By what language?

By what language?

Most clergy of my acquaintance will admit that we would rather minister at a funeral than a wedding. This is not because of any morbidity of outlook. It is simply that funerals (there are exceptions!) are generally simpler. There can be very difficult family dynamics, but the too-common phenomenon of a would-be Bridezilla and her mother is absent in burials, and the planning and execution of a funeral is less protracted, by far. But an additional complication common to both weddings and funerals is the reality that in most cases people in attendance will have very little idea of what is happening, because they have no ongoing experience of what it means to engage in prayer and/or worship. They will certainly expect that whatever happens focuses upon the bride and groom or the deceased and family. They will be somewhat surprised, therefore, in any church in which the focus is on what God does, not on what a great person anyone is or was; not on human joy and emotion; not on grief but on resurrection.

An additional complication in a funeral or wedding is the need to be very, very explicit in instructing those in attendance what they are to do at the various parts of the liturgy. This is why the service bulletin will say things like “stand” or “kneel”. But what do you do when such explicit instructions are ignored? For example, if the bulletin instructs to stand and everyone remains seated, is this a problem?

Let’s leave aside the “problem” that could arise when people simply fail or choose not to follow directions. When we remind ourselves (in the case of a celebration of Holy Eucharist) that there has only ever been one perfect sacrifice offered, and we’re not going to do it, then how “correct” any celebration may be is at best an aspirational good. What I’m getting at, rather, is the reality that people don’t respond to written instructions because they don’t actually read the bulletin. They may glance at a lesson from scripture as it is read. They may even try to sing, at least a hymn if rarely the actual elements of the Mass (like a musical setting of the Gloria, for example). The fact is that we are at the cusp of a post-literate age in which communicating by the written word yields diminishing results. Many people are passive consumers, and what they are used to consuming are images and sounds, not words. Words require thought, processing. Images and sounds evoke reactions, emotions.

All of this is to say that how the Church chooses to communicate—and this to people who are physically present in the context of a prayer and/or worship service—has to account for how people can be communicated with. Which raises a question that takes us back to the roots of the Anglo-Catholic movement within Anglicanism, a mid-nineteenth century movement within the Church of England (and later in America) in which mission-minded clergy became “slum priests” and deliberately sought out the most blighted parts of Dickensian England to bring the beauty of holiness to those whose lives were characterized by squalor. Being a slum priest had very real attractions for me in my own vocation to the priesthood. But with a wife and two children, and the example of too many slum priests dying amidst those they ministered to in mind, I did not seek out the experience of seeking to bring light into squalor. But it sometimes came to me. For example, I served a parish in which it was common to encounter substance abusers (our sanctuary was open 24 hours), with the result that we celebrated more than a few “heroin/fentanyl funerals” at the height of the opioid crisis. (It’s never a good sign that you keep Narcan in a parish office.)

At a heroin funeral many in attendance were substance abusers themselves. Most were unchurched. What worked was to be very explicit in a conversational context. For example, one could in preaching talk about how a funeral involves a Mass of Resurrection; that we wear the white of Easter; that the “big candle” next to the urn or coffin is the Paschal Candle from the Easter vigil, a candle which is used both at baptisms and funerals; that the Creed recited at a funeral is the Apostles’ Creed—the same as used at baptism. This conversational approach allowed people to hear and think, and then perhaps to listen to how the Gospel was proclaimed. One option, therefore, in any worship, is to be as conversational as possible, slipping in instruction.

But what about the original Anglo-Catholic approach, that of the beauty of holiness, communicated very much by signs and symbols? Is it time to return to the original slum priest strategy of communicating in signs and symbols? Is it time to so seek to evoke the beauty of holiness, in a liturgy rich in the evocation of all senses, that people who do not know (for example) the Creed, are nonetheless touched by the transcendent in ways that call to them? This is not an either/or proposition in answer. One can and should continue to use words. But perhaps words become used more in the context of illuminating response.

A complete liturgy involves all of the senses. There is vision, involved in color, movement, signs and symbols that can range from the cross and how it is processed to how vestments are used and how gestures are employed. There is certainly sound, not only in the spoken voice but in music and signing, in the use of bells and chant. There is smell, evoked by the use of incense. There is touch and taste, both in the physical contact of the passing of the peace of Christ and in the physical sensations evoked by partaking of the Body and Blood in the consecrated bread and wine. This involvement of the senses is why, for example, it works to have the youngest children seated up front (contrary to their parents’ instincts), for then they can see, and being visual creatures their interest is better maintained.

A complete liturgy involves all of the senses, but it does so with purpose. We gather and proclaim, we engage in instruction and prayer, we participate in the real presence of Jesus Christ by and through what we do in the liturgy, and remember that the word “liturgy” derives from the Greek for “work of the people”. But what about when the people won’t “work”? What about when they are passive consumers? The danger of a liturgical focus is that it can become performance, something that just happens as spectacle at the altar. But what about when this spectacle is deliberately conflated with instruction and proclamation, instruction that is undertaken conversationally?

Not all of the slum-dwellers to whom the “Puseyites” ministered in Victorian England were functionally illiterate. Most of those who visit a church for a wedding or funeral can read and write. But they don’t choose to do much of either. They choose to consume, and it is images and sensations that they are used to consuming. Any strategy that seeks to involve the passive consumer must embody how holiness is embodied. It’s not just about an effective media hook, a marketing hack.

I have asked more questions in this column than posited answers. This is because I can’t just state what works. I am inviting any reader to comment, to suggest what it is or might be that allows the Church to more effectively communicate through signs and symbols, to proclaim to those who are used to consuming passively, in ways that allow them to experience transcendence, the numinous, the beauty of holiness. By what language can we best proclaim?