Little do they know

A glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes here at St. Jonah's.

There are a few clergy persons associated with the church of St. Jonah's. Just for fun we'll call the main two Burt and Ernie. 'Scuse me, that's Father Burt and Father Ernie. Father Ernie, the Rector, leaves on vacation after constructing elaborate calendars showing his time off and the other clergy and staffs' vacation times, etc. Only then at the last minute he realizes he's not really going to come back on the day the calendar says he is, and he asks Father Burt to take the services on Sunday the 27th. (This part is a plausible reconstruction of events, based on the fact that Fr. Burt seemed to know that Fr. Ernie wasn't going to be around before the 29th in an earlier conversation.) Then the trusty Parish Administrator (me, Doc Bubbles), trying to get a jump start on the next week's bulletins since she is going on a long awaited vacation, discovers--horrors--that the second lesson for the 27th, according to our still-in-use lectionary, contains the dreaded passage: "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as you are to the Lord." The only choices given are in the psalms, and of course any priest in his right mind would at least want to pray the psalm that begins "Protect me, O God"! She then checks to see if our female clergy might be preaching that day, which might have a palliative effect on the situation, but no, she's out of town. Her chart shows Fr. Ernie's name in red, which means he told her he wasn't going to be back, so she runs to Fr. Burt to see what he wants to do, and he says "Why ask me, I'm not even going to be here that day?"

Too bad Doc Bubbles is going on vacation, 'cause she might well have come up with a lively sermon--maybe she would focus on the really difficult first sentence of the passage: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." But not even she can jump in so will there be some bewildered people milling about the church on Sunday morning a week from today?

Doc Bubbles makes calls, sorts things out and it seems that things will proceed in accordance with the rubrics after all. Now, stayed tuned to find out whether Fr. Burt decides to make the leap over to the Revised Common Lectionary, which happily omits this nasty bit.