Episcopal Church 
of the Resurrection
1433 NW R.D. Mize Road
Blue Springs, Missouri 64015
(816) 228-4220
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WATCH US ON FACEBOOK LIVE.
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Tuesday:
Morning Prayer at 10:00 am
Wednesday:
Noonday Prayer at 12:00 noon
Thursday:
Evening Prayer at 7:00 pm
Saturday:
Compline at 9:00 pm
Sunday: Holy Eucharist at 10:30 am
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Congrats to our 2020 graduates
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JOIN THE CELEBRATION CARAVAN SUNDAY.
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Best wishes and congratulations to
Emma Witte
and
Shea Blankenship as they celebrate their 2020 high school graduation!
We acknowledge their hard work, perseverance, long hours in study and hopes for the future.
We will celebrate with a caravan of revelers that will meet at the church parking lot at
12:30 pm Sunday afternoon
. We will have posters but ask you bring a flag or balloon to wave and even decorate your car with "Congratulations" to
Emma and Shea!
Please contact Fr. David if you able to be part of the caravan. Let's have a great showing!
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LITURGY ON THE CHURCH LAWN.
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Weather permitting, we will celebrate Rite II Liturgy on the church lawn adjacent to the parking lot at 10:30 am on
Pentecost Sunday, May 31.
If you are comfortable attending, please bring lawn chairs, umbrellas for shade, your bread and wine, and we'll gather following the "safe distance" guidelines published by our local governments. P
lease wear a mask. If you do not have a mask, we will have a limited number on hand for distribution.
If you aren't comfortable being among others, the service will also be broadcast on Facebook Live. Please pray for good weather and let's gather in worship together as you are comfortable.
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You can access Forward Day by Day prayers on-line by clicking this link:
"
Forward Day by Day
"
 There is also a limited number of "Forwards" in the office that Fr. David can mail to you or bring to you if you request.
Please continue in prayer for each other, our care givers and service personnel, our first responders and the military, and most of all for those struggling because of this pandemic reality.
Go in peace, and go with God, for there is no place you can go where God is not!
ONLINE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THOSE LOST TO COVID-19
The
National Council of Churches USA
(NCC), comprised of 38 member communions, will hold a public online memorial service this Sunday, May 24, 2020, at 5:00 pm CT to mourn the 300,000 people worldwide who have lost their lives to the COVID-19 pandemic, including more than 90,000 in the U.S.
The service
will be broadcast on YouTube and Facebook Live.
The memorial will include a sermon by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, the Right Reverend Michael B. Curry. Other clergy from a broad spectrum of Christian traditions will offer prayers, readings and songs.
A list of names of those who lost their lives to COVID-19 will be scrolled during the service.
A Time to Mourn: An Ecumenical Memorial Service for Lives Lost to COVID19
Sunday, May 24, 6:00 PM ET USA
Also, church bells will be ringing throughout Missouri at noon on
Pentecost, May 31, 2020
, to commemorate lives lost to COVID-19 and in thanksgiving for all essential workers putting themselves on the line for the sake of all during the pandemic.
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Outreach goes on despite pandemic
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UPLIFT SUPPORTED TWICE MONTHLY.
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Our amazing Outreach Committee has been serving 60 meals to Uplift twice a month - even through the pandemic. Flexibility has been important in order to adhere to all state, county and diocesan guidelines.
Diane and Ken Griechen have been preparing the meal on the second Monday of each month, and Gabe and Rich Conn have been preparing the meal on the third Monday of each month. Stew and Annie Scott have been making the deliveries.
We are looking forward to having the 'cooking team' back together, but we have been blessed. If there is a will, there is a way!
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CARD PAYMENT IS NOW AN OPTION.
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Church expenses still go on during the time we have suspended in-person church services due to the coronavirus pandemic. Your continued financial support of the parish is vital to support our ministries and serve our members and community.
Please review different ways to
send your contribution to the Church under the
"give" tab on our church website. You can mail a check to the church, use Zelle, use your bank's Bill Pay service or now pay us by credit/debit card.
We also have a dropbox for payments affixed to the wall just outside the ground level parking lot door for folks to leave payments.
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DESIRE.
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From Fr. David
Below is yet another paper discussion on Spiritual Communion and the celebration of the Eucharist. Remember, Christ is present in all our worship regardless of distance, our presence together physically and our abilities to celebrate virtually. These are uncharted times in respects to using virtual technology and for allowing our Christian Theology to catch up with these current times. Although we believe our traditional theological rubrics are sound and appropriate for the current age, the current technology affords us yet another way to reach out to each other and to God. Please read these "prefaces" on theology as just that. God knows our hearts and our desires. I trust that God welcomes our abilities to receive him, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in all the possible ways there are to communicate with him.
Spiritual Communion in a Season of Social Distancing
The Rev. Dr. Ruth A. Meyers
Dean of Academic Affairs and Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics
Church Divinity School of the Pacific
In this time of social distancing, when we cannot come together to celebrate the
eucharist, church leaders are introducing creative responses such as packing plastic
bags with consecrated wafers for people to drive up and take home, or suggestions that
people in disparate places provide their own bread and wine as a presider in another
space prays a eucharistic prayer. Such efforts suggest hunger for the body and blood of
Christ.
