IDENTITY

Episcopal Night at the Ballpark

Episcopal Night at the Ballpark returns on July 28.

Join Cathedral friends and Episcopalians from around the diocese to see the Mariners play the Astros at Minute Maid Park.

Wear your Astros gear and get ready for a great night. We’ll start the evening at 5 p.m. with a cookout in the Bishop’s Courtyard complete with hot dogs, sodas, cracker jacks, and a raffle — all free of charge!

After the cookout, enjoy a short walk to Minute Maid Stadium for the opening pitch at 7:10 p.m.

Tickets to the game can be purchased online at www.christchurchcathedral.org/astros. $33 for adults, $16 for kids 12 and under. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the mission and ministry of Episcopal Relief and Development.

EPISCOPAL NIGHT AT THE BALLPARK Thursday, July 28 IDENTITY, from cover or causes mischief as us? In other words, is the bearer of our name the Christ who lives in us, or do we steal our identity back from the One to whom we have freely (and blessedly) given it and revert to the character of our old lives?

How can we know? In his song, Steve Forbert has a clue that someone is masquerading as him by the evidence. The same is true for us. St. John tells us, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) And the prophet Micah explains what such love looks like, saying, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Who is it that walks through the world in your name? Has the stranger within stolen your identity back from you, or do you shine with the light of Christ? Just as Jesus himself was broken on the cross and resurrected, our true and only identity is in the One who accepts us in our brokenness and then declares that we are whole. Through the identity of the Christ who lives in us, may we walk through this world, sharing grace and sowing love. That is who we are, and let no one, from without or within portray us differently.

The case of the wandering Credence Table

THE REV. ED STEIN

One day I received a package from an old friend, the Rev. Dr. Lloyd A. Lewis, then professor of New Testament at the Virginia Seminary (VTS). Dr. Lewis, otherwise known as “Tony” was for three years my next-door neighbor in St. George’s Hall when we were both at VTS, Class of 1972.

The package contained a small piece of Church furnishing, a little shelf designed to be used as a “Credence Table” (a side-table or wall-shelf used to hold the offertory vessels for the Eucharist).

The border of the back-piece is topped by a fleur-de-lis with scroll work running down either side. The base of the shelf has a carved series of grapes and vines. The larger back piece has a Eucharistic Host surrounded by a sunburst mandala, above an arrangement of wheat sheaves and grapevines.

This credence table came with a complicated provenance:

It is inscribed “Made of Wood from the Old Altar of Christ Church Houston, Texas, by R.E. Cuthrell, October 24, 1942.”

Apparently Mr. Cuthrell must have been an excellent woodworker, who after the fire salvaged carved bits from the remains of the altar and reredos of the 1900 church. In the following years he produced this shelf as a memento of the old church, and presented it to the priest who guided Christ Church through the fire and the rebuiding.

The Rev. James de Wolfe was Rector of Christ Church (not-yet-Cathedral) here, at the time of the fire and rebuilding of the Chancel in the late 1930s. From Houston, de Wolfe was called to be Dean of St. John the Divine Cathedral, NYC, and from there elected Bishop of Long Island. The Credence Table must have been presented to Bishop De Wolfe when he was still Dean of St. John’s and travelled with him to his Cathedral in Garden City, and installed in his private chapel in the diocesan offices there.

Tony Lewis was Dean of Mercer Divinity School in the early 1980s, which neighbors the diocese of Long Island’s Cathedral of the Incarnation, in Garden City, Long Island, New York. He rescued the credence during a remodeling of the diocesan offices, including the bishops’ chapel there. All the traditional chapel furnishings were being discarded and Dr. Lewis thought the little shelf deserved to survive. Dr. Lewis took the Credence Table to Virginia with him when he was called to the faculty of Virginia Seminary, and used it in his own chapel, in a faculty residence at Virginia during the 1990s and early 2000s.

When I came to the Cathedral, Dr. Lewis decided it was time for the little shelf to return home to Houston, and he sent it on to me.

Inscribed “Made of Wood from the Old Altar of Christ Church Houston, Texas, by R.E. Cuthrell, October 24, 1942.”

IN PICTURES Below: The Rev. Bradley Varnell commissions Cathedral members as they prepare to depart for the Costa Rica Mission trip.

Above: Cathedral Youth put together meals during the CUSE Houston Mission trip.

Left: Members of The Vestry host Summer Place on June 5. Above: Cathedral Youth take a break in front of a mural during the CUSE Houston Mission trip.