Category Archives: liturgy

Communion of the Unbaptized

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General Convention begins next week and surely one of the hot topics will concern changing the canons to allow unbaptized people to receive communion. The House of Bishops Theology Committee has issued its report. It is available here as is a lively discussion.

Some people may find it odd that what seems to be an esoteric debate sparks such strong emotions. In fact, the question of whether unbaptized people should be admitted to communion gets at the heart of our theology, our liturgy, and our understanding of the sacraments. The argument for centers around “radical hospitality,” the idea that we need to be open and welcoming to everyone, just as Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. On the other side are equally sound arguments based in the church’s traditional practice in keeping the Eucharist limited to baptized members.

As I see it, the church’s tradition, our liturgy and sacramental theology, all seem to militate against changing our practice. Hospitality can be shared, radical hospitality can be shared without opening the Eucharist to anyone. Communion knits us together as one body of Christ, and baptism is clearly what brings us entry into that body.

At the same time, I have no interest in becoming a gatekeeper, or an ID checker. I will never demand to see a baptismal certificate before putting bread into an outstretched hand at the altar rail. But if I learn that a child or an adult has received communion without being baptized, I will take the opportunity to begin a discussion about what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ, and what baptism and the eucharist mean.

I’ve detected in many of those most vocal in their opposition to the practice of open communion, not so much theological rationale, but concern for boundary maintenance. Boundaries are important, distinguishing and defining the nature of the church is crucial, but it is also true that all boundaries are porous (just ask our Border Patrol).

Tenebrae

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On Wednesday evening, after a year’s hiatus, we again celebrated Tenebrae at St. James. It is a service derived from traditional services of matins and lauds during the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday), and was set for Wednesday in Holy Week in order to keep the focus from Thursday to Saturday on the central services of those days.

As such, it seems somewhat incongruous. The primary action of the service is the gradual extinguishing of candles, so that at the end, there is only a single candle burning, the Christ candle. The service ends with a loud noise, signifying thunder or earthquake. Tenebrae seems to point towards the death and burial of Jesus, even though in the ritual time of the week, those events lie in the future.

While some of the service seems problematic, the psalms and readings are a powerful reminder of human suffering. Psalm 74 with its graphic description of the destruction of the temple, and the readings from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, bring to mind the suffering of the exiles in the sixth century BCE. The destruction of the Temple, and the Exile were indeed traumatic events that became an occasion for deep reflection on God and on faith in God.

When early Christians sought to interpret their own experience of suffering, it was natural that they would turn to their primary liturgical text—the Psalter, and reinterpret the Psalms to fit their own experience. Perhaps the most profound example of that is Psalm 22, which begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is the Psalm that is chanted during the Stripping of the Altar on Maundy Thursday, and again during the Good Friday liturgy.

Tenebrae is scary. It is psychologically disturbing, and occasionally seems manipulative. But chanting those Psalms and hearing the readings is also an opportunity to confront one’s deepest fears and deepest pain, and connect it with Christ’s suffering on the cross.

If you’ve never attended a Tenebrae service, there are online versions. Here’s one from the BBC.

The Great Litany

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Yesterday, our services began with The Great Litany. It has been the custom at St. James, and is the custom in many Episcopal Churches to use The Great Litany on the First Sunday of Lent. It is the first piece of the liturgy translated and published in English, prepared by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer in 1544 for use in all English churches at a time when England was at war with France and Scotland. He drew on Medieval litanies as well as on Luther’s litany from 1529 and a Greek Orthodox version. Litanies of this sort were commonly used during public processions from the earliest centuries of Christianity.

The language and the sentiments expressed in it may sometimes seem archaic or alien to us, but the Great Litany with its several sections is more than a catalog of our sins and supplications. It expresses our profound dependence on God for all that we are and reminds us that in the end, everything in our lives and the world lies in the providence of God.

