Episcopal worship engages all the senses so that we can offer God our thanks and praise with all our hearts, minds, and bodies. The service is distinguished into two parts. First, we hear and learn from scripture. Each Sunday we hear four readings. The first reading is from the Old Testament, which contains stories and history of our Jewish ancestors.
Next, we read together a Psalm. The Psalms are songs and prayers that span the spectrum of human emotion.
Third, we hear an Epistle or letter to the early churches. These letters give us insight not only into our early Christian forbears, but consult us on how we ought to behave toward one another as the Body of Christ.
Finally, the priest reads from the Gospels, which are stories from eye witnesses who walked with Jesus and saw his work and love first hand. The priest also delivers a sermon that offers insight into these sometimes difficult to understand readings attempting to help God's people understand the whole counsel of God.
The second half of the service is all about offering the gifts of our labor and giving our thanks for all we have been given. Episcopalians are incarnational people of faith. We believe that Christ walked among us, lived with us, ate, drank, slept, and felt what we feel. As such, the Eucharist, or Communion, or even still The Lord's Supper is celebrated every Sunday because we want to offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies as living sacrifices in daily worship. In the Eucharist we retell salvation history. That history tells the story of how Go came to us through prophets an apostles to tell us how to live as God first intended. When in our sin we rebelled and refused to heed His call, God sent Jesus to live among us, offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sin.
The bread that we eat and the wine we drink symbolize His Body and Blood becoming for those who come in faith the real presence of Christ, such that it is like we are right there at the table in the upper room on Passover, eating and drinking with Jesus and listening to him talk about his coming Kingdom of Love. Eating this special food and drink in this celebratory way draws us closer to this Kingdom and makes us stronger as Christ's body in the world today.
We exchange the Peace of Christ with a handshake and often a hug. Above all, worship at Holy Cross is welcoming and reverent. We want everyone to be on the same page, and so we give a lot of effort to help newcomers to the Episcopal Church find their way through the service. We use the Book of Common Prayer, which is a prayer book written in 16th century England with the intent to unite disparate Christian believers. While we use the American Prayer Book, the notion of common prayer remains.
At your first visit, you may notice that there are quite a few little pieces to the regular Sunday service. Some of it we lovingly call Episcopal aerobics. We stand to sing, sit to listen, kneel or stand to pray. There are a lot of moving parts to the service too, and a lot to look at. The purpose behind all of this is to express something. Episcopal worship allows room for our bodies to say what our hearts are feeling, yet our minds are not able to express. There is silence and room to just be in God's loving presence and in the loving company of others. Such symbol and ritual is built for the simplicity of prayer.
