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People Work: On The Language of Our Liturgy, pt. 2

7/24/2018

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The 79th General Convention of The Episcopal Church was host to a number of important issues, but one that has generated some of the most conversation has to do with the proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer, particularly the notion of “inclusive and expansive language” for God. The rector’s forum of The Chapel of Saint Andrew is going to discuss this topic and this series is being posted online for the benefit of God’s people everywhere.


Part ONE of the series, which will served as an overview and introduction to the ideological issues at hand, can be found HERE.


This is part TWO, where we talk about the concept of liturgy itself.


—Fr. Charles
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​“Liturgy is ‘the work of the people.’” This notion is commonplace throughout the church, even to the extent that we have a website dedicated to this definition. Alternatively, there is a growing voice in the Church seeking to call foul on this definition of the word “liturgy.” (This article is a particularly good and short one.)


“The Liturgy” is clearly very important to us. It easily resides among the top of lists of things that cause anxiety or controversy in our parishes. And it also has a tendency to distract us from other, more pressing issues.* So, over all, this topic is crucial. Which begs the question: what, in fact, is the liturgy?
​“Liturgy” is a Latin borrow-word from the Greek λειτουργíα (“leitourgia”), which is a combination of the words for “work” and “people.” The issue comes about in context, because this could be understood, in English, as “work of the people.” It could also be “work for the people.”


“Work of the people” is popular among a certain subset of Christians who see “the liturgy” as the sum of what a group of people agree upon in terms of worshipful actions in community. This is particularly common among the so-called “emergent church” crowd (if that’s even still a thing), where Christians—often those who’ve left more conventional churches—come together to foster their own way of “being church” and, in a laudable move toward ancient ritual, tend toward unnecessarily reinventing the liturgical wheel. For instance, The Simple Way House, a nondenominational Christian community in Philadelphia formed in part by Shane Clairborn, has long utilized their own liturgical forms. A few years back, they released a book for other Christian communities seeking to do the same, a book full of prayers, a calendar of saints, a pattern of daily personal and corporate prayer… in case you haven’t yet seen where I’m going with this, I’ll go ahead and tell you that they entitled it Common Prayer.
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See? Here's my very own copy on my shelf!
Like I’ve said, this is laudable. But also somewhat unnecessary. My unfiltered opinion about this is that such a thing exists for Christians who desire to avoid the responsibility that comes with being part of an established Christian tradition and so they develop their own (which is something I’ll talk about in another post in this series).


Now, what about “work for the people?” Well, this is actually the more historically consonant understanding of the word “liturgy.” That’s because “leitourgia” comes out of ancient Athens and refers to wealthy patrons offering materials and money for events intended for the common folk. A good example of this would be the pan-hellenic games. Another would be a festival for Athena. The “liturgist” was the person who funded these events, who made them possible.


So, “the liturgy” was the offering made by the wealthy for the use and benefit of the common populace, so that they could perform their civic obligations and duties as part of the State. Liturgy, then, is (historically) not so much the ritual itself, but what gives space for the ritual to occur.


And this brings us to a key thing to consider: is there a distinction between liturgy and ritual? We often treat these terms as synonymous, but it would be worthwhile for us to consider if that is helpful.


Further, this historical understanding can be useful for us in conceptualizing what it is we do in church on Sundays (or Saturdays or whenever). If “the liturgy” is something different from “the ritual,” then it stands to reason that “the liturgy” is bigger than any individual or any single community of Christians.


Of course, we have to keep in mind that words change meanings from their historical definitions and that, today, “the liturgy” is used to refer to what we do on Sundays. I don’t want us to “actually”** ourselves to death with this terminology. At the same time, knowing this historical definition helps us take account of the development of our liturgy as a thing that is part of a much larger tradition, not simply the agreed upon aggregate of our theological/linguistic preferences for Sunday morning practice. In other words, “the liturgy” has a “liturgist,” one who has fostered space for how we worship. And that liturgist is The Church—a thing narrowly defined and part of a centuries-old continuity.


