From the Rector
The Right Reverend Sean W. Rowe, Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Bishop Provisional of Western New York, to be the Twenty-Eighth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.
Dear friends in Christ,
I love The Episcopal Church.
Today we celebrate with our Episcopal siblings across the church the election, yesterday afternoon, of the Right Reverend Sean W. Rowe, Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Bishop Provisional of Western New York, to be the Twenty-Eighth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.
He will be the youngest Presiding Bishop since the 1830s at 49 years of age. He was ordained and consecrated a bishop at age 32, and he was the youngest priest in The Episcopal Church when he was ordained at age 24. I encourage you to read more about Bishop Rowe in the additional article published in this week’s edition of The Net.
This is a wonderful day in our life together.
My piece in the most recently publication of Word & Deed shared about the steady decline in attendance and membership across The Episcopal Church over the last two decades. (Follow this link to that article.) The numbers are sobering and easily lead us to fear that decline points inevitably towards a dying church. That’s not true, though. There are signs of life and light everywhere.
The truth is that God loves the Church. Christ is always in our midst. We are his Body—his hands and feet—in the world. Wherever Christ is present, in every heart, there is life. His love for the world casts out fear. Today’s church is not dying but looking out to a changing landscape where there are so many opportunities to sow seeds of God’s love that will grow and bear fruit that will last for generations.
I invite you to pray with me for Bishop Rowe and for The Episcopal Church, as well as for our ministry at Saint Andrew’s. What do you love about The Episcopal Church? What do you love about Saint Andrew’s? What do you hope for our future? What is the first step we can take together to begin the journey?
Christ’s peace, love, and light be with you today ~
Fr. Peter
Each of the five nominees for Presiding Bishop was asked to create a video discussing a biblical image or metaphor that resonates with this moment in the life of the church and the role of the Presiding Bishop. I want to share the transcript of Bishop Rowe’s address:
The Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe
Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania
Diocese of Western New York
In the last chapter of Luke's gospel, we catch two of Jesus followers in the act of missing the point, which is, if you've read this far in the gospels, you know is practically their vocation. They are professionals at being confused. They have a gift of never understanding what is happening. And their story is one of my favorite ways of talking about where we find ourselves in the Episcopal Church today.
In Luke 24 it's just a few hours after the women went to the tomb and found that the body of Jesus was not there and so instead of staying to find out what's going on to check out the story, Cleopas and his companion decide to make their way out of Jerusalem. They're headed the wrong way -- out of Jerusalem -- away from the disciples, away from the women who had been the last pastors and protectors of the cross, and the first ones at the empty tomb. They've heard the good news, proclaimed from the first ones to learn that Christ is risen, and they can't get away from it fast enough. Cleopas in his companion, heard something unsettling from people who can't possibly be trustworthy, and they are on their way. They're out of there. Not only do they not believe the story, they do not believe that the messengers of that story. Not only do they not believe that Jesus has risen, but it's not really possible that the news that changes everything could come from women.
Now it's easy to mock them until you think about all the ways that we Episcopalians do the same thing. We find ourselves headed in the wrong way on the road to Emmaus when we can't hear the truth from voices that are marginalized. When we can't hear the truth from unlikely sources, from people on the edge, from the people who think we really don't have any business delivering any truth to us. When we can't imagine reorganizing ourselves or restructuring our churches to make room at the center for the voices that God trusts with the truth. Like Cleopas and his companion, we hear those voices, and we take off in the other direction for the comfort of our institutional structures as they are, our endowments, and the way we've always done it.
Thankfully, God does not give up on them or on us. Jesus comes to walk with Cleopas and his companion, but they don't know it is him. As they pour out their tale of woe, they really do start to sound like Episcopalian sometimes. We had hoped that Jesus would be the one to come and redeem Israel, they say, we had hoped. We had hoped our children would find faith in the church in the way that we found it when we were young. We wanted the recipe of Sunday School, church camp and family devotions that had shaped us to shape them, too. We'd hoped that every stewardship campaign would hit its goal, and the chefs behind it every pancake supper would have to send somebody out for extra eggs. That everybody we knew would drop in on the parish picnic. That all our churches will be standing room only on Christmas Eve. And failing that, we hoped at least our children would grow up on a spiritual landscape we still recognize so that our churches could proclaim the gospel in ways that we understood. We had hoped.
