All Things Seen & Unseen

The sending out of God's people into the world to work and witness for him is the last movement of the drama involving the people of God hearing the Word and receiving the s acrament which are at the heart Anglican Sunday worship. Fi ve short subsections comprise this main movement which are numbered §21 to §25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . §21    Priest: Gracious God, thank you for fee d ing us, with the spiritual food of the body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Thank you for assuring us of your goodness and love, and that we are living members of Christ's body. [ How do we k now that we are 'living members of Christ's body' (Rom 12.5; 1Cor 6.15; 1Cor 12.12; Eph 5.30 & etc.) ? An important question because some Anglicans at least seem to waver on whether they are destined for God's presence or not. Yet, the apostle John in his 1st letter said that he had written in order that his he arers might know that they had eternal life (1Jn 5.13 ). The whole...

For All Your Blessings, O Lord The Great Thanksgiving is preceded by the sharing of peace and the bringing of the gifts of the people to the Lord's Table at the front of the church building. The offering reminds us that we are one body who are called to be a forgiving body of Christ-believers and in the offering, the onus is on any who are out of fellowship with another in the congregation to make peace before taking Holy Communion (see Matt 5.23). The present 1995, Prayer Book ( A Prayer Book for Australia -APBA) has five different forms of The Great Thanksgiving. Some priests use them by rotation each week, using the fifth one when there are five Sundays in a particular month; others use Thanksgiving 1 predominantly which is the one with which I am most familiar; however, each one of the different forms brings out a different emphasis found in the Scriptures. Again what is noticeable is the call-response structure of this Thanksgiving and the number of allusions to or direct qu...