“The liturgy,” then—as we today understand the term—is a thing that is only comprehensible when it is part of a larger and longer tradition.


An example: If I walk into The Chapel some Sunday morning, roll out a checkered mat, plop down on it, slice up some apples and open a tub of caramel, and tell you that this is The Eucharist, you’re going to have some questions. This is because these actions come out of left-field and have no sense of continuity.


Another example: I’m a Godzilla fan.
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In case this shelf in my office didn't already give it away...
In 1998, Sony produced an American-made Godzilla film starring Matthew Broderick. It is famously bad. Because I am the sort of person that I am, I used to read G-Fan magazine which, yes, is short for “Godzilla Fan.” A letter to the editor in one issue published shortly after the 1998 film came out made an interesting observation: the monster in that movie was not Godzilla. He pointed out key features that make Godzilla Godzilla: born from (American) atomic bombs with a WWII connection, an upright dragon-esque monster, one who walks through buildings and is impervious to conventional weapons, has a distinctive roar, and breathes nuclear fire. The monster in the 1998 movie is the result of French nuclear tests from the 80s and 90s, is a giant iguana, one which climbs over buildings and runs from the military, is killed by conventional weapons, and does not breathe fire. The only things the two monsters have in common are the name Godzilla and the same roar. This writer made the point that the filmmakers had no interest in making a Godzilla movie. Rather, they wanted to make a generic monster movie, but give it a recognizable (and thus, bankable) name.***


Now, this is where we can start talking about inclusive and expansive language. Because it’s one thing to invent something entirely new and give it a recognizable name, it’s another thing altogether to take something recognizable and revise it.****


And we will talk about that, but first, we’re going to take a look at our own liturgical tradition and trace the path that led us from what Christians were doing in Roman houses in the first century all the way to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and Enriching Our Worship. It’s going to be wild.




Click HERE for part THREE.








NOTES


* I’m thinking here of the Anglo-Catholic movement of the late nineteenth century. This began, overwhelmingly, as a social justice reform movement, rooted in medieval Christian practice—which included the Tridentine (Latin) Mass. But, in time, “Anglo-Catholic” became synonymous with “high-church” and is often treated as preference for a certain kind of ritual. For the record, I tend to identify with the Anglo-Catholic wing of The Church, but I’m less concerned with arguing about how the liturgy “ought to be done.”


** What I’m referring to is a thing common in “nerd” circles, where it’s common for people to correct other people for their misunderstanding of things. A good example might be:


Well-adjusted, normal person: “Hey, I see that they’re making a Captain Marvel movie. It has Brie Larson as Captain Marvel? I thought Captain Marvel was a guy a lot like Superman, y’know, with a lightning bolt on his chest…”


Fr. Charles Some Nerd: “ACTUALLY, you’re thinking of the Captain Marvel from DC comics, who now goes by the name Shazam! in order to avoid this very confusion (and also due to legal wrangling between Marvel Comics and DC Comics).”




*** This is somewhat similar to what happened with the Karate Kid remake a few years ago. The film is set in China and features Jackie Chan, who is among the most famous practitioners of the martial art known as Kung-fu. Not karate. But “Karate Kid” is a more bankable name in the United States, so they went with that.




**** To carry my own geekiness further, there is a Godzilla example for this: 2016’s Shin Godzilla. This was a Japanese update to the Godzilla franchise and which started from ground zero on the character and mythology. Things were altered to reflect current political and environmental problems facing Japan today, but the character remained identifiably “Godzilla.”
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The First To Declare: On Saint Mary Magdalene

7/23/2018

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I had just entered through the Damascus Gate in the dark, through a walkway that opened into a courtyard that, until this moment, I had only ever experienced as crowded with people.


