The Rector's Message for the Week of April 19, 2020

Rector Turner
The Reverend Canon Carl Turner

Dear Friends,

The Governor has extended the PAUSE (shelter-at-home) policy for another month until May 15. This means that our daily worship will continue behind closed doors and via the website and ZOOM platform. 4500 people worshipped with us on the morning of Easter Day, and an extraordinary 15,000 dropped in and out during the rest of the day. Since then, a total of 6000 people have worshipped with us, accessing the mass of Easter Day. If you are one of them, we are glad that you joined us, and we want to assure you of our continued prayer for you during this unprecedented time of lock-down. The message of Easter should afford us hope, and it was a joy to renew our baptismal covenant together; even though we are physically apart, we are one family in Jesus Christ.

Over the next two Sundays we are singing some hymns and chants that you can join in; the words and music will be printed in the leaflet that you can download and the numbers from the Hymnal 1982 will be on the screen. For those who love plainsong, we are going to make the music of Missa de Angelis available also.

The Second Sunday of Easter is often known as ‘Low Sunday.’ Mischievously, some Episcopalians explain this as an excuse to stay at home after a full celebration of Holy Week, hence attendance being ‘low’! But from the early days of the Church, this Sunday has been associated with the full inclusion of those newly baptized at the Easter Vigil into the full worshipping life of the Church. St. Augustine explains this in a sermon he preached on the Octave Day of Easter (Low Sunday), addressing those baptized eight days before at Easter: “This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the sign of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision of the flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the dead, he put off the mortality of the flesh; his risen body was still the same body, but it was no longer subject to death. By his resurrection he consecrated Sunday, or the Lord’s day. Though the third after his passion, this day is the eighth after the Sabbath, and thus also the first day of the week.”

The old introit uses words from the first Letter of Peter – “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like new-born infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:1-3). Those new-born infants (the newly baptized) laid aside their white baptismal garments on this Sunday, hence the origin of the Latin title of Low Sunday, “Dominica in albis depositis.” They took their full place in the assembly, no longer catechumens but one with the Body of Christ. One of the great Easter hymns in our hymnal refers to this tradition – “The Lamb’s high banquet called to share, arrayed in garments white and fair, the Red Sea past, we now would sing to Jesus our triumphant King.” (The Hymnal 1982 #202)

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ binds the faithful together as one family – as one body in Christ; it is why, even if we have no one to baptize, we still bless water at the Easter Vigil and renew our baptismal covenant together as the Church, the body of Christ. By doing this we attempt to join in the prayer of Jesus to the Father that his followers be one: “I in them and you in me,” prayed Jesus to his Father, “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

Once, we were catechumens (even if we were too young at the time to remember it). Once, we were baptized and put on the baptismal robe which is not a badge of membership, or alliance with a particular group, but putting on, as it were, Christ – head to foot – like a garment and beginning that journey back to the Father’s love.

As the shelter-at-home policy continues, we will see frustrations rising in communities feeling weary of restrictions, anxious about the economic damage such restrictions inevitably bring. The theme of Low Sunday is an encouragement to live out our baptismal covenant to the full. This Sunday, let us all lay aside the robe that signifies that we are newly baptized, rid ourselves of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander, and, clasping one another’s hands in love, walk together and seek the same pure spiritual milk so that we might all grow into salvation.

Some words of Archbishop Michael Ramsey:

“From Calvary and Easter there comes a Christian hope of immense range: the hope of transformation not only of humankind but of the cosmos too. The bringing of humankind to glory will be the prelude to the beginning of all creation. Is this hope mere fantasy? At its root there is the belief in the divine sovereignty of sacrificial love, a sovereignty made credible only by transfigured lives.” (Be still and know, pp. 69-70)

Happy Easter!

Carl,
Your priest and Pastor.