Sermon preached on Monday, September 18, 2006
Year 2, Proper 19, Monday, Daily Mass:
Psalm 40:8-12, 1 Corinthians 11:17-28,33; Luke 7:1-10
Today we celebrate the feast day of Edward Pusey, one of the founding fathers of the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement was a concerted effort by English laity and clergy (some of whom were Dons at Oxford and Cambridge) to bring back beauty of worship and a reverence for the Body of Christ. Saint Mary's was built as an American companion to this movment. The worship, the building, and a great part of the identity of the church are rooted in much of the thinking of the Oxford Movement.
Today we have a new ambo or lectern. Its beautiful. We also have in our presence our own incense meister, Kenny, who has come back to New York to make a new batch of his wonderful incense for us. Beatiful furnishing and incense are things that can add beauty and majesty to our worship, not to spice up the ceremony, but to bring our whole bodies, our hearts, our mouths, our noses, our eyes, and our ears into worshipping the glory of God and reverencing the Presence of Christ in the Sancrament.
Our gospel today speaks of worthiness. Its not through our own merit that we are worthy to stand before God, it is through the work of Jesus Christ who brings our very humanity into God. One of the main tenets of the Oxford movement was that God was for all of us. The beauty of worship and the revernece for God is somethat that all people can enjoy and share. Pusey and the other founders of the Oxford Movement, were not interested in making Church a good looking and beautiful club. They were interested in bringing about a reverence for Christ and letting all people know they were worthy through Christ. By treating the Sacrament with reverence and taking great care in our worship we quite leterally open the door to all people. That reverence extends to all who recieve communion and beyond to the entire Body of Christ in the world.
I invite you, following in the spirit of the Oxford Movement to expereince the real presence of Christ in Communion and to take the knowledge that through Christ you are made worthy and bring it to others. Invite others by letting them know that Jesus Christ died and rose for them too.
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