What we say in our church’s Discovery Class is that if you want to know Episcopalians believe, you need to pay attention to our liturgies.  In our worship, you see the centrality of scripture to our sense of identity (both in the scripture we read and the way scripture is woven into the language of our liturgies), in our profession of the baptismal covenant, in the confession of and forgiveness of our sins, in the gathering at the table for the sustenance we need to go out into the world as Jesus’ disciples and agents of God’s love.  Our liturgies are rich with meaning, purpose, and identity. 

And yet, because we are a liturgical church, sometimes our liturgies can become rote, and we stop paying attention to the meaning behind the familiar words we declare.  That’s why this Sunday our church will be holding what we call an “Instructed Eucharist.”  The worship will follow the normal patterns, but there will be two key differences.  First, a narrator will join us to offer commentary sporadically to help us understand what we are doing every week and what those actions mean.  Second, our bulletins will be annotated – basically like an expert wrote notes in the margins to help us not only understand what different components mean in the liturgy, but also some pondering questions to help grow our faith.  We have offered these instructed eucharists a few times at our church, and we find every time that all of us (even the clergy!) deepen and renew our faith through the experience.

Given that offering, I have two invitations for you.  One, I invite you to watch – either in person or over on our YouTube channel (the service will archive so even if you can’t join in at 10:00 AM EST, you can still join in).  You won’t regret it, I promise!  Two, I invite you to take a moment for that spiritual check-in.  How is your faith life going these days?  Have elements of your practices – your prayer life, your attendance in worship, your connection to community – become stale or rote?  We all have seasons of rich spiritual lives and arid, wandering places in our spiritual journey.  No matter what season you are in, know that you are welcome here.  This Sunday we hope to offer some tools to help you on your way!