It’s not without its humorous moments, however. The rubrics (instructions) in the Book of Common Prayer tell us that the Great Litany “may be said or sung, kneeling, standing, or in procession.” Whatever the case, when we come to the request that “… it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand, to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up those who fall,”  we are often praying for ourselves.

If you didn’t get enough of it yesterday, there are a number of online versions available, including this one, which comes from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Falmouth, MA.

Candlemas

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Today, February 2, is the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple. It is one of the most ancient commemorations in the church calendar, and has undergone significant transformation over the centuries. It honors the story in Luke 2 in which Joseph and Mary bring the infant Jesus to the temple. This was a practice in Judaism of the day when a mother would come to temple on the 40th day after birth, to offer sacrifices and be ritually purified. In the Luke story, Mary brings two turtledoves, the sacrifice specified for poor women. One of the focal points of the story is the song of Simeon, which he sings after seeing Jesus. Known as the Nunc Dimmitis, it begins “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation….”

In earlier centuries, this feast day was known as Candlemas. It was the day when the priest blessed the beeswax candles that would be used in the church in the coming year, and laypeople could bring their candles for blessing as well. Mary’s coming to the temple on the fortieth day after giving birth in keeping with Jewish observance had an a significant impact on medieval religious practice. In most of western Christianity, a similar rite “The Churching of Women” was observed on the 40th day. It remained in the prayer book until the 1979 revision. In the sixteenth century, when continental Protestants attempted to do away with it as “popish superstition” they met strong resistance from women, for the celebration had become an important rite of passage and reintegration into the community after childbirth.

Candlemas is a feast day rarely observed by contemporary Episcopalians—we don’t often even use beeswax candles any more. At St. James, most of our candles use oil rather than wax but it had cultural as well as religious significance. One of the legends in England said that a wintry Candlemas would make for a late spring, which is probably the origin of the idea of Groundhog Day.

Perhaps the most important part of the gospel story is Simeon’s song of praise, which is regularly used in the liturgy, especially in the daily office, at evensong or compline. The prayerbook version reads:

Lord, you now have set your servant free

To go in peace as you have promised

For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,

Whom you have prepared for all the world to see:

A Light to enlighten the nations,

And the glory of your people Israel.

And now, O Father, mindful of the love

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One of the legacies my father left me was a love of Church hymnody. I grew up singing hymns unaccompanied, in four-part harmony. My dad had a beautiful voice and for many years led the singing and directed the choir in his church. But he didn’t sing only on Sundays. As I remember, he was almost always whistling or humming, or even singing hymns as he worked during the week. In fact, it was one of the things that annoyed me when I was a teenager. He was a carpenter and I grew up spending time with him on the jobsite. As soon as I was big enough, I began working with him. Every summer from junior high through high school, and on into college, the day after school was over, he would wake me up and put me to work.

That was bad enough; but usually from Monday through Friday, as he worked, he would be whistling, or humming, or singing, one of the hymns that had been sung in church on Sunday. And more often than not, it was a catchy tune, with words that seemed to me less than adequate theologically (yes, I became a critic quite early in life). I would get so annoyed by this, that by the middle of the week I would try to think of an alternative, more suitable hymn, and try to outsing him, or at least get him to make a change.

I thought of that today. On Sunday, as we were preparing the altar, Karen played variations on one of my favorite hymns, and then at the 11:00 service, we sang it as one of the communion hymns. It’s a text by William Bright and the title is “And now,O Father, mindful of the love.” The tune is beautiful, but on Sunday I had the opportunity to sing the words and to look closely at them during the service. I especially love the second verse:

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
and only look on us as found in him;
look not on our misusings of thy grace,
our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
for lo, between our sins and their reward
we set the Passion of thy Son our Lord.

Bright’s words evoke the concluding collect of the Good Friday liturgy:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.

