Instructed Eucharist

Why do we do what we do, each and every Sunday? Within the Episcopal Church tradition, we have a pattern of worship: we call this liturgy. Though the Episcopal Church does not have a doctrinal document the way many denominations have developed, we have our liturgy as passed to us through The Book of Common Prayer. This is our broad statement of belief: our liturgy is what we hold as core to our understanding about God.

So: what is liturgy? Our worship, as formed through centuries of tradition, is a statement of who we believe God to be, and what our relationship to and with God looks like. Though the Holy Spirit guides the church to evolve the way we worship, the basic pattern of what we do is similar to how the earliest Christians gathered in the name of Jesus Christ. Sunday worship and liturgy are by no means the only way to express and experience this relationship, but through God and our long tradition we are assured of this relationship through our liturgy. We are strengthened through communal worship to encounter God elsewhere in our lives.

On this day, May 31^st,  at both the 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM services, we will hold an “Instructed Eucharist” – our usual liturgy, interspersed with descriptions about what we are doing. The question to ask is not what all of this means, but what all of this does. Finding meaning is up to you and may well be different than your neighbor. But the liturgy does one thing: in our worship, we are brought into closer relationship with our living and loving God.

So come with open hearts to encounter God this day, every day, as our worship sends you into the world.