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Advent 2005 The Church Messenger St. David of Wales Anglican Church I t used to be that great store was set by the name used to describe what we do on Sunday morning. The Prayer Book of 1962 gave us three choices: Holy Communion, Holy Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, corresponding roughly to Broad, High & Low Church sensibilities respectively. Occasionally one encountered the word “mass”, which to my childish ears always sounded faintly exotic & slightly naughty (probably because it carried a vague whiff of continental Europe), & therefore very attractive. Of course, there were always parishes which simply called it “Mattins” & so avoided a great deal of difficulty. St David’s, as we all know, stands squarely in the ranks of the exotic & naughty, & I for one couldn’t be happier. But referring to our primary act of Sunday worship as “the ”, w ty [y sw o e ap who sit around on Sunday mornings doing whatever it is that happy pagans do on Sunday mornings. It is about being fed & strengthened with the life of Jesus so that we can carry out the mission of God. That mission is arduous, challenging, & will demand everything we’ve got & then some—but that’s all right because we are drawing not on our own resources but on the resources of Jesus who feeds us in the Mass with his own life. And what, exactly, is that mission? Well, it might be helpful to begin by reminding ourselves that it is God’s mission—God’s agenda, not ours—because most of us have no shortage of bright ideas about what the Church ought to be doing. Jesus began his own ministry by outlining God’s mission as proclaimed in the book of Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent [that pesky mission word again] me to proclaim release to the captives & recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. That’s a description of the Kingdom of God, upon the coming of which we reflect in this season of Advent. So, by way of Advent reflection, we might start by asking ourselves what the Kingdom of God might look like in Hastings-Sunrise. What needs to happen here so that the poor can hear good news, the captives released, the blind given sight, the oppressed set free? And what resources, material & spiritual, can we at St David’s bring to that mission? We don’t have to do it all, but we do have a part to play. God has called us to mission, & God has given us everything we need to carry out that mission. Faithfully, Michael † The Church Messenger Advent 2005 priest@dewisant.org Sunday Services Our Parish Life Mattins Sung Family Mass Solemn Evensong Weekday Services Mattins Mass every third Sunday 9am 10am 7pm Monday–Thursday Thursday 9 am 7pm Coming up in our parish life Saturday, December 3 Saturday, December 24 Friday, January 6 St David’s Christmas Bazaar High Mass Christmas Eve High Mass & Potluck Supper Epiphany High Mass Baptism of the Lord High Mass Candlemas Deadline for submission of annual reports. Annual Meeting of the Vestry followed by potluck lunch. High Mass Patronal Feast High Mass Ash Wednesday 10 am 7 pm 1 – 3 pm 10:30 pm 6 pm Sunday, January 8 Thursday, February 2 The Church Messenger Advent 2005 10 am 7 pm Sunday, January 29 Sunday, February 19 Sunday, February 26 Wednesday, March 1 4 C December 24 December 25 Christmas doesn’t end when the presents are unwrapped. It’s a twelve-day celebration of God’s passionate love for us. This year, savour the season & keep the feast in all its richness; join us as we end the festival in style with a High Mass & potluck supper on the Feast of the Epiphany Twelve days & Seven Masses Christmas Eve High Mass, followed by a sherry-&-shortbread reception Christmas Day Sung Mass 10:30pm 10am December 26 St Stephen Low Mass (chapel) 10am December 29 Holy Innocents Low Mass (chapel) 7pm The Church Messenger Advent 2005 January 1 Naming of Jesus Sung Mass 10am January 5 Feria in Christmastide Low Mass (chapel) 7pm January 6 Epiphany High Mass, followed by potluck dinner 6pm 5 Concerning the Prayers of the People The Prayers of the People are an important part of our weekly worship. It is in the prayers that we share most closely in Christ’s ministry, by sharing in his high-priestly intercession for the church and the world. It is important that the prayers be conducted with dignity, but also that they not become a mere recitation of names with little real connection to the praying community. The prayers should be current and topical without being merely trendy, and there should be opportunity, through silence, for meaningful participation by all present. A recent meeting of the Worship Committee devoted a great deal of discussion to the way we do the Prayers here at St David’s. The main concerns expressed were that the Prayers should be concise, inclusive, and should involve the congregation in some way. As