And did those feet in ancient times...

One of the functions of an Episcopal Parish is to be the ethnic home for a certain minority group, one that is often overlooked in modern American life.

This afternoon, we conducted the Burial Office for a daughter of the Church of England. She has lived most of her long adult life in a small Midwestern farming town with no Episcopal Parish in town, or in any of the neighboring towns. She made it clear to her children that when the time came, she wanted to be buried with the ceremonies proper to the Episcopal Church, and the Book of Common Prayer.

So, she was. The family, none of them Episcopalians, came to us and asked if we might do the service; of course we agreed. This being a holiday and neither of our regular clergy being available, one of our retired associate priests was Officiant.

About forty people gathered; children, grandchildren, friends, most of them still living in that Midwestern farming town. The liturgy was the Burial Office, Rite One; we sang “Abide with me” and “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” As requested, I played the tune Jerusalem (“And did those feet in ancient times”), on full organ, before the Commendation. The children had noted that she and her husband (dead these seventeen years) ensured that they knew all the British songs, and sang them regularly at home. She thrilled to the events of the Royal Family, most recently the birth and christening of Prince George; she adored the Queen (as do I).

And every afternoon, without fail, she and her husband would have Tea. They were doubtless the only family in the town, perhaps the county, to observe this custom.

At the end, after most of the people had gone out, I played one last song for this Daughter of England: “God save the Queen,” on eight foot flutes. All of the children came back in to listen, tears in their eyes.

Your Majesty, you will never know it (not, at least, in this life), but you have lost a loyal subject. You have many others, some of them in the most unlikely places.

Some thoughts on Romans 1:26-27

The Daily Office Epistle for Tuesday in the Week of 2 Lent: Romans 1:16-25
The Daily Office Epistle for Wednesday in the Week of 2 Lent: Romans 1:28—2:11

Here are the missing verses:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

I will leave a proper exegesis of this text to my betters, but I wish to observe that it is dangerous to pick and choose which parts of Scripture are to be read by the Church. Much better, I think, to include this and other uncomfortable passages in the Lectionary for reading in worship, at least in the not-very-public venue of a weekday Office.

I also wish to observe that I have not encountered a convincing pro-LGBT exegesis of this passage. Mostly, the arguments I have seen tend to be ad hominem, attacking St. Paul for his supposed anti-gay bias. On the other hand, this is a crucial proof text for those Christians who believe that homosexuality is wrong. Some of them feature these verses prominently in their teaching (e.g., the ministry of Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas, and their pastor, the Rev'd Fred Phelps). To say the least, I do not find their use of this text convincing, either.

It may be that the key verse of the larger context (1:18—2:16, or in a larger sense, the entire sweep of chapters one through eight) is this:

Therefore thou are inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. (2:1)

If homosexuality is wrong, it is not a sin which has the slightest hold over me. Thus it would be very easy for me to condemn it. I believe that this is why anti-gay feelings are so strong, to the point of dividing Christians from one another. We love to condemn others for that which for us holds no temptation. And we overlook the list of sins in the following verses (vv. 29-31), a list which touches closely on us all:

… unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful...

If homosexuality is wrong, it is no more wrong than anything else on the list. Putting it in the context of the Episcopal (and Anglican) Church's arguments over the ordination of openly gay persons, we have lots of priests and bishops who are covetous, malicious, envious, lovers of debate, deceitful... No one seems bothered by that, so why make an issue of sexual orientation?

I should emphasize that I have made the thought experiment of considering homosexuality to be wrong for the sake of this essay, but that is not in fact my position. To give a counter-example to Romans 1:26-27, I submit the account of David and Jonathan, perhaps the most beautiful love story in all of Scripture:

I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. (II Samuel 1:26).

What does hit close to home for me from these opening chapters of Romans is St. Paul's condemnation of those who judge others (2:1-11). I fall easily into a harsh and judgmental spirit, and must constantly repent of it. Rev'd Phelps is a sad and cautionary example of what happens when one continues in such a spirit.

And, as I suggested above, one must not forget where St. Paul is taking his argument:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (8:1-2)

Tu es Petrus

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (St. Matthew 16:18)

For all of my Christian life, the Church has been in decline. Or so it has seemed, to all the evidence of my senses. In the branch of which I am now part (the Episcopal Church), there were about 3.6 million baptized members in 1965. As of 2010, there were 2.1 million. In recent years, this decline has increasingly pinched the denomination's finances, staff, and programming at all levels, from parishes to the national church.

