Archbishop Orombi of Uganda speaks very clearly about the theological basis of the Anglican Way of being a mere Christian.
What Is Anglicanism?
by Archbishop Henry Luke OrombiAugust/September 2007 -->
Copyright (c) 2007 First Things (August/September 2007).
Few would deny that the Anglican Communion is in crisis. The nature of that crisis, however, remains a question. Is it about sexuality? Is it a crisis of authority—who has it and who doesn’t? Have Anglicans lost their commitment to the via media, epitomized by the Elizabethan Settlement, which somehow declared a truce between Puritan and Catholic sentiments in the Church of England? Is it a crisis of globalization? A crisis of identity?
I have the privilege of serving as archbishop of the Church of Uganda, providing spiritual leadership and oversight to more than nine million Anglicans. Uganda is second only to Nigeria as the largest Anglican province in the world, and most of our members are fiercely loyal to their global communion. But however we come to understand the current crisis in Anglicanism, this much is apparent: The younger churches of Anglican Christianity will shape what it means to be Anglican. The long season of British hegemony is over.
The preface to the Book of Common Prayer states, “It is a most invaluable part of that blessed ‘liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,’ that in his worship different forms and usages may without offense be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline.”
And yet, despite this clear distinction, contemporary Anglicans are in danger of confusing doctrine and discipline. For four hundred years Anglicanism represented both the theological convictions of the English Reformation and the culture of the Christian Church in Britain. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglican divines gave voice to both: English Reformation theology (doctrine) and British culture (discipline). The Anglican churches around the world, however, have ended the assumption that Anglican belief and practice must be clothed in historic British culture.
Take, for instance, the traditional Anglican characteristics of restraint and moderation. Are they part of doctrine, as Anglican theology, or discipline, as British culture? At the recent consecration of the fourth bishop of the Karamoja diocese, the preacher was the bishop of a neighboring diocese whose people have historically been at odds with the Karimajong (principally because of cattle rustling). At the end of his sermon, the preacher appealed for peace between the two tribes and began singing a song of peace. One by one, members of the congregation began singing. By the end of the song, the attending bishops, members of Parliament, and Karimajong warriors were all in the aisles dancing.
The vision of Christ breaking down the dividing walls of hostility between these historic rivals was so compelling that joy literally broke out in our midst. At that point in the service, I dare say, we were hardly restrained or moderate in our enthusiasm for the hope of peace given to us in Jesus Christ. Did we fail, then, in being Anglican in that moment? Was the spontaneity that overcame us a part of doctrine or of discipline? Surely, African joy in song and dance is an expression of discipline. Yet our confidence that the Word of God remains true, and our confidence that it transforms individuals and communities—all this is part of doctrine: the substance of the Faith that shall not change but shall be “kept entire.”
In the Church of Uganda, Anglicanism has been built on three pillars: martyrs, revival, and the historic episcopate. Yet each of these refers back to the Word of God, the ground on which all is built: The faith of the martyrs was maintained by the Word of God, the East African revival brought to the people the Word of God, and the historic ordering of ministry was designed to advance the Word of God.
So let us think about how the Word of God works in the worldwide Anglican Communion. We in the Church of Uganda are convinced that Scripture must be reasserted as the central authority in our communion. The basis of our commitment to Anglicanism is that it provides a wider forum for holding each other accountable to Scripture, which is the seed of faith and the foundation of the Church in Uganda.
The Bible cannot appear to us a cadaver, merely to be dissected, analyzed, and critiqued, as has been the practice of much modern higher biblical criticism. Certainly we engage in biblical scholarship and criticism, but what is important to us is the power of the Word of God precisely as the Word of God—written to bring transformation in our lives, our families, our communities, and our culture. For us, the Bible is “living and active, sharper than a double-edged sword, it penetrates to dividing soul and spirits, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). The transforming effect of the Bible on Ugandans has generated so much conviction and confidence that believers were martyred in the defense of the message of salvation through Jesus Christ that it brought.
For the Ugandan church to compromise God’s call of obedience to the Scriptures would be the undoing of more than 125 years of Christianity through which African life and society have been transformed. Traditional African society was solely an oral culture, which limited its ability to share ideas beyond the family level. We couldn’t write our language, and there was nothing to read in our language. The first converts in Uganda were called “readers” because they could read the Bible, the first book available in our own languages. Because of the Bible, our languages have been enriched and recorded. For the first time, we heard God in our own languages. To this day, our people bring their Bibles to church and follow along with the readings.
In some traditional African societies, women were denied benefits because of various superstitions. For example, some societies believed that if women ate chicken they would grow beards. In that culture, women, then, never ate chicken. When the Bible came alive during the East African Revival of the 1930s, the Holy Spirit convicted men of such sins of oppression and began the progressive empowerment of women that is continuing today. So, for another example, the African tradition of polygamy and divorce at will left many women neglected and often destitute. The biblical teaching of marriage between one man and one woman in a loving, lifelong relationship liberated not only women but also the institution of marriage and family.
For many of our tribes, revenge was esteemed as a virtue. If a family had been violated, the first instinct was to gather the clan, arm them, and seek revenge on the family and clan of the offender. In such realms, the Bible has had a profoundly transforming effect, given the teaching of Jesus on forgiveness. Traditional Ugandan society was driven by family loyalties, with little basis for loving those beyond your blood ties. The Bible brought the teaching of Jesus to love our neighbors and even our enemies. And, while there remain remnants of the old culture, the Bible has given us a moral and spiritual basis for transforming culture.
Traditional African objects of worship were limited to families and clans. This created a context in which no central beliefs could be held or shared beyond the ethnic setting. Yet ancestral spirits and such natural phenomena as earthquakes, lakes, and mountains could not satisfy the Africans’ quest for the living God. The Bible’s revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit brought hope for deliverance from the fatalism that resulted from worshiping created things rather than the Creator and Redeemer.
The gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed to us through the Word of God enables warring tribes to begin to coexist and to embrace neighborliness. Indeed, the Word of God opened the way for the nation of Uganda to be forged. When evangelists from Buganda (in central Uganda) traveled to tribes in the east, west, and north, a new day dawned in our country. Instead of being armed with spears, they came armed only with the Word of God. Instead of a message of war and destruction, they delivered a message of Good News from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As the Bible came with the authority of Christ, it revealed a God that is greater than the evil spirits and the kingdom of darkness that controlled so many people’s lives. In Uganda, the Bible has grown into a cherished source of authority that is central to Christian faith, practice, and mission. For all God’s people, obedience to this Bible is the source of confidence, abundant life, and joy. It is an absolute treasure that no one can take away. Isaiah, later quoted by Peter, wrote, “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:8; 1 Pet. 1:24-25). The grass on which our cattle feed, the grass from which our roofs are thatched—all this withers. But the Word of God has withstood the test of time. The Bible is at the heart of our Anglican identity, and we Ugandan Anglicans joyfully submit to its life-giving and transforming authority.