a first step to meeting these goals, the Worship Committee has proposed some changes to the use the sick list. With respect to the sick list, we are asking all parishioners to take responsibility for the Sunday prayer list. Those who wish to be prayed for at Sunday mass, or who wish prayers for someone else, will be asked to place those names on the sick list each week, either by phoning the office during the week or by placing the name(s) in a book at the back of the church on Sunday morning. Please note that if you are requesting prayers for someone else, it is good manners (and now a legal requirement) that you have that person’s consent. Names that are not renewed weekly will not be prayed for at Sunday mass. Prayers for the chronically ill will continue to be offered at the mid-week mass, and need not be renewed each week. These changes will be introduced on Sunday, January 1st 2006. The Worship Committee The Church Messenger Advent 2005 Parish Council Notes Parish Council met on November 15th. Here are the highlights. • Council asked the Property Management Committee to seek more quotes for the office construction project. One bid had been received from Aquataur Services Ltd., quoting $16, 918 plus GST for the work. • Council set Sunday, February 19th, 2006 as the date of the Annual Meeting of the Vestry. 8 C Call for submissions for the next Church Messenger: we are looking for personal short stories & reminiscences about St. David’s & your experiences here as parishioners. Digital & handwritten accounts of about three hundred words are desired. Tales of how our spiritual community have touched lives over the past hundred years can be given to Fr. Michael, the deadline being February 19th 2006. At last I am putting pen to paper to say how much I enjoyed my visit to your church on the 11th of September and was happy to be present for the blessing of the new playground. I’m sure it is being put to very good use! Please accept my sincere appreciation for the warm and generous hospitality shown to us visitors— many thanks to you and your parishioners. God bless, Barbara Tyler St Paul’s, Vancouver from the Rector’s mailbag & The Church Messenger Advent 2005 From the Property Management Committee • The committee has reviewed the zoning regulations for free-standing church signs. Design & approval will be a lengthy, & potentially costly, process. The Committee has decided to proceed with a concept design. Property Management Committee 9 All Saints Day 2005 Photo Album Centenary Celebration O The Church Messenger Advent 2005 On November 1, 1905, the church of All Saints was dedicated by Archdeacon Pentreath. The sermon (on Genesis 18.19) was preached by Father Clinton of St James, the mother parish of All Saints. Thanks to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the faithful witness and hard work of many, All Saints grew and flourished. The building was moved from its original location at Victoria and Pandora to its present lot at Kamloops and Franklin. Two daughter parishes were formed: St Nicolas’, Burnaby and St Saviour’s, Grandview. In time, and in response to demographic and social changes, All Saints’ & St Saviour’s were merged, renamed St David of Wales, and carried on worshiping in the old All Saints’ building On November 1, 2005, people of St David’s were joined by the choir, clergy, and people of St James’ and by Bishop Michael Ingham, to give thanks to God for one hundred years of witness and worship. This time, the sermon (reprinted in this issue of the Church Messenger) was preached by the Bishop himself, and his text was Matthew 5.3 and 6. It was a gathering of at least four parishes: St James’, All Saints’, St. Saviour’s, and St David’s, to celebrate not just a building, but a hundred years of ministry by those parishes to a constantly–changing community. It was a reminder of how flexible and responsive the church can be when it seeks to be faithful to God’s mission. And, as the accompanying photographs show, it was also a great party. 10 Dan Attridge & Robin Barrett led the procession, while Margaret Warner sang lustily and with good courage. Fr. Derby & Fr. Wright came from St James’. Peter Adutt & an augmented choir led our singing. The sacred ministers were drop-dead gorgeous in the latest line of High Mass vestments by Sanguinetti. The Church Messenger Advent 2005 Drew was our crucifer. Eiko’s keyboard stylings kept us humming all evening. Photos: Elaine Jan 11 Someone said, “Let’s skip the service and go straight to the food.” Kelly & Betty Mah found a moment to relax. The Church Messenger Advent 2005 Bill Page lit up the hall with his smile. 