The music of the Episcopal Church has declined in quality. There are fewer choristers, fewer churches that even have a choir, fewer organs and organists, less support for such things from clergy and vestries. Many congregations no longer even use a printed Hymnal or Book of Common Prayer, with predictable results.

“Upon this rock I will build my church...”

I try not to worry about such things. There are places in the world where Christianity is strong. It may simply be that the forms in which I know Christianity may be dying, but not the thing itself. This will be hard, and may not be inevitable.

“... and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

When I despair of the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican tradition, the current Successor of Peter has repeatedly encouraged me through his writings and his steadfast witness to the faith. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the places where Christianity remains strong and is growing: membership in 2011 was around 1.2 billion, an increase of 11% from 2001, with much of the growth in Africa and Asia.

In honor of Benedict XVI and of this day's Feast of the Confession of St. Peter, here is a motet by Anton Bruckner:

Ecce sacerdos magnus (a performance from Montreal)

Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis placuit Deo...
(Behold, a great priest who in his days pleased God...)

Choral Vespers

The current BBC Choral Evensong broadcast from Westminster Cathedral is a good example of Roman Catholic Choral Vespers, which is an ancestor of Anglican Choral Evensong. (For those who wish to listen to it, hurry: it disappears from the Net tomorrow.)

As in Evensong, there is an opening dialogue (V. Deus in adjutorum meum intende. R. Domine ad adjuvandum me festina), then an Office Hymn (where we would sing the Phos Hilaron, “O gracious Light”), then Psalmody.

There is but one Lesson, followed by the Magnificat. In this service, a Homily then occurred, followed by the Lord's Prayer (sung by the choir), spoken intercessions, an Anthem, dismissal, and organ postlude.

Nearly all of the service was in Latin, and most of it in plainsong.

My impressions: I miss the polyphonic Preces and Responses. So far as I know, there is no Roman Catholic equivalent of the Smith Responses, or Ayleward, or any of the other settings. Instead, the Preces is in plainsong and the “responses” are spoken – in this service, they were in a litany form, with short intercessions each followed by the response “Lord, hear our prayer.” As I have written elsewhere, one must sing the Preces as a chorister with enormous energy; I liken it to thoroughbreds in the starting gate, bursting with excitement at the prospect of what lies ahead; in many respects, it is my favorite part of the entire Office. At the other end, what could be finer than the third Amen in Smith? Or its equivalent in many other settings?

Over time, I suspect that I would miss Anglican Chant. The psalmody in this service is splendidly done, with good shape to the plainsong tones and good pauses at the asterisk. But psalmody in Anglican Chant has its own virtues, without which we would be impoverished.

I miss the Nunc Dimittis. In nearly all of the Anglican musical settings, the Nunc Dimittis is a quiet counterpoise to the often more energetic setting of the Magnificat. On the other hand, the Roman version of the Office puts a greater emphasis on the Song of Mary, an emphasis that is not without its advantages. In the service from Westminster Cathedral, by the time one reaches the Magnificat, there has been nearly a half-hour of Latin plainsong, and now – Polyphony! It is like the return of flowers and sunshine in spring. In this service, the setting was the “St. Patrick's Magnificat” by the distinguished Scottish composer James MacMillan, a fine and challenging unaccompanied setting worthy of the long tradition of Latin settings of the Canticle. But I can think of a dozen or more Anglican settings of the Nunc Dimittis which are precious to me. Again, we would be impoverished without such music.

And, as much as I love the great and venerable language of the Western Church, I miss English, or at least the traditional “Rite One” English for which Choral Evensong is almost the final refuge. I hold many aspects of Roman Catholic liturgy, theology, and practice in high esteem, but I also espouse many of the Reformed concepts enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer, not least the idea of liturgy in the English language.

Roman Catholic Vespers is an honorable tradition, much older than what we have as Anglicans. But it may be that Anglican Choral Evensong is our finest gift to the larger Church. There is nothing quite like it in any other tradition.

[Footnote: I commend the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, which outlines the theology of the Daily Office and how it is to be conducted in the Roman Catholic manner. I know of no document equivalent to this in Anglicanism – can anyone suggest something?]

