'Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches' - December 14
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 45; PM Psalm 47, 48; Zech. 2:1-13; Rev. 3:14-22; Matt. 24:32-44
Today’s Reflection
I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. –Revelation 3: 19-22
In Christ Chapel at the Seminary of the Southwest, we would cycle through different versions of the liturgy as we shifted through the different liturgical seasons. At some times of year, we would use the Rite I, with its echoes of Elizabethan language, for Morning Prayer, Holy Eucharist, and Evening Prayer. At other times of year, we would use Rite II for these services. Rites I and II are the versions to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, so it just meant turning to a different page of the same book. But at other times, the sacristans (fellow students who helped run our chapel services) would bring out the cart with the EOWs: the Enriching Our Worship booklets.
Enriching Our Worship is an alternative version of the Episcopal liturgies written in more contemporary language, and with more inclusive wording, than the Rite I and Rite II services found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Currently, in this season of Advent, we are using a Eucharistic Prayer (what we pray together as we prepare to share communion) drawn from Enriching Our Worship. It’s a beautiful prayer, and these past few weeks have been my first time to celebrate the Eucharist using this version of the liturgy. I find that when using new words to pray, I am especially attuned to the meaningfulness of the words, as I become acquainted with these new ways of praying these ancient prayers of preparation.
Today’s reading from Revelation 3 ends with a verse that always reminds me of one of the more noticeable differences between Rite II and Enriching Our Worship in the earlier part of the service, the Liturgy of the Word (the part of the service before we share the Peace). When lay lectors (readers) share the appointed passages of Scripture with us in the Rite II service, they close their reading with this: “The Word of the Lord.” And then the congregation responds, “Thanks be to God.” But in Enriching Our Worship, we are given these possibilities to signal the end of the reading:
After the Readings, the Reader may say
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. or
Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.
People Thanks be to God.
When I would first hear these words after the Scripture readings in Christ Chapel, it bothered me. I thought: Why can’t we just say the usual, the Word of the Lord? And I felt similarly about the other differences between the EOW and BCP liturgies. Why not just leave well enough alone and stick with the very lovely liturgies we already have? I have come to have more appreciation for these different versions of the service now, as I can understand how rotating through different versions allows us to really listen to and say and pray these words with a sense of newness, with a heightened sense of the meaningfulness of these words we are hearing and praying. And, as we are reminded by today’s Revelation reading, Enriching Our Worship, as with the Book of Common Prayer, in many instances is drawing the inspiration for its phrasing directly from Holy Scripture:
Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Thanks be to God!
—Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection
When have you heard other glimpses of Holy Scripture woven into our Sunday morning Holy Eucharist liturgy (beyond the readings themselves)? And in the Daily Offices of Morning Prayer and Compline? In our Rite I and Rite II services, based on the original Book of Common Prayer composed by Thomas Cranmer, we find many phrases taken directly from Paul’s letters, especially from his Letter to the Ephesians (“Walk in love…” and “May God’s peace, which surpasses all understanding” are two).
Daily Challenge
This week, take some time to let the words and phrases of the Enriching Our Worship Eucharistic Prayer wash over you in a new way. Take the bulletin home so that you can linger over or even mark those phrases that seem especially meaningful to you. Maybe weave these words into your own of prayer life between now and Christmas Eve, when we will shift into another Eucharistic Prayer in the season of Christmas.