Holy Week Services - Church Plant, ABQ, NM

Praying your Holy Week in the time of coronovirus is going well and you are full of the peace which surpasses understanding. We had been meeting for Evening Prayer with Communion until the stay-at-home order came but have tried to at least have Evening Prayer liturgies available. If you want a copy of any of the past prayers, let us know!

We have decided to do two virtual services this week:
Good Friday at 6 pm 
Easter Vigil - Saturday evening at 7:30 pm

The Zoom link for both services is: https://zoom.us/j/9030345803 [Meeting ID: 903 034 5803]  

We suggest having the following on hand: a cross for Good Friday candles for each person & bells/keys/noisemakers for Easter Vigil

The Kenyan liturgy includes the following:

All of our problems

We send to the cross of Christ

All of life's difficulties

We send to the cross of Christ

All the devil's works

We send to the cross of Christ

All of our hopes for wholeness

We set on the risen Christ

From meditating on that, we came up with an idea for participating together during this Holy weekend. Some time before Good Friday service, please email or text us a word or phrase that represents those things that are on your heart to "send to the cross of Christ" (there are no limits, no right or wrong answers, nothing too big or too small). We will write these down on slips of paper and place them before the cross during the Good Friday service, they will be buried with Christ, and then cast into his light at Easter Vigil.  If you can only make one service or neither, please feel free to send us words or phrases anyway. 

reverendgap@gmail.com
katherine.noel.collins@gmail.com
630-532-9242

some more incomplete works

 On a personal note:  Noel dedicates this "essay", an assignment for Early Church History, to write an article, as for a church newsletter, on the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity, to the good people of Holy Trinity Anglican in San Antonio, TX (not least of which to her parents who dubbed it thusly).  Thank you for worshiping God as He reveals Himself; as the loving Trinity.  Noel is very excited to worship with you one day soon.

Greetings, church! As we approach Holy Trinity Sunday, let us imagine together our ordinary days profoundly lived in the light of the One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit whom we worship. What do you imgine when I say that? Do you think of an apple? Water? A flame? While these analogies can be helpful in certain matters, what I want to address here will glean little help from them lest, as Gregory of Nazianzus says, “we be frenzy-stricken for prying into the mysteries of God” (Guy, 280). So, let us proceed in humility. Because we take God at His word that He has revealed Himself as Trinity that this should have an impact on our daily lives. But, perhaps, we might ask, I know we affirm, pray and worship the Trinitarian God on Sunday morning and in morning and evening prayer, but I’m still fuzzy on the details, can you fill them in? I hope St. Augustine might be of some help to us on this. He says,

“has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls,
His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father
for the union and communion of God and humanity, imparting indeed
God to human beings by the Spirit, and on the other hand, attaching
humanity to God by His incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His
coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God.”

This is a good synopsis of God’s working out of our salvation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as well as through the indwelling of the Spirit. What do we see that can help us in our daily living? How does this effect how I go to work tomorrow or hang out with my kids tonight?

Well, first of all, we can trust in the mediation of Christ that Augustine spoke of, both His mediation of Himself to us and of our humanity into the life of God. Isn’t that amazing? That sends shivers down my spine to think that God did that! We receive this mediation through the Spirit, moment by moment. And friends, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom! 2 Corinthians 3 goes on to say that in this freedom, we reflect the Lord’s glory and are being transformed into Christ’s likeness by the Holy Spirit. And He is with us always as Christians. So, engage Him at all times of day with confidence, ask Him to join you to Christ’s likeness and to live into those good works He has for you. Ask Him to help you really love and care for Jim in the cubicle next to you whom you are sure has a fingernail growth condition for as often as you hear his clippers being used! Be assured that the triune God is working in your workplace, at your home, in your grocery store, at the post office and He invites you to participate with Him as a minister of reconciliation in the world. So, repent for those times you have been unwilling to participate and ask Him to help you understand Him more and to help you be more like Him.

