Question of the Week

Part II: The Stole 

The stole is the colourfully-decorated ‘scarf’ that the clergy wear on Sundays when we are leading worship. It is the vestment that signifies a person’s ordination to a specific ministry in God’s church. A deacon wears her stole crossed and tied at the side. Priests wear our stoles hanging around our neck.

The word ‘stole’ comes from the Latin word ‘stola’ or Greek word ‘stole’ and means ‘garment’ or ‘array’ or ‘equipment.’ It wasn’t until the 7th century that its use was universal through the church as the symbolic vestment of the clergy, and there are a variety of theories as to how the tradition developed – some say it is a derivative of the Jewish prayer shawl, although the prevailing theory is that it was adopted from the scarf of office among Imperial officers of the Roman empire. Regardless of its origin, it is seen as a symbol of service, of the towel Jesus wore and used to wash his disciples’ feet, of the yoke of Christ that we take on as Christians, a yoke that is gentle and generous. This prayer is printed and hangs on the inside of my office closet, a prayer that I use when vesting for worship:

O Lord, your yoke is easy and burden light. 

Grant that I may so carry this responsibility as to be worthy of your eternal grace. Amen. 

Of course, it is not just the clergy, the ordained, who take on this yoke and this service, it is all of us as Christians. But the clergy of the church are given the responsibility within the church to hold this ministry before everyone, to teach and remind and nourish the entire congregation in doing this work. In reality, then, the stole is a vestment in which we all share, a reminder for the entire Body of Christ of who we are and whose we are.

The stole in and of itself is a symbol. But the stole is also a canvas for symbols. Most of the stoles that I have, for example, are hand-made, one of a kind, pieces of art, and they are a means by which meaning can be expressed using colour, fabric, and signs of our Christian faith. In this simple vestment, with its humble message, artists throughout the centuries have spoken with beauty and creativity something of our experience of the living God.

On that note, you can watch during the season of Advent for one of my favourite stoles. It was made for me by my aunt, Linda Finn, an artist living in Elliot Lake, for my ordination. It was her idea to design an Advent stole which took the Advent wreath as the inspiration for its design. The stole is comprised of interwoven pieces of deep blue, the colour of Advent, but with each successive Sunday in Advent, one of the panels is lifted, revealing a message inscribed in gold. Throughout Advent, then, the stole mirrors our worship, becoming brighter as we progress toward Christmas. 2

My Advent stole is one of the more elaborately creative, even playful, examples of this vestment. But even in its simplest manifestation, the stole is one more way in which our worship engages our senses in leading us to more deeply know God’s truth and love.

Part I: Robes 

There is evidence that, in the ancient church, every baptized Christian wore what is called an ‘alb’ in worship. The alb is still worn: it is the plain white robe that you see on priests, deacons, servers, and lay readers, and it represents our unity in the Body of Christ and the new life we receive in our baptism. At a baptism in the ancient church, the individual would be fully immersed in water and then immediately robed in the white alb afterward. Every person then wore this plain white robe as a reminder that we are all participants in our worship of God. As the church grew over the centuries, the practice changed to the one we now know today: only those with a particular responsibility in leading worship are robed.

Except that it’s not even that simple. Readers don’t robe. At St. George’s, our Chalice Bearers (helping with the wine at Communion) and Greeters don’t robe. Gift bearers (those who bring up the wine and bread at the Offertory for preparing God’s table) don’t. Our choir and our organist wear robes, but they are not albs, they are called cassocks with surplice. Depending on the particular culture of an Anglican church, clergy might also favour wearing the cassock and surplice, rather than the alb. The cassock is seen as business dress, worn during the ordinary dealings of parish life. The surplice is worn only in leading worship. As a singer in the cathedral choir in London when I was younger, I remember our choir master being very strict about wearing our cassock whenever we rehearsed, but only wearing the surplice when we were leading worship.

Wearing a robe has long been an intuitive way of entering into a worship leadership role, and it is therefore not only the Christian religion that does so. Robes are a reminder that, although as individuals we each bring our particular gifts and personalities to our ‘jobs’, it is ultimately not about us. It is about God. And it is about God’s community together receiving God and in turn making God known. Robes also provide a very practical way of levelling the playing field in faith communities. In the ancient church, it was important that, for example, a rich man and a poor woman would be able to pray together, neither one feeling different or uncomfortable because of the dress that their economic circumstances afforded them. In the medieval church, it was helpful for the choir to robe so that people could participate in these schools of music, not based on their ability to pay their way, but based on their musical talents. Although now just worn by particular people leading worship, robes remain a symbolic way of acting out our equality before God, our radical understanding that we are one before God and we are valued in equal measure, regardless of race, gender, culture or circumstance.