12 Photos: Design Guild Bettina Gruver took a break from the rigors of life at the Synod Office. Did someone say “martini”? Mother Em & Father M took off their bike helmets to ham it up. Gladys Jones & Florence Leonard shared memories of St Saviour’s and All Saints’, respectively. Fr. Wright was priest at St Saviour’s before moving to St James’. The Church Messenger Advent 2005 Fr. Neil Fernyhough worked the crowd in his usual affable style. The Bishop & Father Penrice found time to chat. 13 Whose party is it, anyhow? Jennifer Levy Christmas is almost over but the debit line still grows shopping like Santa’s zombies sent our budget down in flames but all our Christmas Spirit helped the giant retail chains. Anti-consumer Christmas Carol, Buy Nothing Christmas The Church Messenger Advent 2005 Our new columnist, Sub-Deacon, Jennifer Levy, is an uppity parishioner at St. James’ Anglican Church. Her columns regularly appear in Cornerstone. She leads an Incarnational Theology Discussion group in the St. James’ Vestry at 7pm, Thursday evenings (participants are encouraged to attend 6pm Mass). All are welcome. Come talk about what it means to be blessed in the flesh, in which God was pleased to dwell. Interested? Call Jennifer 604.780.1257. O ne dark November morning, I stood shoulder to shoulder with my fellow transit jockeys on the Skytrain. Somewhere in between stepping on some guy’s foot & getting poked in the rear end with a wet umbrella, I looked up to see the one we all (unless we are very young) dread. There he was, sitting in his infernal sleigh, merry as all get out, grinning at me from amidst the fluff of that infamous, snowy beard. “Hello, Santa…” I sneered inwardly. The Skytrain lurched as I reached for a copy of the Translink Buzzer, propelling my elbow into the innocent head of a woman sleeping in the seat in front of me. “Sorry”, I mumbled, clutching the pamphlet & wrinkling Santa’s grinning face. “Second Annual Santa Parade Features CarolThemed Floats”, read the headline. Already mildly irritated at confronting the tauntingly jovial image of this red velvet-clad menace, irritation morphed into outrage as I read further. “…Vancouver welcomes Santa back to downtown at 10:30 am, Sunday, November 20”. The Reign of Christ, no less, was to be the day this symbol of consumer glut would enjoy his triumphal procession into town. The Buzzer reports that: “…more than 300,000 people attended last year’s Santa parade”, as Christians went to church. I was glad to read that “4,000 kg of food & 1,200 toys were collected” & distributed to those in need. At least the glorified garden gnome was good for something. Still, it rankled. It seemed to me, as surely it must to most of us, that to stage such an event on Sunday morning, during Christian “prime time”, on a Feast Day that holds out the promise of the coming reign of justice, healing & true re-creation for all, was just downright provocative. Perverse, actually. This midwinter party 14 is about the coming into the world of hope, certainly not this fat, bearded gremlin of glut. It’s not about the hope of finding a Blackberry under the (pagan) tree, or that bottomhugging pair of designer jeans we’ve been lusting after; but that of reconciliation & a new world, governed by God’s love. Imagine, that as we celebrated that hope in the lifting up of the Christ as our Sovereign One, hundreds of thousands of Vancouverites lined downtown streets to welcome an obese garden gnome that supposedly brings them stuff they probably don’t need & may even return to the store for refund or exchange. O, perversity, gone too far! I guess some of you will be a little surprised to read that a post-modernist, hairy lefty like myself would find something as superficially innocuous as a Santa Claus parade offensive, but I do. It’s not just about the obvious idolatry. I’m not particularly offended by secularity, either. Without secularity, what would the Church be? Imperial, I guess, & I think we’ve just about done that one to death. No. This is about the metastasizing of one of the principal Feasts of the Christian calendar (whether it represents a truthful account of the date of Jesus’s birth, or not) into a celebration of all that Our Lord despised. Glut, greed, consumption & participation in an unjust order that oppresses the weakest among us are those ills Jesus stood in resolute opposition to. So, what is our answer? One answer is offered on the deeply “conservative” internet blog, Proud to be Canadian, operated by Joel Johannesen. Mr. Johannesen has created what is known as a “wiki” (a collaborative web forum, on which all that have access may post comments), in order to 15 © ; q l y e b crs ll were pushed into the margins & excluded because they did not share that Faith. In those ‘good, old days’, Mr. Johannesen appears to believe, ‘real’ Canadians celebrated the birth of Christ by erecting trees, covering them with twinkly lights & a variety of other adornments, hanging stockings on the mantle to be filled with mandarin oranges & trinkets by the Great Garden Gnome (who ostensibly brought all