Change for Good or Ill or Both

Those who know me are probably aware that I don’t necessarily embrace the new with open arms.  Being an Anglican at heart, if not by birth, I appreciate the value of the tradition that has enriched our lives.  The three pillars of Anglicanism are scripture, tradition, and reason. 

There is the joke about change and Anglicans: how many Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb?  We don’t change, we’re Anglicans.  That joke, perhaps unintentionally, illuminates (pun intended) the problem with this approach.  Perhaps it would be better to say challenge rather than problem.  Sometimes change can be a good thing and sometimes it is even necessary.  If we didn’t have the development of the COVID-19 vaccine we would be in deep do-do to use a technical term. 

 

Change for change sake, on the other hand, can turn its back on much that is valuable.  This is as true in religious matters as it is in secular matters.  Being at our cottage in Prince Edward Island, our religious life is emersed in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) as opposed to the updated service book, the Book of Alternative Services (BAS) which is not that new now being introduced to the Canadian Anglican Church in 1985.  I presided at a service on Sunday using the BCP liturgy and was reminded about the strengths and weaknesses of the that liturgy.  As is often the case when the pendulum of change swings, it goes perhaps too far along the arc.  It will be interesting to see where it lands when a new prayer book is brought to life in the future.  In any case, it is the tension that perhaps is inevitable when change rears it (I won’t say ugly) head.  However, sometimes it can be divinely intended tension to borrow a phrase. 

 

I was reminded last week that sometimes change can produce wonderful results.  One of the Daily Meditations of Richard Rohr which arrive in my inbox daily focused on the adaptation or rewriting of the Lord’s Prayer by the New Zealand Anglican Church.  I was introduced to this more than 10 years ago at a Summer Dream Conference of the Haden Institute held in North Carolina.  I was deeply moved when I heard it and have appreciated beauty and spirit filed language ever since then.  Some traditionalists might object with changing the words of a prayer of Jesus but it is good to remember that Jesus did not speak English - the Queen’s or otherwise – and translations always change the original meaning to a greater or lesser extent.  There are also two versions of the Prayer on the bible – one in Matthew and one in Luke - so even the Gospel writers couldn’t get a definitive version. 

 

Rohr’s Daily Meditation noted that the New Zealand version honours and reflects the Maori culture which makes it very appropriate in this time of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.  Below is the excerpt from Daily Meditation which included the version of the Lord’s Prayer: 

 

We invite you to pray this modern version of the prayer of Jesus from the Anglican Church of New Zealand, which both honors and reflects indigenous Maori culture.

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples
        of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
        sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
       now and for ever. Amen.

 

May you be blessed with the Divinely Intended Tension of change on your journey.

OF Things Liturgical

The following is part of a discussion on with a friend on Facebook concerning the Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Alternative Services in the Anglican Church of Canada

Desmond — thank you for your thoughtful and extensive comments.  There is some in what you write that I agree and some with which I disagree.  I believe language and symbols such as passing the peace are important.  They are integral to the Anglican worship and symbolic of much more.  There is a great deal more to what the two services — if we take just the Communion or the Eucharist in both prayer books.  The things that are emphasized in each service are quite different but there are similarities.

The BAS does differ from the traditional Anglican service in both form and content.   However, in part it is a matter of emphasis rather than stark differences.  The BAS does emphasize the communal nature of worship opening with the gathering of the community — when two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name he is there — and the emphasis on community continues.  The BAS does have an emphasis on US but there is that element in the BCP.  The confession is communal, ‘We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness’.  The creed in the BCP is ‘I believe’ however, the BAS uses most frequently the Apostles creed with ’I believe’.  There is also the Nicene Creed in the BAS which is communal.  However, you can hardly call that a modernization as the Council of Nicea was rather a long time ago.

 Certainly agree with you that there is a downplaying of repentance in the BAS which is unfortunate in my mind and theology.  We all have the need for repentance and come to the communion rail as sinners and in need of God’s grace.   Perhaps this is another case of emphasis as we are all created in God’s image and God declared it very good.  We have been expelled from the Garden which I take as a myth in the best sense.  However, that is not because of original sin in the Augustine sense.  We needed to rebel against God if we were develop as fully human beings but this did, of necessity, leads to a separation from God.  What would humanity be like if it has remained in the Garden?   This is non-traditional theology which I readily admit.  We do need to repent our separation from God which is inevitable because of our human nature and mostly because our egos see us as the center of our being rather than God.