Originally, only adults were baptized into the Christian faith. When the church was first getting started, it was abundantly clear that this was an underground, highly-suspect, and eventually illegal, movement: Jesus was executed as an enemy of the Roman state, after all! Because being Christian was so risky, baptism was a courageous, life-and-death decision to which only a mature adult could reasonably sign on. It was later, when Christianity became first the favoured religion of the Roman empire, and then the religion governing the politics and power which would eventually spread across the globe, that the practice of baptism began to open up to include infants or small children.

Whereas the first few centuries of Christianity saw a long process of education and formation for adults prior to taking that dangerous baptismal step (the process is called Catechism), that component was understandably lost when babies were involved. Confirmation began as a rite separate from baptism, an opportunity for those baptized because their parents brought them forward and made those promises on their behalf, to take on the promises of baptism for themselves. This is meant to be a ‘grown-up’ decision, a sacrament which involves the recognition of will and desire for individuals to mature in the faith, to ‘own’ their own faith as a chosen part of their adult life.

Practically, however, in many of our denominations, Confirmation began to settle in to becoming a Rite of Passage for young people in the 12-16 year age range. For long-time Anglicans, there is an established expectation for children to participate in Confirmation classes and to be confirmed at somewhere around Grade 7 to 10. The problem with this system is that Confirmation can become just one more part of Christianity that is merely expected and therefore runs the risk of being meaningless, ie. not a choice at all. The great thing with this system is that it does tend to be a good time for young people to receive post-Sunday-school education in the faith and to begin to see themselves as able and capable of making the choice for the life of faith, to feel empowered in the difference that decision makes for them and for their actions in the world around them.

This year, we have had a number of people in a variety of circumstances participating in our Confirmation program. Linda Telega, Sheila Burgess, Ed Swartz and Lindsey Wilton are adults who have been taking classes with Reverend Scott and learning about our Christian faith and our Anglican expression of that faith. Linda, Sheila and Ed were confirmed by our Bishop at our Easter Vigil several weeks ago. Meanwhile, Mari Shantz has been offering classes since January for our young people also seeking confirmation. Andrea, Allan, Brynn, Cameryn and Mark will be confirmed at our cathedral this afternoon at 4pm.

We are grateful for the witness of all of these people over these past months at St. George’s, reminding us all, at all ages, that our faith is a continual journey of learning. We pray that, as they have blessed us with this faithful choice and learning, so each of them will be blessed in his/her relationship with God and living out that relationship in service to our world.

These incredible and passionate youth represent parishes from across the diocese and have been here at St Georges and in St Catharines all weekend to engage in Youth Synod in Action. YSA is an annual event that happens over two sessions each spring, gathering together 50-60 youth aged 13-21 in

addition to a number of community volunteers.

This weekend delegates have gathered, worshiped, prayed, played and learned about social justice and social action initiatives and programs happening here in St Catharines through immersion experiences. From these immersion experiences the delegates will write motions that will be debated in YSA’s second session in May.

YSA is about: advocating for a world that reflects God’s mission, love, hope, hospitality, inclusion and justice; it is about enabling delegates to integrate their faith and witness in their daily lives, it is the embodiment of Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 

Now Youth Synod in Action leave YOU with some Questions of the Week!

Who in your life engaged you in actions of Social Justice?

What did that mean to you?

How can you support and affirm the passion and commitment of the YSA delegates, the youth in our congregation and each other to continue to live Micah 6:8? How can we do this together? 

You may have noticed that the Confession – the part of the service where we collectively acknowledge that we make mistakes, that we hurt others, that we carry around guilt and doubt and regret, and then we receive God’s forgiveness and assurance of healing – is absent during the Easter season. For some, this will feel like a major omission. Human beings are adept at weighing down our lives with feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy, anxiety for our shortcomings, gaping wounds of anger and hurt for how our relationships have been broken. This time in our worship to take stock, to lay down those burdens before God and to be reminded of God’s faithfulness to, and love for, us can help many to feel lighter, freer, refreshed.

However, it is the tradition of the ancient church that the Confession is omitted during the season of Easter. It is not that Christians miraculously become perfect people during the seven weeks of Easter and therefore have no need of repentance and absolution. Instead, it is perhaps more appropriate to think of Easter as a rehearsal, a practising of what a right relationship with God and one another actually looks like.

