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Worship
Worship is at the heart of all we do.
Everyone is welcomed to participate in offering this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God. In worship we personally discover the breadth of God’s grace, the fullness of God’s forgiveness, and the depth God’s love. Gathering together each week allows us to gain a much needed perspective that is often hard to discover in the midst of jobs, family responsibilities, and the stresses so common to our daily lives.
Worship at St. Mark’s is grounded on the Book of Common Prayer. At its center is the weekly celebration of the Eucharist, also known as Holy Communion or The Lord’s Table.
Through the simple offering of bread and wine we discover the Sacrament of God’s promise never to leave us or forsake us. It is this Sacrament, fulfilled in Holy Communion, which establishes St. Mark’s as a part of God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Our traditions, our liturgy, and our spiritual life are deeply rooted in 2,000 years of Christian spiritual practice— from those first disciples, through the richness of Anglican (English) spirituality, the establishment of the Protestant Episcopal Church after the American Revolution, through to today, we continue to actively engage in the process of listening, learning and responding to God’s Spirit in our lives and in our world.
Depending on your spiritual and religious background worship at St. Mark’s may seem familiar or completely foreign. Either way, as you worship you will discover your soul being enriched, your spirit being encouraged, and your mind being stimulated as you discover for yourself the truth that you are a child of God, cherished in God’s sight, and welcomed into the embrace of God’s never ending love.
Come and worship. You will be blessed.
The Church Year
The rhythm and cycle of the liturgical year guides the rhythm and cycle of our spiritual lives.
“In almost every culture, certain religious rituals are periodically repeated, some in relation to the cycle of the seasons, some to reinforce community relations in particular “crisis” situations that occur in the lives of individuals (birth, initiation, marriage, death). Some rites are performed daily, some weekly, some at wider intervals of once a month or once a year.” (Marion Hatchett, “Commentary on the American Prayer Book) These cycles parallel the cycles of the new moon, the passing of one season into another, and the movement from adolescences to adulthood to old age. If you want to take a little theology from Broadway, then just think of Simba’s father telling him of the cycle of life in “The Lion King.”
Advent
As a liturgical church, St. Mark’s observes the same rhythm and cycle of the year as the vast majority of Christians throughout the world and throughout history. On the First Sunday of Advent (four weeks before Christmas) the Church year begins. It is our New Year and it begins with preparation for the coming Nativity of our Savior Jesus Christ.
For many within the Church these weeks of spiritual preparation provide a much needed respite from the hectic preparations of the more commercialized Christmas we see around us every year. Advent is a spiritual preparation, a time to pause and reflect on the year just lived and the year that opens before us. It asks us to sort through the inevitable clutter of our lives to identify what truly matters—what truly feeds our souls and sustains our spirits.
Lent
From Advent and Christmas the Church moves towards another time of preparation. This one longer and more serious than Advent. Beginning the day after Mardi Gras (also known as Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday), Lent begins with the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
With these words Lent carries us through the bleak time of winter, when the leaves have fallen from the trees and the sky presses down with an unrelenting grey that makes us wonder if the puffy white clouds of summer will ever find their way to us. While a somber time in the Church its spiritual message is one of preparation for the coming of the Messiah, the Christ of God. The ancient words of the prophet Isaiah, “Prepare you the way of the Lord,” is exactly what we seek to do during these 40 days before Easter.
Easter
If Advent is New Years then Easter is the 4th of July. Resurrection! New life! The chains of oppression are severed and we are set free! Easter is the highpoint of the church year and the center of our liturgical and sacramental life. Our faith tells us that Christ rose from the dead, defeating death for all time.
As Christians we are united with Christ in his resurrection, as we were in his death, giving us the eternal promise that every disappointment, every failure, every dream that has died, and every hope that has vanished can find new life in God through Christ.
Pentecost and the Sundays After
From Easter Sunday to Pentecost the Church celebrates the Great Fifty Days of Easter as we await the Feast of Pentecost, the anniversary of the founding of the Christian Church. On this day, nearly 2,000 years ago those early disciples gathered in a upper room and discovered themselves filled with the Holy Spirit. From there they went out to preach the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ to every people and in every language. From that first proclamation the Church now spans the earth as people continue to be introduced to the life-changing reality of God’s infinite love.
As the weeks unfold after Pentecost we are reminded again and again that it is now our calling to be as those early disciples and introduce others to the life we have found in God through Christ. Then the year begins all over again as we make our way from the Manger to the Cross to the empty Tomb to the coming of the Holy Spirit, just as we make our way from season to season from birthday to birthday.
As a part of the community at St. Mark’s you will discover this rhythm of spiritual life and by it discover yourself changed by the ever increasing awareness that you are God’s own and that whatever path you may have taken before coming here is far less important than the path that opens before you.
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