The Church Has Different Faces (Part II)

Where the Episcopal Church had all the grace and stateliness of the old world, Zion had the light of new life. Built on a hill, Zion is appropriately named and I was struck by the brightness of this church. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, indeed! Where St. Luke was red, Zion was white. This church did not have the mystique of St. Luke's, but it was alive! People were bustling around, greeting one another, smiling and talking. Children were waving their palm leaves. It was a chaotic friendliness.

Zion Lutheran Church in Kalamazoo, MI

As the service began, the chaos subsided into a comfortable rhythm. An organ prelude. A gospel

reading. A hymn. A congregational response. Another New Testament reading. Offertory. Then, it was the time for what we were all looking forward to: the Cantata! The choir and orchestra were superb.

One song in particular grabbed me and forced me to consider what it was we were celebrating. Called “One Day,” this song began with the women singing in subdued voices about the sin that “was as black as could be.” Then the men joined in with a drum pounding the unrelenting story of the man who was born of a virgin, but was rejected and nailed to a tree. The chimes brought in the next part of the story: the grave could not hold Him! As the piece crescendoed, it told the story of triumph. O glorious day! This musical presentation of the gospel was so beautiful, I wanted to cry and laugh all at the same time.

Of course, I am also biased in favour of Zion because they sang one of my favourite hymns: “What Wondrous Love is This.” I will forgive the choir for stealing my favourite verse, but only because they did such a good job of it!

There were other things along the way that made this time so meaningful. Because the words were printed in the bulletin, I was able to reflect on them and think about our description of heaven as home, the idea that Christ's life and death are both expressions of His love, the centurion's realization of Christ's divinity before His resurrection, and the appearance of sight—excuse the pun—in our Scriptures and songs (i.e. we speak of receiving sight at the cross, Paul was blinded at the same time he first recognized Christ as Lord, God's gift to Simeon was being able to see the promised Christ before his death, etc.). It was a good service and the crowning touch was receiving palm leaves of my own as we left the sanctuary! This is the face of Christ's bride.

The Church Has Different Faces (Part I)

St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Kalamazoo, MI

As we pulled up to the Episcopal church, I was struck by the European architecture and longed to have a few minutes to explore the building's various nooks and crannies. The doors and hallways led off rooms as if put there as an afterthought. As we walked through the arches from one hallway to another, we passed various pieces of art—postmodern, traditional, and everything in between. This eclectic collection of pieces only served to give the place an aged charm. And as far as American buildings go, it was pretty old—176 years old, to be exact.

It was the main sanctuary that took my breath away though. I love the colour red. It's majestic, bold, and in the right shade, it demands reverence. The sanctuary had been dipped in the colour of blood. And soaring over the padded pews, beautiful stained glass windows let in the sun's light. Everywhere I turned, there were palm branches, the green leaves proclaiming life and a reminder that this faith of ours is not a remnant of the past. These symbols of faith surrounding me were not merely vestiges of a dead religion. Our God lives! But I was struck by the emptiness. There were no people to affirm this truth.

Forgive me as I get carried away in describing the physical church. You see, we arrived at 8 am and the Palm Sunday service had been moved to 9 am, so I had ample opportunity to gaze on the beauty surrounding me. But we also met the church embodied in the person of Charlie Large. Charlie met us coming up to the church doors and graciously allowed us into the locked building. He tottered his way through the halls, maintaining a steady narration on the building's various rooms—the Chapel, the crematorium*, the side room that was going to get a stained glass window soon... I got the impression that we were his special guests and he was delighted to give us a grand tour of his home. You see, 79 of his 89 years had been spent in this church. He had seen priests and bishops come and go (and had opinions on each of them!). He had seen this church dwindle from its hey day of over a thousand in the pews to a mere 300 or so.

In talking further with him, I realized that we were conversing with a research scientist, who had been a force to be reckoned with in his day (although I also gathered that the current bishop still thought he was a force to be reckoned with!). He told us about how research had been conducted back in his day. We heard about his friend's dogs and his late wife's inability to stand winters (I could empathize!). We learned about the current priest's compassion for children and the special service they conducted for them on Saturday nights. When we took our leave of Charlie (to find the service in the park he mentioned), I could not help thinking about this spry, opinionated old man wandering through the building and welcoming a couple lost individuals into his church and hoping I might see him again before he departs to cross the river!

