The Value of Doing Easter in full

I am not a ridiculously pious man, despite my calling and present ministry. Indeed, some often claim surprise when they discover that do indeed have a spiritual side - a matter for concern perhaps, but not one that I lose sleep about just now. The fact is, I am a fairly normal type - maybe just not your typical rictus God-botherer.

Over the last few years I have been learning about something which, when expressed out loud as in the form of a blog post, seems obvious. Despite the impression of me that you may have formed if you read this thing often enough, I do not come from a heavily liturgical tradition of church. Indeed, my child-hood parish was a fairly straight-forward estate brick wigwam, blessed with a choir that could only sing in unison. I was not born into a bells-and-smells tradition - no: I chose it having tried other things first. 

As I have grown as a Christian, I have discovered the simple truth about Passiontide, Holy Week and Easter: the more I put in the more I get out. In simple terms, for me it is an all-or-nothing thing. 

As the Vicar, one of the things that I am required to do is to lay out the liturgical flow for the year. That I enjoy it and have something of a gift for it is besides the point (I am a crap preacher, so being good at something else is good). I sat in the immediate wake of a happy Christmas and made choices - not for me, but for the good people of Whitton, not least among whom are the worshippers at this here edifice. I pondered last year at the feed-back that I received after the first such sweeps of ceremonial formed by my vicarly hand, and it was good. It observed the very thing that I myself feel when I seek the Lord - that the more you put in the more you get out. This seems to be the plimsoll line for ritualist Christians. 

And so I drafted the list of services between Palm Sunday and Easter. Upon emailing it, I could sense the gasps, but it was my sense that it was my job to take my people on a journey with Christ. Yes, it needed flavour above and beyond the purpose presented in the Story, so we had Healing on one day, Meditation on another and longer prayers on another. It struck me last year that different people come to different things, so Good Friday was an epic Whitton marathon (for me and the three others who did all of it) of more than nine hours of worship. Each was well-attended and often by very distinctive groups of people. However, it was also having an effect on me - this year I have done more than I have been party to or have lead in previous years and in simple terms - the effect of the entire story on me was yet greater than it had previously been. The more I did, personally, the more I felt connected. 

My abiding memory of this year was being sat in the hall next to my wife watching The Passion of the Christ after a day of liturgising. She was weeping as the film ended and others were holding one another in consolation. For me, Easter 2013 will be characterised by people 'getting it', maybe for the first time. As I look back on the last ten days, I think perhaps more is more. How could anyone ever fully appreciate the joy and cost of Easter in just one visit?

Covering Up In Church

Not the real Archbishop of Canterbury

With thanks, once again, to Rowan Atkinson, the proud claimant to the world's largest car-insurance payout!

In my little church at the posh end of Twickenham, we have been subject to the desires of an unknown soul to enforce exposure in the face of our absolute desire to cover up. It has now happened four times that I have witnessed this exposure, and the sensibilities of my punters have been seriously tested. Indeed, the  Sacristan's hair appears to have actually shrunk in recent weeks. 

For proper some Christians, it is the time of year when we cover up. If you don't cover up at this time of year you are a meagre different style of Christian who, rather than pursuing modesty, would rather remain exposed within your church buildings. Such behaviour is to be condemned celebrated as part of the diversity of the Church.

I know that most more than half of you are wondering what I am talking about, and it is true that you don't in fact know. If you were a proper liturgical Christian, you would know that on Passion Sunday, and then on until Easter Saturday, you would cover up all the images, statuary, crosses and crucifixes in the church. If you have ever wandered into a church where everything seems to be draped in little crimson or purple hankies, then there is a good reason (albeit a practice with a good reason that is almost completely extinct in Anglican circles). In very simple terms, the practice of covering up icons and all other images in the church is to remove those sources of personal comfort at a time when we are called to focus purely on the passion and the agony of Jesus Christ. For those of us who employ iconography  for example, as a tool for private devotion, this time is quite deliberately and actually a challenge. 

In my little church, we have been discovered a new phenomenon. As I have said, on four occasion I (or others) have come into the unlocked church to see most, if not all, of the coverings removed - and then folded neatly and placed besides the image in question. At such discoveries, the clothes were dutifully replaced thereby covering once again the images in question. At then it happened again; and again; and again. 

Part of me is apt to be a bit narky - and my instinct is often: "why don't you just leave the bloody things alone, whoever you are?". The larger part of me has wrestled that appetite and won as it occurred to me that for possibly the first time in the life of this parish, someone 'got it' - even though they didn't like it and reversed it. It tells me that the same person is in church when it is open, not to rob us of hymn books or let off fire-extinguishers, but to adore Christ. Whilst it is contrary to my practice, their removal of the coverings from the icons, images and crosses tells me that someone (as yet unknown) is committed, devoted and indeed comfortable enough in the church to undertake to find their own comfort in the sacred things. Put another way, one person who notices and objects is surely worth a hundred who don't notice at all.

