"Nice Service, Father"
I grew up in a tradition that looked askance at anything remotely "planned". People in my childhood church would have found "reading prayers from a book" on a par with summarily inviting the Spirit to leave the building. Worship was supposed to be spontaneous, free-flowing and emotionally enthralling. A formal structure in that tradition was tantamount to blasphemy. In fact, some of the preachers I listened to as a child would have had me believe that there was the New Testament Church of Acts...and then 1900 years of people following "the ways of man"...before the Spirit miraculously reappeared to several groups of seekers at the turn of the 20th century.
And yet...when I first walked into an Episcopal liturgy, I found that I was jumping into a river of tradition that had quenched spiritual thirsts for millennia. I discovered prayers that had been prayed by the church for centuries -- not because people were too lazy to draft new ones, but because there was a timelessness in the language that invited worshipers to step out of their current distractions and focus on God's big picture of eternity. I was amazed at the direct references from Scripture, the allusions to Scripture and the economy of words that carried such an immense freight of meaning.
Three pastoral offices, the liturgies that assist us in marking the major moments of our lives -- baptisms, marriages and deaths -- are marvels of liturgical theology at its finest.
At the thanksgiving over the water at baptisms, the whole of salvation history is recounted... from the Brooding Spirit over the waters of chaos at creation, to the descending Spirit upon our Lord Jesus, through to our own baptisms, which mark our "burial" with Christ in his death and our resurrection to new life.
My favorite part of the marriage liturgy is the prayer over the newly married couple in which I ask God (in the words of the Church and on behalf of the Church) to, "...Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace." The Church then invokes God's presence so that the couple's love will be, "a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads." And finally we pray that God will, "Bless them in their work and in their companionship, in their sleeping and in their waking, in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death..."
At the time of death, the prayers of the Church give voice to our sadness and proclaim to us the hope of resurrection. But the hope proclaimed is not a happily ever after, "in the sweet bye and bye" sort -- it is a realistic hope...grounded in an awareness that death is a part of the human condition. We all go down to the grave, but we stare death in the face and make our song, "Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia."
As a priest, I am privileged to pray these words of the Church at baptisms, marriages and funerals. They are powerful words. They are precise words. These words hover over us with unbearable lightness. They pierce our souls with the heaviness of God's glory. They are words aimed at inviting the congregation to pause in these highly charged moments and remember that we are gathered as a praying community in the presence of God.
My job as a priest is to be as present as I can to the words the Church has given me to say...and to pray them like I mean them. Praying them like I mean them isn't a difficult or onerous task...I do mean them! With every fiber of my being!
The aim of these liturgies is not to produce a "nice service". These liturgies compel us to remember that all we have and all we are -- from birth to rebirth in Christ to death and beyond -- is a gift from the God who created us and calls each of us by name.
I grew up in a tradition that looked askance at anything remotely "planned". People in my childhood church would have found "reading prayers from a book" on a par with summarily inviting the Spirit to leave the building. Worship was supposed to be spontaneous, free-flowing and emotionally enthralling. A formal structure in that tradition was tantamount to blasphemy. In fact, some of the preachers I listened to as a child would have had me believe that there was the New Testament Church of Acts...and then 1900 years of people following "the ways of man"...before the Spirit miraculously reappeared to several groups of seekers at the turn of the 20th century.
And yet...when I first walked into an Episcopal liturgy, I found that I was jumping into a river of tradition that had quenched spiritual thirsts for millennia. I discovered prayers that had been prayed by the church for centuries -- not because people were too lazy to draft new ones, but because there was a timelessness in the language that invited worshipers to step out of their current distractions and focus on God's big picture of eternity. I was amazed at the direct references from Scripture, the allusions to Scripture and the economy of words that carried such an immense freight of meaning.
Three pastoral offices, the liturgies that assist us in marking the major moments of our lives -- baptisms, marriages and deaths -- are marvels of liturgical theology at its finest.
At the thanksgiving over the water at baptisms, the whole of salvation history is recounted... from the Brooding Spirit over the waters of chaos at creation, to the descending Spirit upon our Lord Jesus, through to our own baptisms, which mark our "burial" with Christ in his death and our resurrection to new life.