the stuff to go under the tree & in the stockings), & toys for the kiddies (young & old, in need of toys or not). These are the traditions he holds up as distinctively Canadian Christian. Ironically, nowhere does this rabid defender of ‘tradition’ mention Christ, Himself. Another, less fevered answer, comes from the people at Buy Nothing Christmas (http:// www.buynothingchristmas.org). Simply: buy nothing. Hard to imagine, buying nothing during the season of consumption, what with Santa leering out at you at every turn, rosy cheeks gleaming, whispering “Spend, spend!” Harder still to actually commit to the idea, especially if you have children in your life raised in the prevailing environment of consumerism & planned obsolescence. It is, however, an ethically & theologically consistent answer to the perversion of Advent/ Christmas into a season that celebrates mammon more than it does the Source of all that is & the abundant gift of that precious Infant. “ We wait for Him as we wait for the coming reign of justice & peace for all God’s creation, not sleepwalking through malls, wallets open & minds numbed, but awake & alert to the movement of God in history & the part we play in that movement. ” Douglas Todd writes that this “…mini-movement in North America urges spiritual people to return to their roots instead of celebrating commercialism”. Those roots have nothing whatsoever to do with twinkly lights, trees, stockings, or the Great Garden Gnome in red. Those roots are one root: that of Jesse & the only tree concerned is that of Life. The Word that was made flesh, the very Wisdom of God born of a woman into the darkness of a winter’s night, Our Brother, Jesus, is what we celebrate now. We wait for Him as we wait for the coming reign of justice & peace for all God’s creation, not sleepwalking through malls, wallets open & minds numbed, but awake & alert to the movement of God in history & the part we play in that movement. As “Mennonite on a mission” & Buy Nothing Christmas activist Aiden Enns says, Christmas marks “…the birth of a man who taught the wealthy to scale down their opulent lives”. If we are to bear witness to His birth in our lives as Christians, in a world of opulence, then our observance of Advent/Christmas must surely honour & model His teachings. Instead of that Blackberry, or those bottomhugging designer jeans, why not frame your wedding vows for your partner, or give away something you really value? Why not make something meaningful with your own hands, in lieu of throwing a bale of money at the bloated beast of consumerism? Buy Nothing Christmas has a slew of other suggestions, if you’re game. The Great Garden Gnome will not be humping about any gifts from me this year, as I won’t be haunting the malls, glassyeyed with panic as December 25th approaches. There may be gifts, but they’ll be simple things: a multifaith calendar, a secondhand book I know someone is dying to read, or maybe just a little extra time spent with someone I love, doing something I know they’d enjoy. That bearded scallywag, partnered as he is in the pursuit of capitalist profit-margin nirvana with the monstrosity of the mega-retailers, is getting knocked out of his smug little sleigh this year. Christmas is not his party. It belongs to a little baby with open hands. cumpane@yahoo.com The Church Messenger Advent 2005 The Blessing of the Animals Patti M Laughlin c The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi This year the regular Thursday evening service on October 6th marked a special event. Father Michael led participants in a celebration of the life of St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1227), and blessed the animals accompanying them to this service. In his sermon, Father Michael described St. Francis as one of Christianity’s pioneer environmentalists, who, in a pursuit of his ideal of the integrity of creation, came to see divinity in all creatures. And, as Christmas seemed to have been St. Francis’ favourite feast, he petitioned the emperor to make a law requiring all people to provide the poor, as well as for the birds and beasts – in order that all had occasion to celebrate Christ’s birth. The Church Messenger Advent 2005 17 The Church Messenger Advent 2005 photo illustration : Po ild 005 The Design Gu p Goes the Bishop ©2 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are those who hunger & thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied. Matthew 5.3, 6 he words from tonight’s gospel are the opening words of the famous Sermon on the Mount, that we find in chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew’s Gospel. These three chapters contain the core of Jesus’ teaching about morality. And they are the most radical, difficult & challenging of all the teachings of Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is about the reversal of