But Jesus by opening the scriptures and breaking the bread opens their eyes. When the scripture was read to them and when the bread was broken, their eyes opened, and here's the thing: They didn't even know their eyes were closed until they were opened.
Friends in the next nine years in the Episcopal Church, we're going have many opportunities to head in the wrong way, away from the voices that God has chosen to bear witness to God's mission in this broken world. But it will also be filled with chances to be freed from the past, from what we had hoped, and marshal our resources to meet the challenges of the future we could not have seen, would not have believed.
The next presiding bishop must keep us listening to the voices that can breathe fresh air and new light and life into our beloved church. And help us hear the testimony of the women at the empty tomb, to recognize Jesus on the road, to take the risks that truly opening our eyes requires us to take, and allow us to embrace fully the knowledge that people we don't yet recognize, those on the margin and sometimes those in the center, will meet us on the road to tell us Christ is risen. And we will never be the same
6/27/2024
Older News From the Rector
Dear friends in Christ,
We are three weeks into the Season after Pentecost, which extends more than half of the Church’s calendar year. It is, by far, the longest liturgical season. This year there are 27 weeks after Pentecost until Advent, when the calendar year begins again.
By contrast, the other weeks of the year incorporate the 9 other liturgical seasons:
Advent, roughly 4 weeks that begin on the Sunday nearest the Feast of Saint Andrew (Nov. 30) and extends to Christmas Eve
Christmas, the 12 days that carry the year on to the Vigil of the Epiphany
Epiphany, extending from January 6th to Septuagesima
Septuagesima, from the Sunday of that name (3 before Ash Wednesday, 9 before Easter) to Ash Wednesday
Lent, the 40 days extending to Easter Eve, which includes
Passiontide, the 2 weeks before Easter
Eastertide, from Easter Day to the eve of Whitsunday: the Day of Pentecost, in which is included
Ascensiontide, from the 5th Thursday after Easter to the Saturday week following
Whitsuntide, being the Day of Pentecost and the 6 following days
As an aside, the list of 10 seasons is more ancient that the list of only 7 that our Prayer Book mentions (see BCP 31-32).
The imbalance of time seems about right when we consider the relatively brief interval from the Incarnation and Nativity of Jesus, though his three years of earthly ministry, to his Cross and Passion, his Resurrection and Ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. All this took place in only 33 years.
After the coming of the Holy Spirit, though, we behold the ministry of Christ’s Body, the Church, over two millennia. We are part of this Season after Pentecost, partakers of the unfolding history of the early Church until this very day. Before his Ascension, Jesus told his disciples, “I am with you always, even to the end of the ages” (Matthew 28:20). He speaks these words to us too.
Our ministry as members of Christ’s Body in the Season after Pentecost is the retelling and essential continuation of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Johann Adam Möhler, an 18th- and 19th-century German theologian, once wrote in a letter to a friend, “If Christ is the sacrament of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him present. She not only carries on his work, but she is his very continuation, in a sense far more real than that in which it can be said that any human institution is its founder’s continuation” (1834). The Holy Spirit fills and empowers us to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. We are each walking sacraments. Those who are baptized into Christ’s death are raised with him to newness of life. Our lives become outward and visible signs of Christ’s inward and spiritual grace at work transforming the world.
I want to share, in closing, a prayer of thanksgiving for the mission of the Church that I was reminded of at Morning Prayer this past week: “Almighty God, you sent your Son Jesus Christ to reconcile the world to yourself: We praise and bless you for those whom you have sent in the power of the Spirit to preach the Gospel to all nations. We thank you that in all parts of the earth a community of love has been gathered together by their prayers and labors, and that in every place your servants call upon your Name; for the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours for ever. Amen.” (BCP 838).
Thanks be to God for his grace that guides and sustains our witness to the Southside of Birmingham. Our history of more than 100 years tells the story of our part in the long Season after Pentecost that continues to unfold from age to age. And together we ask, how shall we live faithfully into the next 100 years of the Gospel?
Peace to you, beloved~
Fr. Peter