What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • General Synod: Come for all now is ready

    I’ve commented before that you can tell almost all you need to know about a Christian community by the way that they invite people to communion.

    Yesterday, General Synod started to meet in Edinburgh and by some distance the most significant theological statement came, not in the debates about how we will talk about same-sex couples and marriage, not in the considerable theological reports that we had but in a tiny little exchange used in the liturgy.

    Come all people: this is Christ’s table to which all are invited.
    Come, for all is ready.
    Thanks be to God.

    Now, the reason this is significant is that this isn’t what we usually say in church. This isn’t what is part of the regular liturgy.  So far as I could tell, it was used yesterday at the Synod Eucharist simply by the sanction of the nodding of seven bemitred heads gathered around the altar.

    It was a joy to me to find such a thing said.  I’ve believed this way for quite some time.

    In St Mary’s we say, ‘everyone is welcome to Communion in this church’. Occasionally I get people asking whether we really mean it and I always say ‘You bet we do!’

    Now the thing is, it is uncommon. Some churches make theological demands – all those who are trinitarian Christians are welcome to receive the bread and wine.  For others, one sacrament acts as both a barrier and a key to another – all those who have been baptised are welcome to receive communion. Still others make Church membership the key.  And for others still it is good behaviour,  for example, the terrifying – all who are in good standing with their church are welcome…

    Yesterday at our set piece Eucharist when we are all on show and amongst ecumenical and interfaith friends, we said that it was for all people. It was hugely significant and hugely welcome.

    But the thing is, liturgy changes us.  That’s part of the idea.

    If we say things like this then it will change what we do.

    The church is currently debating whether to change what we do with regards to marriage.  Is it open to straight couples or in fact something that is open to any couple?  Are gay people fully accepted as God’s children, whose relationships God will bless or not?

    We’ve got to the stage of discussing that seriously at last.  This isn’t my conversation any more.  It felt like that for years. Now it is the church’s conversation.

    If we start to behave in the Eucharist as though the gifts of God are for everyone then there must be rising hope that we will apply the same to all our sacramental thinking.

    The debate is happening.  Real change is possible.  It started most particularly in that little exchange at the mass.

    Come all people. Yes, come all people.

    That’s the kind of church I want to belong to.
    Thanks be to God.

14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

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