I am unsure, for the record, if it is appropriate to cover up snare drums and amplifiers on Passion Sunday.  I cannot claim to know everything!

God is Gone Up

Courtesy of c28.com

I am fast learning, as a priest, that some of these festival days are hard things to preach at - and to not say the same thing a year later!

Anyway, brothers and sisters, it is the Feast of the Ascension, or as we like to call it in these parts, the Feast of the Ascension. Last year I considered how it must have been for the disciples with their new "Jesus shaped hole", and as I approached my own first incumbency, wondered how it might have been for twelve ordinary folk and their supporters taking on their first incumbency for the whole planet.

This year, I have been thinking about that utterance from the Cross - "it is finished", or "it is accomplished". They are significant words, much pondered and the essence of which is the fluff in so many prayer cushions! I think though, without the Ascension, this statement would have meant the darkest of things, and not the most salvific. 

So much of faith and church life alludes to journeying. Each act of worship has a beginning, a middle and an end (even the most 'spontaneous' acts). Even our meetings are framed by a route of journey. Time passes, and one thing leads to the next thing - and if we forget that in the sparkling moments of our faith's story, we miss a great deal of the point - I believe. 

Imagine Bethlehem and the birth. Great - a baby, new parents, gifts, heavenly creatures and the odd ungulate. Imagine the stable without the Christ's ministry and you simply have a Christmas Card scene, or at least a scene long ago forgotten because it would have fast become the account delivered by perceived beardy-weirdies. Jesus' ministry - full of miracle and teaching. Imagine that ministry without the Passion and death of Jesus. It would have been a notable ministry of an itinerant healer-preacher. No more no less. The crucifixion was a tragedy, a heinous crime - but without the Resurrection it would simply have been the slaying of a local religious hero, an early William Wallace moment. It may have even reached a history book, maybe. The Resurrection turned that murder into the atoning sacrifice, the crime into the most significant gift known to humankind. 

Without the Ascension, the only thing accomplished would have been the darker intentions of jealous pharisees and weak Romans. No more, no less. 

So, this is in many ways the final piece in the Jesus Jigsaw - the last piece that locks all the others into place. All that was done would have remained undone and incomplete had it not been for this super-natural and mysterious moment when the entire process set into place at the point of the Annuniciation was consummated and completed. 

Annunciation to Ascension - the greatest journey in the world, and we make it every year!

And So it Begins

Time to write during the course of this year has been scarce, and even more so as we step closer to the events of the Triduum.

The Lenten journey is epic, if done with any sense of purpose, and brings with it a renewal in the understanding that we have in the stories of our Scripture. Without a good Lent, there is a very real danger that the events we recollect in the days to come will be little more than fancy legends.

Palm Sunday explodes into a Lenten backdrop and having been denuded of our 'Alleluias' of late, find the arrived of our 'Hosannas' to be thrilling. Processing in all the garb and pomp around the church grounds may seem like an eccentricity to a passer-by, but to us who have walked Lent, it truly is a festival day. Barmy we may appear with our floppy palm branches, but joyous we certainly are. Changed too, if the faces on the crowd were anything to go by last Sunday lunchtime.

Today I have wrestled with sermons, devotions, liturgies and paper. Maundy Thursday has arrived, and despite being a feast of celebration, brings with it the roll of clouds on the horizon. We know that we will enter the church in White and Gold, but we try hard not to think about the desecration that will follow. Anyone who experiences the brutality of the Stripping of the Altar in out liturgy will have found it hard not to feel what is happening, as real in our day as in Jesus'. Only for mere moments in a whole year do we find a chance to sit, one-to-one, with Jesus. The perfume of flowers, the semi twilight of candlelight, the near silence of a church in watchful prayer - a sensory treasure if any existed. A pure moment in a faith journey. 

Good Friday is always a funny one. We are left with so little after the robbery of Maundy Thursday, yet we find the most meaning in lots of ways. We are forced, as worshipers, to cope without the beauty and the 'things' of our faith's practice. We are called to look on the agony of one man, almost certainly younger than any of us, as his body is smashed before our eyes. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Father, why have you left me here to die? For those of us who will lay face down on ground, there is a sense that would be better if we were spared having to get up and proceed. The hardest thing, for the onlooker, is the lack of reverence. We are a processional people, a well-behaved gathering - yet we leave in disarray, in chaos - as the church doors are bolted fast and we are left with nowhere to go. 

