the time you got up.
SPEAKER_06: Maybe you had a bad dream, or you had to get up and go to the bathroom, and you had some particular thought or something, or you realized you left something out.
SPEAKER_06: There's always, always a pronunciation of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_06: You don't have to have a priest to do this, but if you do, the priest gets up and does it for you.
SPEAKER_06: You always read some of the psalms.
SPEAKER_06: Always.
SPEAKER_06: This is the Psalms, um, we talk about this in Bible study, are actually the hymns of the early church.
SPEAKER_06: It's the hymnal.
SPEAKER_06: And um Thomas Kramer decided that memorizing hymns is extremely important to what we believe about God.
SPEAKER_06: Now, this is probably true because there's church songs we sang when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_06: I could tell you all the words.
SPEAKER_06: What can wash away my sin?
SPEAKER_06: Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_06: Don't you know that one?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_06: If you're not, if you grew up Episcopalian, you probably don't know it.
SPEAKER_04: It's a good song.
SPEAKER_06: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.
SPEAKER_01: The old rugged cross is the one I think of.
SPEAKER_06: I will cling to the old rugged cross.
SPEAKER_06: You know what's funny is I don't haven't memorized a lot of episcopal hymns because I became an Episcopalian later in life.
SPEAKER_06: Those little Southern Baptist hymns, I know them probably better than I know my Bible.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas Cranmer knew that's how we how we relate to Psalms, so you get the Psalms every day.
SPEAKER_06: If you're a monk, if you're a monk, you read the Psalms, all 150 of them, every week.
SPEAKER_06: You hit every single one of them.
SPEAKER_06: If you go through the four movements a day, you read all the psalms every month.
SPEAKER_06: Every month.
SPEAKER_06: Not every week, but every month.
SPEAKER_06: There's always a couple readings from scripture in the morning prayer service.
SPEAKER_06: There's always the lessons have these things called canticles.
SPEAKER_06: So you might hear a reading from the book of Luke, and then you'll get to say something like, Blessed are you, God of our parents, praised and exalted above forever.
SPEAKER_06: So these canticles are a response to readings.
SPEAKER_06: There's a few closing prayers, and that's that.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, morning prayer actually takes about ten minutes.
SPEAKER_06: Not very long.
SPEAKER_06: I would challenge you, if you've not done it before, to uh to do it for a week and just see how it feels.
SPEAKER_06: Just see how it feels for a week.
SPEAKER_06: It still will be a little bit clunky at the end of the week.
SPEAKER_06: If you can go for a month, you really will figure it out and you'll get sort of get in a rhythm.
SPEAKER_06: As I told you, there's um there's prayer at noonday, that one comes later.
SPEAKER_06: The next thing you see in the in in the book is the evening prayer.
SPEAKER_06: Now that's not at bedtime, that's like at the evening meal or right before it.
SPEAKER_06: There's only one noonday prayer, it's in right two language, and there's only one bedtime prayer, it's in right two.
SPEAKER_06: But so you get morning and evening, you get right one choices.
SPEAKER_06: Which one's better?
SPEAKER_06: Well, the fact that they're in the prayer book says neither one's better, it's choose your own adventure.
SPEAKER_06: In Lent, here at St.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas, we do, we alternate years.
SPEAKER_06: So in Lent, every Sunday we'll be right two this year.
SPEAKER_06: Right two at both services.
SPEAKER_06: Next year, every Sunday we'll be right one, and that's so we can just have a taste of the different language and remember there's something bigger than ourselves.
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
SPEAKER_06: You'll see on page 75, morning prayer two.
SPEAKER_06: Like I said, that's just really different language.
SPEAKER_06: It's a little bit more contemporary than Val Dai.
SPEAKER_06: Lots more canticles show up.
SPEAKER_06: Lots more.
SPEAKER_01: And you can change those.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, you can change the canticles every single day.
SPEAKER_06: You can use any ones you want.
SPEAKER_06: You can use the same ones.
SPEAKER_06: If you use the same ones, you start to memorize them, which was Thomas Cranmer's idea, is that you can memorize the morning prayer service and not need the book anymore.
SPEAKER_06: If you do it every day for a month and you use the same canicals, I suspect you'll start to memorize them.
SPEAKER_06: Which is what he wanted.
SPEAKER_04: That would be a good Linton discipline.
SPEAKER_06: That would be a great Linton discipline to do morning prayer every day.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, forget the other three, but if you just did one, you may say, Well, Mike, I want to do the whole thing.
SPEAKER_06: If you want to run a marathon, in the first day of your training, you try to run a marathon, you're going to get hurt.
SPEAKER_06: I know because I've done that.
SPEAKER_06: So it's great if you just start out, if you start out with something like the morning.
SPEAKER_06: Page 103 is the service for noonday.
SPEAKER_06: Like I said, it doesn't matter whether you're right one or right two.
SPEAKER_06: This is your one, your one service.
SPEAKER_06: Then you get evening prayer too.
SPEAKER_06: And then you get, and this is the word we've maintained.
SPEAKER_06: We don't say vespers anymore.
SPEAKER_06: We don't say vespers because we don't get up in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_06: We have complain, and that's before bedtime.
SPEAKER_06: Compline.
SPEAKER_06: It starts with a confession.
