Liturgy that gives hope

By Julie Lane-Gay

LITURGY NEVER stops impressing me, never ceases winning me over.  Just when I get a bit snarky thinking it was surely written by a small group of old white men, now long gone, I am overcome by its relevance and its Scriptural rootedness. (These realizations are followed by my feeling very humbled.) The ability of those words, said over and over, to speak to my heart anew and to my life in the 21^st century, attests to its genius.

One of the early times I saw how applicable liturgy could be was with babies and baptism. As neither my husband nor I had been raised Anglicans, we had not thought a lot about infant baptism. Was it more correct than adult baptism? Three graduate degrees in theology between us were of no help. That is what parenting does: it takes all those worldly verifications of competence and renders them useless.

We decided to have our babies baptized, and what astounded me was the communal nature of it. As the rector preached that morning out of St. Luke’s Book of Acts, it was Philip and his whole house that were baptized. This baptizing business was something we do together. To this day, each time someone is baptized at our church, there are seven questions asked of the entire congregation, not just those who know the person or the baby being baptized, but everyone. These are strong volitional questions: “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?”  The response is, “We will, with God’s help.” We do it together; we participate in being family for each other.

As I see other parishioners’ children grow, I pray for them, remembering my vow to do what I could. Whatever you may think of her politically, Hilary Clinton was right on this one. It takes a village to raise a child and my church community is my village. I treasure my community of St. John’s in Vancouver. We do not always agree or get along or even do things together socially, but we are each other’s people and in the end, that is as good as it gets.

As our kids grew and began to participate in the larger community and shaped our family anew, the liturgy kept changing its gifts to me. It has always been hard to root my thoughts in the Gospel as I participated in all the communities of our lives: the kids’ schools, work, neighbourhood, church. My thinking has always felt fragmented and I have always felt like I couldn’t slow down and yet couldn’t keep up.

Thankfully, as I was doing an increasing amount of driving, back and forth to school, to piano lessons to soccer matches, to auditions, I started to sing one line out of the Benedictus, which is also known as Zechariah’s Song, as written in Luke’s gospel. We sing it most Sundays before the sermon. There is a lovely line in the metrical version, “Who with us all He keeps His word, in love that knows no end.” For several years, I think singing that over and over to myself, mostly in the car, was my devotional time each day. It confirmed for both my heart and my head that God is trustworthy, full of unending love. I have read that long ago when Christians were very sick, too sick to say their prayers, they rubbed a hazelnut in their hands as their prayer. The Benedictus was my hazelnut.

About ten years ago, I felt that someone, no doubt the Holy Spirit, turned on the lights for me during the Eucharist. Before the bread and wine is received, we always pray the Prayer of Humble Access. I noticed this line: “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.” It articulated why I felt reticent about Communion. I was far too self-absorbed to accept the magnitude of this gift. Why give yourself for me? The liturgy affirms the why -- because God’s character “is always to have mercy.” 

Those two words, “have mercy,” changed my experience of Communion. I hear them even now, every other week, as the best news I could receive. They bring honest relief that I can participate in this feast. It is that love and grace that draws me, magnetically, toward God and away from myself. I return to my pew after Communion with this profound carefree-ness.  I am awash with the hugeness of God’s mercy and the emancipation of resting in that alone.

Salisbury CathedralIn the last few years, a new urgency has coloured my Sunday mornings. I have become restless in my need to get to church on time, or even early, to be ready to participate. I have this sense that if I don’t hurry, it might be gone – like a store about to close. I want to make sure that my community of believers is still there for me, still together and still affirming the truth and hope of the Gospel, which I get muddled about so often.

Equally, I want to get to church in plenty of time for the General Confession. I want to be there in time for the lead up to it, I want my Confession to be as heartfelt as I can make it. I desperately want to hear the Absolution, the priest’s affirmation of my total forgiveness, to really hear and savour it – to let it seep down, to truly set me free in a way nothing else does, at least until about Wednesday. I crave how the Absolution redefines me, again and again. I do not wrestle with the infamous sins of murder or theft or adultery. But for the sins of selfishness, manipulating my children, wounding others for my own gain, and pride, I cannot seek the Absolution more fervently. I can never love others as myself and I long to so deeply.

The Confession takes on even more meaning. My seventeen year-old-son, Andrew, and I are often standing beside each other in church, he sleepy and a bit aloof, while I am trying to get over my irritation at how hard it is to get everyone out the door to church on time. I am quite confident Andrew and I have both planned each other’s demise in the past week. Even in a good stretch, we say things to each other we shouldn’t. Early in the service we pray that General Confession together. I notice Andrew does it earnestly. I trust he sees that I do too. We ask forgiveness for what we have done and what we have left undone, and we readily confess that there is no health in us. We stand next to each other, equally in desperate need of forgiveness. For this reason alone, I passionately love the liturgy. It is one of the most redeeming experiences I will ever have. 

I am forty-eight years old now, and look at my life differently than I did a decade ago. I see some bright spots ahead and some dark ones, and I know that there is still much I do not see. And when I recite the liturgy each week, I realize that there have been millions of other people before me, and alongside me, who have said these same prayers, who have needed these prayers as desperately as I do, who have needed to recite the Creed to remind themselves of who they are, who have craved the Absolution of their sin week after week and have been given a portion of hope from the liturgy that has carried them forward, into the pain and the love and the goodness that lies ahead.

Part One, “Liturgy that gives rest,” was published in our December 2009 issue.