The stone below my feet, worn smooth from centuries of foot-traffic, reflected little ambient light and as I passed through the courtyard I entered a narrow road, normally frenetic with merchants and tourists and pilgrims and people buying various goods, but now dark and lined with closed metal doors. It’s like entering a cave, the buzz of a few small fluorescent lights, one of which is the sign to a hostel (seen in the photo above) the only light upon my path.


In the shadows, movement. Cats jumping at my approach, rifling through garbage or on the hunt. It is at this moment that two things pop into my mind:


First, I wonder how scared my mother would be if she knew what I was doing. Walking before dawn by myself through the streets of Jerusalem. The shadowy cats make me think about thieves and bandits and the words of the proverbial Solomon who wrote of “a young man without sense,” walking these very streets “in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness” and how he is ensnared by folly (see Proverbs 7).


Secondly, it dawns on me that I am walking a similar path to that of Saint Mary of Magdala, because—like her—I am making a pre-dawn trek to visit Jesus’ tomb. And—like her—I will find that it is empty and I will return to my friends and colleagues with that good news in mind.


It was this realization that changed my relationship with Saint Mary.


In the Church of the Resurrection (or, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as it is often known) is a chapel, just to the left of the Aedicule—the name for the “church within the church” that commemorates the Tomb of Jesus—on the north side, is the Franciscan Chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene, which is meant to mark the garden area where Mary encounters the risen Jesus (as told in John’s gospel). Being in that place and having walked that walk, I felt a sort of spiritual kinship with that blessed woman from the village of Magdala. To cite the over-used idiom, I had walked a mile (or so) in her shoes.*


What Mary does on that first Easter day is a complete summation of Christian witness. She experienced Jesus, risen, and proclaimed that good news to the world. All of us Christians owe an enormous debt to her, because her example sets in motion the entire Jesus Movement as we know it today.
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And this is remarkable because The Church has, by and large, missed a huge thing in this story. We’d denied (and continue to deny) the Holy Spirit’s call to women to serve as ordained leaders of The Church. I grew up with this understanding, but the folly of that idea was fully exposed for me on that early morning walk.


Of course, by that time I’d long accepted that it was “okay” for women to be ordained. I’d been at a church with a woman priest for three years, after which I’d come to seminary where some of my dearest friends and most-admired clergy happened to be women. The ship of my personal acceptance of this had long sailed. But the folly, as I already said, was made ever-the-more apparent in Jerusalem. I mean, my own call to ordination was only possible because of Mary’s walk that morning.


I’ll explain.


In Luke’s gospel, as with all the other gospels, “the women” were the first to arrive at Jesus’ tomb, for the purpose of anointing His body. Luke 24:10 explicitly names Mary Magdalene as among these women. After they discover that Jesus is risen, Mary and her companions return to the upper room where the other disciples are in hiding. In a turn that any hack stand-up comedian would’ve seen coming, Peter and the other dudes didn’t believe them, “these words seem[ing] to them an idle tale.”**


So they go and see. At the same time, two other disciples are journeying to the village of Emmaus and, unbeknownst to them, wind up walking with Jesus—who winds up revealing Himself to them at dinner, sending them in a rush back to Jerusalem to give their report to the rest of the disciples.


This brings us back to the upper room, where Mary and the other disciples—women and men—are gathered and sharing their stories. And then Jesus appears in their midst, talks with them, opens their minds to understand His presence in the scriptures, and then begins to commission them: “You are witnesses of these things.”***


After that, He leads them to the Mount of Olives, and gives what we often call The Great Commission:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”****



Later, these same disciples are again in the upper room when the Holy Spirit bursts into the room during the feast of Pentecost, setting their heads aflame in spiritual fire, and beginning what we today would call “the Church.”


Now, again, Mary of Magdala (as well as other women) are present for all of this, standing alongside Peter, James, John, the various Simons, Alphaeus’ kid, the Judas who’s always called “no, not that one,”‡ all of the disciples. Ones that we’ve written icons about and named churches after and all of that. All of these people are called “witnesses.” Which becomes an essential aspect for leadership in The Church (just look at Saint Peter’s words in Acts 1:21-22).