SPEAKER_06: This is a great one, isn't it?
SPEAKER_06: The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.
SPEAKER_06: There are just some wonderful, wonderful phrases that came out of both scripture and prayers people have been praying for years and years and years and years.
SPEAKER_06: Which is, this is a great one on page 132.
SPEAKER_06: I just want to lift up how this is really, really helpful as a discipline and as a meditation.
SPEAKER_06: Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.
SPEAKER_06: Keep us as the apple of your eye, hide us under the shadow of your wings.
SPEAKER_06: That's something we're supposed to pray every day at the end of our day.
SPEAKER_06: Despite our worries and our successes, our anxieties, our celebrations, we say, I'm commending my spirit into your hands.
SPEAKER_06: That's a lovely meditation.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's extremely meditative.
SPEAKER_06: There's a really fantastic turn of phrase in the New Zealand one that says, Lord, it is night at the end of a busy day.
SPEAKER_06: What is done is done.
SPEAKER_06: What is not done is not done.
SPEAKER_06: Let it be.
SPEAKER_06: Such a lovely phrase.
SPEAKER_06: Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, really beautiful prayers.
SPEAKER_06: And this is what I want to say up front.
SPEAKER_06: I used to teach at a fundamentalist Christian school.
SPEAKER_06: I was a math teacher, and they wanted us to teach to open every class with prayer.
SPEAKER_06: And I would tell you, uh, I was an Episcopalian then.
SPEAKER_06: I had decided to do that.
SPEAKER_06: That was questionable at the fundamentalist school.
SPEAKER_06: But I wrote out prayers to start every class.
SPEAKER_06: I wrote them out.
SPEAKER_06: And many of my students said it's not a real prayer if it's written.
SPEAKER_06: Because you're reading somebody else's words and not making up your own.
SPEAKER_06: And my experience, that had been my experience.
SPEAKER_06: Prayers had to be spontaneous to be real.
SPEAKER_06: But what I realized is that I often am without inspiration.
SPEAKER_06: If I'm really upset or I'm really happy, I have those feelings, but I'm not always even sure how to express them.
SPEAKER_06: And this became the interesting thing for me about written prayers, is that they expressed how I was feeling better than I could in the moment.
SPEAKER_06: It was a way in which I could pour myself into these specific words that weren't magic, but quite honestly, not only expressed me better than I could, but that Christians around the world had been praying sometimes for more than a thousand years.
SPEAKER_06: This is Cranmer's idea, is that we can pray the same prayers that people have been praying for more than a thousand years and talk about common prayer, right?
SPEAKER_06: That's a communion that unites us to the dead and the living.
SPEAKER_06: And some, again, some of the phraseology is just incredible.
SPEAKER_06: Much of it comes from the Psalter, from Psalms.
SPEAKER_06: Into your hands I commend my spirit.
SPEAKER_06: Jesus says that on the cross, but it actually also comes from Psalm 37.
SPEAKER_06: I made that number up, but it's one of the comes from one of the Psalms.
SPEAKER_06: I read it this week.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's just, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_06: Any questions about the four movements about Compline, evening prayer, morning prayer, noonday?
SPEAKER_00: I have a question about collects.
SPEAKER_00: What is a collect?
SPEAKER_06: Let me get let me get there.
SPEAKER_06: Let me get there.
SPEAKER_06: Again, you might decide as a way to experience this, like, hey, this week I'm going to do morning prayer every day.
SPEAKER_06: Next week, I'm going to do noonday prayer every day, even if I do it before I go to bed.
SPEAKER_06: The week after that, I'm going to do evening prayer when I have dinner, even with my friends over.
SPEAKER_06: And nighttime, I'm going to do this prayer before I go to bed.
SPEAKER_06: I will tell you, my favorite complain is the New Zealand service.
SPEAKER_06: The New Zealand rite is, to me, is again, that's the one that said, Lord, it's night at the end of a busy day.
SPEAKER_06: What's done is done.
SPEAKER_06: What's not done is not done.
SPEAKER_06: Let it be.
SPEAKER_06: Why is it that we are so quick to get up early and stay up late and eat the bread of anxiety?
SPEAKER_06: I just find that describes my life.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's a really interesting question.
SPEAKER_06: That's out of the New Zealand Compline.
SPEAKER_06: So it's great to kind of tour how other cultures have done this in their prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: If it does not enrich your life after doing it for a week, don't do it anymore.
SPEAKER_06: But I almost promise you it will.
SPEAKER_06: And the difference between us doing it every day and not at all is that we choose to do it.
SPEAKER_06: So I offer to you, it's a really great thing to experience this week.
SPEAKER_06: What follows are daily devotions for individuals and families.
SPEAKER_06: Now you might say, well, geez, Mike, we already did that in the morning prayer.
SPEAKER_06: This is really so that you can, as a family, see, Cranmer believed in, he knew he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, but he also believed in the priesthood of all believers.
SPEAKER_06: And this was the opportunity of families who did not live in monasteries to read scripture and talk about it together.
SPEAKER_06: You can do this alone.
SPEAKER_06: This is additional readings.
SPEAKER_06: What happens, and you'll find this in the back of the prayer book, not the front, is Cranmer divided most of the Bible into a two-year reading cycle.
SPEAKER_06: It's called the Daily Office.