Three Links and an Observation

A housekeeping detail: I have modified the settings for Comments, so that one should now be able to make Anonymous comments -- so long as one can decipher the word recognition gadget. Perhaps this will allow human beings to comment, which I desire, but not spambots, which I do not welcome.



I was playing the organ fairly well in May and June by necessity, for there was a lot of playing to be done and I spent more than twice my usual amount of time on the bench. But then came a span of almost a month, from July 15 until August 5, when my services at the organ were not required, so I did no practicing whatsoever until August 3.

The Observation: I expected my improvisation skills to decline and they did, but what suffered the most was the playing of hymns. With three weeks off, I got sloppy. My sense of pulse, the keeping of a steady rhythmic flow, and the breathing space between phrases and especially stanzas, all needed attention. I worked carefully on them this week, running my tape recorder, and played more accurately today.



Robin Denney is a former agricultural missionary to what is now the nation of South Sudan. Her website has not been active since she left South Sudan about a year ago, but she posted a video seminar recently which I commend to you.

While in Africa, she worked as an Episcopal missionary with the Anglican Church of the Sudan, travelling through the bush, teaching sustainable agricultural methods to subsistence farmers. As she describes in the video and the written curriculum, the secular NGOs have difficulty convincing the farmers to try something different, and rightly so: bringing in a crop is life-or-death for them. "But when the local church, of which subsistence farmers are members, presents them with a new teaching (their calling to be caretakers of creation, and God's faithfulness in increasing their yield), their response is shocking!"

The video records how she has adapted her teaching to a different (and in many ways less capable) audience – Americans. It runs about an hour, with the first half indoors and the second half outside in the field. For a short summary, one can view her curriculum, which I believe she has prepared so that other people can teach this workshop in their parishes, or their communities, here and elsewhere in the world:

God is calling YOU to the work of tending and taking care of creation. To:
-- Pray while you work and for the work of your hands
-- Look for solutions to the problems you face by praying and observing creation
-- Try techniques on a small portion of your crop, and compare it to the rest
-- Give out of your harvest to God and to those in need

[In the curriculum, she is being modest about one thing: she mentions an introductory handbook to tropical agriculture, but neglects to mention that she wrote it.]

I often despair of the Episcopal Church in the United States. But Robin, and others like her – including some whom I know personally from this parish – make me proud of it. I believe that the strength of the church has nothing to do with the ranting and posturing of General Conventions, and little to do with clergy or church programming or buildings or even church music; the strength is the unique and irreplaceable work that many Episcopalians do “out in the world.”

Just this afternoon I spoke with a young woman who, because of her faith and the situation in which she finds herself, has become an activist against “fracking.” It has isolated her from most of the community in which she lives, and perhaps placed her and her family in physical danger. But she is doing what she has to, and part of me does not think she would be able to do so without the Episcopal Church somewhere in the background.

She is, in short, a Heroine.

And that brings me to my second link: Bill Moyers maintains a presence on the Web these days which is, again, an irreplaceable and unique Christian answer to the situation in which he (and in many respects all of us) finds himself. I commend his weekly webcasts to you.

This week, his audio podcast is a revisiting of his interview with Joseph Campbell in 1987, twenty-five years ago. Campbell's views are probably well-known to most of my readers. The “Hero's Adventure” is a focus of his work, and of this interview.

My largest disagreement with Campbell has to do with his failure to recognize that the mythos recounted in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, especially in relation to Jesus of Nazareth, is, as C. S. Lewis often said, the fulfillment of all the myths, not least because it is True, in sober historical fact. There was a day, a day just as real as this day in August 2012, when the children of Israel stood on the far shore of the Sea of Reeds and saw the dead bodies of the Egyptians wash ashore. There was a night when angels sang in the sky over Bethlehem, and the shepherds gazed upon a virgin mother and her Child. And there was a day when the women brought spices to the tomb and found it empty, and later saw one whom they knew beyond any doubt had been dead.

Still, one should listen to Campbell, for he has much to say. Certainly, the myth of the Hero is in every culture, as Lewis also describes. I especially commend the segment beginning about 43 minutes into the podcast: “What the myths are for is to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual.” He describes walking from the streets of New York City into St. Patrick's Cathedral – “and everything around me speaks of spiritual mystery.” And then he walks back out. Can he hold something of the mystery out on the street? The answer is “Yes,” but you must listen to Campbell for that.