My favorite part of the marriage liturgy is the prayer over the newly married couple in which I ask God (in the words of the Church and on behalf of the Church) to, "...Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace." The Church then invokes God's presence so that the couple's love will be, "a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads." And finally we pray that God will, "Bless them in their work and in their companionship, in their sleeping and in their waking, in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death..."
At the time of death, the prayers of the Church give voice to our sadness and proclaim to us the hope of resurrection. But the hope proclaimed is not a happily ever after, "in the sweet bye and bye" sort -- it is a realistic hope...grounded in an awareness that death is a part of the human condition. We all go down to the grave, but we stare death in the face and make our song, "Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia."
As a priest, I am privileged to pray these words of the Church at baptisms, marriages and funerals. They are powerful words. They are precise words. These words hover over us with unbearable lightness. They pierce our souls with the heaviness of God's glory. They are words aimed at inviting the congregation to pause in these highly charged moments and remember that we are gathered as a praying community in the presence of God.
My job as a priest is to be as present as I can to the words the Church has given me to say...and to pray them like I mean them. Praying them like I mean them isn't a difficult or onerous task...I do mean them! With every fiber of my being!
The aim of these liturgies is not to produce a "nice service". These liturgies compel us to remember that all we have and all we are -- from birth to rebirth in Christ to death and beyond -- is a gift from the God who created us and calls each of us by name.
posted by FrGaryB | 6:21 PM
5 Comments:
The idea of "lex orandi, lex credendi" ("the law of prayer (is) the law of belief") is more than just a cool concept or marketing pitch for the Prayer Book - it does work that way. (At least, for this cradle Episcopalian, it does/did.) But it's not something that happens overnight..and, I think more importantly, the belief that is engendered is not adequately expressed by the English word. (Neither "credo" in the Latin nor "pisteo" in the Greek translate well!) It is not a matter of repeating the same words enough times that one is able to give intellectual assent to their content.
Once upon a time I heard a story about a Greek Orthodox seminarian...the seminarian went to one of the old priests at the school and said, "I have a problem...I'm not sure I believe everything that's in the Creed." Hearing this, the old priest smacked the seminarian on the side of his head and said, "Idiot! It's not YOUR Creed, it's OUR Creed."
I also love the prayer from the Bernardin's Burial Services on page 101 that begins "We seem to give him back to thee, dear God, who gavest him to us." It includes the line "And life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight." The rest of the prayer is just as beautiful, I use it at every funeral I do and someone always comments on how powerful the words are.
Errr...I dunno...that seems to be some fairly squidgy theology couched in poetic language. My instinct is to run very fast in the opposite direction from anything along the lines of "death is only _X_," where "X" is a dodge to get around the reality of death. I'd rather go down to the grave, return to absolute dust, but make my song "Alleluia" anyway, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.
I think that's an important distinction that seems to get smoothed over a lot in our culture's anxiety and collective denial about death.
I do agree there is power in the words of the BCP. One would think that it would also create consistency in message, but I have not found that to be true. I use to blame it on a written format, but I no longer find that to be the reason. More so it is were the individual is in their faith walk and were the priest is in their own walk. At a previous Episcopal church I went to, we had a supply priest for one Sunday who was very intentional in his delivery. He slowed us down and encouraged us to be more deliberate in our listening, response and reading of the prayers and creeds. What I found (and still do) is that is easy to memorize the replies and prayers and repeat them without much thought or meaning. Being present does not mean being engaged, it is a mental decision on our part a parishioners to be engaged and mentally receptive to the power of the words offered to us. I also think the priest can aid in this by being aware of the state of the congregation, are we present in coma like state or are we a bit off guard and engaged.
I recently heard a lecture on Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" in which the presenter mentioned that the audiences during Shakespeare's day (even the so-called "uneducated" members of the audience) possessed a "capacious aural and oral memory"...ah, the good, old days!
There's been plenty of lament about our society's generally shorter attention span and visual fixation. But identifying a symptom may not address the underlying problem. I'm reminded that clergy are members of this society as well...we aren't immune from the wandering mind or faltering attention.
I agree with Brad that "slowing down" may be the first step toward allowing the words of the liturgy to seep into us.
I was also reminded by his comment that even if a congregation is "catatonic", I am not relieved of my responsibility to lead worship to the best of my ability...I think it's incumbent upon me to remember that "this Sunday" may be the day when one phrase or word leaps off of the page and lodges in someone's mind and heart...that's how the seeds of conversion get planted.
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