SPEAKER_06: Every day you'll read a psalm, you'll read part of the Hebrew Bible, or we call the Old Testament, you'll read one of the letters of Paul or John or Hebrews, and you'll read some of the Gospel.
SPEAKER_06: And if you do that every day, you'll read the Psalter, all the Psalms.
SPEAKER_06: I think you read that again once a month, you read all the Psalms, you'll read all the Gospels twice every two years, and you'll read most of the Old Testament and most of the rest of the New Testament on a two-year cycle.
SPEAKER_06: And you'll find all that table actually in the back.
SPEAKER_06: Like just to tell you, if you flip just to the very back, on like page 944, where does it start?
SPEAKER_06: You'll see in the very back, Daily Office Year 1, Daily Office Year 2, and it'll tell you, like in the fourth week of Epiphany, on the Sunday you read Genesis, Galatians, Mark.
SPEAKER_06: On the Monday, you read Genesis Hebrews John.
SPEAKER_06: And it tells you chapter and verse.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: You have to look in the bulletin.
SPEAKER_06: And you know, in the and I'll tell you more about how we do the readings on Sunday, too, because it's a totally different way.
SPEAKER_06: It's on a three-year deal.
unknown: I know.
unknown: That's great.
SPEAKER_06: It's on a two-year deal for every individual people to read the whole Bible.
SPEAKER_06: Forget the Bible in a year.
SPEAKER_06: You're supposed to read it in two.
SPEAKER_06: You'll get the gospels twice, and you'll get the Psalms 24 times.
SPEAKER_06: Any questions about devotions or morning or evening prayer?
SPEAKER_06: I'm going to tell you this.
SPEAKER_06: Most Episcopalians that I know don't ever look at this book.
SPEAKER_06: This is part of the reason why in our bulletin I don't print the Eucharistic prayer anymore.
SPEAKER_06: Number one, it takes a lot more paper.
SPEAKER_06: And number two, we never pick the thing up.
SPEAKER_06: But this is really the wealth of the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_06: It's one of the things most other churches don't have.
SPEAKER_06: Our Catholic friends, they've got the missile, which is the Eucharist service and a few other things.
SPEAKER_06: But there's not necessarily understanding that this is for everybody, priest, deacon, bishop, layperson to be using all the time.
SPEAKER_06: That's really unique to the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_06: You can use it on Rogation Days, which we don't really do.
SPEAKER_06: Those are like harvesty days for farmer people.
SPEAKER_06: And then you run into on page 159 the colicks.
SPEAKER_06: And this was Ellen's question: what's a collect?
SPEAKER_06: Now you'll see that there's colic's traditional and there's colic's contemporary in the next part.
SPEAKER_06: Traditional would be the right one language.
SPEAKER_06: Contemporary would be modern language.
SPEAKER_04: What page?
SPEAKER_06: Colicks begin on page 159.
SPEAKER_06: And you'll see they're actually for Sundays.
SPEAKER_06: So colicks are not for, they're not for Mondays through Saturdays.
SPEAKER_06: Colics are really only for when we get together in church, whether we're doing morning prayer or the Eucharist, that's when we use the collect.
SPEAKER_06: Morning prayer or the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_06: Morning prayer can happen on your own at home, but on Sunday it happens in a bigger community, which is why we have the colic.
SPEAKER_06: Now, I told you there's a daily office.
SPEAKER_06: Everyone is.
SPEAKER_06: Kramer thought everybody's supposed to do that every day.
SPEAKER_06: But then there's something else called the lectionary.
SPEAKER_06: The lectionary takes most of the Bible, and I say most, it's really more like 60%.
SPEAKER_06: There's a lot of things the lectionary skips.
SPEAKER_06: Sometimes because they think it'll be boring.
SPEAKER_06: More often than not, it's because it's a little too dicey.
SPEAKER_06: There's a story, never mind, I'm going to tell you, there's some really kind of R or NC17 stories in the Bible.
SPEAKER_06: They're just R.
SPEAKER_06: And we don't read those in worship because, well, they're R-rated, or NC17, and not everybody in there is 17 and up.
SPEAKER_06: The Daily Office gets some of them.
SPEAKER_06: The Daily Office doesn't even get all of them.
SPEAKER_06: Okay?
SPEAKER_06: The revised common lectionary is something we share with a few other traditions, like the Lutheran Church, the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
SPEAKER_06: Depending, we sometimes share it with Methodists and sometimes with Roman Catholics and sometimes Presbyterians.
SPEAKER_06: There's a little bit of variance in there, but theoretically, you read four things every Sunday on a three-year rotation.
SPEAKER_06: Year A, year B, and year C.
SPEAKER_06: We're in year C right now, started in Advent, which is mostly reading the Gospel of Luke.
SPEAKER_06: In year A, next year, we'll read Matthew, and in year B we read Mark.
SPEAKER_06: When do we read John?
SPEAKER_06: Every year during Easter, because Easter is seven weeks.
SPEAKER_06: Sometimes John will slip in in ordinary time as well, but that's sort of normally how we organize the gospel is by year.
SPEAKER_06: And there's different stories that go with it.
SPEAKER_06: The people who made the lectionary up, their thought was to take four readings from the big Bible and pair them together, and the job of the preacher is to show how four readings from different places weave together to make one coherent story.