With this knowledge of the centrality of the authority of Scripture in Anglicanism, therefore, we understand ourselves to be in the mainstream of Anglicanism—from Thomas Cranmer to John Stott. The evangelical tradition in the Church of England produced William Wilberforce, whose lifelong mission to eradicate slavery and the slave trade liberated our people. It produced Charles Simeon, who inspired the beginning of mission societies that shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with us and many others. It produced Bishop Tucker and other missionaries, who risked their lives to come to Uganda. These and many more Anglican evangelicals brought us the legacy of the Protestant Reformation in England. Their commitment to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture has continued among us to this day.
Such a commitment—to the authority of Scripture as a defining mark of Anglican identity—was why the vast majority of bishops from the Global South and I insisted that Lambeth Resolution 1.10, the 1998 decision on human sexuality, include the words “incompatible with Holy Scripture” when describing homosexual practice. This standard of Holy Scripture is why we continue to uphold Lambeth 1.10 each time we meet.
In the current Anglican crisis, we are at risk of losing our biblical foundation. As bishops, we are constrained, in the words of the 1662 Ordinal, “to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word,” and we are determined “out of the same Holy Scriptures to instruct the people committed to [our] charge and to teach or maintain nothing, as necessary to eternal salvation, but that which [we] shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the same.”
From Thomas Cranmer to Richard Hooker, from the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Ordinal to the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the authority of Holy Scripture has always held a central and foundational role in Anglican identity. This is true for the Anglican church in Uganda; and, if it is not true for the entire Anglican Communion, then that communion will cease to be an authentic expression of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Tertullian’s oft-quoted statement “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” is the story of the faith in Uganda. On his first visit to Uganda in 1885, the Englishman and missionary bishop James Hannington was martyred as he tried to cross the river Nile into central Uganda. Bishop Hannington was coming to Uganda from Kenya and decided to approach the Buganda kingdom from the east. Unfortunately, unknown to him, there was a Baganda belief that its enemies would approach the kingdom from the eastern route. So the king, the Kabaka, sent warriors to meet this encroaching enemy. Before they killed Hannington, on October 29, 1885, he is reported to have said, “Tell the Kabaka that I die for Uganda.”
Less than a year later, on June 3, 1886, the king of Buganda ordered the killing of twenty-six of his court pages because they refused his homosexual advances and would not recant their belief in King Jesus. They cut and carried the reeds that were then wrapped around them and set on fire in an execution pit. As the flames engulfed them, these young martyrs sang songs of praise. Far from eliminating Christianity, the martyrdoms had the opposite effect: If the faith of these martyrs was worth dying for, then it must also be something worth living for. Christianity began to spread like wildfire.
Martyrdom, however, is not a thing of the past. As recently as 1977, the archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Janani Luwum, was martyred at the hands of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Archbishop Luwum spoke out boldly against the injustices and atrocities of Amin. This, however, ushered in a swift and merciless reaction from Amin. The archbishop’s home was plundered during a 1:30 a.m. raid on February 5, 1977. This brought a piercing censure of Amin from the Ugandan House of Bishops. Church leaders were summoned to Kampala and then ordered to leave, one by one. Luwum turned to Bishop Festo Kivengere and said: “They are going to kill me. I am not afraid.”
On February 16, 1977, Amin had Archbishop Luwum arrested on trumped-up charges of treason. Thrown into a cell with several other political prisoners, the archbishop said, “Let us pray.” Then they were taken to Amin himself, brutally beaten, and shot to death. “While the opportunity is there, I preach the Gospel with all my might, and my conscience is clear before God that I have not sided with the present government which is utterly self-seeking,” Janani Luwum wrote. “I have been threatened many times. Whenever I have the opportunity I have told the president the things the churches disapprove of. God is my witness.”
The influence of these martyrs on the faith of Anglican Christians in Uganda cannot be underestimated. The Church of Uganda has been built not only on the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone, but also on its martyrs. The faith and moral vision for which our martyrs died can never be denied by the Church of Uganda. Their courage and complete confidence in the God of the Bible and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has left an indelible mark on Christianity in Uganda.
The experience of martyrdom is not, however, unique to Uganda. The faith of the Ugandan martyrs is the same faith that took Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley to the stake. Latimer’s dying words to Ridley were, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” Yet, as the light of the gospel continues to dim in the Western world, are we not betraying our founding fathers and the Reformation Faith for which they died?
Do we not need a revival of the martyrs’ confidence in the Word of God? A revival in the conviction that this Faith that was worth dying for is the same Faith worth living for today? The heroes of Anglicanism throughout the world are our martyrs.
In 1935, fifty-eight years after the first missionaries arrived in Uganda, a revival broke out in northeastern Rwanda and rapidly spread throughout Uganda, beginning in the western part of the country. At that time, much of Anglicanism in Uganda was nominal. The missionaries had emphasized liturgical and formal expressions of faith, grounded in the catechism. When the East African Revival broke out, the nominal African Christians realized that what they had learned from the missionaries through the catechism and liturgy actually made a difference in their lives.
The influence of the revival cannot be overemphasized. The Ugandan Anglican identity was forged through God’s gift to us of the East African Revival. Genuine repentance, for instance—in which people turned from their old ways of believing and behaving and turned to embrace the God of the Bible and his moral vision—was a fruit of the revival in people’s lives. The missionaries had challenged us to dispense with the fatalism of our traditional African religions. The result, though, was eliminating only the outward and superficial symbols, without touching the roots of those deep beliefs. Gone from our worship were our traditional drums, yet in our hearts people still invoked our ancestors and other spirits. When the East African Revival swept through our villages, it swept away the old roots; our people turned from its lies and replaced them with the truth of Jesus Christ in the gospel. There was true repentance and conversion, and the fruit of repentance was evident in people’s lives. The revival established a new zeal for enthusiastic holiness in African Christianity.
In Uganda, a Christian is one who has a testimony—a story of what their life was like before a living relationship with Jesus Christ; how they heard the message of Jesus Christ and how their life has changed since surrendering their lives to him. The First Letter of John states: “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:5-9).