Which means that Mary is numbered among the witnesses. She’s clearly an early apostolic figure and intended to be so (she’s at least important enough to be named by the evangelists). God, in holy sovereignty, chose this woman to be the first voice to declare the resurrection.


She was the first to ever give that Easter acclamation: “Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Allelua!”


Mary is very important. Her answering the call of Jesus, being an instrument of God’s work, made her a crucial person in the world’s salvation narrative. Her gospel proclamation, made it possible for all of us to hear the good news of Jesus risen!


What’s sad is that our popular culture tends to see her in fairly sexist terms. Either she’s the prostitute who anoints Jesus’ feet, or the prostitute caught in adultery. That, or she’s confused with Saint Mary of Bethany. Even worse, she’s turned into Jesus’ wife.


I’m reminded of the strong words written by Gerard Loughlin, in his book Telling God’s Story. Speaking of John Shelby Spong, he writes:


“Spong marries Mary Magdalene to Jesus. This speculation is said to reverse the calumny of the early Church, which quickly developed the need to remove ‘the flesh and blood woman who was at Jesus’s side in life and in death, and to replace her with a sexless woman, the virgin mother’ [Loughlin is here quoting Spong’s book Born of a Woman—CB]. Rather than having Mary Magdalene a disciple in her own right—a woman who chooses to follow Jesus as much as the men have done, and who follows him more faithfully—Spong makes her a sexual chattel; part of the group that follows the band rather than part of the band itself.” He goes on to say “[H]e makes up a story about a woman who followed Jesus because she was married to him, rather than the story we have about a woman who chose to follow Jesus because she loved him as a disciple.”


In referring to another Spong misinterpretion‡‡, Loughlin wryly observes: “Spong rewrites the story[…] inserting a man where no man was previously to be found.”‡‡‡


A lot of Christians and scholars think that they’re being edgy, or subversive, or enlightened when they openly talk about Jesus being married to Mary of Magdala—all the while being completely ignorant of how this robs her of her agency as a woman.


It’s time we move passed that.


She’s the “Apostle to the Apostles.” The “Proto-Evangelion.” The first one to tell us that Christ is risen.


Almighty God, whose blessed Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of body and of mind, and called her to be a witness of his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by your grace we may be healed from all our infirmities and know you in the power of his unending life; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP 242)








NOTES




You may have noticed that I call her “Mary of Magdala” in a few places. If that’s unfamiliar, let me explain. “Magdalene” is not her surname, it means that she is a person from Magdala, a Jewish village in Roman Era Judea/Palestine.




* As an aside, this idiom is often said to be “Cherokee” in origin. A lot of things are given a “Cherokee” back-story (just ask around your family and you’ll likely find someone who claims an ancestor as married to a “Cherokee princess.” Cherokees don’t have princesses and they also don’t have miles). A version of the saying I’ve heard refers to walking “two moons in someone else’s moccasins” and it might be of First Nations origin (either Cherokee or other). But the saying seems to be common in most languages and having a long history, which suggests that the notion is a generally human notion and has inspired perhaps thousands of parallel versions of the saying all over the world.


** Luke 24:11 NRSV


*** Luke 24:48


**** Acts 1:8; the “Great Commission” is found in various forms in Mark, Matthew, as well as in Acts.


‡ Seriously. Just check out John 14:22. Other gospels seem to call him Thaddeus instead. Given the history, I’d probably do the same.


‡‡ He’s writing of John Shelby Spong’s bizarre insistence that the Blessed Virgin Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, who was the “real” father of Jesus.


‡‡‡ All of these quotes come from Telling God’s Story, pp. 120-123
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    Father Charles Browning is the Rector of The Chapel of Saint Andrew and the Head Chaplain of Saint Andrew's School.

    He is also a husband, father, avid surfer, reader, writer, and (over) thinker trying to make sense of this Jesus business and how to be a faithful minister to God's people in The Church.

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