SPEAKER_06: You rarely hear the preacher do that because it's darn difficult.
SPEAKER_06: I just want you to know.
SPEAKER_06: Sometimes the only way I can do it is to say, um, I think this one's wrong, and I think the other three prove that.
SPEAKER_06: Because sometimes they contradict each other.
SPEAKER_06: I'm just going to tell you, sometimes they do, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_06: Now, the collet, the collet is supposed to be the interpretive key to the readings.
SPEAKER_06: So today we're talking about the baptism of Jesus.
SPEAKER_06: And if you'd like to see it on page 163, there it is.
SPEAKER_06: You will find this in your bulletin.
SPEAKER_06: This is where we get it from.
SPEAKER_06: Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan didst proclaim him thy beloved son and anoint him with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_06: Grant that all who are baptized in his name may keep the covenant they've made and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_06: Now that tells us we're going to hear the story of Jesus' baptism today.
SPEAKER_06: We are, by the way.
SPEAKER_06: And we're going to also have the opportunity to renew our baptismal covenant.
SPEAKER_06: That's what we're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_06: The collect tells us to do that.
SPEAKER_06: Which means if I read the readings in a way that resists that, maybe I misread them.
SPEAKER_06: That's what they want us to do in church today.
SPEAKER_06: If you're going at 1030, you'll find that same collect in contemporary language on page number 214.
SPEAKER_06: It's not going to sound much different.
SPEAKER_06: Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan proclaimed him your beloved son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_06: Grant that all who are baptized in his name may keep the covenant they've made and boldly confessed him as Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_06: Pretty similar, right?
SPEAKER_06: In general, the colics match very well.
SPEAKER_06: There's really no major change other than thee thou die in a little bit of cadence.
SPEAKER_06: The collect is there for us to collect ourselves into the readings.
SPEAKER_06: We always do the colic first, and then we hear the readings.
SPEAKER_06: Does that make sense?
unknown: I thought it was collect.
SPEAKER_06: We say collect, but it really is collect.
SPEAKER_06: Now you're going to hear, I mean, sometimes we come together to do to do communion, and hey, um, we might be celebrating a missionary or a pastor.
SPEAKER_06: If you look at page 246, you'll see there's one for Thanksgiving Day at the top, but then you'll see sometimes there's a college when we think about martyrs or missionaries.
SPEAKER_06: There's a special one for a church convention.
SPEAKER_06: We have one on page 254 we use at a confirmation service.
SPEAKER_06: So if we're doing confirmation, we'll use that instead of the collect for the day.
SPEAKER_06: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_06: It might be Sunday morning, and we might be having the Eucharist, but if we're doing confirmation, which by the way, we'll be doing February 24th, this will be the collect we'll use that day.
SPEAKER_06: In this sense, what we do every Sunday is very predictable.
SPEAKER_06: And that's not so we can be boring, that's so that we can tune ourselves to the music that's already written for us.
SPEAKER_06: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_06: The spontaneity in the service we do really happens at the sermon.
SPEAKER_06: It doesn't happen in the liturgy.
SPEAKER_06: You'll find that then after the colics are a few special days.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, on page 270, you'll see we have a service for Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_06: That's where we bless those palms that we wave around.
SPEAKER_06: And then we have something for Maundy Thursday.
SPEAKER_06: That's where we do foot washing.
SPEAKER_06: And on Good Friday, and on Easter Vigil.
SPEAKER_06: Special services.
SPEAKER_04: Just looking through this.
SPEAKER_04: What are Ember Days?
SPEAKER_06: Oh, um, Ember Days happen four times a year.
SPEAKER_06: And I can tell you what it really means.
SPEAKER_06: And Ember Day is when you're supposed to communicate with your bishop about what's going on in your life and your parish.
SPEAKER_06: The good news is I don't have to write those letters anymore because I got priested.
SPEAKER_06: Bishops don't want that mail, just to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_06: They have apparently enough to do already.
SPEAKER_06: So usually you write an Ember Day letter when you're when you're a postulant, like when you're a candidate for holy orders, deacon or priest, is when you communicate with your bishop that four times a year cycle.
SPEAKER_06: We've kind of lost the tradition.
SPEAKER_06: They're also called rogation days.
SPEAKER_06: Again, those have to do with seasonal changes when you're a farmer.
SPEAKER_06: I don't think most of you farm or know anything about rogation days.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, if I asked you, when's the right time to harvest squash?
SPEAKER_06: Do you know approximately the date?
SPEAKER_06: Fall.
SPEAKER_06: Right?
SPEAKER_06: That's about the best we can do.
SPEAKER_06: What do you know?
SPEAKER_06: There's an Ever Day in the fall.
SPEAKER_06: When's the best time to harvest tomatoes?
unknown: When they're right.
SPEAKER_04: That might depend on where the new live.
SPEAKER_06: Usually summer.
SPEAKER_06: Now in Texas, it could be summer tomorrow, so you never know.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, that's part of the deal that's different with us, but that's that's sort of where they come four times a year.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Can I have a question?
SPEAKER_06: Please.
SPEAKER_03: When you talked about the only spot in anything in the service is the sermon, how does the music fit in with that?
SPEAKER_06: I'm glad you asked that.
SPEAKER_06: So this is really important.