The East African Revival taught us about living transparently with one another and before God about our sin. To “walk in the light” is to be eager to confess our sin publicly, to receive forgiveness, and to be restored into the fellowship of the community. The revival spawned thousands of local lay-led fellowships in which Christians gathered weekly to pray and praise, to share testimonies, and to walk in the light with one another.
Initially, the revival was met by resistance from the missionaries and other church leaders because it challenged the status quo of nominal Anglicanism. Over time, however, the revival became part of mainstream Anglicanism in Uganda; today most of our bishops and other church leaders are products of the East African Revival.
Another notable effect of the East African Revival on Anglican identity in Uganda is a renewed passion for mission and evangelism. The goodness of the gospel cannot be hid under a bushel; it cannot be whispered but must be shouted from the rooftops. Even as archbishop, when I make a pastoral visit to a diocese, I go as an evangelist. When I am invited to speak, I preach the gospel and invite people to come forward and give their lives to Christ. Every diocese in our church organizes regular evangelistic outreaches within the villages and markets in their communities. Ugandan Anglicans are not ashamed of the gospel, “because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16).
Ugandan Anglicans are not unique in their experience of revival. The Great Awakenings in America, the revivals catalyzed by John Wesley in England, the Welsh revival, and countless others around the world have been a part of Anglican experience. Even the charismatic renewals in the late twentieth century are part of this revival stream within Anglicanism.
Theologically, Ugandan Anglicans share much in common with our evangelical brothers and sisters, yet we have retained the historic threefold order of ministry: bishops, priests, and deacons. This, of course, is reminiscent of the English Reformation, which theologically had much in common with the continental Reformers while retaining the historic episcopate.
And yet our commitment to the episcopate is not just about the good order of the Church. As bishops are successors to the apostles, so our focus through the historic episcopate is on apostolic faith and ministry. A bishop is ordained in apostolic succession to be the apostolic presence in the community. A bishop, therefore, is the ongoing presence and voice of the apostles. He is our link to the early Church, and this link between bishop and apostolicity gives Anglicans our transcultural identity. The implication, therefore, is that the essence of Anglican identity is to be apostolic. More than a simple unbroken line of consecrations, we are to be apostolic in nature: faithful to the apostolic message, submitted to apostolic authority in Scripture, committed to apostolic mission and ministry, and devoted to apostolic worship.
In short, an apostolic church is a missionary church. A bishop is the focus for the mission of the Church, following in the footsteps of Jesus, who commissioned his apostles to preach, to teach, and to heal. The bishop’s apostolic ministry starts with evangelism, because transformation begins with the individual. The bishop himself must have a testimony and set a direction in his diocese for evangelism and church planting. When the early missionaries came in the late 1800s, their understanding of mission was not only preaching but also education and health ministry. So, combined with our churches, there are schools and health clinics, all under the apostolic oversight of the bishop, whose charge is to preach (evangelism), to teach (schools), and to heal (health clinics).
The incarnation of Jesus Christ has been described as the “scandal of particularity.” The One who came, as Savior of all, was born as a particular man—Jesus of Nazareth—at a particular place, with a particular ethnicity, and at a particular time. Our particular experience of Anglicanism in Uganda, too, has some universal applicability. The pillars of Anglican identity in Uganda—the martyrs, revival, and the historic episcopate, all resting on the Word of God—suggest themes with historic precedent from the formative years of Anglicanism in Britain.
Consider, first, the centrality of the Word of God in faith and life. No honest reading of historic Anglican formularies and the English Reformers can deny the central place of Scripture in Anglicanism. Our worldwide communion is in danger today of confusing doctrine and discipline. The various disciplines of the autonomous provincial churches can be contextualized, but doctrine, based on Scripture, transcends all such cultural distinctions.
We would not be facing the crisis in the Anglican Communion if we had upheld the basic Reformation convictions about Holy Scripture: its primacy, clarity, sufficiency, and unity. Part of the genius of the Reformation was its insistence that the Word of God and the liturgy be in the language of the people—that the Bible could be read and understood by the simplest plowboy. The insistence from some Anglican circles (mostly in the Western world) on esoteric interpretations of Scripture borders on incipient Gnosticism that has no place in historic or global Anglicanism.
At the Anglican Communion’s Global Conference on Dynamic Evangelism in Kanuga in 1995, delegates from most of the communion’s provinces gathered to evaluate the “Decade of Evangelism” at its halfway point. The pattern that emerged from reports was that the growing churches, mostly in the Global South, possessed a confidence in God’s presence and his ability to act and intervene in human affairs; the declining churches seemed to lack such confidence.
But the lesson of the martyrs is exactly this—that we must have confidence in God—and their universal appeal derives from their heroic example. The gospel exists to challenge the worldview of all—even Anglicans—who do not see the joy and beauty of a life lived with confidence in a great and dynamic God who can and does intervene in the affairs of human beings.
The legacy of the East African Revival is its strong emphasis on the need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This emphasis is not unique to Uganda; it is a part of historic Anglicanism, especially in its Reformation heritage and the evangelical tradition. I long for the day when the global reputation of Anglicans is our insistence on a relationship with Jesus Christ that is characterized by personal experience and repentance, and shared through testimonies. “Oh, those Anglicans! How they always talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ!”
Finally, a passion for evangelism and mission is at the heart of an apostolic and missionary church. The reason there is a global Anglicanism today is that Anglicans were compelled by the Word of God to share the gospel throughout the expanding British Empire and beyond. In the absence today of such a convenient infrastructure, the future of the Anglican Communion is found in embracing the key Reformation and evangelical principles that have had such an impact in Uganda.
Without a commitment to the authority of the Word of God, a confidence in a God who acts in the world, and a conviction of the necessity of repentance and of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we will be hard-pressed as a communion to revive and advance our apostolic and missionary calling as a church.
If, as I have suggested, the future of Anglicanism lies in a revival of the key Reformation and evangelical principles that shaped the Church of Uganda and our mother Church of England, then our instruments of communion need to find a way to serve that vision. I fear, however, that our conciliar instruments are in danger of losing their credibility and being rendered irrelevant. The resolutions of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops have always had a moral authority among the communion’s autonomous but interdependent provinces, yet some of those resolutions are now flagrantly defied and even mocked.
We primates have worked hard in recent years to find consensus even in our present situation of broken or impaired communion. Through the grace of God, our communiqués have been consensus statements, unanimously agreed upon, and they are evidence of our commitment as primates to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Yet some provinces have not taken our communiqués seriously, and the primates, as an instrument of communion, have been scorned.