Campbell is also right that each of us is on a Hero's Journey. But I would add that we cannot be “mavericks,” as he described himself; we cannot be our own master. Rather, our Journey makes sense only when viewed as a part of the larger Journey that includes Adam and Enoch and Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Deborah and Samuel and David and Hezekiah and Jeremiah and the Maccabees and Mary and Jesus (most of all) and Paul of Tarsus and Timothy and Clement of Rome and Augustine and all the rest.

“Everything around me speaks of spiritual mystery...” As Campbell says, we can eventually realize that the sidewalks and traffic and concrete outside the doors of St. Patrick's are part of the same mystery. I said this too, in another way:

The Qodesh, the holy place, is not limited to the Temple. It is, as the Sages wrote, a state of mind and spirit. Were a person sufficiently advanced, he would dwell in that place day and night, as did Joshua the son of Nun (Exodus 33:11). Most of us need help to perceive the Qodesh. Even Moses needed admonition from the LORD at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5). Sacred Music is one point of entry; the holy Icons are another, as is the acoustic of a place such as the Basilica, where the Song lingers in the air.

It is all true, all of the time. But it is more true in some times and places: thus my third link. We will sing this piece in the Choral Evensong for the commemoration of All Saints, Sunday November 4 at 5 pm. As is our practice when we have something especially beautiful, I seek to involve the children and youth as well as the adults, so we will combine the choirs for this service.

We will not sound as good as the choir on this YouTube link (King's College, Cambridge), and our little parish church is a far cry from that glorious space – especially glorious at Evensong in candlelight, as in the video – but the difference between us and them is of degree, not of kind. For one of the mysteries is that the Qodesh is not limited by time or space.

And I saw a new heaven (Edgar Bainton)

The Queen's Birthday

V. O Lord, save the Queen
R. And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee.

The Queen's Birthday

For many years, R.B. (a member of our parish) hosted a Tea for the Queen’s Birthday. It would be at a local park, complete with a brass quintet playing “Rule, Britannia” and other appropriate music. Ladies were expected to wear hats and gloves; gentlemen to wear ties and jackets. Expatriate Britons from hundreds of miles around came, along with many of us Yanks. It was always an Event of the first magnitude.

R.B.’s funeral was earlier this spring, so he did not make it to Her Majesty’s eighty-fifth birthday. But I would expect that he might have been looking on from the Upper Gallery seats in heaven, probably bursting with pride at young Prince William in his red uniform and bearskin hat, and the beautiful young Princess Catherine, the new Duchess of Cambridge.

R.B., we miss you.

I am an American. I am proud of our nation. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are among my heroes. But sometimes I wish we had someone like Queen Elizabeth.

My favorite portrayal of her is outside Parliament in Ottawa, a statue which I have admired in person.

Ever a lover of horses, she is astride “Centennial,” who formerly served in the RCMP and was given to her by the people of Canada in honor of their centennial. Here is another photo.

Her role is almost entirely ceremonial; the reins of government are in other hands. But as Prime Ministers come and go, she has been a rock of stability, and, in her way, represents Great Britain to the world.

And she appears to take seriously her role as Fidei defensor, Defender of the Faith. A turning point for me in my appreciation of the monarchy was a day when I was browsing in the library at graduate school, and happened on a program from her coronation in 1953. It was an Anglican ceremony of Holy Communion complete with the Proper Preface for Coronations, a far cry from the manner in which we inaugurate Presidents.

I love the rubric at the beginning of the text that “Care is to be taken that the Ampulla be filled with Oil for the anointing, and together with the Spoon, be laid ready upon the Altar in the Abbey Church.” I can well imagine the Altar Guild at the Abbey seeing to this detail.

Archbishop: Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel?

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?

Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?

And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?

Queen: All this I promise to do.

There was much fine choral music, beginning with Parry’s “I was glad” and including the newly-composed settings of “O taste and see” and “All creatures that on earth do dwell” by Vaughan Williams.

We have nothing like this in the United States. I wish we did.

(I can hear Mr. Jefferson off in the distance muttering something about separation of Church and State…)

A prayer for the Queen’s Majesty (from the BCP services of Matins and Evensong)

O Lord, our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: Most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lady, Queen ELIZABETH; and so replenish her with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that she may alway incline to thy will, and walk in thy way. Endue her plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant her in health and wealth long to live; strengthen her that she may vanquish and overcome all her enemies; and finally after this life she may attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Archbishop and Pope

In the upstairs hall of our church, there is a photograph of the Most Reverend and Right Honorable Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, with a handwritten note of greeting to our parish inscribed on it. This photograph from the Archbishop gives me hope, especially on bad days in the parish. It reminds me that my little bit of work in this place is in communion with the much larger work of Anglicans in places of infinite variety around the world, large and small.

