In which the Postulant commits a sin of omission
Looking over a first draft of the ordination service, I see a hymn inserted unrubrically between the sermon and the Creed. I have been asked for my comments on the service. I raise no objection.
Is this because it's one of my favorite hymns? Or is it because I hate to make a fuss? Or is it because I hate always being that guy?
Sometimes it's exhausting to be me.
Labels: Calendar and canons, Church music
posted by The Postulant @ 6:59 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
Actually, I think we could use a few more of those guys around.
It's a good thing when clergypeople take Authority seriously, I think; it's a primary theme of the Rule, after all. And we really don't have that much of it - Authority, that is - to begin with, so what's the big deal?
Honestly, I've gotten pretty tired of those other guys....
Well, you could count it as ecumenical. It a particularly Lutheran to have the Hymn of the Day follow the Sermon and come before the Creed as further explication of the Gospel as proclaimed in the reading and in the sermon.
I'm with bls here. :)
I must say, one of the joys of blogging is the reassurance that I'm not out of my mind (or that if I am, I'm in very good company).
Oh, and Christopher, there may be something to that. I believe the Cathedral organist is married to a Lutheran pastor.
Interesting point about the Lutherans, though. And we are in Full Communion.
Hmmm. (It gets much easier to violate subsequent Canons after you've violated the first one, I guess....)
#3
the Lutheran liturgy has its own shape and its own integrity, and it's different from ours...
borrowing little bits is rather like taking the lovely arm off one sculpture and adding it in to a different sculpture. the bits of liturgy work as elements of a whole, and aren't just isolated little bits.
this is not to say that you have an obligation to protest the violation. but it is a quick slope from "ooh, i like that" to "liturgy should do whatever i like"...
I think that argument a bit weak, close to a slippery slope fallacy, until we know why the hymn was added at all. After all, the shape of our liturgies (we have more than one) tend to love borrowing little bits from everyone else. I'm not saying go against the rubrics lightly, but let's be careful in assuming some ill intention or poor theological reasoning for the addition until we know why it is added. And more to the point, the 1979 BCP and LBW share a great deal because the committees that put them together were cooperating with one another.
I'm another one of "those" (leaving off the guy part, as it does not apply in my case) who twitches at such. Would that there were more of us!
If it's a favorite hymn, might you not ask to have it put in another (liturgically correct) place in the service?
christopher's objection is a well-taken one, but i think it misses. the more we notice how similar the 1979 BCP is to the LBW, the more we may be drawn to realize that the differences are likely to be intentional.
the custom of a "Hymn of the Day" has very deep roots in Lutheran liturgy; it is not something invented by the LBW. it's something that the 1979 BCP authors were surely aware of, which doesn't mean, "hey, it's close enough, let's do it", it means, "they consciously chose against it."
As a curmudgeonly teacher of liturgics, my hair stood on end when I read of the hymn between the sermon and creed.
The '79 book's framers intended for the gospel, sermon, and creed to unfold as an unbroken progression-- as the Word is read, broken open in the homily, and then juxtaposed to the creed as Rule of Faith (and interpretive key to the scripture, if you follow Chris Bryan's argument, as I do). Throwing a hymn into the mix derails the progression. This isn't a case of rubrics for rubrics' own sake-- there is actually a reason behind the pattern.
If the ELCA has chosen differently, that is its own business, but hymnody does not usually work as well to convey that progression of gospel/midrash/rule of faith.
Please, please be "that guy."
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