The current crisis presents us with an opportunity to mature into a global communion that represents not just historic bonds of affection but also an advancing mission force for the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated. For this to happen, our instruments of communion may also have to become instruments of discipline. As a member of the primates’ standing committee, I was invited to come to the United States in September 2007 to attend the meeting of the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. But I recently wrote the archbishop of Canterbury and informed him that I could not participate.
Among my reasons is this: In February 2007, the primates of the Anglican Communion met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and made certain requests of the Episcopal church. It is my conviction that our Dar es Salaam communiqué did not envision interference in the American House of Bishops while they are considering our requests. For me to violate our hard-won agreement in Dar es Salaam would be another case of undermining our instruments of communion. My decision to uphold our Dar es Salaam communiqué is intended to strengthen our instruments of communion so we will be able to mature into an even more effective global communion of the Church of Jesus Christ than in the past.
In December 2006, the House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda unanimously adopted “The Road to Lambeth,” a statement drafted for a council of African provinces. Among other things, it stated, “We will definitely not attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators of the Lambeth Resolution [1.10] are also invited as participants or observers.” Accordingly, if the present invitations to the Lambeth Conference stand, I do not expect the Ugandan bishops to attend.
It is important that this decision not be misunderstood as withdrawing from the instruments of communion. On the contrary, our decision reflects the critical importance of the Lambeth Conference: Its value as an instrument of communion is greatly diminished when the persistent violators of its resolutions are invited. If our resolutions as a council of bishops do not have moral authority among ourselves, how can we expect our statements on world affairs to carry weight in the world’s forums? An instrument of communion must also be an instrument of discipline in order to effectively facilitate meaningful communion among its autonomous provinces.
The Church of Uganda takes its Anglican identity and the future prospects of the global Anglican Communion very seriously. Our thoughtfulness in how we participate in the instruments of communion reflects our fundamental loyalty to our Anglican heritage. Likewise, our devotion to the Word of God—expressed through our martyrs, revival, and the historic episcopate—reflects our commitment to the ongoing place of the Church of Uganda as a province of the Anglican Communion.
Henry Luke Orombi is the Anglican archbishop of Uganda.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
July Services
We continue to worship at Berwick Comox Valley, 1700 Comox Ave, Comox at 9:30 a.m. alternate Sundays
July 1st, July 15th, July 29th, 2007.
July 1st, July 15th, July 29th, 2007.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Easter Season Services
Thanks to everyone who participated in our Good Friday ecumenical service. There were about 1200 people there from across the valley with participation from multiple churches. We also had a wonderful service on Easter Sunday morning at Berwick.
The 9:30 a.m. Berwick Sunday Schedule for the Easter Season is:
April 22nd, 2007
May 6th, 2007
May 20th, 2007
Plan on every second week thereafter until further notice.
The 9:30 a.m. Berwick Sunday Schedule for the Easter Season is:
April 22nd, 2007
May 6th, 2007
May 20th, 2007
Plan on every second week thereafter until further notice.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Easter Weekend
Good Friday: We shall be participating in the Valle-wide ecumenical Good Friday Service at Mark Isfeld High School on Lerwick Rd in East Courtenay. 10:30 a.m. Friday April 6th. Please arrive early.
Easter Sunday Morning: 9:30 a.m. Communion Service at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave, Comox, BC.
Easter Sunday Evening: Pot-luck supper followed by prayer and praise plus youth cell group at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox, BC. Everyone is welcome.
Readings for Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary:
First Reading Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24,
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Gospel John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday Morning: 9:30 a.m. Communion Service at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave, Comox, BC.
Easter Sunday Evening: Pot-luck supper followed by prayer and praise plus youth cell group at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox, BC. Everyone is welcome.
Readings for Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary:
First Reading Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24,
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Gospel John 20:1-18
Monday, March 26, 2007
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Friday, March 16, 2007
Confirmation Service
The Rt Rev T. Johnston, Missionary Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda, will be presiding over a confirmation service for Anglican Mission (ACiC) churches at Richmond Emanuel Church , Elmbridge Way, Richmond, BC, 7 pm Sunday 18th March 2007. All welcome.
There will be no COOL Comox service or pot-luck that day.
There will be no COOL Comox service or pot-luck that day.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
COOL Schedule for February 2007
February's schedule is as follows:
COOL Comox at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox: 6pm Sundays each week. Potluck supper followed by prayer, praise and adult and youth cell groups.
COOL Berwick at 1700 Comox Ave, Comox: Holy Communion 9:30 am Sundays. Usually fortnightly but we are shifting the phase by having two services in a row:
Feb 4th as planned
Feb 11th (i.e. two weeks in a row)
Feb 25th
March 11th
March 25th
April 8th (EASTER)
April 22nd
Youth Unlimited and Adult Bible Study
Comox Valley Youth For Christ/Youth Unlimited Discipleship Team meet at 1523 Eton Rd on Tuesdays 3:30-5pm. YU meets at St George's United Church on Fitzgerald in Courtenay Wednesdays at 7pm. Bible Study for parents and volunteers follows during small groups at around 8pm.
Marriage Preparation using the Alpha Marriage Prep Course 7pm Tuesdays at Eton Road.
COOL Comox at 1523 Eton Rd, Comox: 6pm Sundays each week. Potluck supper followed by prayer, praise and adult and youth cell groups.
COOL Berwick at 1700 Comox Ave, Comox: Holy Communion 9:30 am Sundays. Usually fortnightly but we are shifting the phase by having two services in a row:
Feb 4th as planned
Feb 11th (i.e. two weeks in a row)
Feb 25th
March 11th
March 25th
April 8th (EASTER)
April 22nd
Youth Unlimited and Adult Bible Study
Comox Valley Youth For Christ/Youth Unlimited Discipleship Team meet at 1523 Eton Rd on Tuesdays 3:30-5pm. YU meets at St George's United Church on Fitzgerald in Courtenay Wednesdays at 7pm. Bible Study for parents and volunteers follows during small groups at around 8pm.
Marriage Preparation using the Alpha Marriage Prep Course 7pm Tuesdays at Eton Road.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Anglican Mission Chairman, Chuck Murphy, describes church planting.
The ACiC is the Canadian network of the Anglican Mission in the Americas. Bishop Murphy chairs the mission on behalf of the Archbishop of Rwanda.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Calculating Christmas
For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, here is an article tracing the origins of the date of Christmas. We do not know when Jesus was actually born; what matters is that in Jesus Christ the Word of God became human. Some scholars think that Jesus was probably born at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles , which is usually in September. This article explains why December 25th was chosen.