Whereas Lent is a time for honest and probing self reflection, intentionality and care in how we use our time and resources, spareness and restraint, Easter is a time for celebration, celebration of the fullness of God’s kingdom, of a reality in which each of us lives in the light and love of God and reflects that light and love in our relationships with one another. In the fullness of God’s Kingdom, we are free from the past brokenness and pain of our lives and our relationships are whole and life-giving. In the fullness of God’s Kingdom, talk of sin and forgiveness no longer have a place, because we are healed.

We are not there yet. Brokenness and fragility are part of our story. We still look forward to the time when the promises of new life and healing offered on that first Easter morning will be fully realized. And some of us might continue to bring heavy hearts to worship through Easter. Individuals are encouraged to offer before God in prayer any confessions, any needs, any worries, regardless of whether it is Easter or not. However, our collective prayer changes at Easter in order that we might, as a community, tell this part of our story: Christ is risen! And we have glimpsed the Kingdom of God, where every tear is wiped away, where all hearts are mended, where we join with all of creation in receiving and sharing the good gifts God gives us.

Pay attention to how our worship ends today. Or, it would be more accurate to say, pay attention to how it doesn’t end. There are no final prayers. The concluding blessing is not given. We do not exchange the peace. For those of you who are very observant, you will know right away what is missing. For others who are maybe not as familiar with the flow of our regular worship, you might feel that something is different but not be able to identify what that difference is.

This is important. In fact, today’s worship doesn’t end until next weekend. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, the Christian journey with Jesus in the last week of his life – to the cross and to Resurrection. Rather than understanding Holy Week as a series of services or liturgies to mark Jesus’ final days, we actually understand the upcoming worship events as part of ONE service. Logistically it would be impossible for all of us to stay in this building for the week worshipping, but during Holy Week, our regular lives become essentially suspended as the unfolding worship becomes our central and connecting act as we journey to the final meal on Thursday, the cross on Friday, the mysterious transition of Holy Saturday, and to the astounding Easter proclamation made on the first day of the week.

Don’t miss out on the story. Don’t opt for only a select portion of these events that so clearly and concisely reveal the nature of Jesus’ life and the Good News he offers. This year, we are connecting the story through a preaching series which will delve into the actions and perspective of a parent: Mary of Nazareth, Mother of Jesus.

Palm Sunday was the original cliff-hanger. Each of the unfolding services – Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday – leave us in suspense. Not until the darkness is banished by the light of Christ on Easter Saturday, that bridge between death and resurrection, our first Easter proclamation: ‘He is risen!’ , do we then bring the worship we have begun today to its conclusion. Today we are not sent out to be Christ’s light and life in the world. We are asked to stay. To stay in this space. To inhabit the story.

Don’t miss out.

The joy and mystery of Easter cannot be truly appreciated without journeying with Jesus through his last days, his arrest, his trial, his crucifixion. In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ life, this final week is given careful attention, with much emphasis on the exact sequence of events leading up to Jesus’ execution on the Friday and the stunning revelations that began to emerge on the Sunday. This year, our preaching through Holy Week will help us to enter into the story of one person whose life was thoroughly tied to the life of Jesus. Join us throughout Holy Week as we look at these events through the eyes of a mother:

Mary of Nazareth, the Mother of Jesus. 

Palm Sunday – March 20th – 8:00 and 10:00am – Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem with great fanfare and celebration. The masses recognize Jesus as the long-awaited Saviour, they wave palm branches and call him King. We re-enact this story with our own palm branches, processions, and songs. Mary has long been aware that God has anointed Jesus with a special plan and purpose. Now she watches his fame escalate, even as the powers of darkness conspire against him.

Daily Worship, Monday March 21st – Wednesday March 23rd, 12:10pm + 

Advent Café on March 23rd at 7pm: We follow Jesus through the drama of his final days, the controversial teachings he gives in the public sphere, the behind-the-scenes decisions that those closest to him are making, a chain reaction of events set in motion as the power of God is challenged by the power of the status quo.

Maundy Thursday – March 24th – 12:10pm & 7:00pm This is Jesus’ last night with his disciples before his arrest and death. In the face of the violence and hatred closing in on him, Jesus chooses to share a meal with his disciples, to wash their feet in an act of friendship, care, and service for them, and to speak to his followers about God’s great calling to us that we learn how to love one another.

Our service ends with the arrest of Jesus. We strip our church of all adornment, we extinguish the lights, we are invited to remain in the dark for time of prayer and meditation. We are asked to leave in silence.

Good Friday –March 25th –Good Friday Walk @ 9:45am (gathering at Royal House, 95 Church Street) & Worship @ St. George’s, noon. Through music and word, story-telling, prayer and silence, we gather at the cross, we tell the story of Jesus’ death, of his execution at the hands of the religious and political leaders, and the faithfulness of those in his inner circle, including Mary, accompanying Jesus even as he hangs on the cross. We connect his story of suffering and darkness to the places in our lives where we are most broken, most in need of God’s compassion and healing.