The desire to receive communion reflects a sea change in eucharistic piety in the
Episcopal Church during the late twentieth century. The liturgical renewal movement
was highly effective in transforming the Episcopal Church, fostering a eucharistic
spirituality with an expectation that the Holy Eucharist is the principal act of worship on
the Lord's Day (BCP 13). We've come a long way from the common practice of monthly celebrations
of Holy Communion or the non-communicating high mass of some Anglo-
Catholic congregations.
Yet the efforts to provide consecrated eucharistic elements suggests to me that the
liturgical renewal movement did not fully transform our eucharistic theology. The
urgency for people to receive communion and efforts to stretch our practices to allow
that to happen are a curious twist on medieval eucharistic theology and practice.
In the medieval western church, a practice of "ocular communion" was the most
common experience of the mass. Christians came to understand the words of institution
over the bread and the cup as consecrating the bread and wine, changing them into the
body and blood of Christ at that precise point in the prayer.
Sanctus bells signaled the arrival of this moment of consecration, and after reciting
Jesus's words, the priest elevated the host. People jostled for the best place to view this
miracle. But receiving communion was so infrequent that a thirteenth-century church
council required everyone to receive communion once a year, at Easter, a sure sign that
few people were partaking even that frequently.
Just as the practice of ocular communion emphasized the consecration to the
near exclusion of the reception of the elements, proposals to bend the rules to
allow people to receive focus on one moment rather than the totality of the
celebration. Since the earliest centuries of Christianity, eucharist has included both a
prayer of thanksgiving in which the assembly remembers what God has done for
us and the sharing of the eucharistic gifts of bread and wine, Christ's body and blood.
One proposal to hold these together is for a presider in one place to pray the great
prayer of thanksgiving while those sheltering in their homes have their own bread and
wine to be consecrated. Yet this practice places undue emphasis on the reception of
communion. Sharing one bread and one cup is integral to communion, as the apostle
Paul reminded the Corinthians: "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one
body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Corinthians 10:17). A webcast or Facebook
livestream or Zoom meeting can help us feel connected to our community, but it does
not allow us to share one bread or one cup.
In the celebration of the eucharist, we experience the real presence of Christ, not only in
the bread and wine that are blessed and shared but also in the Word proclaimed and
broken open in homily, in the community gathered as the body of Christ, in song and
prayer. This real presence is always in tension with real absence. We glimpse Christ's
presence, getting a taste of the heavenly banquet, yet on this side of the grave we
never experience the fullness of that presence. Real absence draws us forward to the
time when we shall see God face to face. Real absence makes room for the mystery of
God whose presence we can neither compel nor control.
Social distancing makes us keenly aware of real absence and our yearning for the real
presence of Christ, an experience we share with Christians through the ages. To
respond when we cannot celebrate eucharist, Christian tradition offers us the
practice of spiritual communion. St. Thomas Aquinas explains this as "an ardent
desire to receive Jesus in the most holy sacrament and lovingly embrace him" at times
when it is not possible to receive the sacramental elements.
The 1979 Prayer Book refers to spiritual communion in the form for Ministration to the
Sick, directing the priest to assure a person unable to eat and drink the bread and wine
"that all the benefits of Communion are received even though the Sacrament is not
received with the mouth" (BCP 457).
The Prayer Book for the Armed Services suggests
a prayer for spiritual communion:
In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy
Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer to you praise and thanksgiving. I
remember your death, Lord Christ; I proclaim your resurrection; I await your coming in
glory. Since I cannot receive you today in the Sacrament of your Body and Blood, I
beseech you to come spiritually into my heart. Cleanse and strengthen me with your
grace, Lord Jesus, and let me never be separated from you. May I live in you, and you
in me, in this life and in the life to come.
Amen.
In this season of social distancing, individuals and congregations can practice spiritual communion in a number of ways. Any Christian desiring to receive the sacrament can
offer a prayer for their own spiritual communion. Some congregations have the
resources to gather a small number of leaders for a full celebration of communion,
inviting others to view the celebration from their homes and feed on Christ in their hearts
by faith, with thanksgiving (BCP 365). Other congregations may find that their resources
enable them to offer the liturgy of the Word via livestream or video conference and
adapt that form to include prayers for spiritual communion.
The apostle Paul assures us that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:39). Spiritual communion offers one way to sustain
ourselves as we await the time when we can once again gather in the same space with
other Christians to celebrate eucharist.
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HELP US RAISE FUNDS.
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PLEASE take the time to clip the Best Choice UPC labels and the Boxtops for Education and save them for when we are together again!
You can also mail them to the church or deposit them in the black locked box by the side door of the church. Thank you!
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Yard Sale delayed to fall
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SAVE YOUR DONATIONS.
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Please save any items you wish to donate to the church
for our annual yard sale.
Due to the pandemic, we have delayed this event until fall. All donations are tax deductible.
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