Darkness gives way to light on Holy Saturday. The darkness of death is conquered by the nullifying light of new life. A tiny spark of light on beeswax announces the Resurrection of our Saviour. The light pours across the church and the lullaby of the Exsultet is sung, pronouncing the arrival, finally, of Easter. Light explodes over the entire gathering and life is restored. The journey to new light is complete, accomplished. Dreams have come true. 

The amount of work that we all put in at this time of year is a fit reminder of the real significance of the events that lay ahead. This isn't just another Triduum, it is the Triduum. It is our Triduum. 

And may the betrayed, crucified and Risen Lord bless us all.

My New Favouritist Thing In the World for Today

While all of you have been sleeping and waking, working and playing, eating and drinking, fighting and loving - a process has been taking place that few people ever see. It is a thing that takes place in deepest darkest secret, emerging complete like a mysterious creation from another world.

Well, sort of.

Today I have been mostly building services - a sort of Liturgy Construction Site where the framework of our worship has taken form. 

And it is the most fun in the world, let me tell you (unless you happen to be my Sacristan [and he reads this] in which case it is a source of much concern).

With all services and liturgies, you could open up a book, start at the beginning and get to the end, doing as directed in a blind way until it becomes just another register entry. Alternatively, you can build a living thing, that has shades of light and dark, periods of noise and silence, spells of great pathos and emotion. And so it is that I have been putting together the big services that regale the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord. I have completed Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and rather than having formed four distinct liturgies, have crafted one liturgy in four movements. 

Fashioning liturgy is a wonderful thing, and this is the first year I have done it on this scale (for, perhaps, obvious reasons). Until now, I have picked up the book or Order of Service and done what is said. This process gives a depth to that which I finding incredibly helpful. It's in little choreographic moments that so much can be achieved in these services that we all know and love (if we know and love them) - for example, matching the three points where the Cross on Good Friday enters the church to those where the Paschal Candle enters a day later. Another is the use of the Pangue Lingua and its tune - once on Maundy Thursday, and again in echo at the time of the Veneration on Good Friday. The use of bells and their discontinuation - all these things, small and apparently accidental, give so much flavour, so much more meaning. 

Finally, I get liturgy. It is orchestral. It isn't linear as it sometimes appears or is delivered, but a beautiful movement of events that rotate, rise and fall. Needless to say, this Easter will now mean even more to me than I ever thought it could - because I have been granted a rare opportunity to shape worship (not as frequent an event in the life of a Vicar as you might imagine)

Loose Liturgy

This is for you Anglo-Catholics and you Charismatics out there!

This is Easter Day, the culmination of the arduous journey of Lent, the steep climb of Holy Week, the pause for relief of Mothering Sunday, the agony of the Passion and the desolation of the Cross. Today is the day when we see Him rise. 

I sit here as a tired little curate, one who earned his pennies this last few weeks. The last twenty-four hours, in our church, have witnessed some extra-ordinary scenes, liturgically speaking. What we witnessed was lively liturgy, liturgy in the moment, worship of the second and of the people there - but I have discovered that it doesn't happen by accident.

Last night we had the great celebration of the Easter-eve Vigil, and with it twelve confirmations and eight baptisms. That meant that we had to re-arrange the church to accommodate what was to take place and those who would  come to witness it (a case for churches without pews, just there). Having such a large gathering comprising many who were strangers to our edifice meant that we were often at the mercy of circumstance, within a framework. I am fast learning that 'catholic' acts of worship are at their best if they compromise to the moment. A liturgy that is wrought-iron might look fabulous and is without doubt beautiful, but it offers no room to breathe. A loose liturgy knows where it is going, what needs to happen, and also what can be sacrificed if the need arose. For the gathering, we hope a healthy mix of the formal and the informal; for the priests, a considerable effort not unlike sailing a yacht close to the wind. Our liturgy was acrobatic, spontaneous catholic liturgy, and it worked. 

Today's celebration of Easter welcomed three little ones for baptism. It meant yet more welcome guests who were unsure of what they were doing. It meant, happily, a coach-load of visiting kids who felt comfortable in our Medieval Barn. Some parents worried that their children were too boisterous, but they weren't.

Knowing what is meant to happen when and where is important. It means that liturgy has structure, direction, flow and meaning. I am not one for excessive spontaneity for fear of getting to the end without having journeyed to all the places required, so I have learned the art of holding tight to the rope, while it hangs loose. To a casual observer, the Eucharist may have seemed chaotic, and perhaps in odd moments it was. I firmly believe that good liturgy tabs into order at given points, with times of fluidity interspersed between them. It is, I think, more tiring for we the leaders of the service, but that is the joy of our work. To be thanked by a visitor to our church with comments about how the formal and informal was helpful, made my day.