Easter Vigil –March 26th –7:00pm –With special guest Bishop Michael we gather on this evening and do what people of faith have been doing for thousands of years: we light lights in the darkness. We begin with the lighting the new fire. We worship by candlelight, entering the dark church where we last left one another following the story of Jesus’ death. We tell some of our stories –the stories of God’s ongoing faithfulness to, and love for, us. We sing the hymn of new light, and tell the best story of all, the story of the empty tomb, of the risen Christ. We celebrate the news with song, with a three confirmations, and a sharing of God’s meal of bread and wine. In Mary’s story, we bring our most profound experiences of heartbreak to bear on the promise of God’s love and life.

This service is offers that most life-giving transition between the darkness of Good Friday and the hope of Easter morning. *We celebrate afterward with a Resurrection Party!

Easter Morning –March 27th –8:00am and 10:00am –

All the bells and whistles, decorations, fanfare, special and joyous music you would expect on Easter morning… Plus some fun surprises!

Mary of Nazareth is a powerful, and at times controversial, figure in our Christian tradition. Her image is a source of prayer and strength, a connection with God, and yet that image shifts and changes to take on the cultural characteristics of those who look to her. Across the globe, men and women pray for her intercession, asking that they pray with them as they seek God’s healing and guidance, and countless have reported mystical experiences as result – both of that prayer working, as well as actual visions of Mary speaking to people, sometimes groups of people (particularly children). She is named Theotokos, Bearer of God – most exalted among women. She draws millions of people to shrines like Fatima and Lourdes each year, sustaining religious tourism worth billions of dollars. She has inspired the creation of many great works of art and architecture (Michelangelo’s “pieta,” Notre Dame cathedral). Yet, the Protestant arm of Christianity has pushed back against some of these titles and prayers, feeling that they border on idolatry, raising Mary above her human status to suggest more god-like qualities. Interestingly, while she has been a point of division between Catholic and Protestant belief, she is a unifying force between the Christian and Muslim religions. Muslims, too, consider her to be holy above all women, and her name “Maryam” appears more often in the Koran than “Mary” does in the Bible!

For all of this closeness and controversy, however, Mary speaks only four times in the Bible, and there are few certainties we know of her life. Scholars guess that she would have been between the ages of 12 and 14 when betrothed to Joseph, the carpenter and became pregnant with Jesus. Joseph, like Mary, was thankfully in tune with angels, and because of an angelic message, stayed with Mary and raised the baby who was born as his own. There are legends which suggest that Joseph and Mary and Jesus travelled through Jesus’ childhood, even as far as England. By the time the adult Jesus comes on the scene, however, Joseph seems to have long since died. Mary at times is shown struggling with understanding the controversial ministry of Jesus, even attempting to quiet him down and bring him back home. However, like the other disciples who had their times of misunderstanding and mistrusting Jesus, her faithfulness wins out. John’s Gospel tells us that Mary stayed by her son up until his death on the cross. From the cross, Jesus entrusts his mother into the care of his “beloved disciple” (who we assume is John), and legend again tells us that, in fact, they lived together on the island of Patmos furthering the Gospel up until their deaths. The Catholic church, in fact, believes that Mary, because of her faithfulness, was spared human death, and at the end of her life was carried directly to God in heaven. Other Scriptural sources affirm that Mary was an integral part of the early Jesus movement, and therefore one of the apostles of the early church.

Questions, traditions and legends aside, there are some core characteristics which have made Mary so beloved and which have provided consistent strength to the faithful. It is to these core characteristics that we will look as we journey through Holy Week this year at St. George’s – Palm Sunday (March 20th) to Easter Sunday (March 27th), and that most holy journey with Jesus through the final week of his life, to the cross, and to Resurrection. We know that Mary was strong and faithful. She made mistakes. She suffered deeply. She loved greatly. Her story

allows us many points of entry, her vulnerability and humanity allow us to relate to her, to feel a sense of resonance with her experience and with her faithful choices out of the challenges she faces and the mistakes she sometimes makes. We believe, in fact we experience, that in allowing Jesus’ story to come close to our human story, we become more able to participate in his ministry, his courage in the face of the cross, his rising to new life.

Valentine’s Day has become popular and lucrative because it is a celebration of romantic love, a time in which men and women can prove how much they value their significant other, often by investing in roses and dinners and greeting cards, all of which have been jacked up in price in order to capitalize on the pressure of the holiday. For this reason, Valentine’s has also been somewhat maligned, not only by those who don’t have a ‘sweetheart’ when the 14th rolls around, but also by those in committed relationships who are revolting against an event seen as far too commercialized and robbed of meaning for the sake of sentimentality.