human values; the overturning of social conventions. Notice that Jesus begins with economic values. Blessed are you who are poor in spirit (St Luke’s version of the sermon just says “blessed are you who are poor”); woe to you who are rich. Blessed are you who are hungry; woe to you who are full, for you will be made hungry. Blessed are you who weep now; woe to you who are laughing. What is Jesus saying here? Well, he is saying that in the coming reign of God the poor & the rich will change places. Those who have enjoyed the good life here will have a taste of what everyone else has had to put up with. Those who have suffered hardship & loss, persecution & suffering will know the consolation of God. So the sermon begins with a declaration of a new order that is coming with the reign of God. T Jesus then goes into social & personal relationships. Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, revile you, defame you: and woe to you when people speak well of you. There’s a deep challenge here. In-groups & powergroups take note. God intends to reverse the fortunes of the outcast & the respectable. The outcast & the respectable will find themselves in opposite places. Privilege has had its day. The marginalized of the earth will rejoice & leap for joy. You can just imagine it was at this point that people started slipping away from the sermon to have a word with the chief priests & the elders. But Jesus goes on. If you want to change, he says, here are some things you can do. Give to everyone who begs. Do to others as you would have them do to you (the so-called Golden Rule). Do not retaliate. Do not resort to violence. Lend your money & expect nothing in return. Be merciful. Do not be judgemental or critical of others. Forgive those who wrong you. And learn to give, to give more than you receive. Be generous in your thoughts, in your feelings & in your attitude to money. The teaching is simple & straightforward. There’s nothing ambiguous at all about it. And it is so very hard to do. So very hard to follow. Because there’s something in us that wants to be judgemental. There’s something in us that wants to be critical, unforgiving, & jealous, & greedy, something that makes us want to keep everything we’ve got. It’s called sin. And sin is so deeply embedded in us we would rather make sin the norm in our world than overturn it all & build the spiritual kingdom of God in our hearts, our lives, & our societies. This is why God has need of the Church. The purpose of the Church is to be a foretaste of the heavenly banquet that awaits us at the end of time. It is meant to be the community of God’s people on earth who live out in the world the values & norms of the world yet to come. It is to be an incarnation in history of the radical community of the elect, the redeemed, the anointed sons & daughters of the Lord who live by a different set of rules. The Church is not itself the kingdom of God—God knows, we’re all aware of that—but it is a sign of the kingdom, a whisper, a rumour, a thin veil through which from time to time we glimpse the creation afresh & receive the spiritual strength we need for our mundane daily lives. The church of St David, in its various incarnations, has been such a sign in this city for a hundred years. A hundred years is a long time to keep faith, to wait upon God, to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament & pray for the world’s transformation. But this is what you have done. Year after year, decade after decade, the prayers of the faithful have risen in this place as incense from the altar. continues on page 20 19 The Church Messenger Advent 2005 You have kept alive the vision of Jesus for a radically different social order. You have been a counter-cultural sign witnessing to a dimension of truth that is obscured by the narcissism & materialism of our day. Though you have often felt weak & vulnerable, often wondered what the future might hold for a small church in a great & changing city, you have been a powerful source of hope for generations of Christians. They have seen in you the beauty & transcendence of Almighty God. They have taken comfort from the dignity & depth of your worship. Here, in this sanctuary, nourished by Word & Sacrament, many lives have been strengthened, many hearts made new. St David’s stands in the anglocatholic tradition of our Church. I am one of those who believes the anglo-catholic tradition needs urgently to be restored & strengthened today. Not for the sake of mere tradition, but for the sake of the Church’s future. I am of the view that the current strains in the Anglican Communion can be traced, at least in part, to the decline of the anglo-catholic tradition over the last 50 years. If you think of Anglicanism as a ship of sorts, then it has been kept level in the stormy seas of the last several centuries by a careful interplay