Happy Easter to you all. Christ is risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!

The world without Resurrection

I touched on a thought today in my sermon, which for reasons logistical, meant that the touch remained light - so I am going to unpack my thought just a little more here. Also, a zeal-filled Priest ought to say something meaningful on his Blogette on Easter Day, just in case God is watching and thinks I have signed off early!

I am often mindful that we have a very specific perspective on events 'biblical' because we have the 20-20 vision of hindsight (which is, after all, an exact science). We trot through Lent, Holy Week, the Passion and the first stages of the Triduum as the preparation for Easter Day, and rightly so, for it is the focus of our Christian heart - but what about the hapless ordinary Joes - the Disciples. They hadn't got the New Testament to hand (and if they did, it would  be the NRSV, of course). They didn't have the happy memories of 'last Easter' when fliching from the side of Golgotha, and frankly, they had no inkling that this was all going go anywhere else than right down the toilet. Jesus, the man of snappy parables and handy one-liners was quite dead. Now, without a New Testament to hand, how does a mere mortal contemplate this as anything other that catastrophic failure? I am guessing that they missed their boats (was Zebedee still sitting on that boat, I wonder) - thinking that perhaps this had all been something of a fools errand. I am sure I would have. I am sure that had I been former fisherman Cloake of Galilee 90210, I'd be just a tad dis-chuffed by all of this. 

So, what were they to think when the Aramatheian Cave was discovered to be devoid of its post-crucified inhabitant. That would probably add to my dis-chuffment, as I would also have been denied the chance to bid a final goodbye (and to say sorry for being human and a mite inadequate these last few days). Thankfully we have the rather marvellous Mary of Magdala who 'gets it' - but what a leap of faith! 

I extrapolated this to church life - and painted a church that, in the Resurrection, was without role and rota. Imagine a church where all the job roles have vanished and all the rotas somehow 'defragged'! I asked the good folks to imagine how church life would be on Easter morning in such a circumstance; would they peer into a darkened church, enter, take their usual seats and just wait until ... well, nothing happened. Would there have a been a church full of people all looking at one another thinking, 'what happened to the choir', and 'where's Father this morning?'. That is the world the Disciples were thrown into - a life without order. Does the congregation worship God, or do they go home assuming that the service was cancelled and that they missed the notice last week? Do they work it out for themselves, or do they curse the bones of the ones who normally 'do', and who appear to have vanished?

In broad terms, John's Gospel paints a world that until that moment was without Resurrection (barring Lazarus, but I am fairly confident that a typical pattern of human 'surely not', and 'perhaps I misunderstood - no one comes back from being dead for four days' had balanced that fact out in the minds of the Disciples). With my NRSV in my hand, I can' fully grasp the Resurrection - so how the heck were Mary and her mates going to fathom it?

Liturgy not Archaeology

Christ is Risen, Alleluia!

I have returned from church, tired, elated and convinced of the rightness of my place in this world in which I find myself. 

With me tagging along with Chrism, the Bish (as in +Alan, as in Blog) has Baptised and Confirmed an entire army of willing initiates. From the punters' perspective, it all went like clockwork - though we know differently where we were 'behind the scenes'. Yes, I got to sing my lullaby to a candle, evoking Mother Bee, and bar a couple of vocal twangs, it went ok I think. The Exsultet has always resonated in me at a very deep level, and that doesn't change as the one now charged with intoning it. 

We had the full spectrum of liturgical effect, and the place was 'on fire'. The kids were elated, the adults broad with grin at being Confirmed into this faith of ours, and it was a joy to behold. No, the Bish (as in +Alan, as in Blog) didn't reverence the Gospel Book; no, we had too few chalices out, and yes - I knocked over candle with my cope - but it didn't matter.

I am reminded, tonight, that liturgy is not archaeology. It is a living thing; it is organic. I love the liturgy and I am a formost fan of good ceremonial - but only where it is meaningful in the context to which it finds itself. Yesterday's prostrations only meant something because they appeared shocking to the observers. My candle-lullaby evoked memories of 'home' for a Zimbabwean friend. It is worth something if it means something, and it meant something tonight. There could be an army of those who could argue that it could have been a more polished service, that the serving team could have been regimented to within an inch of their lives, and although the crozier was never held the wrong way - it was a bloody good act of worship, a witness to the Resurrection of Christ and the welcome of new witnesses. 

Would Jesus have cared that I didnt't wear an Apparelled Amice? No, of course not ...

A happy and blessed Easter to you all, Alleluia!