Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
From Contempt of What is Old and From Fear
of What is New
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Diocesan Life, November 1999
[This is an edited version of an address Bishop Paul gave recently
at a Convocation at Yale. --Bill]
It is impossible to understand our prayer book tradition without
acknowledging the centrality and power of the cross for Thomas
Cranmer's understanding of the Christian life.
In the liturgical tradition that formed young Cranmer, it was
common for the first letter of the first words of the Canon of
the Mass, a "T" from Te igitur, clementissime Pater, not
only to be illuminated, but to take up an entire page facing the
body of the prayer. This "T" soon became a crucifixion scene. The
priest entered the most sacred mystery with the image of the Cross
filling the eye.
Cranmer's tool was prose, not painting. He thought his inspiration
was St. Paul, not liturgy; but the illuminated "T" might as well
have been there in his work. The structure of his eucharistic rites,
whether of 1549 or 1552, shows that the center of his theology
and piety was the cross. There the worshipper met the free gift
of the most merciful (clementissime) God calling from us the offering
not only of lips but of lives.
If Cranmer's world did not see enough resurrection, our culture
largely prefers its resurrections without crosses, its renewal
without repentance, even understanding morals in terms of a kind
of values-menu.
A few years ago the majority (but not all) of a sample of college
students felt comfortable expressing personal disapproval of the
Nazi holocaust, yet still did not believe they had a right or duty
to characterize other peoples' choices as evil. We inhabit a world
which names little, if anything, as evil. We do not have, as a
nation, the intellectual structure to discuss America's hedonism,
our energy and resource gluttony, our strange assumption that if
it feels bad, challenging or inconvenient, it is bad, even oppressive.
From delusions and self-indulgence, the Cross of Jesus Christ
calls us to brilliant reality and nourishing discipleship. From
our power-addicted politics and obsession with self-affirmation,
we are freed when we call Christ Lord. There may still be life
in a liturgy that unrelentingly presents us with these emancipating
truths.
My words may sound reactionary to some, perhaps many. But are
they? It was fairly standard Christianity, taken seriously, that
inspired William Wilberforce to dedicate his life to the abolition
of slavery in England long before it was attempted here.
When that day came, Julia Ward Howe drew on conventional soteriology,
-- "As he died to make us holy..." -- to frame the effort for freedom
for America's chattel slaves. I have not gotten over the experience
of hearing those words sung lustily in a church in the United Kingdom.
I heard Christianity in action in a way that far transcended our
inherited issues of blue and gray.
The Episcopal Church's Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music
will present a prayer book revision plan to the Church's General
Convention in 2000. As in 1549, the latest technology calls the
shots: where Cranmer could create uniformity with a printing press,
we can create paths of diversity as we put a bookshelf's worth
of material on a CD-ROM. The proposal will be for more than a single
book: it will call for resources that cover a wide range of Christian
experience and speak to many ethnic and cultural groups.
The claim has always been that the prayer book is the principal
expression of doctrine in the Anglican tradition; so the broader
the liturgical base, the wider the spectrum of theology and spirituality
embraced or encouraged. This is good or bad news, depending on
one's point of view.
Uniformity, in the sense of cloned text (if not enactment), was
the rule in the first century of the Episcopal Church in the United
States. It was only in 1892 that the church provided for any local
options in the text of the service, and those options were not
many. An astute observer said at the time, however, that a mortal
wound was given the "fetish of uniformity." That wound has widened
and deepened, and become a wonderful fountain.
There is little to object to in a plan such as the Commission
will propose. For several decades scholars have questioned the
ability of the church to provide a single book for its diverse
membership.
If this is in fact the future, with so much that is new to the
prayer book tradition being embraced, a theological and pastoral
question arises. Should the community go into that future with
no idea of its roots in the past? The shelf of material the Standing
Commission on Liturgy and Music contemplates can easily find room
for the American books of 1789-1928, even if authorized only by
mentioning rather than reproducing them.
The plan about to be put forward shows genuine concern for Episcopalians
whose native spirituality or lived experience should not be smothered
once they enter a church. It recognizes that their experience and
spiritual treasures can enrich the life of the entire church. Can
this not also be said of the patterns of worship that previous
books provide?
The 1928 prayer book has been caricatured as focused on sin -
I hope I have invited discovery that its rites were meant as an
encounter with the grace of God that transcends human failing.
With so much variety planned, one wonders why people who love the
1789-1928 pattern should be excluded from the Church's life. What
is the duty of those who make changes toward those who cannot accept
them.
To my ears the language of those antique books sounds sexist.
So do Shakespeare, Milton, and much of the spiritual treasure to
come from some of the ethnic groups for whom there is so much appropriate
concern.
In the days of 78 rpm records one listened for the music between
the scratches. Those looking for treasure rather than offense can
equally hear the music in feminist, Native American, and Cranmerian
material. Why should the church be the place where imagination
is not encouraged?
The liturgical diversity in the Roman Catholic Church is astounding
to Protestant eyes. Along with the variety provided in the standard
Roman rite, consider the revival of the Tridentine liturgy along
with local rites such as those of Milan, the monastic variations
beyond number, and the varieties of Byzantine liturgy we see throughout
NE Pennsylvania, all in one communion. The question arises whether
Anglicans can be as inclusive as the Pope.
An Inuit Christian said to Bishop MacDonald of Alaska that when
he reads or hears modern liturgies, "there are no pictures there." The
observation is worth considering when we are tempted to discard
the vivid if troubling imagery of previous liturgies.
Is it worth dividing the church over the 1928 book or any liturgy
when so many special materials are already in use and so many more
contemplated?
There is a deeper issue: the balance is of our spirits. I like
a simple prayer I found in an old book: "Preserve us from contempt
for what is old, and from fear of what is new."
The temptation to contempt and fear in matters of worship is not
unknown in the Christian Church. A fuller appreciation of the breadth
as well as the depth of liturgical life may help us live that prayer
and profit greatly from the experience, and from the pictures.
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