Was at a great meeting in Edinburgh at the head offices of the church today. I'm on the Communion Task Group and after at least 2 years we've got some major stuff done in terms of what communion is in the church. And today we were going through a commentary on the first order in Common Order which is the church's book of services. It sounds dull but it was fascinating. I learned a whole lot of stuff, not that I can remember much of it at the moment but I really, really want to do a traditional communion service. That's a really traditional service because the one we have that so many people hang on to is very modern and full of ideas that have been gleaned from the french church, the eastern church, the Syrian church which have all been added to our service.
For example, the communion table. In a traditional service there ought to be no communion table in my mind because there wasn't one, basically. When communion season arrived, kitchen tables were scrubbed and laid out in the worship space and everyone sat round them. The elements were directly 'processed' onto them and served. Now we have pews and we have chosen to keep the white cloths then that serves at the table. The communion table, in the words of someone today, has become more and more alter like because it has become a top table and the highest dignitaries sit round it which is a fallicy in the Church of Scotland because there is no hierarchy at all.
In those same terms, the elders certainly shouldn't sit round it because it sets people apart and the reformed would have died with their collective leg in the air if they saw what we do today. The only time anyone should come and sit round the table would be to be served, or for those folk to come from the body of the kirk and collect the elements and take them to the people.
And while that was happening the minister would be reading from scripture such as the passion narrative all the way through lest there be sielnce because the reformers said silence was suspicious lest there should be any misapprehansion of what was happening.
But not only that, the words of the liturgy ought to change each time lest the people imagine there is any incantation in saying the same words each time, and that is certainly true today in people's minds when I have to say the same words by their request each time.
And there's more, but I'll save that for another day. But it was a really fascinating meeting where we really saw how what we imagine is a traditional church of scotland communion is as far from being traditional as me getting the hymn choice right this Sunday. Indeed, the beautiful irony is that our All-Age communion is actually more traditional that our formal ones because there there is no top table, not only elders serving, servers come from the people at the right moment, there is a spoken institution (the retelling of the story), there is singing during the distribution (singing is equally as good as speaking the scriptures by the way), while there is unity in the minister taking a leading role, others participate in the liturgy, it is not a singly ministerial act... So there you go. It was a surprise to me that all-age communion is closer to our tradition. What's happened is that we have become every so familiar and sentimental about the order we grew up with but which was very far from what the reformers had in mind. And even as they believed in always in need of being reformed, such reforms have been shoddy, victorian in sentiment and populist. And that's not my thought (well it's my thought but I didn't say it).
So bread and wine anyone?
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