Tag Archives: Holy Eucharist

St. John the Evangelist

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St. John the Evangelist

Another Sunday, another church, but this one is special, because my friend is the vicar. It was a Family Eucharist, and all we needed was a laminated service sheet, (A4, printed on both sides) and this week’s bulletin (B4, folded, printed on both sides) containing the hymns, collects and announcements.

Since it was a family service it wasn’t difficult to follow. I just had to remember to keep an eye on both sheets. Of course, I am kind of biased because it’s my friend’s parish, but I did enjoy the service. Her homily was short and held the children’s interest but had a message for the adults present too.

To receive communion we all stood in a circle around the altar, and children who didn’t receive the bread and wine received a blessing and a sticker, which I thought was a wonderful idea. I saw a little girl later with her sticker proudly stuck on the front of her dress.

After the service there were refreshments at the back of the church. All the children sat together on the floor (apparently there are usually tables and chairs) and the adults stood around and chatted. I asked for a cup of tea and then stood near the table and . . . no one spoke to me. Eventually the person in charge of the tea and coffee said something, but no one else said anything to me at all.

And so I was left wondering again, what is it about Anglicans and welcoming visitors (or not)? Why are we not very good at it? I was there with a member of their vicar’s family, so right there I would think are two points; I must be a visitor (because they don’t know me) but I am with someone they know, so surely it would be easy to start a conversation?

I know we all lead busy lives, and one of the joys of being a member of a congregation is the connections to be made, the friends to catch up with every week (or however often you attend). Of course that shouldn’t be neglected but what about the visitor? Can’t we spare a few minutes to welcome them?

Every week when I am in the UK I attend a different church, but every week I am struck by the same things; I am a visitor and yet no one checks if I know my way round the service, if I am clear about how to receive communion, and no one talks to me unless I lurk near them for a while and they eventually can’t put off speaking to me any longer.

For about three years I was a member of a Lutheran church in Tokyo and I was impressed by how different their approach to visitors was. There was always a welcome, a small joy at someone new joining the worship. It’s not difficult, and surely we can all do it.

We may be greeting someone who has felt called by God to come to church, but is feeling nervous, unsure of what to do, who needs a helping hand through the service, a smile over a cup of coffee. It’s such an opportunity and one that is so often missed.

We may be entertaining angels. We may be welcoming someone to church for the first time, and our greeting, conversation, help might make all the difference in the world.

St. Nicholas of Myra, Brighton

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St. Nicholas, Brighton

This morning I attended a service at St. Nicholas of Myra. It was my second visit here; I attended one service last summer, so I already knew most of what to expect. I have come to realise that when I visit a church I am curious about a few things; the welcome, the worship, the sermon, and the support or help offered.

So, first of all I received a lovely welcome from Angela. As she handed me the booklet for this morning’s service, I asked her if that was all I needed. She realised as I asked that I was a visitor, and explained that everything was indeed in the booklet, and also gave me a leaflet introducing the church, inviting me to look around afterwards.

I sat down and looked through the booklet to see if there was anything unusual, but it all seemed familiar. It was a fairly lengthy booklet, running to twenty-four pages, including information about an upcoming festival of music, other announcements, and contact information for the parish. Pages two, three and four were information to prepare for the service; mobile phones off, facilities in the church etc. I particularly liked the information on page four, on how to sit, be still and pray before the service started.

The worship itself: as well as the vicar there was also an assistant priest, several servers and acolytes, and a choir of about twenty people. Quite a lot of the responses were sung, but the music was not provided for them or the hymns. I kept up but would have been able to do so far more easily if I had the music to sing from instead of the words only. There was incense, but not huge billowing clouds of the stuff, and the sermon was interesting enough. Thinking back to Evensong at St. Michael’s last week, I enjoyed the priest’s quiet, heartfelt reflections made without reference to notes more than this morning’s kind of standard sermon. But having said that, the priest this morning was preaching to a much bigger group of people and that clearly changes the dynamics.

After the sermon and the Creed the booklet directed us to ‘sit or kneel’ for the prayers of intercession, and the congregation sat. I noticed that there were hardly any kneelers, but nevertheless, being accustomed to kneeling I knelt anyway. It was a little uncomfortable kneeling without a cushion but sitting doesn’t feel right to me. The Peace should follow directly after, but instead there followed ‘the presentation of chorister awards’ to some of the teenage members of the choir, which took about ten minutes.

Following on from that, the Peace, and the two men behind me introduced themselves, ‘Kevin & Kevin’ and asked for my name. When I told them I was visiting but had attended a service last summer also they remarked,’You’re a regular, then!’ On to the offertory hymn, preceded in the booklet by a slightly stern reminder to use the gift aid envelopes so the church could claim back taxes and so increase the money given. This information had been included at the beginning of the booklet so I found it a little jarring to see it repeated in the middle of the service. Anyway, I’m not a UK taxpayer so I ignored  it.

The Eucharistic Prayer, and then we received communion. The choir went first, then went to the back of the church to sing while the rest of the congregation went up to the altar rail. The anthem they sang first was beautiful. The hymn they sang next, (“Oft in danger, oft in woe”) was not. Sung in four parts, the sopranos lost the melody line and the whole thing fell apart, I suppose without the melody the other parts couldn’t really hear where they were going. Anyway, a number of the choir members, particularly the younger ones, seemed to find this quite funny, and the choirmaster looked rather rueful. I can only imagine that it had been a bit hit-and-miss in rehearsal but they had decided to do it anyway and hope for the best, but it really was a bit dreadful.