I suspect that for my father singing hymns throughout the week wasn’t just about the music; it was a form of prayer. It is a real gift to my spiritual life and to my journey toward Holy Week, that since Sunday, the tune of that hymn has been going through my mind, becoming my prayer of preparation for this most holy of seasons.

Lord, have mercy

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Our observance of Lent at St. James brings sin to the forefront of our consciousness. We begin each service with the Penitential Order and in one of our Lenten programs we are studying Dante’s Divine Comedy. Last night in our discussion, we noted that Dante has a very different hierarchy of sins than ours. In our culture, sexual immorality seems to be the most offensive, while for Dante, the lustful were confined to the third of nine circles. Below them suffered (among others) misers and spendthrifts (in the fourth), flatterers (in the eighth), traitors (in the ninth). One of the fun things about reading The Inferno is noticing Dante’s changing attitude toward the suffering he is observing. Initially he sympathizes with the sinners; over time he comes to detest them and even occasionally add to their suffering. As his guide, Vergil tells him “piety lives when pity dies.”

It’s easy for us to say the words of the confession of sin and conclude, from the priest’s absolution, that we are OK. But sin isn’t only about acts we commit; sin is also about who we are. We are fallen human beings in need of God’s grace. This week I saw Little Children, a movie presented by the Upstate Film Society. Among the most deeply moving and disturbing films I’ve seen in quite some time, it is an examination of the emptiness of suburban life, in which lonely people seek meaning in broken relationships. One of the most poignant scenes is of a date between a convicted sex offender and a woman who suffers from mental illness. The two make a profound connection through their brokenness but the date ends in catastrophe. The film depicts raw humanity at its bleakest with no hint of redemption. Sarah, the leading character who sought release from the prison of suburbia through a desperate affair and planned to escape with her lover, in the end abandons her plan and returns to her suburban existence. Her only hope for survival seems to be in the love she shares with her daughter.

One of the great benefits of communal worship is the shared experience of confession, forgiveness, and grace. At the altar, we see ourselves and each other as we are, fallen human beings in need of, and receiving God’s grace. As I’ve reflected about the sinners I read about in The Inferno and in Little Children, and as I reflect on my own existence this Lent, I realize how very little separates me from them. It isn’t the gravity of the sins that sets me apart, but the fact that I ask God’s forgiveness.

Hear us, O Christ

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On Sunday, we began all three services with the Great Litany. The majestic cadences and beautiful language of the Litany transported us back 450 years to the very beginning of the English Reformation. It was the first portion of the liturgy that Archbishop Cranmer translated into English in the 1540s. The version we used is considerably modernized, yet it retains the penitential feel of the original. As I led the congregation in the Litany at the first two services, I reflected on the power of its words to shape my understanding of my self as a sinner. Later, the cantor who sang at the third service, remarked to me, “It doesn’t let us off the hook.” What he meant was that in the series of petitions, we give voice to all of our sins, and we also give voice to all of the ways in which we need to repent, and in which we need to receive God’s forgiveness.

One of the first things that attracted me to the Episcopal liturgy was the simplicity and beauty of the confession: “we have sinned against you, in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” That pretty much covers it. But it doesn’t end there. The priest’s absolution reminds us that God forgives us for all of our sins. Still, even though we say the words of that confession every Sunday, it is good to be reminded occasionally, as in the Great Litany, that our sins go deeper than the words of the confession.

Lent provides us an opportunity to take our religious lives more seriously than we are wont to do. We often symbolize that by giving something up, something dear to us. In my case, I have given up bourbon, and I have again, as I often have in the past, vowed to give up meat on Fridays. But spiritual discipline does not only mean giving something up. It can also mean taking something on, trying something that one might not otherwise do, like the daily office, or a regular regimen of prayer, reading, or even works of mercy.  In Lent, we can try something on, see how it fits; sometimes, we might discover that the practice we take on quickly becomes a habit, part of us.

