I do love a well-deployed subjunctive

This morning I was in a neighbouring parish. One of the hymns they had was “Lift high the cross”. At one church we sang from Mission Praise.

Lift high the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim
till all the world adores His sacred name.

At the other we sang from Common Praise:

Lift high the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim
till all the world adore his sacred name.

I may be a pedant, but it seems to me that’s a good use of a subjunctive. (Prayer is a good place for many of them: take the Our Father!) Universalism is a hope, a wish, a prayer. It’s not a certainty, is it?

Blessings and warm fuzzies

I’m never quite sure whether professional niceness is an art-form or a neurosis for us who are Anglican priests. One of the many downsides to it is the way it regularly intrudes the wrong kind of bonhomie or feel-good factor stuff into the liturgy. So excuse me while I have a quick rant.

A particular bugbear of mine seems to crop up with ghastly regularity. It’s that form of blessing where clergy intone “the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be with you and remain with you and those whom you love, now and always. Amen.”

The words in bold are those I struggle with. Blessing, it always seems to me, when not directed at God, is about those who are (or that which is) immediately present and the focus of the action.

In this case, as part of the dismissal rite, a blessing is focused on the dispersing of the community from being gathered in worship to living lives which will try to bear witness to God, and serve him in daily living.

“Those whom we love” have hopefully been included in our prayers and intentions during the liturgy. But the point of the dismissal is to send us into a world in which we are called to treat anyone in need as a neighbour to love, bless those who persecute us, and love our enemies.

Including a cosy reference to families and friends to make people feel that the vicar really cares about them works badly against that intention.

So can we please go back to treating the blessing as a promise of God’s presence with his people as they try to serve him, and not the liturgical equivalent of shaking the vicar’s hand at the door as a warm fuzzy to show he or she really cares.

Thank you.

What year is it, again?

I’m always intrigued a) how easily people forget what liturgical year it is, and b) assume that the best way to find out is to ask their priest.

Having once received a phone call from a colleague wanting liturgical help, I’m doubtful that (b) is always a good assumption. The conversation went something like this:

Him: “The bishop said I could ring you for help.”
Me: “I’ll do my best”.
Him: “Well, he’s coming for a confirmation and he says he wants the readings from the lectionary.”
Me: “OK. He’ll mean those for the principal service.”
Him: “The lectionary. Is that the book you can get from SPCK?”

As I say, asking the vicar may not always be a solution.

However, there is an easier one to hand, that involves not lectionaries, nor complicated rules, nor even hierarchical pronouncements, but merely a simple bit of maths.

Take the calendar year for Ordinary Time. Divide it by 3.
If the remainder is 1, it’s Year A, the first gospel, Matthew. 
If the remainder is 2, it’s Year B, the second gospel, Mark.
If it divides exactly by 3, it’s Year C, the third gospel, Luke.

Now you need never be stumped for an answer again.

 

Let’s hear it for the holy foreskin

I’m sure there’s something quite bizarre about the title of this post. But it wasn’t so to mediaeval ears, when the Holy Prepuce was a sought after relic apparently held simultaneously by more than one church.

I am pondering tomorrow’s sermon (in case you were wondering!). I see the lectionary gives me the option to keep the circumcision of Jesus hidden away from the majority of worshippers by transferring it to Monday and sticking with the safe theme of Christmas. Anglican worship of the last century, of course, encouraged a focus on the naming of Jesus, and made the ritual a barely mentioned accidental accessory to the thing that really mattered.

(In the process it continued and emphasised the popular misreading of Philippians 2:6-11 as making “Jesus” the name above all names, rather than sharing with him God’s own name, kyrios, ha-Shem, YHWH.)

The Roman Catholic Church has removed it entirely from the calendar and replaced it with the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, as – it would seem – have some Anglicans. Much as I honour the Mother of God, this seems to me to be celebrating the theological cart while ignoring the historical horse: replacing the mess of incarnational specifics with the glory of thematic theotokia.

It seems that for all the emphasis on Jesus the Jew, there’s a limit to how much we’ll reflect on his Jewishness, and the sacred snip of the holy foreskin is just that bit too Jewish for a nice well brought-up church’s table manners. It is, however, perhaps rather an important plank in understanding Jesus as Torah observant, even if he engages in disputes about exactly what Torah observance entails.

(In fact, it might be a rather important political theology for interfaith relationships in the light of the rationalist attempt to ban circumcision which some Jewish people in the West see – along with kashrut and ritual slaughter – as a looming problem for them as for Islam.)

The earliest Christian text I know of to make anything more of the Circumcision than a bare historic fact is the Arabic Infancy Gospel.

And the time of circumcision, that is, the eighth day, being at hand, the child was to be circumcised according to the law. Wherefore they circumcised Him in the cave. And the old Hebrew woman took the piece of skin; but some say that she took the navel-string, and laid it past in a jar of old oil of nard. And she had a son, a dealer in ointments, and she gave it to him, saying: See that you do not sell this jar of ointment of nard, even although three hundred denarii should be offered you for it. And this is that jar which Mary the sinner bought and poured upon the head and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, which thereafter she wiped with the hair of her head.

The writer of this anonymous apocryphon makes a fascinating narrative connection between the shedding of the infant’s blood and the shedding of the adult’s. (Those who suspect the possibility that circumcision may in some respects function as a substitute for child-acrifice will find this even more interesting.) The oil that anoints him for burial (I am assuming the author will have conflated all the accounts of the anointing of Jesus.) is the oil that has marinaded his foreskin for thirty years. The vulnerability of infant flesh to the mohel’s knife is the same vulnerability of adult flesh to the nails and the spear. In the circumcision of the child, the death of the adult is foretold. This child is born to shed his life-blood from beginning to end, and even here at the cradle, the grave casts its shadow.

Can the ordained worship God?

I notice that David Green said:

The elephant in the room for many leaders of worship (whether ordained or otherwise) is that when you are planning and then trying to lead your people through the journey of the worship, conscious of newcomers and guests, let alone children, keeping one eye on the clock, and another on whether dear ol’ Flo has pocketed her wafer rather than consuming it again, it’s very hard to retain a sense in your heart of worship and the presence of God.

He was picking up on this older post by David Cloake, which said:

As a priest, I either preside or I worship – the two rarely overlap

I confess that, while I sympathise with the practicalities being discussed, I am almost entirely unpersuaded by the argument. It is not just that there are a range of practical tips for gaining space for personal engagement with God (and 25 years experience says there are) in the performance of liturgical presidency. It is also that this “conundrum” seems to me to suggest an understanding of worship as a human experience of God.

I wonder, say, how such an understanding might relate to the idea of priesthood as majoring on the kind of rush-hour chaos of animal slaughter which characterised the Passover in the New Testament period.

I wonder also whether the way either David sets the question up depends on an assumption that worship is defined by what the worshipper experiences, rather than what the worshipper offers.

I am just asking, but it seems to me that those are rather important questions.