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| Photo by Kim Bodenhamer Smith |
Three Fridays ago, we – as a worshiping community –
celebrated All Saints' Day. I say
that we celebrated All Saints' Day that
Friday, November 1, but if you were with us, you probably didn’t notice much
that was different than any other Friday as Southside Abbey. We celebrated in the way we always celebrate – by gather in
fellowship and prayer around a meal of Thanksgiving, and with a reading and
discussion of scripture. But, then
again, perhaps you did notice a few of the little things that made that Friday
different from the ones that had come before.
On that Friday three weeks ago, we sang a new song as the
consecrated bread and (nonalcoholic)
wine were passed before and after the meal, respectively. We sang that old, gospel hymn, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” And
more than that, our liturgy was different. Now, liturgy is church-word that comes from the Greek
meaning “work of the people,” and it refers to that good work God has given us
to do – the praise and worship of Him, the celebration of the grace and
blessings he gives us through Jesus, and the prayers by which our restless desires
and common toils find rest in Him.
At Southside Abbey, we often have much of our liturgy scripted out, and
that script changed that All Saints' Day.
Our liturgy for the Lord’s Supper from that Friday on
through the following three Fridays, that is to today, has been based on a
combination of the two most ancient Eucharistic (“Thanksgiving”) prayers of the
Church. The most ancient form is
recounted by St Paul in a letter to the Church in Corinth (I Cor 11:23-25),
from which we get the Words of Institution. The rest of our prayer has come from combining the two
Eucharistic rites found in the Didache – a first or early, second century manual
of instruction for following Jesus and common prayer.
This Friday evening we’ll continue to use this liturgy as we
celebrate another important day in the Church’s liturgical calendar – the Feast of Christ the King. In
celebrating with the same song and liturgy from All Saints Day to the Feast of
Christ the King is our way of acknowledging that this period of time in the
Church’s calendar is of a piece.
We remember the saints – that cloud of witnesses who have come before us
and been raised to the resurrected life – because they pledged their ultimate
allegiance to Jesus Christ rather than to a nation or a flag or an ideology or
the pursuit of wealth, power, and fame.