Another means of practicing our Trinitarian faith is through remembrance. Friends, we as Anglicans, stand in a long tradition of those who have chosen to remember and celebrate God’s events in history. You might notice that much of our liturgy involves this recollection with gratitude, nowhere noted more than in the Great Thanksgiving, Eucharist. By remembering the salvation trajectory, we can know Father, Son and Holy Spirit for willing together to sustain the creation even after sin entered, for destroying the power of sin and death, and restoring us to new life in communion with God, as Augustine said. In all things, thank God for the ways in which He does these things in your life now, recall them with others, use them to tell others the Good News. Even ask the Spirit to help bring these things to mind as part of practicing this Trinitarian way of living.

Last but certainly not least is that our Trinitarian God is within Himself love and relationship. The source of all our love, ability and yearning to relate is in Him. He is known in relationship and it is for life in Him that we are saved. When Jesus prays, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know you sent me and loved them even as you loved me,” He is not just saying something nice and comforting. He is expressing the reality that the triune God desires for us, that the Church be Christ’s body, one with Him and the Father. After Jesus ascends, He sends the Spirit of Truth to work in those whom He loves the reality of unity that is the same unity between the Father and the Son. How do we know this? Because the Spirit is also one with the Father and Son as God! So, we are, in a profoundly real way, being bound together in love as members of Christ’s body, the same love that is found in the Trinitarian God of the Universe. So, love in freedom! Practice our Trinitarian faith with risky love through hospitality, gift-giving, gift-receiving, prayer for one another, asking the Spirit to help you see others needs and a way to help, carrying others burdens, befriending the lonely, and all of those things that Jesus did in the Gospels in the power of the Spirit. We are living into our call as the royal priesthood when we welcome others into loving relationship just as we were welcomed into the loving relationship of the Triune God by the mediation of Christ worked out in us by the Spirit.

 

We will explore more of these themes and perhaps imagine a few more as we explore the vastness of the doctrine of the Trinity in our Christian Ed series beginning in Pentecost. All of this here has been just a tantalizing morsel of what is to come and at the least you’ll learn some new cool words to impress friends and family! We will meet together in the hope that “we, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” 

more incomplete works of greg

An essay prepared for the last section on Early Church History

In his Third Epistle to Nestorius, Cyril of Alexandria argues against the writings and teachings of Nestorius concerning the nature of the person of Christ. Nestorius has propagated a Christology which drew a great distinction between the humanity of Christ and the divinity of Christ, the Eternal Word. Nestorius had been concerned about Apollonarianism and the claims that the humanity of Christ was subsumed by his divinity. Attempting to realign that error, and to protect the divinity of Christ which clearly could not change, suffer or die, Nestorius ended up splitting the two natures of Christ dividing Christ's words and acts between his humanity and divinity, respectively. Cyril's approach to argue against Nestorian Christology relies on a three-fold system of “rules” used in early ecumenical counsels for reaching theological decisions: Do not contradict Scripture; Do not threaten the means of salvation through Christ; And do not interfere with the liturgy.

Cyril regularly appeals to Scripture in order to disprove Nestorius showing him how he has misused Scripture and departed from the correct interpretation thereof. Cyril urges Nestorius to “abstain from these mischievous and distorted dogmas, which you hold arid teach, and to receive the right faith, handed down to the churches from the beginning through the holy Apostles and Evangelists, who 'were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the Word'” (Third Epistle to Nestorius, 1). It is evident that there is an essential connection between Scripture and the faithful interpretation of Scripture as passed down through tradition, or “right faith”. Cyril also quotes and references Scripture in order to build up his case for the unity of the two natures of Christ and the necessity that He be both fully God and fully human in all his words and actions.