Calculating Christmas
William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25
Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.
Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.
A Mistake
The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.
In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.
There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.
As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Pers ian Empire to the east.
In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.
A By-Product
It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.
How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.
Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)
However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.
Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)
These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.
In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)
Integral Age
So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.
This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.
It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.
Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.
Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).
In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.
A Christian Feast
Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.
And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”
The author refers interested readers to Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year (The Liturgical Press). A draft of this article appeared on the listserve Virtuosity.
William J. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
Calculating Christmas
William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25
Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.
Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.
A Mistake
The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.
In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.
There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.
As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Pers ian Empire to the east.
In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.
A By-Product
It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.
How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.
Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)
However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.
Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)
These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.
In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)
Integral Age
So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.
This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.
It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.
Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.
Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).
In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.
A Christian Feast
Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.
And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”
The author refers interested readers to Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year (The Liturgical Press). A draft of this article appeared on the listserve Virtuosity.
William J. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Christmas Message from one of our Archbishops (en francais)
Joyeux Noel from Archbishop Diropka of the Congo
Sunday December 24th 2006, 10:09 am Filed under: Uncategorized Link to: this post
Chers collègues Eveques, Partenaires et amis,
Fraternelles salutations dans le Précieux nom de Notre Seigneur et Sauveur Jésus Christ dont nous célébrons bientôt la nativité.
A cette occasion, nous présentons nos sincères vœux de Joyeux Noël et de Bonne Année 2007 à vous, votre famille, vos collaborateurs et a tous ceux qui vous sont cher.
Que la fête de la Nativité nous rappelle toujours ce grand amour de Dieu envers nous « Car la grâce de Dieu, source de salut pour tous les hommes, a été manifestée… Notre Sauveur Jésus christ qui s’est donne lui-même pour nous, afin de nous racheter de toute iniquité, et de se faire un peuple qui lui appartienne, purifié par lui et zélé pour les bonnes œuvres » (Tite 2 :11,14).
Ces fêtes de fin d’année doivent être pour nous, le moment de bilan de notre cheminement avec Jésus et de prendre de nouvel élan sous la conduite du Saint Esprit, pour un engagement encore plus sérieux de Le servir en servant les autres.
Que ce Roi d’Amour et de Paix naisse dans le cœur de chacun de nous, dans nos foyers, dans nos Pays respectifs et dans les lieux de nos travaux pour la plus grande gloire de Dieu. Alléluia !
The Most Revd Dr DIROKPA BALUFUGA FidèleArchbishop of Congo and Bishop of Kinshasa
Sunday December 24th 2006, 10:09 am Filed under: Uncategorized Link to: this post
Chers collègues Eveques, Partenaires et amis,
Fraternelles salutations dans le Précieux nom de Notre Seigneur et Sauveur Jésus Christ dont nous célébrons bientôt la nativité.
A cette occasion, nous présentons nos sincères vœux de Joyeux Noël et de Bonne Année 2007 à vous, votre famille, vos collaborateurs et a tous ceux qui vous sont cher.
Que la fête de la Nativité nous rappelle toujours ce grand amour de Dieu envers nous « Car la grâce de Dieu, source de salut pour tous les hommes, a été manifestée… Notre Sauveur Jésus christ qui s’est donne lui-même pour nous, afin de nous racheter de toute iniquité, et de se faire un peuple qui lui appartienne, purifié par lui et zélé pour les bonnes œuvres » (Tite 2 :11,14).
Ces fêtes de fin d’année doivent être pour nous, le moment de bilan de notre cheminement avec Jésus et de prendre de nouvel élan sous la conduite du Saint Esprit, pour un engagement encore plus sérieux de Le servir en servant les autres.
Que ce Roi d’Amour et de Paix naisse dans le cœur de chacun de nous, dans nos foyers, dans nos Pays respectifs et dans les lieux de nos travaux pour la plus grande gloire de Dieu. Alléluia !
The Most Revd Dr DIROKPA BALUFUGA FidèleArchbishop of Congo and Bishop of Kinshasa
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Christmas Season.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
Many thanks to all the many folks who attended our Carol Evening on the 15th and our Nine Lessons and Carols on the 17th.
Our Christmas Eve Service will be shared with our friends at Living Word Episcopal Church meeting at St Andrew's Pioneer Church building, Mission Hill, Courtenay at 11pm Sunday 24th December 2006.
As many folks are away for the holidays we shall cancel our 31st December service and meet again January 7th at 9:30 am at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave.
Many thanks to all the many folks who attended our Carol Evening on the 15th and our Nine Lessons and Carols on the 17th.
Our Christmas Eve Service will be shared with our friends at Living Word Episcopal Church meeting at St Andrew's Pioneer Church building, Mission Hill, Courtenay at 11pm Sunday 24th December 2006.
As many folks are away for the holidays we shall cancel our 31st December service and meet again January 7th at 9:30 am at Berwick, 1700 Comox Ave.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Advent 2006
Hello all. So much for global warming. This balmy Pacific Island (Vancouver Island) is blanketed in snow and ice.
Advent begins this coming Sunday Dec 3rd.
COOL Berwick:
Advent begins this coming Sunday Dec 3rd.
COOL Berwick:
- Dec 3rd. We meet at Berwick at 9:30 for the Eucharist.
- Friday 15th we shall be holding a carol sing at 7pm in the Berwick foyer for the residents there.
- Sunday Dec 17th Service of 9 lessons and carols at 9:30 a.m
COOL Comox:
- Sunday evenings each week for potluck supper at 6pm at 1523 Eton Rd followed by Prayer and Praise plus Youth Quest series.
COOL Christmas:
- We join our Common Cause partners at Living Word Episcopal Church on Mission Hill in Courtenay for Christmas Eve.
- Their services that Sunday are 10 a.m. & 6p.m. and we shall join them for the 11pm "midnight mass" service with David celebrating.
Unpacking our Mission Statement - Fifth Instalment - Worship
Mission: To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.
So far we have discussed how Jesus’ teaching can be summarized by two statements: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, which give us the five purposes in our mission statement.
Great Commandment:
Mark 12:29-32 (New International Version)
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these."
Great Commission:
Matthew 28:19-20 (New International Version)
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Today we look at the final part of our mission statement: loving God with all that we are. This is what worship, in its most comprehensive sense, means. Worship is at the heart of all that we do, as the most important of these purposes.
What is worship?