We stood for the prayer and then sat for announcements, particularly on the subject of the festival of music. After that, back on our feet for the blessing, and we prepared to sing the final hymn, when there was a kind of beeping noise, which gradually got louder. The vicar said it was the fire alarm and we all had to leave the church. As people started to stroll towards the main door, they found their way blocked by an elderly gentleman holding a large piece of paper on which someone had written FIRE in large red letters. We turned and strolled out of the back entrance instead, as we did passing a woman alternately telling us, ‘Assemble on the grass at the bottom of the hill,’ and ‘You can come back for coffee.’ We wandered outside, then stood about for a few minutes. I talked to Kevin & Kevin a little, then we all wandered back. Apparently the service had ended. I was a little disappointed, because the last hymn was to be ‘Great is thy faithfulness’, but there was neither that nor the organ voluntary.

On my way out I picked up a copy of the parish news and noticed that there is a Julian Group meeting on the first Thursday of every month, which made me happy. Angela was still by the door and invited me to come again next year. I think I will, and if I lived in Brighton I would consider making St. Nicholas’ my regular church. It’s a friendly and welcoming place, and I enjoyed the service.

However, I am left with two questions that I think need to be the subject of separate blog posts, because they are things which concern me. One is music: how much it enhances worship, and how much is ego. The other is about the accessibility of worship. I know my way around most services, so even if I am not familiar with the particular form of words or the musical setting I can find my way through it. However, neither this Sunday nor last did anyone check if I could do that, and I wonder how someone would feel if they were a complete newbie. How do we support someone who is completely new to the liturgy? How do we make worship more accessible?

 

Conjunctions

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Humility

We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

This is the Prayer of Humble Access. Over twenty years ago, I used to attend the morning service of Holy Eucharist at Sheffield Cathedral. It wasn’t something I intentionally started to do, it was simply that there were very few buses into the city in the morning, and the only one that would get me to work on time in fact got me there with quite a lot of time to spare. Rather than sit and drink coffee I didn’t need, I decided to attend the service every morning.

There were never many people there, often only one of the canons, one other woman and me. Every morning we used the Prayer of Humble Access; it found its way into my heart and I loved it as part of the liturgy. Occasionally I hear it used, but it seems these days it isn’t used much.

Last year, I spent a happy Sunday afternoon showing some American visitors round Tokyo. They were both Episcopal priests. Over dinner the conversation somehow turned to the Prayer of Humble Access, and I mentioned my attachment to it. One of them remarked that she felt differently, and knew other women who felt the same; women who had been in abusive or damaging relationships, for whom the statement, ‘We are not worthy . . .’ was painful. I was challenged to account for my positive feelings.

At the time I think I said that I didn’t hear ‘not worthy’ as much as ‘mercy’. I didn’t satisfy myself with that answer, I felt there was something more, and so I thought and prayed about it. Eventually I arrived at an explanation that satisfied me.

From when I was eleven and my brother was nine, my father was an alcoholic (though my mother never admitted that and we never talked about his drinking until many years later). He drank every evening and then became verbally abusive. Many times every evening he would come into the living room, look at us, then close the door again, swearing at us as he did so. This was mainly to check we weren’t about to walk into the dining room where he was going to get another drink. As he closed the door he would say with some venom, f*** off or some other equally hurtful expletive. Evening after evening, my brother and I would look at Mum and she would always reply with, I didn’t hear anything / Just ignore it / Rise above it. This went on for many years. I was never able to ignore it, was never able to understand why she let it happen. I became clinically depressed for two years at university, and everything that I spoke about with my doctor at that time was connected to him or my grandparents. In my twenties I was able to stand up to him and when he swore I looked him in the eye and asked him to not do that because it was hurtful. He never stopped but I had my say.

My grandparents also said things that stayed with me. They often asserted that their love was conditional, and that because I fell short I was a disappointment or had hurt them and therefore love would be withheld on some level. ‘If you really loved us you wouldn’t go to China.’ ‘We’d love you more if you stayed here.’ That kind of thing.I knew that they loved me dearly, but still, their words hurt.

All of the above is not to paint me as some kind of victim, because I don’t feel that way. I feel sad about it, but I came through it, I’m stronger for it, I learnt about psychology and grew in faith and made my peace with it as much as I could.

My point is, the message I got from all of that was, I was not worthy because I was a disappointment; Dad was drinking and in a bad mood so we had to just accept it; adults had these negative feelings or had experiences in their past or something I couldn’t fathom and we had to take it. Lots of connections, conjunctions; and, because, so.

Then I came to the Prayer of Humble Access and again, it told me that I am not worthy. The difference was the conjunction. ‘We are not worthy . . . but . . . ‘ and that is what makes all the difference in the world to me. There is no connection between my unworthiness and what happens next. There’s no so, and or because, it all gets blown apart because of the ‘but’. Because of all the things I was told as I was growing up I have buttons in my head. It’s quite easy to rattle me, to make me feel anxious. I’m ready to believe it must be my fault, that I let someone down in some way.

I keep coming back to the Prayer of Humble Access because it breaks that cycle for me. I am not worthy. But. God doesn’t change, there is always mercy and grace.

That is why I like the Prayer of Humble Access. Everyone has their own experiences, and I know that for other people the word ‘unworthy’ might be just so loaded that there’s no getting round it, but for me it has the opposite effect.