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.
On Having the Last Word
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
[Diocesan Life, March 1997]
It was like setting off a stink bomb at the Easter Vigil. In the
1720's there occurred something that later generations still call "the
Dark Day" at what was then just little Yale College. Timothy Cutler,
the college's president, closed his pastoral prayer with an Old
Testament quotation, "and let the people say, Amen,"... and waited
for them to do so.
There could have been no surer sign that Cutler had given the
unthinkable, the unimaginable, the catastrophic offense. At a solemn
moment in the life of the Puritan enclave, he was expecting them
to act like Anglicans, the people they had built their colony to
escape.
What was so upsetting about the use of one little word?
Except for Psalm-singing, Puritan worship was entirely clergy-centered.
The ministers read all the lessons, preached, and made up the prayers,
and always themselves said Amen to those prayers, because they,
after all, were the spiritual authority. It was a sore point with
Puritans that people who used the Book of Common Prayer which they
considered "popish," allowed the last word, the validating word,
to be said by the congregation. This point had been debated for
over a hundred years, and all parties to the argument knew exactly
what they were doing when they gave, or did not give, the last
word to the congregation. Cutler's action could not have been missed
by anyone, and a short time later he sailed for England for reordination.
He returned to be an important leader in the planting of our church
in New England.
So there is a reason that leaders of worship in the Episcopal
Church just stop at the end of their prayers, and that there is
sometimes a nanosecond of silence before Amen swells from the congregation.
It goes back a very long way.
In about the year 160, Justin Martyr, a lay person, wrote what
has to be one of the greatest tongue-in-cheek liturgical descriptions
in history. He describes a Sunday gathering of Christians in terms
we would find familiar. Then, when he comes to the eucharist, he
says that the one presiding "gives thanks as well as he can," and
one wonders what led him to think of those words! In any event,
he immediately adds that the congregation validates and authorizes
the prayer said in their name by loudly saying, Amen.
This perhaps explains why there is nothing to add to our liturgy
to "empower" the people. They already have all the power, but they
may not realize it. The 1979 prayer book was produced by clergy
and lay people working together, to be a "script," a plan for what
would be said when we come together for worship. We come into church
knowing, at least within some set boundaries, what will be said,
our common prayer, owned by all. Because the words are not especially
new, we are able to enter into them with our hearts as well as
our ears. So whether it is a lay person leading morning prayer,
or the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding at the eucharist, it
is the church's words, our words, that will be used, not those
of any individual - and there will be that fraction of a second
of silence as we wait for the assembly's (preferably thunderous)
Amen.
Even at confirmation and ordination, rites that we normally connect
with the bishop's special liturgical ministry, there are those
italics again, and in its Amen the congregation is authorizing
what has been spoken on their behalf. Think of confirmation. Candidates
are accompanied by their sponsors. The congregation, which joins
them in the Baptismal Covenant, has promised to support them before
doing so. Then the whole assembly prays for them. Only then do
they come to the bishop for what is really a very brief blessing,
to which everyone gives assent with their Amen.
This is not to suggest that the assembly's vocabulary is limited
to one word. Each half of the liturgy begins with a dialogue, and
the Prayer of the People are again just that. Lessons and psalm
are read or sung by members of the congregation. Most of the fixed
parts of the liturgy we all sing or say together, and some of the
prayers have been revised to be said by the whole assembly. Despite
all that, the last word in those few matters which are entrusted
to the clergy (absolution, consecration, blessing) is still reserved
for the whole assembly. This explains why the prayers that leaders
of worship say, are always "we" and "us" prayers, not "I" and "me" prayers.
It also explains why in our tradition, a priest does not celebrate
the eucharist without a congregation -- there's no "us" there,
standing with the celebrant around the altar.
Words can get too familiar, and lose their edge, so it is very
much the responsibility of leaders of worship to remind us of the
importance of what we say in that one little word. The whole assembly
takes responsibility for what has been said.
The practical point of all this is simple. Take charge of your
worship. Let there be no wimpy, half-hearted Amens in our churches
this Sunday or ever again. Particularly at the end of the eucharistic
prayer, let our faith, hope, and thanksgiving rise to God in a
mighty shout, as all the people say, Amen!
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