“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” BCP, p.304
Baptism has been on my mind these days, not just because we
recently baptized three of our young people (though that was a lot of fun), but because I find myself, more and more, leaning into the Baptismal Covenant that guides our lives as Anglican Christians. These are trying times and I find great comfort in reminding myself of what I believe – God, the creator of all that is, Jesus Christ, the one who suffered, died and was gloriously risen, and the Holy Spirit, the movement of God through our world now. I also find great comfort in the structure of what I promise to do as a baptized Christian. I promise to resist evil in others and in myself. I promise to repent when I sin. I promise to proclaim the Good News of God’s love. I promise to serve Christ, strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of everyone.
I also promise to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. In other words, I make a commitment to the common worship of my faith community, understanding that I am most fed through Holy Communion and most spiritually formed through the experience of weekly worship where I hear the Word of God and spend time with my fellow parishioners.
As Anglicans, we find the core of our Christian practice in regular worship. The Book of Common Prayer was named as such because at its inception, the Anglican Church held forth the belief that the most important characteristic of our denominational identity was our common prayer, praying together with the same words and gestures. We are a community of practice, bound together by our liturgy rather than a particular set of doctrinal statements. For us, our life of prayer shapes our beliefs and behaviors. So, regular worship is important. It is who we are and what makes us distinct.
Sunday is Lord’s Day, when we show up to “House of the Lord”. Yet, we build this house together. Every single one of us, whether it is by reading scripture, singing in the choir, or sitting in the pew and lending your voice and your prayerfulness, it is our common worship of God through Jesus Christ that builds the “House of the Lord.” A colleague once compared her church to a house being built, literally. She said something like – what if the electrician only showed up once a month, and the plumber came on a different day, but infrequent, and the general contractor popped in every so often. Would the house ever be built? Not likely. We will never complete building this house, but as Anglican Christians, we are called to build it together and this can only happen by committing to our baptismal promise to regular worship.
So, I offer each of you a challenge. Commit to a regular worship schedule that is more than you currently commit to (unless weekly worship is the norm for you, of course). If we showed up more often, if more worshipped on the same Sundays, I believe our energy would increase and our connections would strengthen. For some this will be easy, for others more difficult, but for all, fulfilling. Someone recently said to me, “We need God now more than ever.” Let our need for God be expressed in our worship of God.
~Lori+