Writing

let me sweep your church
I’d leave the door ajar
to split the glimpses of grace,
remind them who you are.

those who peek within
drawn to your loyal side
& you would see without
the futility of pride.

I’d stir up with my broom
the dust of fusty pews
service to a servant
a friend they stand to lose.

I’d clean the stained glass too
for a little light to shed
in a gloomy, stale state
the vision’s limited.

let me sweep your church
I’d fling the door back wide
so you might hear your calling
to stay, or step outside.

©Peter Clague

We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.[i]
     Winston Churchill

...what we build will, over the years, shape how we understand God.[ii]
     Anselme Dimier

In the few months since arriving in Stroud I have increasingly appreciated Saint John’s Church – this building to house the Church. At first sight, my attention is held by three features of the building: the high twin pulpits; the particularly small sanctuary; and the choir seating.

These features cause me to reflect on understandings of the Church and worship at the time of its construction, and where continuities and divergences may be found in both older and also in contemporary understandings and ways.

From my morning and evening prayer seat in the choir looking across to the tall tower for preaching or reading, my eye then travels to the rear of the church. Given the social context of the building of this chapel of the Australian Agricultural Company, I try to envisage what evangelical exhortations and morally improving messages may have been directed from the pulpit to the occupants of the convicts’ gallery. My imagination is fuelled somewhat by the piercing eyes and stern countenance of the chaplain William Macquarie Cowper whose photograph hangs in the foyer of the rectory.

St John’s brings to mind my affection and gratitude for two historical periods, and aspects of church architecture and the liturgy for which it was built. The first is the (largely unremembered) Anglican continuity with Benedictine monasticism. Although monks in their stalls have long been variously replaced by canons and clerks, and by cathedral and parish choirs, the singing and recitation of daily prayer and Sunday worship is carried back and forth from either side of the choir. Then as now, our answerability to each other whilst praying in such a manner remains apparent.

A second facet of my gratitude is being able to pray and shape liturgy in a church which pre-dates the neo-gothic revival in Anglican ecclesiastical architecture. Accompanying this is an absence of unconscious (or perhaps even indiscriminately followed) assumptions and directions in worship largely inherited from the determining architecture of that era. On a practical contemporary liturgical note, I am glad of a single-level sanctuary, rather than the later more usual multiple steps. The pulpits are high, though not the altar! Although I owe much to the neo-gothic influence on my earlier liturgical formation and practice, my more deeply rooted attraction is to the unadorned simplicity modelled by Cistercian monastic liturgy. The relatively undecorated Georgian style of St John’s is happily conducive to the prayer tradition which has most profoundly formed me.

A quotation on the Friends of St John’s Stroud website from architect Clive Lucas describes the church as “perhaps the finest and certainly most intact Anglican [c]hurch in Australia which predates the influence of ecclesiology.” To take gentle issue with this assertion, I would argue that any church of whatever era is an expression (whether by adherence, modification or rejection) of the dominant tradition of the time.

St John’s was built in the year of the beginning of the Oxford Movement and before the subsequent Catholic revival in the Church of England. The ecclesiology of our building thus reflects an earlier piety than that of both the Oxford Movement and also the associated 1845 Cambridge Camden Society, also known as the Ecclesiological Society, whose interpretation of ecclesiology was specifically related to matters of church building. The architecture of St John’s reflects a more evangelical understanding of the Church (ecclesiology) and thus pre-dates the predominant anglo-catholicism of the diocese of which it later became part.

Comments in the visitors’ book often make mention of the historic nature of the church and our other buildings, and also of St John’s being a prayerful and beautiful place. I like to hold this trinity of beauty, history and prayer together. An enduring gift of St John’s lies in enabling visitors and parishioners to allow this meeting of the past to find expression in the present, and to give hope for the future.

Week by week parishioners gather to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist, gathered at the sanctuary built for this purpose in 1833. The steady life-giving heartbeat of the church community is sustained in the daily offering of Morning and Evening Prayer, for the praise of God and to pray for the world and the Church. St John’s Church continues to be a place where the memories of successive generations are treasured, and a place which continues to symbolise the spiritual and community hopes of present and past Stroud people. I am glad to be joining this living history.