To worship something or someone is value them above everything else. It is to ascribe worth to them. We uses the concept in a non-religious sense when we ask what something is worth, or when we refer to the mayor as “his Worship” or we read about some “worthy fellow” in a story about merry England. Or when we say a soldier is worth his salt.
Reverence, awe, fear, wonder, and amazement are some of the feelings we may have when we participate in worship. Words we use to describe what we are doing include: exalt, glorify, magnify, praise, venerate, or revere. The highest of all of these terms is the worship which belongs to God alone. We may respect or revere humans we hold in high esteem but Christian worship is reserved for God.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Our worship should reflect the fact that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. What our preferred way is to worship God has a lot more to do with our personalities than with what is necessarily the right way to worship. Different denominations and traditions tend to emphasize or specialize in these different elements of worship. Some emphasize the mind, others the spirit. Heart speaks of emotion and enthusiasm. Soul refers to the core of our mortal beings. Mind speaks of the intellect and will. Strength reflects the physical part of us. Unlike some other religions and philosophies, Christians and Hebrew believers in God reject any dichotomy between the spiritual and material. God is Lord of both. In our Gospel passage today Jesus said God seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Truth is something we grasp with our minds as God illuminates our thinking. It also affects our emotions as we respond to it's truth, and it helps bring our spirits to life as his Spirit touches ours with the truth of his word.
At Church of Our Lord we try to bring a balance of these different aspects to our worship. We honour God’s Word, the Bible as we try to understand it with our minds and obey it with our strength. We are open to God’s Holy Spirit so that we can worship with our spirits or souls. We use our bodies to worship him as we sing, stand, sit or kneel, raise our hands or clap. We receive him spiritually by the physical act of eating bread and wine, when accompanied by faith.
What it is not:
Worship is not for our selves. It’s for our Saviour.
The Puritan Shorter Westminster Confession describes the purpose for which we are created as this: “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” St Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” We are wired for worship. Worship of some sort of deity or some sort of spirituality is common to all cultures even though some have tried to stamp it out and it is no longer fashionable in Western Society to believe in God. Human beings are incorrigibly religious. We are made that way because God made us for himself. Worship does bring us benefits, but that is no why we do it.
Unlike some other spiritualities, we do not worship in order to appease him, or earn something, or to manipulate him through magic. We worship because he is worthy of it. We worship him because of who he is. We worship in response to what he has already done.
Worship is not for sissies. It’s a sacrifice.
Salvation is free. Christ has made the sacrifice on our behalf. There is no sacrifice we can make to earn our salvation. But that does not mean the Christian life will always be easy or that there is no cost to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. We love him because he first loved us. He calls us to love the same way, to follow in his steps.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote from the Nazi prison: “when God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For many Christians around the world, admitting one’s allegiance to Christ or worshiping him openly or meeting with other believers is a life-risking affair. Whether or not we shall ever be called to pay that price is something we don’t know. We do know however, that we are called to present ourselves, our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Not just our words, or our time, talents and treasure but also ourselves – all of us.
The psalmist tells us to give God a sacrifice of thanks and praise. There are times when worship comes effortlessly, when we are lost in wonder, love and praise. There are other times when we do not feel like worshiping. It is not hypocritical to do s at those times. It is in fact a sacrifice: it takes effort to worship when we are tired or cranky or feeling off-sorts. When we honour God on such occasions by approaching him anyway, we are often surprised by how our feelings follow along afterwards. At other times, God tests us through what St John of the Cross called “a dark night of the soul”, when God seems distant and we wonder why we bother. He wants us to trust him even when we don’t have the feelings. He is trust-worthy and worthy of our worship regardless of our feelings.
Worship is not for Sundays (only). It’s a seven-day a week activity.
Christian worship is not limited to a special day, a special time, a special building, nor even only when a special class of people is present. The Samaritan woman tried to draw Jesus into a religious controversy over whether the Jews were right about worshiping in Jerusalem or the Samaritans at Mount Gerazim. Jesus ignored that. He said “neither”. God is Spirit, implying that he is not confined geographically. We can worship him any time and anywhere. But we are to worship him in spirit and in truth. The early Christians worshiped in synagogues and the temple until they were expelled. They also met in homes, or rented rooms or in the open air or in the catacombs in Rome. The Celtic Christians worshiped in the open air, under trees, in simple church buildings. They had prayers for every occasion: milking cows, getting dressed, going to work etc.
We too can do what the medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, called “practicing the presence of God”. We can worship our Father Monday to Friday too, and in every situation.
So far we have discussed how Jesus’ teaching can be summarized by two statements: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, which give us the five purposes in our mission statement.
Great Commandment:
Mark 12:29-32 (New International Version)
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these."
Great Commission:
Matthew 28:19-20 (New International Version)
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Today we look at the final part of our mission statement: loving God with all that we are. This is what worship, in its most comprehensive sense, means. Worship is at the heart of all that we do, as the most important of these purposes.
What is worship?
To worship something or someone is value them above everything else. It is to ascribe worth to them. We uses the concept in a non-religious sense when we ask what something is worth, or when we refer to the mayor as “his Worship” or we read about some “worthy fellow” in a story about merry England. Or when we say a soldier is worth his salt.
Reverence, awe, fear, wonder, and amazement are some of the feelings we may have when we participate in worship. Words we use to describe what we are doing include: exalt, glorify, magnify, praise, venerate, or revere. The highest of all of these terms is the worship which belongs to God alone. We may respect or revere humans we hold in high esteem but Christian worship is reserved for God.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Our worship should reflect the fact that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. What our preferred way is to worship God has a lot more to do with our personalities than with what is necessarily the right way to worship. Different denominations and traditions tend to emphasize or specialize in these different elements of worship. Some emphasize the mind, others the spirit. Heart speaks of emotion and enthusiasm. Soul refers to the core of our mortal beings. Mind speaks of the intellect and will. Strength reflects the physical part of us. Unlike some other religions and philosophies, Christians and Hebrew believers in God reject any dichotomy between the spiritual and material. God is Lord of both. In our Gospel passage today Jesus said God seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Truth is something we grasp with our minds as God illuminates our thinking. It also affects our emotions as we respond to it's truth, and it helps bring our spirits to life as his Spirit touches ours with the truth of his word.
At Church of Our Lord we try to bring a balance of these different aspects to our worship. We honour God’s Word, the Bible as we try to understand it with our minds and obey it with our strength. We are open to God’s Holy Spirit so that we can worship with our spirits or souls. We use our bodies to worship him as we sing, stand, sit or kneel, raise our hands or clap. We receive him spiritually by the physical act of eating bread and wine, when accompanied by faith.