One of my struggles as a priest is finding space to worship in the midst of distributing ashes, leading the congregation in the Great Litany, or celebrating Eucharist. Often worship takes place in small, unguarded moments, when I catch the eye of a parishioner as I am making the sign of the cross with ashes on their forehead, or as I place the Host in their hands. Occasionally, though, as I am saying the words, the prayer I am saying for the congregation beomes my prayer: “In all times of sorrow, in all times of joy, in the hour of our death and at the day of judgment, Savior deliver us.”

The Great Litany reminds us of our brokenness, as individuals, as families and congregations, as a church, a nation, and a worldwide community of life. To acknowledge that brokenness and our own responsibility for it is one of the great lessons of Lent. As I was leading the Litany on Sunday, I realized again how much of our church’s and our world’s problems are created by people who recognize the sin in others, but seem unable to acknowledge or admit the sin in their own. My prayer for this Lent is that I pray with utter sincerity: “Grant me true repentance, forgive us our sins of negligence, and ignorance and our deliberate sins, and grant us the gracec of your Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to your word.” Amen.

Fr. Jonathan

Reflections on Eucharistic Sharing

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Reflections on Eucharistic Sharing

One of the biggest stories to come out of the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania last week was the news that a number of the primates refused to receive communion at the Eucharist in the presence of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts-Schori. In a statement signed by seven archbishops, they defended their refusal to share with two arguments: first, that the New Testament teaches that before sitting at table with one another, we must be reconciled (referring to Matthew 5: 23-26 and I Corinthians 11: 27-29); and second, by quoting the Book of Common Prayer’s Exhortation to Communion which includes the statement “Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; Draw near with faith.”

There had been much speculation about this in the weeks leading up to the Primates’ Meeting, in part because it became known after their last meeting in 2005 that almost a third of the Primates refused to participate in joint Eucharists. We do not know yet how many withdrew from this expression of unity in Dar es Salaam, but it seems to be the case that the number this year is far fewer. Their actions are a reminder that Christian unity is a fragile thing and that it founders, not only on grave matters of doctrine and practice, but also on much more human faults—pride and self-righteousness.

My understanding of the Eucharist has taken shape over the years, beginning with my experience growing up in the Mennonite Church, where, when I was a boy, communion was used as a tool of discipline. One of my earliest memories as a baptized member of the church was the members’ meeting held several days before our semi-annual celebration of communion. I remember vividly how the clergy cited the roll of those who would be excluded from communion, excluded from membership because of their sins. Several years later, I remember as well how one elderly man would demonstratively leave the church service before the beginning of communion to make clear his conviction that our church was no longer the pure bride of Christ it needed to be.

Those members’ meetings lost their force over the years of my membership in that church, but they continued to hold power over my imagination and over the imaginations of much older members. I recall going through minutes of members’ meetings from early in the twentieth century with my aunts. We were amused by the infractions which led to excommunication—attendance at the County Fair was among the most grievous sins. But we were most surprised to see, in the report from one meeting in the 1910’s mention that my grandfather had been reinstated into full communion, though his infraction was not specified.

One of the reasons I became an Episcopalian was because I found in the celebration of the Eucharist, in the reception of Christ’s Body and Blood, a symbol of God’s gracious acceptance of me, a sinner. The words of the Confession, the Priest’s absolution, and our approach to the altar, is potent evidence of the power of God’s grace to overcome our sins, and to overcome our broken-ness as a community.

A few weeks ago, a Catholic visitor to St. James asked whether he needed to make his confession before participating in the Eucharistic celebration. I responded to him with a resounding “Maybe”—maybe, if his personal spiritual journey required that step. But I also said to him that the Eucharistic table was not our table, it is our Lord’s, and just as Jesus ate with sinners in his own lifetime, we come to the table, all of us, as sinners, all of us needing God’s grace. To deny access to the grace of the Eucharist for any reason, is to deny the power of repentance and to deny the power of God’s grace to make of each of us, each day, a new creation.

Fr. Jonathan