©Martin Davies

Image Interior, Saint John the Evangelist, Stroud, NSW, Australia

Which comes first?  Baptism or Communion? Baptism is not a requirement for communion and so I have heard the new PC(USA) Directory for Worship hopes to affirm the free and abundant grace of God we find at the Lord’s table.  No exceptions. I have, for some time, embraced an open table and I believe the Church, not only the Presbyterian Church (USA) is opening to the idea of sacrament as welcome and inclusion.  I confess that I enjoy worshipping at an Episcopal Church where this unconditional welcome is crystal clear.

Earlier this year I was asked to celebrate an “extraordinary” baptism.  Of course, all baptisms are extraordinary, but this would be a baptism that bends the rules, stepping just outside the doors of the church.  Sara Miles, in Take this Bread, had already suggested to me the idea of a font outside the doors of the church.

My nephew and his bride grew up in the church, Presbyterian and Lutheran respectively.  Like most of us, there have been times when they felt excluded and alienated by the church.  They are now young parents, both working hard to balance family, work, and pleasure.  They were married by a beloved pastor in the great outdoors, with the mountains as a backdrop.  When they began to think about baptism for their daughter, Harper Iona, the doors were closed to them unless they became members of the church.  And the font was behind those doors.

They say that young adults don’t think about membership the way we boomers and older folks do.  I thought about all the ways the old-line, mainline churches are trying and failing to welcome younger adults.  I thought about all the baptisms I had celebrated inside the church, where the parents made their promises out loud, but were never seen again on a Sunday in church.  I also thought about the Church of Scotland where I have served, and the way that they have wrestled with this very question, loosening up a bit on the membership requirement. 

When asked to baptize Harper, I so very much wanted to say “yes.” My initial response was, I so want to do this, but we would need to figure out a way to make it an “official” baptism.  It would not be a blessing or a dedication.  It would not be a private baptism.  I was willing to bend the rules, but I have become increasingly sacramental over the years.  When I asked the parents why they wanted Harper baptized, they had all the right answers.  She is a child of God.  We want to say that out loud to our family and friends.  And, yes, we will profess our faith out loud.  And, yes, we will promise to raise her in the church.  And, yes, everyone there can gently remind us that we need to find a church.  And we will.  In time.

So I read and reread the Directory for Worship.  And the Bible.  And I talked to a few clergy friends in various traditions.  And I even talked to a couple of polity wonks to try to figure out a way to do this.

And then I attended another baptism inside the church and realized that very few Sunday morning baptisms follow the Directory for Worship to the letter.  They happen before, not after the sermon.  There are no renunciations.  Hardly ever is the Apostles’ Creed recited by one and all.  There may or may not be an elder present.  Questions may or may not be asked of the congregation.  Session may or may not have recorded it in the Register.

Over the years, teaching Reformed Worship, when “extraordinary” cases in point were raised in class, I always told my students to wrestle with three things:  the pastoral, the theological, and the ecclesial.  And of course, the Bible.  The ecclesial requirement of membership in this case seemed a way of pushing this young family further from the church.  I prayed.  I conversed.  I listened.  I read.  I wrote.  And I decided that I could create a sacramental service of worship that honored the Directory for Worship, but more than that, honored the spiritual lives of this family, Reformed theology, and the Word of God. 

Gospel words began to ring in my ears:  “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for to such as these belongs the kingdom of heaven.”  “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”  “God is love, and those who love are born of God and know God.” “Here is some water, what is to prevent me from being baptized?”

So I said, “yes.”  And I conducted a service of worship outside the doors of the church, but with a gathered community of family and friends who would sing and pray, who would hear the Word proclaimed, who would respond by professing their faith, and by witnessing the promises of these young parents.  Both great grandmothers are elders, so they stood with me as those gathered promised to support this family. Two close friends were sponsors.  The only missing piece, in this case, was that the baptism would not be recorded in any congregation’s minute book.  I made them a very beautiful certificate and signed it!

It was an extraordinary event for so many reasons.  But in the thinking and the praying and the planning and the celebrating, I was changed.  A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace.  That I have long believed.  But a sacrament ought not be a way of excluding anyone from that invisible grace.  A sacrament ought to be an invitation, a welcome, a reaching out, evangelism. We can no longer wait inside the church, behind closed doors, waiting for young families with children to push their way in.

I am honorably retired, so not as worried as I might have been a few years ago about breaking or bending the rules.  I know that I am way more “by the book” than so many younger, edgier pastors who would say, “What’s the big deal?”  By narrating this event, I am refusing to fly under the radar.  I am professing a scruple.  At least. So defrock me.