*This is the term Charlie used. It was a room where the ashes of the deceased were kept.

A Love of Liturgy

Advent Candles.

The appeal of the tradition and reverence of the “high church” is one I understand. It’s why I’ve visited and appreciated Russian Orthodox services and Catholic masses, why I did not feel out of place in a Wesleyan church for four years, and why I am in the process of reclaiming my Anabaptist heritage. It is in humility that I acknowledge we have been pursuing God for a long time and perhaps my youthful ideas of what is best for the church are wrong.

Allow me to explain the value I see in liturgical churches.

I love the liturgy, its cadences, the congregational unity it creates, its majesty, and the theological depths contained in the words. I love how liturgy combines reason and faith and beauty. And the hymns... I want to tell Chris Tomlin to stop “modernizing” these classics. Let them be. Let us relax into the long held notes, let the sopranos soar into beautiful descants, let’s revive multi-part harmonies, and please, oh please can we occasionally end in the hushed reverence of an a cappella “Amen”?

Liturgical worship acknowledges our bodies. Somehow, in the evangelical Protestant world we have lost the ability to worship God with our senses. Where are the flickering candles that remind us of life’s fragility, the warmth of God’s presence, and the light we must be to the world? Where is the incense that reminds us that our prayers are a fragrant offering to God? Where is the profusion of colour that reminds us of the Creator God’s infinite variety and childlike delight in creating something as frivolous as colour? Where are the textures of solid wood and heavy materials that recall the firm foundation on which we stand and the majesty of a King?

I love the Church calendar. I love her rhythms. I love her rises and falls. I love the anticipation and expectation of Advent. I love the innocence and wonder of Christmas. I love the solemnity of Ash Wednesday. I love the perseverance and strength of character developed during Lent. I love the joy and hope of Palm Sunday. I love that Maundy Thursday reminds me to participate in footwashing and service and rending my heart before God. I love the grief and darkness and acceptance of the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice on Good Friday. I love the cleansing healing of Easter Sunday. I love the all-reaching love of God that won’t be stopped by languages seen during Pentecost. The church calendar echoes the patterns of my own life. It reminds me that there are seasons of hope, seasons of discipline, seasons of grace, and seasons of joy. My journey on this narrow path is not linear, but sinusoidal and that is just part of a growing, living faith.

In short, there is so much that contributes to my liturgical leanings, but I must be fair. I must give the other side as well and explain why I am not a member of a high church.

I worship a God who will take me as I am, broken and bleeding. He does not stand on ceremony when I cry out to Him in pain and beg Him to cleanse me of my filth. This rawness is also part of my faith. I must be able to fall to my knees in His presence or prostrate myself on the floor or stand with my head thrown back. What arrogance that I will sit complacently in my pew while confessing my blackest thoughts!

Shadowlands. Photo Credit: Minesh Bacrania

I want to bring whatever I can to the altar. I want to bring Him my love for theatre. Would a “traditional” church allow me to perform dramatic readings for the glory of God or worship Him through narrative and poetry? Would I be free to explore different expressions of my adoration for God? I want to be free to participate in the traditions in new, but still meaningful ways. Must the form always be preserved, or can the form be more flexible, while the spirit remains? Can we make Communion become a Love Feast once again? Can we move the ashed cross from our foreheads to our hands, where it is a more effective reminder to ourselves, rather than merely a public statement? Can our Tenebrae Service incorporate the Stations of the Cross and an African American poem? Will I forget the freedom of expression if I am bound within a certain form?

For these reasons (among others), I still call myself an Anabaptist. I submit that we are able to worship God in many forms and only those which are useful for bringing us before the throne ought to be retained. And these forms ought to be re-evaluated at regular intervals. What is effective for bringing someone to the throne of God may not work for another. Also, what works at one time, does not work at another. There is a time and season for every activity under heaven. And so I do not bid everyone to appreciate the liturgy as I do, but I ask that those who do not participate acknowledge its importance for others and understand the failings of their own particular forms of worship (for we all have tendencies and/or practices, which are not completely healthy). And so, let us look at our own traditions and judge what is good and what is lacking.