This brings us to the crucial issue of scripture and how you understand it and what you/we believe.  I believe that contrary to what you declare we must look at the direction of scripture and of Jesus’ message rather than the specifics of different passages.  What you say is logical but I don’t believe that logic has priority for Jesus or for God’s interaction with people.  To perhaps be illogical and take one passage to support this I turn to Paul.  As Paul says to the Church in Corinth, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (KJV).  If we are to live in true charity with our neighbours and ourselves we will be following Jesus commandment to love one another.   I turn to Jesus and the woman caught in sin about to be stoned.  None of us is without sin.  However, he does say go and sin no more which is often held up as the last word against same-sex-blessing.  We are to turn back and repent.  However, there is another approach of Jesus which is presented in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  The father does not wait for the son to give his well-rehearsed speech of repentance.   The father accepts the son as he celebrates the reunion.  He does not say you may come back home but sin no more.  He accepts him unconditionally.  The question for me is how are we to live in love and charity with our neighbours? 

The BAS does present things in what could be called a logical fashion.  There is little mystery in what has been presented which is part of the problem with the liturgy.  As my wife Lorna noted it tries to pin down God as good and gracious and loving and only that.  But there is little of the mystery of God which is essential as we try to understand God.  This is beyond our abilities as finite human creatures.  I want to conclude with a quote from Richard Rohr:

For me, it really comes down to this: the individuals I know who are most genuinely happy and also fruitful for the world invariably relate to God in a way that is deeply personal, intimate, and almost conversational. Yet these same persons would be the first to admit and recognize that their personal God is also transpersonal and sometimes impersonal, and “the one in whom we all live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and, finally, beyond all names for God. God is humbly recognized as beyond any of our attempts to domesticate, understand, or control the Mystery. All names for God are “in vain.”

That is I believe not logical and it cannot be as God is beyond our logic.  For me that is the mystery of God. 

 

BCP and BAS and Other Things Liturgical

I was presiding and preaching at the church in Montague —St. George’s yesterday.  They use the Book of Common Prayer rather than the ‘modern liturgy of the Book of Alternate Services so we were celebrating the fourth Sunday after Trinity.  It is interesting — and a bit of a challenge —to preside at a BCP service as I did not grow up in the Anglican church. When I came over to England (to coin a phrase), the B.A.S. was in general use — a least in my experience.  I did have some experience with the BCP liturgy mostly in the nursing home services and home visit where the people wanted the service they grew up with and were most familiar with — just as the old hymns they grew up with resonate with them on a deep level.  However, even that experience didn’t really prepare me for presiding at a ‘high’ BCP service which is the custom at St. Georges as well as St. Albans in Souris here on Prince Edward Island, where we are spending the summer, and where we also worship.

I became serious about Anglican worship around 1990 and the debate about the new liturgy of the BAS versus the traditional liturgy of the BCP had been going on for a while in parts of the church.  It was not evident in the congregation which I worshipping at that time with Lorna.  I believe I missed most of the discussion around the change by that time.  The objectives of the new liturgy and the objections to it were far ranging and still exist in some parts of the Anglican Church.  There was and is a resistance to change among Anglicans is a long standing value and habit summed up by the (now) old joke, “How many Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb?  Change, we don’t change, we’re Anglicans!  And anyway that light bulb is a memorial for my parents so we can’t change it”! 

Some of the arguments around the two forms of worship revolve around language — the beauty and poetry of the BCP prayer book which was written by Thomas Cramner, the Archbishop of Canterbury following the reforms initiated by Henry VIII who had less than pure motives in breaking with the Roman Catholic Church.  The language is archaic and rather hard to get used to, for one raised in modern English.  However, it is beautiful.   The use of BCP goes lockstep with the use of the King James Version of the bible which does give me more difficulty when proclaiming the Gospel in the worship service.   There is of course more behind the changes than language.  The theology of the two different books is quite different which I won’t go into detail here. 

 However, one of the objections to the service change was the passing of the peace which in the BCP was done by the priest reciting, “The Lord be with you”.  The congregation responded, “And with thy spirit.”  The BAS follows this formula with minor changes to update the language.  However, here comes the kicker — in the BAS people actually exchange a symbol of peace by shaking hands.  This did not go well with many Anglicans who saw it as an unnecessary intrusion into their solemn worship. 

This is a small but telling example of the resistance to the change.  However, there are much more significant differences which are associated with the two prayer books.  The BCP is usually, but not necessarily, associated with traditional, orthodox theology and a resistance to the ordination of women which was introduced in the Canadian church in the 1970’s.  More recently the debate has centered on the blessing of same-sex-unions (and now marriages).  As someone who definitely leans towards the liberal end of the theological continuum it is a cause of a bit of dissonance in my worship.  However, I am able to appreciate the beauty of the BCP liturgy without getting involved in the debate around these far reaching theological issues — as important as they are.  However, we all must choose our battles or as we used to say in seminary ‘choose which ditch we will die in’.