SPEAKER_06: We have the book of common prayer.
SPEAKER_06: There are really no songs in here.
SPEAKER_06: There is some chant.
SPEAKER_06: No, actually, there's no chant in here.
SPEAKER_06: There's a little bit of chant.
SPEAKER_06: There's no songs.
SPEAKER_06: We have the hymnal, which has all the songs, and then we have another book called Lift Every Voice and Sing, which is like extra songs that didn't fit in the hymnal, and we thought we'd put that in there.
SPEAKER_06: Um some churches only use that.
SPEAKER_06: Some churches use neither one.
SPEAKER_06: There's churches that use a screen and project whatever they want up there.
SPEAKER_06: So there's a lot of variety, and again, that becomes this way, right, in which people express their individuality through song as well.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I notice in the hymnal though there are certain seasons that match the songs.
SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03: And I guess those are more suggestions.
SPEAKER_06: They are suggestions, and then there's sometimes it'll say like at communion or for Christian living, and that's to give people an idea who don't know the contents of the whole hymn that'll hey, I need four hymns for Sunday.
SPEAKER_06: What am I going to sing about?
SPEAKER_06: So it's similarly organized thematically.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: What's interesting, right, is just like the prayer book and the Bible, um, not everybody sings all the hymns in the hymnal.
SPEAKER_06: There's ones you've probably never heard.
SPEAKER_06: And then there's probably ones that you could sing in your sleep.
SPEAKER_06: You know?
SPEAKER_06: And and really that varies by congregation.
SPEAKER_06: That's the interesting bit.
SPEAKER_01: It seems to me that when we were little, we may not have had that guide or we may not have followed it because we knew certain hymns really well because we sang them often.
SPEAKER_01: Now you sing a hymn maybe once a year and you don't really learn.
SPEAKER_01: Children like you grew up learning some, and children don't really learn hymns anymore.
SPEAKER_06: And here I think is the biggest challenge of the last 60 years is people don't know how to sing anymore.
SPEAKER_06: But 60 years ago, in general, people were taught, if only in church, how to read music.
SPEAKER_06: You may say, Mike, I'm more than sixty years, I didn't learn that.
SPEAKER_06: But that has been an American turnover, is that now we only know how to sing harmony and we don't know how to I'm sorry, I said that wrong, melody, and we don't know how to sing our parts.
SPEAKER_06: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_06: I sorry.
SPEAKER_04: But we don't sing this black on the same, we don't sing the same songs uh uh often enough.
SPEAKER_06: That is sometimes true, but I think there's even a bigger understanding, it's not just learning songs, it's that we can't look at a musical staff and know an A sounds like this, I will sing the note A.
SPEAKER_06: Can any of you do that?
unknown: No.
SPEAKER_04: No, I just follow along.
SPEAKER_06: I cannot.
SPEAKER_06: And I I can I don't I in general can only sing the melody of a song.
SPEAKER_06: I have a really hard time singing my part as a baritone.
SPEAKER_06: And which is really, I'm not really a baritone.
SPEAKER_06: I'm just not as high as a tenor or as low as a bass.
SPEAKER_06: So baritone is the dumping ground for people who have a six-note range.
SPEAKER_06: Um so that's sort of the deal.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I I think you're right, and I will tell you what's interesting is um I think that's why there's been this big movement in contemporary United States to sing contemporary Christian songs.
SPEAKER_06: If you know anything about them, they're not contemporary at all.
SPEAKER_06: They're like Eagles songs, right?
SPEAKER_06: The Eagles are a great band when you're on a long drive.
SPEAKER_06: They're really easy to listen to, but that kind of music is now 40 years old.
SPEAKER_06: Contemporary Christian music is 40 years old.
SPEAKER_06: The tunes are all like the Eagles would have written.
SPEAKER_06: I love them.
SPEAKER_06: But let me tell you, um, nobody in their churches is doing like contemporary hip-hop songs.
SPEAKER_06: You listen to that on the radio, but nobody's singing that from the congregation.
SPEAKER_06: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_06: You can't sing it.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes it's not even music on the side.
SPEAKER_06: Well, and see, and our folks said the same thing about some of the songs we like.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, when when the Eagles came out, our grandparents were like, turn that racket off, you know.
SPEAKER_06: But we love the Eagles.
SPEAKER_06: We just love them.
SPEAKER_06: And I'll tell you, I love the Eagles too.
SPEAKER_06: They're very easy to sing along with.
unknown: I love the Eagles.
SPEAKER_06: You don't like Kiss?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: I couldn't even tell you a Kiss song.
SPEAKER_06: That's the sad thing.
SPEAKER_06: Um, it all depends on what music we were formed in, and this is this interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_06: I grew up listening to Oldies on the radio.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I didn't listen to contemporary, and my dad also liked the Statler brothers and Ann Murray, which is very strange.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I could tell you all the words to Snowbird, uh, and I know Danny's song, not the Wayland Jennings version, but the Ann Murray version, which is like you just country it a little bit, you know.
SPEAKER_06: Ann Murray's a great singer, you know, and uh love the Statler brothers.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, forget Randy Travis singing King of the Road.
SPEAKER_06: He gets it wrong.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, that the Statler brothers are the ones to listen to.
SPEAKER_06: And we all grew up like that in our own little musical tradition.
