Hooks to Hang your Faith on

I haven’t posted for a while because it has been both busy and mundane.

On Sunday I negotiated to just sit in the congregation and watch things form that end for a while.

Observations: -

1) I was in the youngest 10% of the congregation. In my own church I am roughly in the middle, and sometimes feel too old for the evening service.

2) When you are not standing next to the choir, the hymn-singing sounds weak and feeble. This is not the fault of the people – the acoustics are bad, there are large gaps between the people, and hymns [in contrast to contemporary Christian songs] are set at a pitch where most men simply can’t reach. You don’t mind singing out of tune if your voice is drowned out, but when your voice will be heard by those near (well relatively near), you don’t have the nerve to sing with any energy. Especially if you suspect they like ‘contemplative worship’ and think loud singing is irreverent. So – quiet, feeble singing. From my charismatic perspective, reverence of God means making AT LEAST as much noise as you would when reverencing a victorious football (soccer) team returning with the World Cup. God has done more than kick a bag of air about!

3) The rood screen is an obstacle to the view, and sets an artificial division between the congregation and those with formal roles. In the words of the Sacristan – them and us. He says the screen arose in the middle ages when churches were used more as community centres (good) and would therefore have had animals staying the night in them from time to time and the screen was to keep the animals out of the sanctuary. I can see the point, though from my point of view I don’t consider one place more holy than another – God is everywhere – and I would also consider the animals made by god to be holy too. But I’m being picky there – its just a different perspective. Anyway, we are no longer in the middle ages with animals around, and I think the rood screen should go.

4) I was able to follow the service well (except for the bit where the middle pages fell out of my service book and confused me completely). I did appreciate the fact that a liturgical form of worship means that all can participate in more than just singing hymns.

I spent some time with the sacristan as arranged long ago. He explained a lot of the meanings of the vestments to me, and showed me the Aumbry, and stuff like that. He describes these things as ‘Hooks to hang your faith on’. In his former role as a surveyor, he used to remind himself of the key actions in a compulsory purchase by remembering each one hanging on a hook in a row of coats hooks. And so, in the church, the vestments and rituals are things that he uses to remind himself of the key points of the faith. I can see where he is coming from, and it makes sense. In my personality I am able to deal with things in a fairly abstract manner, but every one is wired up slightly differently, and for him these things are very helpful. Another key aspect, which I can endorse, is that they are physical representations, or re-enactments, of his faith, almost in the same way that he sees the bread and wine as incarnational. I am coming at it from a very different angle to him, yet I can respect his view as a legitimate one.

But coming back to the meanings of things – I was surprised that he didn’t seem able to give me official definitions of the meanings of things – it seemed like it was a more personal interpretation, and that other interpretations were valid. I’m not sure if official meanings exist. I can see that these things might have been useful in earlier times to visually communicate the gospel to illiterate peoples, but if the meanings are flexible, how effective is the communications? And if the meanings are so flexible, do the rituals paradoxically end up actually meaningless?

I have also attended more Wednesday choral evensongs and more Sunday evening prayers.

I have come to appreciate the Choral Evensongs as an act of worship to God. So often we think church is there to entertain us, and when I told my family that there is only 5 in the congregation apart from the vicar, readers and choir, they wondered why we bother going to the effort for just five. But that is missing the point – it is for GOD, not us. Having said that, I have heard from god in these services. This week the singing of Psalm 94 really communicated to me in a way that would not have worked in my own congregation, where the psalm would be read not sung, and even if read with expression it wouldn’t have worked so well.

Where the Choral Evensong uses the Book of Common Prayer, the Sunday evening prayer uses the ASB, which was never officially approved by parliament. I always say the words wrong in this, and in a congregation of 4 including all the ‘staff’, this is embarrassing.

When I went to the church on Monday night for what I thought was a business meeting of the Readers, we did the ASB evening worship first, complete with homily, before we got down to business. Great, acknowledge God at the start of the meeting. But to sit through exactly the same stuff again was really tedious.

Common Worship says that repetition of services means that eventually you learn them by heart and then you can worship God without the need to read and shuffle papers, and can really enter into the spirit of the worship. Fair enough, but the stage after that is that you stop paying attention at all. Be honest now - how many of us really pay attention when we say the Lords Prayer? And in the passage where Jesus taught the prayer he warned us not to use repetitions (Matt 6 v 7 KJV) – so I always rebel when I am told to pray [repeat it word for word] as Jesus taught us – NO HE DIDN’T!

When I told friends (including former Anglicans) I was joining an Anglican Church, they warned me against it saying “It’s the same every week!” Their tone of voice was that of refugees from a disaster pouring out their woes to the media.

I have not experienced this sameness in my own Anglican Church, but after two months on my placement I am beginning to get the feel for what they mean and to be honest I am looking forward to the end.

End of Rant

For my last month, I have been given a more active role. I will be the one reading the Liturgy for next Sunday evening (ASB), and for the second Wednesday (BOCP) services, and will do the homily on the last Sunday Evening of my placement. I am also doing the prayers this Sunday.

After that, I have to prepare a report on my placement for the Year Group meeting in January. The report will be read by my supervisor at the placement church, so I shall have to be more balanced than I am in this post!