We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.
Compline was a service to close the day, an opportunity to give thanks for the joys and graces experienced, a chance to confess sins committed throughout the day, and the perfect moment to close the day the same way it started: in prayer. If Morning Prayer is designed to start the day off right then Compline is designed to end it well. It frames you for sleep and puts the day in perspective. It helps you recommit yourself to prayer during Advent. Give it a try!
Prepare the way of the Lord – What does it mean for us? These lessons chart a course for us, what is expected of us, understanding how life works. “The wilderness inside takes a whole lifetime to cross.” This is what Isaiah is talking about preparing the way of the Lord in the desert. Where is that desert? Those that live in the Middle East is what comes to your mind – barren land, dryness. It also has to do with our life course – walking across this life span we are given. Sometimes it is not easy – sometimes things happen along the way we would never have wanted to happen or anticipated. However, if you are on a course with a particular destination, things don’t trip us up as much.
It’s just the idea of a container. Say you have a bucket with paint in it. It’s not the bucket what is important, it’s what’s in the bucket. It is the paint, not the container. That’s the way it is in our lives. We live in these containers. It is what’s inside what God looks at that’s important. We need to be mindful of what’s inside of us.
We have markers of where we are in Kronos time, such as the calendar date and lectionary date. But where do you think you are on the road? That’s a rhetorical question, we all would do well to ponder. Where are we in our path through the Wilderness because the wilderness is the perfect metaphor for life in that we don’t know exactly where we’re going, we don’t know what the terrain is going to look like and we don’t really have much of an idea about where we’re going to wind up. But we’re given some help with that in understanding our path and where we’re going to wind up too because that’s what the Gospel our Lord Jesus Christ proclaims unto us.
We need not be afraid of the wilderness even though it’s an unknown. We need not live in fear of the place of our souls in creation – that’s already taken care of. The way that’s taken care of is very interesting too because we have that presented to us in the Gospel where it talks about John’s baptizing in the wilderness. He baptized people and what happened was that in those days the understanding of baptism was an ancient Jewish custom which wasn’t new The idea was that he bathed in the River Jordan and your sins were washed away. It was a physical thing – your bodies became clean. What Jesus did was take that beautiful Jewish tradition that John embraced and what Jesus did was embellish it , transform it, elevate it to something brand new which is it is the revival of our souls.
At Christmas time we sing songs about the birth of Christ. But I want to tell you that I believe this that every time one of us makes the decision to seek a deeper life, to search more aggressively for that which is internal in our lives, the child is born again in us and we are born again.
The compline service is in the prayer book but there are several opportunities for variations. One being the prayers, akin to the prayers of the people which will change with services. There is also an opportunity to the congregation to add their own prayers.
The second main variation is in the music which changes for the service.
There were three main pieces for this service:
1. O Come O Come Emmanuel. Performed by the “Piano Guys”, in this case a pianist and cellist. From their website “What do you get when you mix up a marketing genius that does video, a studio engineer that writes music, a pianist that had a successful solo career, and a cellist that does pretty much everything? The Piano Guys: a miraculous meeting of “guys” with the same intrinsic purpose – to make a positive impact in the lives of people all over the world through music videos…Our story is a miracle. We’re just a bunch of ordinary “guys” playing classically influenced instrumental music in videos that showcase incredible locations.”
2. Give Thanks. Performed by Michael Eldridge who writes “I’m a pharmacist with a passion for singing.” All the parts! “I’ve been blessed by God with the opportunity to share my love for the classic acapella hymns I grew up singing, and still sing today.”
3. Come Divine Messiah – Advent at Ephesus From their website “We are a religious community of women seeking to emulate the hidden life of Mary as love in the heart of the Church.”
They were founded by Sr Mary Wilhelmina Lancaster OSB, in Gower, Missouri.
“The nuns are also recording artists, and their first two albums of recorded chants and hymns reached number one on the classical traditional Billboard charts. They were thereafter named Billboard’s Classical Traditional artists of the year in 2013, the first order of nuns to win an award in the history of Billboard…Their album sales have been used to improve the monastery and pay off the abbey’s debt.”
The House is a combined ministry of the Episcopal/Lutheran churches focusing on campus, Young Adult, and Intergenerational Ministry centered around The University of March Washington and Germanna. The Rev. Ethan Lowery is the missioner who is supported and sponsored by by Trinity Episcopal, St. George’s Episcopal and Christ Lutheran.
St. Peter’s ECW signed up to provide dinner to one of their regular weekly meetings on Tuesday between 5pm. They have a dinner business meeting and program. We had 8-10 students for the dinner. (The students were in the midst of “crunch time” with exams next week).
Thanks to Elizabeth, Catherine, Linda, Alice and Robin who cooked the food and Jim Heimbach and Andrea who supported St. Peter’s at the event. St. Peter’s provided both regular and gluten free chile, corn bread and brownies as well as a vegetable tray.
Joining us was the Rev. Rosemary Beales who is a specialist in Godly Play and presented the story of Abraham with all the objects in a tray of sand. (Catherine took Godly Play under Rosemary prior to St. Peter’s implemented it several years ago. Rosemary works with Godly Play at St. George’s.)
We learned the House is conducting one of their main fund raising events this Sun Dec. 10 which is a crafts fair with items donated. Customer will not pay a price set by the House but one they believe is fair.
“Advent is a time to look for “desert places”: the place of solitude, the place of true silence in which we can become fully awake to our sin and God’s forgiving grace which alone can heal it.”-Br. Robert L’Esperance
This week we focus on John the Baptist through scripture, art and commentary. Let’s move to Advent 2.
Commentary is by Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, director of ministerial formation at Saint John’s University School of Theology and Seminary.
The voice of John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness and gathering great crowds invites us into the Second Sunday of Advent. Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s St. John the Baptist Preaching captures this moment as he presents a wooded wilderness embracing a colorful crowd. Left of center is John the Baptist, clad in camelhair, though we have to search the scene to find him. Instead of standing as a dominating figure, John is one of the crowd, one of the people who serves his peers with prophetic passion.
For Brueghel, the crowd itself seems to be the dominant figure. It fully saturates the landscape as one body that reveals its diversity only upon closer inspection. A chief way Brueghel shows that diversity is through hats, hoods, and headdresses—each signifying a different culture, vocation, or profession. Brueghel shows not only the mix of people that might have been present in the region, but the great diversity of all of humankind as the intended recipients of the Good News that John is heralding. John prepares the way of the Lord to go beyond boundaries, starting with the colorful cavalcade of people who come to hear the prophetic message.
The body of the crowd becomes vertical, as people all around the perimeter climb the trees to get a better view. Sitting on branches, they foreshadow the story of Zacchaeus the Tax Collector, a figure of conversion and repentance from the Gospel of Luke. Thus, the tree climbers also underscore the message of conversion that John is preaching. Ascending the trees also foreshadows the cross itself as the ultimate place of reconciliation.
In the background, we see a clearing in the woods that presents a vista of a river, a walled castle, and misty mountains. This is an invitation to see beyond the immediate message to the possibilities of God’s ultimate home for us. The river, evocative of Baptism, is especially important as it winds like a road into the mysterious beyond.
We too are called to look beyond and see ourselves as part of a body of people who are gathered by the Good News. Like John, we are also sent to share the Good News so as to help open the horizon of possibilities that lead us all into God’s eternal love