What it is not:
Worship is not for our selves. It’s for our Saviour.
The Puritan Shorter Westminster Confession describes the purpose for which we are created as this: “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” St Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” We are wired for worship. Worship of some sort of deity or some sort of spirituality is common to all cultures even though some have tried to stamp it out and it is no longer fashionable in Western Society to believe in God. Human beings are incorrigibly religious. We are made that way because God made us for himself. Worship does bring us benefits, but that is no why we do it.
Unlike some other spiritualities, we do not worship in order to appease him, or earn something, or to manipulate him through magic. We worship because he is worthy of it. We worship him because of who he is. We worship in response to what he has already done.
Worship is not for sissies. It’s a sacrifice.
Salvation is free. Christ has made the sacrifice on our behalf. There is no sacrifice we can make to earn our salvation. But that does not mean the Christian life will always be easy or that there is no cost to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. We love him because he first loved us. He calls us to love the same way, to follow in his steps.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote from the Nazi prison: “when God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For many Christians around the world, admitting one’s allegiance to Christ or worshiping him openly or meeting with other believers is a life-risking affair. Whether or not we shall ever be called to pay that price is something we don’t know. We do know however, that we are called to present ourselves, our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Not just our words, or our time, talents and treasure but also ourselves – all of us.
The psalmist tells us to give God a sacrifice of thanks and praise. There are times when worship comes effortlessly, when we are lost in wonder, love and praise. There are other times when we do not feel like worshiping. It is not hypocritical to do s at those times. It is in fact a sacrifice: it takes effort to worship when we are tired or cranky or feeling off-sorts. When we honour God on such occasions by approaching him anyway, we are often surprised by how our feelings follow along afterwards. At other times, God tests us through what St John of the Cross called “a dark night of the soul”, when God seems distant and we wonder why we bother. He wants us to trust him even when we don’t have the feelings. He is trust-worthy and worthy of our worship regardless of our feelings.
Worship is not for Sundays (only). It’s a seven-day a week activity.
Christian worship is not limited to a special day, a special time, a special building, nor even only when a special class of people is present. The Samaritan woman tried to draw Jesus into a religious controversy over whether the Jews were right about worshiping in Jerusalem or the Samaritans at Mount Gerazim. Jesus ignored that. He said “neither”. God is Spirit, implying that he is not confined geographically. We can worship him any time and anywhere. But we are to worship him in spirit and in truth. The early Christians worshiped in synagogues and the temple until they were expelled. They also met in homes, or rented rooms or in the open air or in the catacombs in Rome. The Celtic Christians worshiped in the open air, under trees, in simple church buildings. They had prayers for every occasion: milking cows, getting dressed, going to work etc.
We too can do what the medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, called “practicing the presence of God”. We can worship our Father Monday to Friday too, and in every situation.
Unpacking our Mission Statement – fourth instalment. Discipleship.
Mission To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever.
Amen.
So far we have looked at Service, Evangelism and Fellowship. Today we look at what is means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ. At COOL we want to be an authentic community which encourages each other to grow in maturity as followers of Jesus Christ, to discover the gifts he has given us and to use those gifts for him.
Jewish rabbis of the day used to teach their students or disciples in small groups. A person who wanted to learn from a rabbi would ask to become his disciple. If accepted, he would become part of a small group of followers who would spend all of their time with the rabbi, eating, travelling, studying, discussing the Jewish law etc. They would even share accommodation and spend all their waking moments together. They attempted even to walk and talk like their teacher. Jesus’ small band of closest followers was similar, except that he chose them.
A disciple is a follower or student, one who patterns his life on his teacher. The term comes from the same root as “discipline”. Just as an athlete or musician develops skills by practice and exercises, so to develop as a disciple of Christ involves practicing spiritual disciplines, such as regular prayer, scripture reading, participating in worship and times of solitude, silence, meditation on scripture etc. Peter tells us that Christ left us an example to follow in his steps. God’s intention is for us to become like Christ. And that we are to be partakers of the divine nature.
Jesus’ disciples noted that he was a person of prayer and so they asked him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer had taught his disciples. He gave them what we know as “the Lord’s prayer “ as a template for our prayers.
The topic of Christian discipleship is an enormous one. While preparing for today I thought that we could use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework, especially as we were looking at this prayer during our adult and youth Bible studies this week.
Our Father in Heaven: Jesus introduced them to a relationship with God as Father. This expression is only used of God a few times in the Old Testament. Jesus’ relationship with God as “Abba” or “Daddy”, as we would say, was entirely novel. What Jesus enjoyed by his very nature as the eternal Son of God, we can enjoy by adoption and grace. He said to say ”Our Father”, indicating that, in Christ, we collectively are God’s children.
John 1: 12 tells us But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
Romans 8: 15 puts it this way: So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[h] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”[i] 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows God as heavenly Father.
May your name be honoured: In Hebrew thought a person’s name represented who they were. To honour God’s name is to show him reverence and respect. It means not taking his name in vain or speaking disrespectfully of him. It means not bringing his name into disrepute, not being ashamed of him. Similarly we honour the name of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.
A disciple of Jesus honours him.
Your Kingdom come:
Jesus constantly taught about the Kingdom of God. He indicated that in his own person the kingdom of God had arrived. He also said that the Kingdom was within or among them and that they could enter that kingdom by believing in him and being baptized. He further indicated that they were not to worry about material things. Matt 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
How many of you are familiar with the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men? Of maid Marion, Little John, Will Scarlet etc? Richard, the rightful king of England, was away on the Crusades and had been abducted on his way back through Europe. His brother, Prince John had usurped control of the Kingdom. Robin and his band of men in green were loyal to Richard the Lionheart. They were outlawed and hunted down but on Richard’s return they helped him regain the throne. The Christian community is like that merry band, longing for the return of King Jesus, facing danger for him and remaining loyal regardless of the apparent futility of it.
A disciple of Jesus is a citizen of God’s kingdom, an ambassador for the King, a member of the church which is an outpost or colony of the kingdom.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
A disciple of Jesus surrenders his will to God, says “not my will but yours be done.”
Give us this day our daily bread
This is the only part of the Lord’s prayer which asks for something material. Bread is the staple food. Daily bread means essential nourishment enough for the day. While the Hebrews were in the wilderness during the Exodus God gave them manna from heaven enough for the day. Except on the day before the Sabbath they were only to collect enough for the day. Jesus taught his disciples total reliance on God. He also called himself the bread of heaven. He invites us to receive this bread at his table.
