On Thursday night last week we held a Diocesan service - A Liturgy of Lament - in our Transitional Cathedral. The text of the Liturgy is here. This post is intentionally not a reflection on the whole of the service nor on responses to the service, save to see that many people commented to me on how moved they were by it.
One aspect of the service to be reflected on here: a small group worked care-fully and creatively on the content of the service. The following readings were chosen.
Psalm 13
Lamentations 5:1, 14-22 (Prior to a Litany of Confession)
Isaiah 58:5-11 (in the second part of the service, The Beginnings of Hope).
My reflection is simply that when I asked myself what New Testament reading might have been chosen, I could not think of one. There is not much by way of lament in the New Testament. Although Isaiah influences some passages in the New Testament about a new beginning in being a just people, none offers the length and depth of the Isaiah passage chosen.
On the one hand, this observation serves to reinforce the general tenor of the New Testament: it is the announcement of the Good News of God's salvation, of new life now and forever for the world.
On the other hand, our liturgy is a powerful reminder that the Old Testament is ever relevant to the whole of life, and, in this case, especially to its darkest and most troubling aspects.
Postscript: In the wider Anglican world this week ...
1. An extraordinary, unusual story about a newly appointed CofE bishop's recent episcopal eye-brow raising role in an ordination in Germany.
2. The Observer has a profile on a new book by Diarmaid MacCulloch. It is called Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity. It looks at least ... provocative!
15 comments:
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But even that is a quote from Psalms.
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Great book review. Peter, how would a rainbow Christians with a call to ordination be treated by the Anglican Church here?
Hi Mark,
I can only speak generally in the public domain.
Anyone offering for ordination should be treated well within the context of our church's constitution, canons and customs local to (say) Tikanga, diocese; as well as within specific discernment processes overseen by each ordaining bishop.
Great. And if someone presented with a call to ordination, like Diarmaid did, with or without the calibre of Diarmaid in terms of his gifts for understanding and communicating Christianity, and they were gay and in a committed relationship, let's say a marriage, would they suffer the same fate that Diarmaid did or not?
Hi Mark,
On an "all things being equal" basis, that would depend on how each episcopal unit is working out its theological freedom concerning homosexuality in the life of our church (noting that freedom includes whether to permit or to not permit the blessing of same sex civil marriages).
Thanks Peter.
Oh, ok. Tricky. So it depends on each diocese/bishop/(tikanga?) to develop its own rules and practices around ordaining, or not, let's say a gay married man? There's no blanket ruling in Aotearoa that married gay people cannot be ordained?
And if so, how do I know whether my local episcopal unit is open to me or not? What is the position of Christchurch?
As you can appreciate, these are not hypothetical questions to some people in our church community.
Dear Mark
Your questions are best answered by direct communication with the local bishop.
The questions are important but I do not think they are appropriately answered via a thread of comments on a blog.
Gosh, that would mean a gay person would need to out themselves to their bishop before even knowing what sort of response - accepting or otherwise - they might get. That doesn't sound like safe practice to me.
Hi Mark,
I am not going to continue this conversation in this forum, save to observe that in any discernment conversation with any bishop anywhere there needs to be, at some point in the conversation, openness and honesty about views held etc.
That's ok, Peter. Blogs and comment threads are rather limited to sort out the fine details.
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Back to the main event: I was thinking not just of lamentation, but also the many types of other literature contained in the Old Testament - e.g. law, erotic poetry, wisdom writings, prophetic literature.
Perhaps we should keep adding to the New Testament - it is rather short, after all, in both time space and actual length. I'm not suggesting reducing the sense of the normativity of the gospels, but including - or appending - literature from subsequent Christian experience (in which we will find no end of lamentation). Is that permissible in Anglican liturgy?
This odd suggestion has happened in other non-Anglican spaces: for a long time Quakers have compiled short testimonies from journals and "books of suffering" in a red bound volume called Quaker Faith and Practice (formerly The Book of Christian Discipline). This sits in the middle of all meetings houses, on a table that also always includes the bible, so that, if the Spirit leads, we may pick up either book and read aloud.
For example: "Words must be purified in a redemptive silence if they are to bear the message of peace." (Pierre Lacout, 1969: Quaker Faith and Practice 2.12).
What book of sufferings or testimonies might Anglicans include - or append?
Hi Mark, thinking about words/silence reminds me of something I've saved from Frederick Buechner's 'Telling The Truth : the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale [pg 23-24]'; he wrote about "the Preacher" at the lectern and the silence just before the sermon begins. Two excerpts:
"Let him tell them the truth. Before the Gospel is a word, it is silence. It is the silence of their own lives and of his life. It is life with the sound turned off so that for a moment or two you can experience it not in terms of the words you make it bearable by but for the unutterable mystery that it is.
"Let him use words which do not only try to give answers to the questions that we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have words for asking and to hear the silence that is the answer to those questions.
(love the "help us to hear the questions" ~Liz)
Yes, a lovely and different way of saying: Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
Buechner must also have Rilke in mind:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
Awesome, Mark! I'm adding it to my Buechner/Preacher notes. Thanks a million!
I love both those quotes thanks, dear ones, but for those of us who do talk in church, they are hugely challenging. I hope for sufficient silence in my life to give room for people to hear the questions rather than my attempts to give answers… But I am not sure of that!
'Blessed are those who mourn.' Mt 5.4
'Woe to you that laugh now.' Lk 6.25
'Many, of whom I ... now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ.' Phil 3.18
'Ought you not rather to mourn?' 1 Cor 5.2
Lament is there in the New Testament if you look for it. But remember that the Apostle states: 'Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.' (2 Cor 7.10) Perhaps the world is afraid of the kind of sorrow that drives us to repentance (i.e. re-thinking born of sorrow) and only wants either affirmation or analgesics. Bianco da Siena's words are a little strong for the Gospel of Positive Thinking:
"Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become my inner clothing,
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o'er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing."
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
I hate pews. All arranged in tight rows. Walling off our ability to see and connect with each other. Placing God right up the front like a distant landscape or Lloyd Webber musical. God as High Priest rather than The Bridegroom. If Peter would only consent, I would be the first one burning the pews of Christchurch.
St Luke's in the City, before it was destroyed by earthquakes (which our vicar, quoting the NT, termed a time of great "stripping") did liturgy 'in the round' (a circle of chairs with clergy sitting alongside other folk). Meeting in a round was one of the things that actually brought be back to church. But: every Lent our vicar would re-arrange the church in the old, tight pew formation. It really felt anti-resurrection...
"And Jesus said unto them, “Can the attendants of the bridechamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast." (Matt. 9:;15).
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