Cyril appeals to the second of the unofficial “rules”, when he argues that Nestorius is threatening salvation through Christ. It is necessary for salvation that the Eternal Word died on the cross in unity with Jesus' humanity, “in order that, having trodden down death by his unspeakable power, first in his own flesh...and that he might make a way for the nature of man to attain incorruption” (Third Ep, 3).

Lastly, Cyril protects the liturgy, specifically the sacrament of the Eucharist, from the Christology of Nestorius. Cyril argues that Nestorius has divided Christ into two, separating the humanity and divinity in such a way that he cannot be rightly worshiped in Unity, but is rather two different objects of worship where believers must somehow render praise to Jesus the man as well as Christ the God. Cyril uses the practice of the Eucharist to uphold the indivisible union of the two natures of Christ in one person. If the person of Christ is divided, then he is not present in the Eucharist and those who partake of it do not partake in the life-giving Word who died. This argument asks the question, “was not the Eucharist a re-enactment of the miracle of Bethlehem, at which the life-giving Body and Blood of Christ were offered to be received by the faithful?” (Chadwick, 198).

This process carries validity to how we may do theology today, but the diversity of Orthodox Christian practice may cause difficulties to use this approach with consistency. To uphold Scripture as paramount and to defend salvation through Christ are certainly necessary and Christianity remains in agreement on these points. Arguing from liturgy provides more difficulties, especially with perennial debates concerning the nature of the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper and Baptism. A more robust theology of liturgy across all Christian denominations would enliven theological debate, especially since lex orandi lex credendi is alive and well in the 21^st century.

We thought it was like "Fall Break"...

...boy, were we wrong!  So, when we read "Reading Week" in the middle of October on the Academic Calendar, we did mental high fives.

But, as we perused our syllabi and all our due dates, we gradually realized that it was nothing like a Fall Break and that we would be unable to go visit people or Niagara Falls or even just experience what the bourgeoisie refer to as a "staycation".  Alas, this was not our lot in life. 

First and foremost in our minds was our four Early Church essays and quiz to be turned in and taken by Thursday.  The class is excellent and the questions fair, and the essays only a page.  Easy shapeasy, right?  Have you ever tried to write all your thoughts about Ignatius of Antioch's historical context on a single 12-point font, 1 inch margin page?  I didn't think so.  Sadly, it was fairly easy to fit the place of women in the early church on one page...and that was even with the added business of having to support your claim with reference to the Didache.

We thought about posting all of our assignments for your perusal, but we will pick and choose because we don't want any pfeiferphiles to become pfeiferfoes.  Pictured above is Greg, chagrining as he attempts to put his finished essays in the dropbox online only to find that the internet has gone out...again.  More on that little problem later.
By the by, Greg highly recommends The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom by Alan Kreider.  It it a fairly small book, with ridiculously small font, but which packs a lot of information on the nature of the church and the changes she underwent as Christianity became the religion of the empire.

Noel, pictured above, immensely enjoys Early Church, perhaps a little too much.  But, she was also pre-disposed to the idea that this would be her favorite class at Seminary.  In any case, doesn't she look so studious and intellectual in this picture?  If you'd like to see her answer to one of the "essays"-a creative flyer, click here.

And about this time, they recalled the word study due for BI600 (endearingly called this because nobody ever remembers the real name and thus far, it seems strange to have a grammar class in seminary)...and in addition to the Word Study, an Exam on the first half of the class.  This means, the entirety of a "little" book called "Greek for the Rest of Us" and all the English and Greek grammar your brain can hold, and some that it can't, for that matter.  Pictured to the left are Noel's lifeline, her flashcards and the Greek book sprawled on their dining table in receding light to accentuate the feeling of dread which accompanies them.  Please be lifting up the exam which happens Monday, the 25th, and for especially Noel's memory to be entirely alert.  Greg had 5 semesters of Greek and is already a grammar guru.

 We also have a book review, reflections and our regular reading assignments as well as 22 hours of work each week.  So, we're starting to feel the pressure big time. 
Are you wondering how on earth we survive all this chaos?