Hello –
10:00am. Join us for worship on Facebook live. The Rev. Heather Erickson will be out Consecration Sunday Preacher. I will be the celebrant and at the Eucharistic prayer will have up at the altar 150 little plastic chalices that contain either wine or grape juice and, sealed into the base, little pieces of bread. These will be blessed, to be either picked up or delivered, depending on your preference.
10:50am. Like Molly did for us last year, Heather, at the end of the service, after a word of introduction, will hold us all in 7 minutes of silence. During those 7 minutes, from home, you are invited to open the sealed card that you should have gotten in the email from me. (If you didn’t get a letter from me that included a postcard folded in two with a seal, please email me at c.h.mrtn@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get one.) You are then invited to fill out a card, in the spirit of knowing that we participate in generosity as a step in our growth in the life of Christ.
11:00am. Right after the service two things happen.
First, those of you wish to stay at home will have people from St. Paul’s come to you with a small blessed chalice for everyone in your household and a lunch consisting of Chinese Chicken Salad from Comforts and a fabulous desert organized by Katie Taggart. If you have filled out a card, the messengers will collect those too.
Second, If you prefer, you are invited to come to St. Paul’s and walk through a safe circuit. You walk through the church doors and walk up to the altar, where you are invited to place your filled out card. You turn right to go into the Vestry, where the bathrooms are, where you will be invited to take the number of blessed little chalices your household needs. You then go out into the courtyard, where you will be invited to take a boxed salad and a desert for each member of your household. Starting from 11am, Libby will be serenading all who come with beautiful songs.
We need to know whether or not you are participating so we can know how many salads to order from Comforts and Katie can know how many deserts need to be prepared.
12:00pm. At noon, all are invited to rejoin Facebook live. I will be back at the altar. After a few words, I will say a prayer and we will all be invited to eat the bread and drink the wine together, at the same time. We will then all eat our lunch, and if you would like to connect with other people at that time, we will have a Zoom chat group going.
12:30pm. While we are eating lunch, Nan Marie and Lorrie will be looking at the completed cards and calculating what we can expect in terms of generosity from our extended St. Paul’s family in 2021. At 12:30, they will come down to the church and announce on Facebook live the results of our Consecration Sunday efforts.
If we didn’t receive back a postcard from you by Thursday it is likely that you are on a list of people to be called either tonight or tomorrow, encouraging you to participate next Sunday.
Even if you are not planning on filling out a card next Sunday, you are invited to either have communion delivered to you or to come and get communion and lunch. Our desire is to share both a sacred and an ordinary meal as our extended St. Paul’s family.
We believe two things about next Sunday:
The first is that this is more complicated to explain than to actually do. This is just what happens in the strange world of living with Covid.
The second is that there was a unanimous feeling among the Vestry and other leaders that communion and Consecration Sunday are important to do on the Sunday after the election. We affirm that, however we may have voted on Tuesday, we are one body because we share in the one bread and the one cup.
Join us next Sunday. You are not alone.