We are very excited to announce that we're co-presenting An Evening with Sandra McCracken in concert at All Saints Dallas on Saturday, January 18. We've reserved a limited number of tickets for St. Bart's and All Saints parishioners. Those reserved tickets are on sale NOW before we open tickets to the public on December 1. The ticketing page is password protected, so use the code "allsaints" when prompted. To purchase tickets, click HERE.
All Saint's Day
Early on in the Church’s life, people of heroic faith were lifted up and celebrated. Because many of them were martyred for their faith, they began to occupy special days of remembrance in the Church’s calendar. All Saints' Day serves to celebrate all of those who’ve followed Jesus no matter the public significance of their faith - people just like you and me.
It’s a perfect day for baptisms because this day is the annual feast where we celebrate every saint, known and unknown, living on earth and in heaven. Many of you have had questions about baptism. This week is a perfect opportunity to participate in the liturgy as we support those being baptized into the life of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Jay+
Playing the Comparison Game
In this week’s gospel passage, Jesus tells us the story of two men praying, one a Pharisee and one a tax collector.
The story has much to teach us about prayer, but it also tells something central about human nature itself, namely the great temptation to measure how we are doing in comparison to someone else.
And this is the game the Pharisee plays, the game of comparison. He doesn’t really pray at all. Rather he pronounces his own greatness by thanking God that he isn’t like other people. “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11). Looking at his whole prayer, you’ll see that he doesn’t ask God for anything. Instead he tells God how great he is. He lifts himself up by comparing himself to others.
While we might not think of ourselves as Pharisees, and most of us are not, really, we all can too easily play the comparison game. We all have thought or said something like this, “At least I’m not like so and so. I know I’m better than that person.” And though the temptation to compare ourselves to others can be exacerbated by the merciless onslaught of information and social media, the comparison game is nothing new. It’s as old as humanity itself. Just ask Cain and Abel.
By contrast, what the tax collector understands is not his own greatness, but his own great need, and so he prays for mercy. His prayer must be our prayer. We all stand in need of mercy. And the heart of all prayer begins with that cry: “Lord, have mercy.”
Please join us this Sunday for our Instructed Eucharist service. We’ll take time during the service to explain the prayers and the liturgy and to describe why we do what we do in worship and where it comes from.
Chris+
A New Covenant
While his people languish in loss and exile, God speaks to them through the prophet Jeremiah that though they have been uprooted, he will once again "plant and build" them. And he makes an interesting promise to them:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke…. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
So a future hope that is different than his work among them in past times is offered. Sunday we’ll look at this covenant, how it differs from the ‘old’ covenant God made with Israel through Moses at Sinai, and how we participate in this new covenant even now through Christ.
See you Sunday!
Jay+
To The Exiles
Last week we took some time to ponder what it would be like to have our homeland conquered, our place of worship destroyed, and our leaders exiled. This Sunday we’ll hear what message God has for his people that he sent into exile in Babylon.
Jeremiah 29 records the prophet’s letter to the exiles, and in it we see that God is still at work. It seems that they’ve lost everything, but even in that devastating loss, God’s good purpose for Judah is not thwarted.
See you Sunday -
Jay+
From Celebration to Lamentation
Confirmation Sunday was a great celebration! It is always remarkable to stand by the confirmands and those praying with them as our Bishop Philip speaks the words of knowledge and the Confirmation prayer over them. It has a “rippling effect,” as does the courage of the saints when they stand boldly proclaiming the gospel in word and deed as +Philip mentioned.
But this week the Scriptures will move us from Celebration to Lamentation, and that will take some work beforehand.
To do so, I want you to prepare for Sunday’s lessons by putting yourself in the shoes of an Israelite in 587 BC when Jerusalem was destroyed. The city you loved and lived in is gone. A foreign army has come and killed most of your neighbors, has taken captive the ruling class, and has left only a few people to work and keep the land. In fact, your king fled under cover of darkness slipping through a gap in the city wall only to be hunted down like a dog, brought before the conquering king, have his eyes put out, and sent to Babylon the conquering land. The glorious temple that King Solomon had built for the worship of the living God glory 373 years prior lay in ruins. And every precious item that was used in worshiping God has been plundered and hauled back to Babylon. The roads that lead to the city and the temple are no longer marked by the songs of pilgrims drawing near to worship but by dead bodies.
The book of Lamentations was written in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the majority of Judah being led into captivity by their enemy Babylon. The book records five different poems each in acrostic form. These poems were composed in order to remember and give voice to the lament of the people in the wake of this devastating loss. The acrostic form demonstrates the poems’ highly artistic and liturgically useful nature.
This Sunday we’ll take a closer look at Lamentations and the circumstances around its composition. What will God speak to us as we proclaim this word of lament?
See you Sunday -
Jay+
Welcoming New Members, Confirming God’s Work of Faith
This Sunday St. Bart’s will welcome our Bishop Philip Jones as he confirms the newest members of our growing family. Bishop Philip will lead us in this sacramental moment in the Church when the "grace of the Holy Spirit is conveyed in a new or fuller way to those who have already received it” through baptism and their life of faith.
Confirmation is the final step of Membership at St. Bart's, so we’ll be welcoming new people into the church and into the global Anglican family. The Confirmation Service is always powerful as Bishop Jones will call friends and family members up to surround the confirmands. Then, in a moment of quiet and waiting on the Lord, he lays hands on each confirmand and prays specifically for them.
Come expectant and prayerful for those who are being confirmed and joining the Church - I’ve listed their names below so you can pray for them. And, come ready for God to move in your own life as you participate and experience.
Jay+
Learning to Lament with the Weeping Prophet
This coming Sunday we will spend some time with the prophet Jeremiah, and we will clearly see why he has come to be known as the weeping prophet.
My hope is that our time with the weeping prophet will be neither a morose exercise nor a historical curiosity but rather a help for us as we address crucial questions. What do we do with our anger? What do we do with our pain? Is there space within our faith for disappointment and doubt? Or to ask another way, how do we lament?
Jeremiah models for us how lament, how bringing pain and disappointment before God as a matter of prayer is not antithetical to faith but central to it. In his book Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, theologian Soong-Chan Rah describes lament as “a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble. The hope of lament is that God would respond to human suffering that is wholeheartedly communicated through lament.”
I find Rah’s description striking for a couple of reasons. First, his description of lament as liturgical means that lament is a way of worshipping or, if you aren’t willing to go that far, a way of praying. Think of it. Bringing our pain, our disappointments, our questions, our doubts before God is part of our right worship of him. Second, Rah’s insistence that lament is a matter of hope means that even in the midst of darkness, by crying out to God, the very one who feels absent, we are still praying, and praying is always a matter of hope.
Please join us this Sunday, and if you haven’t already, please consider joining a pastorate.
Chris+