That’s Episcopal And Don’t You Forget It

For those of us who became Episcopalians over the past thirty years, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is about all we’ve ever known. It replaced the 1928 BCP, a book held in great reverence by many or the faithful. But the 1979 BCP presented Rite One (language from the 1928 book) as well as Rite Two (modernized language and practice), and it therefore ushered in many changes and allowed for a wider range of liturgical worship than did its predecessor. After its adoption by the wider Church, there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth as the Church bade farewell to its former formulary of Sunday worship, occasioning a number of defections from various congregations here and there, but that is perhaps another topic.

When the 1979 BCP came out, we at St. Paul’s Church (we weren’t a cathedral yet) saw a number of variations occur in the morning service. Not willing to plunge headlong into modernism, we used Rite One during Lent and Advent for a while at the 10:30 service, keeping our toes in the comfortably warm waters of tried and true liturgical tradition. Then, Rite One got reserved for the 8AM service only. We all went along with whatever the liturgist at the time wanted to do, but when we were faced with a combination of Morning Prayer plus Holy Eucharist, discussions arose about the subsequent length of such a pairing (over two hours by the time we ran through a few canticles), and we thought about bringing box lunches into church if this innovation were to continue. Thankfully, it did not.

Then we settled, more or less, into what we have now, and that seems to suit nearly everyone. We worship with a dignified and reverent liturgy that involves the congregation, and generally observes a comfortable rule about sermons: “Talk about God; talk about ten minutes.”

I recently went to church in New York where they haven’t got over the demise of the 1928 Prayer Book, begrudgingly using Rite One from the 1979 BCP, and desperately clinging to rituals and procedures we haven’t seen, perhaps ever, at St. Paul’s. I shall try not to disparage their ways, but I couldn’t help but envision three birds in a lawn, all bending in unison to peck at the same worm, as I watched the three priests at their east-facing altar, choreographing their bowing and sliding back and forth together, accompanied by an attending thurifer who was doing his best to keep them well smoked. There were, of course, no women priests at the altar, but what to my wondering eyes should appear but a female acolyte. So there! Progress!

What impressed me most was the distance that such ritual masses assume, almost as if there was no congregation behind the priests only whose backs are visible. I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, how alienating the east-facing altar is, how remote from the people. The Prayers of the People were prayed by the deacon, thank you, but then I guess he’s one of the ‘the People’ after all. Then he came down among us and we saw his face as he sang the Gospel. The sermon started off with a personal anecdote which turned out to have nothing whatever to do with the lesson from Job, and it’s not as if the preacher didn’t have plenty of time to get around to that great model of patience. It was apt that Job had been the lesson; we prayed for patience.

I apologize now if my review has been too scathing; I really only wanted to make the point that, in the Episcopal Church, we are allowed a wide latitude of worship, and this example presented one of the farther edges of that latitude. Any excursion down Rite One is something of a heavy trip for many of us these days, but a good reminder of how far we’ve come from some of our more hidebound traditions that excluded women priests, women chalice bearers, and in some cases women doing anything at the altar.

Wide allowance of religious practice is a good thing, and one of the strengths of our church. The congregation whose rituals I made fun of just now also has a strong community outreach program, feeds the poor and homeless, finds homes and shelter for unwed mothers, and cares for its elderly. And it is those facets of church life that we need to focus on. Their Sunday worship method may not suit us, their lay readers may fall short of the high quality we’re used to at home, and the sermon might drag on while their straight-backed, oak pews begin to cripple us, but it is the heart of the congregation that should draw our attention as to how that particular church sees its mission in the Kingdom of God and does its best to fulfill that mission.

So, go visit other congregations if you want. You can’t help compare and contrast what you’ll find there with what we have here at St. Paul’s, but be open to finding out what the church is doing for ‘the least of these my brothers’, and you’ll likely come away feeling a lot better about what you’ve learned. Then come on back to St. Paul’s. After all, there’s no place like home.

Robert Heylmun