SPEAKER_06: And sometimes it's hard you go to church, and it's like, what on earth?
SPEAKER_06: What kind of music is that?
SPEAKER_04: We sing it in church too, the same songs we learned in summer school.
SPEAKER_06: Each I met a Southern Baptist.
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: And other churches do, I know the same.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you need I I I appreciate what you're saying, and it's I think it's worth pausing on on the hymnal here because um I'll tell you something really frustrating for me about um having come from from the Baptist and Methodist tradition.
SPEAKER_06: There's some of the same hymns are in the hymnal, but they're to different tunes, and it drives me crazy.
SPEAKER_06: Why is the hymnal wrong?
SPEAKER_06: Well, I'll tell you, the hymnal that we have um has the oldest musical setting for tunes, even if nobody knows that one anymore.
SPEAKER_06: And it drives it just drives me crazy.
SPEAKER_04: Are you familiar with any of the songs in the hymnal that yes?
SPEAKER_02: Um it drives me crazy when it's different from what I've expected.
SPEAKER_06: Here's a Christmas song.
SPEAKER_02: I am thoroughly I can't even do the service anymore.
SPEAKER_02: I used to know it by heart, and now it's too confusing for me to go back and forth between the two.
SPEAKER_02: So I just followed along.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, truly, I in and I and I'm gonna tell you why we print this parts of the service in the bulletin, because otherwise, you've got three things you've got the prayer book, you've got the hymnal, and you've got the body.
SPEAKER_06: Bible, and if you don't know when to do what, you've got three books open, and you've got a bulletin telling you which hymns and which Bible passages, and that's just a lot to juggle.
SPEAKER_06: So part of why we print a bulletin instead of doing it all out of the prayer book is to be a little more user-friendly.
SPEAKER_06: Now, the first church I went to in the Episcopal Church, the bulletin said readings for the day, hymn numbers, and that was it.
SPEAKER_06: So I had this book, I had the Bible, and I had the hymnal, and I have a really high pain threshold.
SPEAKER_06: I do.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I'm I have a really lot of religious pain threshold.
SPEAKER_06: Most people don't have that.
SPEAKER_06: And they would say, What?
SPEAKER_06: And at the piece, they might just sneak out if they made it that long.
SPEAKER_06: That's kind of what we've decided.
SPEAKER_06: And unfortunately, right, what you lose is you lose familiarity with the book, you lose familiarity with the Bible, and you lose familiarity with the hymnal.
SPEAKER_06: It's always something that we juggle.
SPEAKER_06: Now I know my Bible because by the time I was seven, I had to know all the books of the Bible in order to get like a candy.
SPEAKER_06: And you know, when you're seven, you you learn anything for the candy.
unknown: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_06: That's what we did at church when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_06: So I got the Bible down, but the prayer book and the hymn is hard.
SPEAKER_06: And we're trying to figure out now how do we we be accommodating for people who are visiting that may not want to juggle three different books at the same time.
SPEAKER_06: This is hard.
SPEAKER_06: I don't know the answer to it.
SPEAKER_03: And I've seen it go through cycles too.
SPEAKER_03: The whole thing printed out, and I think that's great for visitors.
SPEAKER_06: We do that on Easter and Christmas here.
SPEAKER_06: That's the only two days we print the whole thing.
unknown: It is difficult to deal with it.
SPEAKER_06: Otherwise, I I I say and I wait every week.
SPEAKER_06: I say, service continues on page 360 of your red prayer book, right?
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I even say what color it is.
SPEAKER_06: We don't have any black ones.
SPEAKER_04: So it's only two, so I think that's not too difficult.
SPEAKER_06: I don't think it's too guest unfriendly to do that, right?
SPEAKER_06: And it's only for the tail part.
SPEAKER_06: And of course we print the readings because I mean, I guess we could do different.
SPEAKER_06: I guess I could, I I I we could we have pew Bibles, and I guess I could put a page number in the pew Bible so that people could find it.
SPEAKER_06: You know, but I will tell you one thing we don't know as Episcopalians is our Bible.
SPEAKER_06: If you say, Oh, that's in the book of Hezekiah, and people will look for that book, which is not a book.
SPEAKER_06: It's not, but it sounds like it could be because it's a funny name, right?
SPEAKER_06: One bit about hymns, and this relates.
SPEAKER_06: Um, we sing a song at uh Christmas time, Away in a manger.
SPEAKER_06: Now, the way I learned to sing away in a manger was away in a manger, no crib for a baby.
SPEAKER_06: Not in the hymnal like that.
SPEAKER_06: I hate the hymnal because that's the way you sing it.
SPEAKER_06: That's how I learned it.
SPEAKER_04: That's how everybody sings it, right?
SPEAKER_06: No, no, does anybody did anybody learn it a different way?
SPEAKER_01: We do it differently now.
SPEAKER_06: I can't hardly even do it because uh I mean I know how it goes in my head, but if I try to sing it, I'm gonna sing what I just did.
SPEAKER_06: There's a few like that.
SPEAKER_06: There's a few like that in the hymnal.
SPEAKER_06: Uh Come Now Long Expected Jesus.
SPEAKER_06: Uh, you know, that's that's a Wesley hymn.
SPEAKER_06: Come thou long expected Jesus born to set by people free.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I don't know that.