I am glad that Rowan and Benedict, the Bishop of Rome, have become, to all appearances, personal friends, with a shared recognition of their task of Christian witness in an unbelieving world. I hold both of them in high regard, and wish them God's grace and blessings in all that they undertake.

In this light, the Pope's recent visit to Great Britain was for me a source of unalloyed joy, culminating in the Choral Evensong at Westminster Abbey on Friday. Here is the Order of Service; it is worthy of examination as a window into what must have been a splendid occasion.

Some impressions:

- One does not often have an Order of Procession like this (page 8), including the sixth-century illuminated Gospel book brought to Canterbury by its first Archbishop, and concluding with the Pope and Archbishop and their chaplains, all entering to "Christ is made the sure foundation" to the tune Westminster Abbey, in the building for which it was named and where its composer was Organist.

- I am glad that we Anglicans presented ourselves at our best: Choral Evensong in one of the great churches of the world. The service of Choral Evensong, with the musical repertoire that has developed for it, is the unique gift of the Anglican Communion to Christendom.

- The musical selections could not have been better, from the list of organ voluntaries before the service (page 4) and the anthems by Byrd, Stanford and Tallis (page 6-7) to the hymns and Psalm, and Stanford in A for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and Duruflé's Ubi caritas as the Anthem, topped off with Bach's Komm, heiliger Geist as the first of two concluding voluntaries. We have sung some of this music in our parish choir, and I have played some of the voluntaries; this music is thoroughly representative of our tradition.

- The Service was a reminder that the Choral Office is ecumenical in a way that the Holy Eucharist cannot be. We differ on many things, but we can pray together, and sing together.

- The address given by the Holy Father was an inspiration to me. Using the processional hymn as a springboard, he spoke of Christ as the source of all Christian unity:

"Our commitment to Christian unity is born of nothing less than our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. It is the reality of Christ's person, his saving work and above all the historical fact of his resurrection, which is the content of the apostolic kerygma and those credal formulas which, beginning in the New Testament itself, have guaranteed the integrity of its transmission. The Church's unity, in a word, can never be other than a unity in the apostolic faith, in the faith entrusted to each new member of the Body of Christ during the rite of Baptism. It is this faith which unites us to the Lord, makes us sharers in his Holy Spirit, and thus, even now, sharers in the life of the Blessed Trinity, the model of the Church's koinonia here below. . . ."

"Fidelity to the word of God, precisely because it is a true word, demands of us an obedience which leads us together to a deeper understanding of the Lord's will, an obedience which must be free of intellectual conformism or facile accommodation to the spirit of the age. This is the word of encouragement which I wish to leave with you this evening, and I do so in fidelity to my ministry as the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Saint Peter, charged with a particular care for the unity of Christ's flock."

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In perusing the Holy Father's other speeches during his visit, I found this, in his address to the people of St. Peter's Residence, a home for the elderly in London:

"Those of us who live many years are given a marvellous chance to deepen our awareness of the mystery of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity. . . . [O]ur physical capacities are often diminished; and yet these times may well be among the most spiritually fruitful years of our lives. These years are an opportunity to remember in affectionate prayer all those whom we have cherished in this life, and to place all that we have personally been and done before the mercy and tenderness of God. This will surely be a great spiritual comfort and enable us to discover anew his love and goodness all the days of our life."

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In our little parish church, far removed from Westminster Abbey in almost every possible respect, we had a good choral service this morning. The choir sang verses from Psalm 79 to Tone IV, capturing the dark intensity of these words:

O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance;
they have profaned your holy temple *
they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble.

They have given the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the air, *
and the flesh of your faithful ones to the beast of the field. . . .

They later sang "There is a balm in Gilead" in the fine arrangement by William Dawson, in a manner that was fully committed to this great Spiritual, communicating that being a Christian is something that demands everything from us, and is in turn our only refuge and help, the "balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole." In our own way, we gave testimony this morning to "our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead."

It is as we worship and serve this our Lord Jesus Christ, looking to Him alone, that we are one. We must hold on to this.