of three forces. One is the evangelical wing of the Church, with its emphasis on the Word of God & personal conversion. The other is the anglo-catholic wing, with its deep reverence for the sacraments & the life of prayer. And these two have been kept in a kind of equilibrium by the Broad Church centre, the middle-of-theroaders who bring together both Word & Sacrament to energize the mission of the Church in the world. “This is a tradition unparalleled in its power to attract and inspire. ” The Church Messenger Advent 2005 If you think of these three elements of Anglicanism as a kind of ballast in the hold of the ship, you can imagine what happens when the ballast slips, or when one part of it falls overboard. The ship lists. It can no longer sail a straight course. This might be a good image for the Anglican Communion at the moment, where we have seen the erosion of one third of our tradition in recent years & a corresponding struggle for power & control between the other two thirds. The current issues of controversy might perhaps be the occasion rather than the deeper cause of this imbalance. In my view, we could do with a revival of the third part of the Anglican trinity to get us back on an even keel. This tradition, at its best, has pointed people beyond this world to the magnificence of God’s beauty & love. It has lifted the spirits of the world-weary, the jaded & the spiritually lost & brought them nearer the transforming perfection of God’s grace. The anglo-catholic churches of our Communion have been the first to plunge into the trenches of human despair, to wade into the rivers of human misery, bringing comfort & life to those who have no hope left. In the great cities of the world, it has been the churches of this tradition that have brought together that powerful & compelling mix of evangelical preaching, sacramental devotion, & social justice for the poor. This is a tradition unparalleled in its power to attract & inspire. This is a tradition that has lived for a hundred years here. It has called people to a radical transformation of their lives & society, as the gospel for tonight so clearly demands. Today is All Saints’ Day. Saints are people who try to live by a different set of rules, a costly set of values, following the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ through his life & death to the glory of his resurrection. Tonight we celebrate the saints of St David’s Parish—past, present & to come. We thank Almighty God for those who have gone before us. We pray God’s grace & strength will renew this parish in its vision, restore this great tradition in our Communion, & bring in the kingdom of God for the sake of the whole world. Sermon preached by Bishop Michael Ingham at the High Mass in thanksgiving for the 100th Anniversary of the Dedication of All Saints’ Church, Vancouver (the present St David’s), on the Feast of All Saints, 2005. 20 Deacon’s Corner Reverend Gord Barrett H ere we are at the end of another year & looking forward to Christmas. This is a good time to reflect on all of the things that we have done over the past year & to plan ahead for next year. We have had quite an eventful year with Father Michael coming on board for St. David’s day & hitting the decks running. We’ve moved well into our centennial year & next year promises to be quite exciting. We are hoping to have our basics for babies programme again this year & will be putting together family Christmas hampers soon. Last year we were able to help four families celebrate Christmas & we hope to help more families this year. In my last Deacon’s Corner, I mentioned about an inter-faith programme that I would like to build for Lent in the new year. I have recently attended the Alkali Gurdhwara (Sikh Temple) that is located on Skeena Street near the First Avenue on-ramp to the Freeway in Vancouver. I have made a connection there & we are excited about the opportunity to share an understanding of our respective Faiths with our congregations. I am hoping to arrange for a session where a speaker will come to talk to us about Sikhism & for us to have the opportunity to attend an instructed Sikh service. In turn, we would do the same for members from their congregation. While we appear to be two very different religions, we actually share many of the same principles. By learning about another Faith we develop respect & understanding & opportunities will arise where we could share in a common ministry of serving the community to which we jointly belong. I will keep you posted! I wish everyone a most blessed Christmas, a safe holiday & a time of peace & relaxation. Pax, Deacon Gord † Gordon.Barrett@icbc.com The Church Messenger Advent 2005 www.dewisant.org Design Guild ©2005 evesd@eciad.ca St. David of Wales Anglican Church 2475 Franklin Street Vancouver, BC V5K 1X3 office 604.253.8524 fax 604.253.8520