Interestingly, Valentine’s has its roots in the early witness of Christianity, with absolutely no reference to romantic love. Named not just for one saint, but possibly as many as three, each St. Valentine was a martyr – choosing death rather than renouncing their proclamation that Jesus is Lord. It was not until the high Middle Ages, and the obsession with courtly love, that somehow Valentine’s and romance became linked. The stories of Valentine, (we actually know very little about any of the St. Valentines) were embellished and glossed with St. Valentine becoming re-cast as a romance-ally – a priest who secretly performed marriages of Roman soldiers who had been forced to be celibate by the emperor’s belief that sexually-frustrated men were better in battle.

Jesus tells his friends on the night before his death, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love on another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35). Because Valentine’s Day actually falls on a Sunday this year, we have an opportunity as a community to celebrate this special date in a way that is closer to its original Christian premise – a marking of how we, as followers of Jesus, can bear witness to, and participate in, the compassionate, other-centred love at the heart of this Gospel command.

Today, we have the opportunity to gather together in worship and prayer and thanksgiving.

Today, we celebrate the blessing of baby Ryu, welcomed into the family of Reverend Scott and therefore into our St. George’s family as well. We have planned a special “baby party” for Ryu after the 10am service.

And today, we support our Refugee Sponsorship Project through a Skating Party fundraiser at Ridley College at 1:30pm.

These are a few of the opportunities on order in our St. George’s celebration of Valentine’s Day 2016. I pray that each of you will make a point today of finding creative and generous ways of sharing God’s love – not just with the friends and family closest to your heart, but with the people we don’t yet know, to whom we do yet feel connected, and yet who in the mystery of God’s love are our brothers and sisters!

There are a couple of ways of understanding the word ‘saint’, and the church has seen some evolution in the way All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ is understood and celebrated. In the more traditional sense, the ‘saints’ of the church are those whose lives are seen as having so witnessed to the love of God and the faith of the church that they reveal a particular, widely-recognizable closeness to God, both in their lives, and even after their deaths. We also use the term ‘the saints’ in a more all-encompassing way, referring to those many brothers and sisters who walk the life of faith, who share in God’s life both before and after death, and yet who do this in the more ordinary, everyday, flawed, but no less beautiful way we see all around us.

Although many of the more prominent saints had specific Feast Days on which to celebrate and remember their lives, it eventually became important to have a ‘catch all’ holiday to honour them within the contribution that their lives as a group, a communion, make. November 1st was traditionally All Saints’ Day, with All Souls’ celebrated the day after. All Souls’, in many parts of the world, became the bigger of the two festivals, as this was a time for honouring the family and friends of individuals in a faith community who had died. The church taught that, for most ordinary people, heaven would not be an immediate reality. The purification of purgatory must be endured for an appropriate amount of time before an ordinary, flawed person would be ready to make that next step into God’s heavenly graces.

Purgatory is not a part of our Anglican teaching. We remember and pray for our loved ones, not because we want to get them out of purgatory, but because we understand that they remain an important part of our lives, even after they have died. This is a fundamental principle which is at the heart of our worship today, just as it was 1400 years ago. Many of us have experienced – some in very concrete, or some in deeply intuitive, ways — that those who have died continue to be present to us. For all of us, it is an affirmation that we make regularly in our practices and in our worship: our lives are of deep value to God, our lives hold the possibility of participating in God’s life and truth, our lives are joined in Christ’s resurrection, and death does not destroy us. Now the celebration of All Saints’ and All Souls’ is often rolled into one all-embracing worship observance, and we mark this day in the church year on the Sunday closest to November 1st.

Our worship today honours the range of emotions present in the beliefs we profess. It begins on a celebratory and triumphant note. We give thanks for the courage, love and faith of our saints: this is praise for the God who is continually working in and through ordinary human beings in order to communicate with us. Our worship also has a solemn note, remembering those who are close to us who have died in this past year. No matter how certain a person is in their faith, losing a loved one is devastating, grief can be overwhelming, even crippling, time and space and support is needed to walk through the grieving and healing process.

And within that recognition, we celebrate the sacrament of Eucharist, gathering at God’s table to receive God’s good gifts to us once again. We receive those gifts and perhaps we

experience the thinness of the veil between this world and the next: God gathers us and all of the faithful before and after us into the eternal song of heaven, into the vast and enduring promise of God’s love working in and through us, walking beside us on our journey.