A disciple of Jesus relies on God for his needs and receives Jesus in the bread and wine of communion regularly.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us:
As creatures, we owe our creator a debt of obedience. Our rebellion incurs a debt, as it were, of what we owe him. Christ paid that debt by his perfect obedience as perfect man on our behalf. Through Jesus we have been offered forgiveness for our sin and a restored relationship with the Father.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows he has been forgiven and who has learned the difficult lesson of forgiving others.
Lead us not into temptation (or save us from the time of trial)
God neither can be tempted himself nor tempts us. However, temptation is part of life. The same word is used for trial or testing and for temptation as temptation to do what is wrong is a test of our submission to God. He has promised us that we shall not be tempted beyond what we can bear.
We also have an advocate in heaven, Jesus, who was tempted in every way that we are so he is able to sympathise with our weaknesses and intercede for us before the throne of God. Christ gave us his example of resisting temptation.
A disciple of Jesus is one who faces trials in His strength, who avoids unnecessary temptation and who turns to God for forgiveness when he falls.
Deliver us from evil (or the evil one)
Christ has conquered death and evil by his crucifixion and resurrection. We have his promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
A disciple of Jesus resists evil and has God’s promise that we shall overcome evil eventually.
We end the prayer as we begin, by worshipping God: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
This brings us to the topic of worship which we shall be discussing next time when we look at “loving Him with all that we are.”
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever.
Amen.
So far we have looked at Service, Evangelism and Fellowship. Today we look at what is means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ. At COOL we want to be an authentic community which encourages each other to grow in maturity as followers of Jesus Christ, to discover the gifts he has given us and to use those gifts for him.
Jewish rabbis of the day used to teach their students or disciples in small groups. A person who wanted to learn from a rabbi would ask to become his disciple. If accepted, he would become part of a small group of followers who would spend all of their time with the rabbi, eating, travelling, studying, discussing the Jewish law etc. They would even share accommodation and spend all their waking moments together. They attempted even to walk and talk like their teacher. Jesus’ small band of closest followers was similar, except that he chose them.
A disciple is a follower or student, one who patterns his life on his teacher. The term comes from the same root as “discipline”. Just as an athlete or musician develops skills by practice and exercises, so to develop as a disciple of Christ involves practicing spiritual disciplines, such as regular prayer, scripture reading, participating in worship and times of solitude, silence, meditation on scripture etc. Peter tells us that Christ left us an example to follow in his steps. God’s intention is for us to become like Christ. And that we are to be partakers of the divine nature.
Jesus’ disciples noted that he was a person of prayer and so they asked him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer had taught his disciples. He gave them what we know as “the Lord’s prayer “ as a template for our prayers.
The topic of Christian discipleship is an enormous one. While preparing for today I thought that we could use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework, especially as we were looking at this prayer during our adult and youth Bible studies this week.
Our Father in Heaven: Jesus introduced them to a relationship with God as Father. This expression is only used of God a few times in the Old Testament. Jesus’ relationship with God as “Abba” or “Daddy”, as we would say, was entirely novel. What Jesus enjoyed by his very nature as the eternal Son of God, we can enjoy by adoption and grace. He said to say ”Our Father”, indicating that, in Christ, we collectively are God’s children.
John 1: 12 tells us But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
Romans 8: 15 puts it this way: So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[h] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”[i] 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows God as heavenly Father.
May your name be honoured: In Hebrew thought a person’s name represented who they were. To honour God’s name is to show him reverence and respect. It means not taking his name in vain or speaking disrespectfully of him. It means not bringing his name into disrepute, not being ashamed of him. Similarly we honour the name of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.
A disciple of Jesus honours him.
Your Kingdom come:
Jesus constantly taught about the Kingdom of God. He indicated that in his own person the kingdom of God had arrived. He also said that the Kingdom was within or among them and that they could enter that kingdom by believing in him and being baptized. He further indicated that they were not to worry about material things. Matt 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
How many of you are familiar with the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men? Of maid Marion, Little John, Will Scarlet etc? Richard, the rightful king of England, was away on the Crusades and had been abducted on his way back through Europe. His brother, Prince John had usurped control of the Kingdom. Robin and his band of men in green were loyal to Richard the Lionheart. They were outlawed and hunted down but on Richard’s return they helped him regain the throne. The Christian community is like that merry band, longing for the return of King Jesus, facing danger for him and remaining loyal regardless of the apparent futility of it.
A disciple of Jesus is a citizen of God’s kingdom, an ambassador for the King, a member of the church which is an outpost or colony of the kingdom.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
A disciple of Jesus surrenders his will to God, says “not my will but yours be done.”
Give us this day our daily bread
This is the only part of the Lord’s prayer which asks for something material. Bread is the staple food. Daily bread means essential nourishment enough for the day. While the Hebrews were in the wilderness during the Exodus God gave them manna from heaven enough for the day. Except on the day before the Sabbath they were only to collect enough for the day. Jesus taught his disciples total reliance on God. He also called himself the bread of heaven. He invites us to receive this bread at his table.
A disciple of Jesus relies on God for his needs and receives Jesus in the bread and wine of communion regularly.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us:
As creatures, we owe our creator a debt of obedience. Our rebellion incurs a debt, as it were, of what we owe him. Christ paid that debt by his perfect obedience as perfect man on our behalf. Through Jesus we have been offered forgiveness for our sin and a restored relationship with the Father.
A disciple of Jesus is one who knows he has been forgiven and who has learned the difficult lesson of forgiving others.
Lead us not into temptation (or save us from the time of trial)
God neither can be tempted himself nor tempts us. However, temptation is part of life. The same word is used for trial or testing and for temptation as temptation to do what is wrong is a test of our submission to God. He has promised us that we shall not be tempted beyond what we can bear.
We also have an advocate in heaven, Jesus, who was tempted in every way that we are so he is able to sympathise with our weaknesses and intercede for us before the throne of God. Christ gave us his example of resisting temptation.
A disciple of Jesus is one who faces trials in His strength, who avoids unnecessary temptation and who turns to God for forgiveness when he falls.
Deliver us from evil (or the evil one)
Christ has conquered death and evil by his crucifixion and resurrection. We have his promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
A disciple of Jesus resists evil and has God’s promise that we shall overcome evil eventually.
We end the prayer as we begin, by worshipping God: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
This brings us to the topic of worship which we shall be discussing next time when we look at “loving Him with all that we are.”
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