We are sacramental.  I am a Minister of Word and Sacrament.  A priest.  We are to tear down the fences and the dividing walls.  The doors of the church ought to be open.  Always.  So, if I believe in an open table, where all are welcome, baptized or not, then I believe in a font that is right there, right near the open doors of the church as a sign of welcome.  As a visible sign of invisible, lavish grace.  And filled to the brim.  Always.

©Rebecca Button Prichard

Image Baptism Certificate made and gifted to Harper Iona and her parents from Rebecca.

www.rebeccaprichard.com

In the nave
two chairs with arms
look at each other

on the
trail of window sills
queen anne’s lace
stencils
sun and shadow

above the altar
a collage of local
hills and houses
church and local theatre
train at the station

the place I get off
is where love
and grief collide
just a feeling
inside

when the Shepherd
comes looking
for me
when His heart
calls
i’ll run
the road
of paradise
won’t look
behind
 

ends

©Tess Ashton
Image Marc Chagall (1887 – 1985)  Song of Songs IV

i
A church and a bell

I’ve seen a tree on a hill
(with a church and a bell)
out my window
for 17 years now
alone without leaves
I now realize
must be dead
from this side of the river
who knows
yet says
‘I stand for all
things set apart
by those with an eye
for things placed
on a hill
or a table
for contemplation’
and I realize
it’s a dead tree talking
warming the living
saying love
is complete
in all things
given

ii
Hunger

when i look at the
tree on the hill
with the church and the bell
and the river in front
and the bush
on the edge
of cloud-touched tracks
the slow-moving rhythm
of the sky above
a poem no less
with a train
running through

but what is a poem
but truth coming forth
like Heidegger’s
butterfly
or a moment
of leaving from
a railway station

the crying most often
i come to the
hill sounds the call
for children
hungry and dying
how best to help
where are
they exactly?

a feeling below
of small hollow boats
on long empty rivers
forgotten then
sailing then lifting
on rainbows
children and babies
no fanfare
or tombstones

iii
Yang Yang and the view from the back

Above the tree on the hill there’s a Catholic
church with woods backed up facing
us  Off the flat ‘burb road from
the cul de sac entry
there’s a school
attached
too I
haven’t

seen lately
What the kids don’t
know there’s a hill stretching
downwards to a pink-blue river sky in its
mirror  On the back of the hill the sun comes
early shifting things in the dark with
light across pasture  Think often
of ‘yi yi: a one and a two

a movie that speaks
of forgotten
views  A boy
with his camera
clicks heads from the
back  says we all need help
with the tracks we’re immune to 
On Sunday went swimming in singing and

sermon and movie and river and light on hill
gliding  caught the rear view from
Colossians too  the wind of
the Spirit showed some-
thing odd though
a cloud of my
making
jiggled a warning

Shamed  to name sins
that cut into focus   Today
stroked the back of a neck of a loved
one felt the scar where hearing was taken
forever  Clever Yang Yang to spot a least thought about angle  

iv
The days and nights of Manapau St

blue
pink blue
blue orange
orange black
black black

sets the red station light
moon of the train
the bridge and town
alight in the distance
clack clack

as the train goes by
with the river
and clouds
who’d move?
relax relax

you might touch God
it’s paradise
here
in the cosy ‘burb
most times most times

and the hills over there
and the river
in front
and lights and city
in tiny perspective
this place this place

here clouds
and people
stride together
the old troll bridge
to catch the train
to town to town

past our verandah
meander the station
the edge of the
platform
the way of the journey
so near so near

Meadowbank kids
perch in formation
itching til airborne
bedrooms like hurricanes
ducks going somewhere
lift off lift off

by tides and timetables
hearts spin back
to days and nights
of pink and blue
and orange and black
think back think back

v
Fool on the hill

outa that scene
for good
rear view
mirror
tells a story
giant sun
proclaiming
glory
not disaster
on the hill

home alone
rays bear down
deepest
heaven
four years
rot
dug out
in twenty
minutes

nervy dream
old scene
naked
In the elevator
heading for
the upper
floor
be still
hints
St Francis

next day
wander to
garden centre
a rose
my name
chosen for
spring promotion
heart felt
description
swirl of love
birthday gift
from heavenly
Father

©Tess Ashton

Image  The Slain Tree  Eric Lee-Johnson c. 1945, Auckland, New Zealand