SPEAKER_06: In the hymnal, it's come thou long expected Jesus.
SPEAKER_06: I can't I can't even sing it because I want to sing what I just sang to you, because I learned that one first, so it's right.
SPEAKER_06: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01: I think we used to, in many cases, and we have a P maybe still, but both tunes are in there.
SPEAKER_06: There used to be often both, and in 1982, like the stodgy old music directors had their way, and they winted many of them down to one, which is probably not the one you like.
SPEAKER_06: By the way, that happens anytime we revise the prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: Is that sometimes you might say, What do you mean you took out the prayer of humble access?
SPEAKER_06: I love that prayer.
unknown: Yeah, I was gonna ask you.
SPEAKER_06: Uh and we just have to make choices on that.
SPEAKER_06: Okay, baptism follows.
SPEAKER_06: So we're wading through here.
SPEAKER_06: We've done holy week, palm Sunday, Maundy, Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil.
SPEAKER_06: There's a service for baptism.
SPEAKER_06: There's only one.
SPEAKER_06: There's not baptism one, baptism two.
SPEAKER_06: And then comes the Eucharist service, right?
SPEAKER_06: Which we're gonna do this morning.
SPEAKER_06: We did Eucharist one already at 8 o'clock.
SPEAKER_06: We're gonna do Eucharist 2.
SPEAKER_06: Every service is supposed to have readings and a collet.
SPEAKER_06: Every service has the prayer.
SPEAKER_06: Um, you know, we all always start with um, Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_06: We always ask God to kind of prepare us for worship with that prayer.
SPEAKER_06: We get a confession of sins and an absolution.
SPEAKER_06: We have prayers of the people every week.
SPEAKER_06: The interesting thing is there's samples of the prayers of the people, but every congregation is invited to write their own.
SPEAKER_06: The goal of these samples is to make sure we remember to pray for everybody and not just the people we're thinking about.
SPEAKER_06: It's really easy to leave out refugees if you don't live in a refugee community, or people who are incarcerated, or uh, etc., people who aren't getting a paycheck because of government furlough.
SPEAKER_06: Like it's easy to leave those people out unless that's you.
SPEAKER_06: So the prayers of the people are really to make sure we're just not limiting who we pray for.
SPEAKER_06: Now, at St.
SPEAKER_06: Thomas, we use forms of the prayers of the people that aren't in the book.
SPEAKER_06: And the book encourages us to do that so long as we include the major categories: sick, suffering, rulers in the world, forgiveness of sins, care of the earth.
SPEAKER_06: Does it does that make sense?
SPEAKER_06: In fact, we I think we used, we have ten.
SPEAKER_06: Uh there's there's only seven different ones in the prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: So one uh is from South Africa, one is from the diocese, and another one is from, well, I wrote it.
SPEAKER_06: So so we that's ten, and we rotate them every every ten Sundays we we do it again.
SPEAKER_06: Does does that make sense?
SPEAKER_06: The prayer book wants us to do that.
SPEAKER_06: That's a that's a part of variety.
SPEAKER_06: So that that yeah.
SPEAKER_06: The sermon, the prayers of the people.
SPEAKER_06: They're really good.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I think the prayers of the people are really, really fantastic.
SPEAKER_06: Notice, they didn't pray for the political leaders we like, they pray for all the leaders of the world to rule with justice and righteousness.
SPEAKER_06: Pretty cool thing to pray for instead of God, I hate Democrats, um, frustrate all their plans.
SPEAKER_06: That just that's just really petty and silly.
SPEAKER_06: You know, I mean just as awful.
SPEAKER_06: Look at that, we're halfway through the book, we're on page 412.
SPEAKER_06: Have I missed something or like super bored you so far?
SPEAKER_06: You're asking as you want to ask, right?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that that that um use from Iona.
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember where that goes.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the Iona invitation.
SPEAKER_06: It's not in the prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: It comes from um a religious community called Iona Abbey.
SPEAKER_06: And why did I slip it in there uh three and a half years ago?
SPEAKER_06: Because I think it belongs there.
SPEAKER_06: Now, this is an interesting thing that's important to know.
SPEAKER_06: We have the Book of Common Prayer, which is really the outline, it tells us what to do.
SPEAKER_06: But you know who prays the Eucharistic prayer is your priest.
SPEAKER_06: And this becomes an interesting thing, right?
SPEAKER_06: Your priest, female or male, young or old, is not praying this for you.
SPEAKER_06: It's their prayer.
SPEAKER_06: Now, there are certain prayers that I cannot offer authentically.
SPEAKER_06: I just want to say this.
SPEAKER_06: I cannot pray the prayer of humble access because it reminds me of being wretched and worthless and there's no good in me.
SPEAKER_06: And I don't believe those things are true.
SPEAKER_06: So I cannot say that prayer with any real piety, which is why I don't pray it.
SPEAKER_06: I think it would be wrong for me to pray a prayer publicly, but I don't mean.
SPEAKER_06: So I don't do it.
SPEAKER_06: Now you may say, Mike, that's naughty, it's in the book.
SPEAKER_06: It is.
SPEAKER_06: But I don't do it.
SPEAKER_06: And in prayer C, I don't say, Lord God of our fathers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because I'll tell you, uh, my mother's the one who connected me to my faith.
SPEAKER_06: So I say, Lord God of our parents.
SPEAKER_06: Of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, and Keturah.
SPEAKER_06: Those are his wives.
SPEAKER_06: Of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.
SPEAKER_06: Those words aren't in the book, but it's my prayer.
SPEAKER_06: So there's a little bit of tension there.
SPEAKER_06: I'm just going to admit it, there is.
SPEAKER_06: Um, but uh the mentoring I got is that dogs and bees can smell fear and they can smell phonies, and so can children.
SPEAKER_06: Children are really good at smelling phonies.
SPEAKER_06: Adults, sometimes we we're often so phony ourselves we can't tell.
SPEAKER_06: But we owe it to our children to be authentic and honest.
SPEAKER_06: So if I can't pray it, I shouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_06: I hope that's okay.
SPEAKER_06: I could be wrong, but I'm pretty committed to that.
SPEAKER_06: That's why I change some of the words in in the prayer book, even though they're common, I change some.
SPEAKER_06: But I don't change the book, see, and I think that's the difference.
SPEAKER_06: Um, when we read it, we read the book, you hear me use different words sometimes.
SPEAKER_06: That's because it's my prayer, but but here's the book in front of us, so you're kind of getting two voices at the same time.
SPEAKER_06: I tell people, if you like the prayer of humble access, pray it.
SPEAKER_06: It's in the book, it's written here.
SPEAKER_06: I I just I can't do it publicly because it, you know, I was taught that pretty much God hates me.
SPEAKER_06: So when I hear that prayer, it takes me back to that awful place.
SPEAKER_06: And as I told you at the beginning, I think it's theologically in the wrong place in the service.
SPEAKER_06: I think that's a prayer we should do before the confession, but not after it.
SPEAKER_06: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_06: Maybe one day we'll, maybe in Lent, we'll start praying that before the confession.
SPEAKER_06: And then we'll get absolved.
SPEAKER_06: And look, we prayed it and it makes sense, and now we're we're done.
SPEAKER_06: You do?
SPEAKER_06: Thanks.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I think it matters.
SPEAKER_06: You know, when I first got here, this is the thing to think about in the service.
SPEAKER_04: We have the um I didn't know you didn't know you could do that.
SPEAKER_06: Well, I'm the chief liturgical officer of the parish.
SPEAKER_06: I can do whatever I want.
SPEAKER_06: As long as I say the Nicene Creed.
SPEAKER_06: You've got to say the creed.
SPEAKER_06: And if I want to do something radically different from in here, I need the bishop's permission.
SPEAKER_02: But to change to do that, I don't.
SPEAKER_06: To do that, I don't.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, look, I didn't change the prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: It's still in there.
SPEAKER_06: I just couldn't, I I mean, I didn't change it.
SPEAKER_06: And maybe I shouldn't be recording these.
SPEAKER_06: But I I mean I I think this is part of what's important is that our faith has to be authentic, whether you're a layperson or the priest, and inauthentic faith is the thing that God um delights in the least.
SPEAKER_06: It seems like there was one other thought to to name, and I can't remember what it was.
SPEAKER_06: You know, there's the it's not in the book.
SPEAKER_06: There's a book of um, it's called the priest's handbook, and it tells me what I'm supposed to do at all times in the service with my hands.
SPEAKER_06: There's even um illustrations that during parts of the Eucharist prayer, I do this, or or actually I think it's this, and then there's one point I'm supposed to do this.
SPEAKER_06: Um and I bought that book because one of my friends in ministry was like, buy the priest's handbook, it'll tell you everything to do.
SPEAKER_06: And I had it on my desk, and my mentoring rector saw it, and he was like, Why did you get that book?
SPEAKER_06: Throw that away.
SPEAKER_06: I was like, Well, because my friend told me to buy it.
SPEAKER_06: And he said, Look, I mean, if you don't do that stuff already, if that's not already meaningful for you, don't do it.
SPEAKER_06: Because it's just some, but somebody else does.
SPEAKER_06: If you like to put your, I mean, if it's comfortable for you to do this, do it.
SPEAKER_06: If it's meaningful for you to pray this way, do it.
SPEAKER_06: But don't think that because that means something for someone else, it's going to make your prayer more meaningful for you or anybody else.
SPEAKER_06: And it's really, really thoughtful.
SPEAKER_06: That stuff isn't in the prayer book.
SPEAKER_06: But there is a book, I'll tell you, that some clergy subscribe to that says, good priests do this during the Eucharistic prayer.
SPEAKER_06: And I just didn't even know what that is.
SPEAKER_06: There's a good guy.
SPEAKER_06: There's a good lady.
SPEAKER_06: Who does that?
SPEAKER_06: Do you ever do that?
SPEAKER_06: It's the strangest gesture I've ever seen, but most priests do it.
SPEAKER_06: I'll tell you because it's in that book.
SPEAKER_06: Not, it's not in this one.
SPEAKER_06: And that's not the strange thing, the difference between scripture, tradition, and reason.
SPEAKER_06: Okay, I stopped the prayer book business here today and we'll pick it up next week.
SPEAKER_06: Does that seem good?
SPEAKER_06: I hope I didn't bore you to tears.
SPEAKER_06: Thank you for being here.