The Serious Business of Worship

Essays in Honour of Bryan D. Spinks

Melanie Ross, Simon Jones

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780567642325
• eBook ISBN: 9780567006097
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

The study of liturgy has received criticism from scholars and practitioners alike: the academic discipline of liturgiology has been compared to the hobby of stamp collection, and proponents for liturgical renewal argue that worship must be made more accessible and relevant. Bryan Spinks has been an important moderating voice in this discussion, reminding both academic and ecclesial communities that Christ is made known in the liturgical riches of the past as well as in contemporary forms of the present. Inspired by Spinks' work, this volume brings together biblical, historical, and theological scholars to discuss the theme of continuity and change in worship. Its historical range begins with the early church, extends through the Reformation, and concludes with a discussion of issues facing contemporary liturgical reform. In recognition of the fact that Professor Spinks' work has been widely influential in both Europe and the United States, the editors have solicited liturgical perspectives from scholars with international reputations on sides of the Atlantic.

Part 1
Early Church and Eastern Traditions

The essays in Part 1 engage liturgical development in the early Church and in the Eastern tradition. In the opening essay, Robert Taft reminds readers that Spinks is by no means the first preacher concerned with the ‘seriousness’ of worship. Centuries earlier, the homilies of St. John Chrysostom reveal a preacher struggling mightily to improve the orthopraxis of a Church more unruly and boisterous than the one we know today. Daniel Findikyan provides an annotated English translation of the complete rites of Palm Sunday evening in the Armenian Church, with special attention given to the dramatic liturgical ceremony called ‘The Opening of the Door.’ Findikyan explores possible theological and historical precedents for the ceremony, including the practice in the late twelfth through early fifteenth centuries of dismissing the faithful from the church and closing the main doors for the duration of Great Lent. Acknowledging that a definitive conclusion would be premature, Findikyan suggests that the old ritual of closing the doors at Lent might have served ‘as a magnet, if not the actual occasion’ for the development of the ‘Opening of the Door’ ceremony within the Armenian Rite.

Midway through the production of this Festschrift, we were deeply saddened to learn of the untimely death of Gregory Woolfenden. Gregory was one of the first authors we invited to contribute to the project. He wrote back immediately and affirmatively, expressing his admiration and affection for Bryan and his delight at the invitation. Like Bryan Spinks, Gregory Woolfenden was a scholar ‘willing to look over the various fences that Christians have erected, so as to compare and learn.’ His chapter surveys the most widely used forms of the Day Hours – particularly those found in the Roman and Benedictine breviaries and their derivatives, and the Palestinian monastic rite currently used by the Byzantine Orthodox churches. Tony Gelston then provides a helpful introduction to one of Spinks’s most significant areas of research: the history and evolution of East Syrian eucharistic prayers. As a conclusion to Part 1, Paul Bradshaw affirms Spinks’s insistence on the diversity of ritual forms and interpretations in early Christian initiation. Bradshaw draws on Eastern and Western sources from the first through the fourth centuries to emphasize that although almost all sources treat anointing as a constituent element within the baptismal rite, there is little agreement among them concerning its position, form, or theology. This makes tracing the origins of early Christian baptismal anointing something of an impossibility.

1
St. John Chrysostom, Preacher Committed to the Seriousness of Worship

Robert Taft

The Reverend Professor Bryan D. Spinks, esteemed colleague and friend of many years to whom I dedicate these brief reflections, believes that worship is a serious undertaking, as we can see in his 1997 homily ‘The Serious Business of Worship’ reprinted at the beginning of this Festschrift in his honor. As he points out in that eloquent sermon, the purpose of liturgy is not to entertain, but to be ‘an epiphany of God … a place where God manifests Himself.’ That is why we must let the liturgy speak for itself instead of trying to make it speak exclusively for us, instead of exploiting it as no more than a medium of self-expression. Like medieval cathedrals, liturgies were created not as monuments to human creativity, but as acts of worship whose object is not self-expression, not even self-fulfillment, but God. ‘He must increase, I must decrease,’ John the Baptist said of Jesus (Jn 3:30), and that is an excellent principle for liturgical ministers.

Just over 1600 years ago another eloquent advocate of ‘the serious business of liturgy,’ St. John Chrysostom, bishop of the Great Church in the imperial capital of Constantinople for only six years from 398 to 404, faced innumerable problems and opportunities of ecclesiastical administration and pastoral care far beyond anything he had known as a presbyter in Antioch.¹ The extant historical evidence shows that one of Chrysostom’s major pastoral concerns was the seriousness of liturgy – so much so that tradition attributes to him one of its chief liturgical texts, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, an attribution only partly true. What he in fact did was take the pre-existing (and now no longer extant) Antiochene Greek Anaphora of the Apostles and redact it anew, adding theological interpolations to combat the heresies of the day. For if liturgy is to be serious business, it must at least be orthodox!² But Chrysostom’s preaching, directed at the unruly congregation before him and often focused on their comportment during Church services, was directed less at orthodoxy than at orthopraxis: orthodoxia not just in the sense of ‘right belief’ but also of ‘right glorifying, right worship.’

Liturgical Orthopraxis

It is no accident that most Byzantine Christian literature is homiletic. Ritual splendor, beautiful chant, and great preachers were the Church’s main earthly attractions – so much so that some people left the church once the sermon was over, as Chrysostom himself complains!³

Byzantine preaching was often long and boisterous.⁴ The bishop spoke seated on his throne in the apse, or at the ambo in the center of the nave, sometimes for as long as two hours, while the congregation stood crowded up against the chancel screen, delighting in the rhetorical flourishes of the homilist, punctuating their approval with shouts and applause, and their resentment with jeers when roundly berated for their vices and comportment, habitually unruly even in church.⁵ Chrysostom, however, tells his hearers in Constantinople they would do better to observe his exhortations instead of applauding them!⁶

Despite the hubbub and applause, just how much of a literary Greek sermon in the rhetorical tradition of the Greek Fathers the Byzantine ordinary people understood is moot.⁷ Most Late-Antique Greek preachers had an elevated style, some highly rhetorical sermons seem to have been designed as much to show off as to communicate, and it is doubtful just how much the ordinary people understood.⁸ Chrysostom, On the Priesthood V, 6, implies that not too many were able to appreciate a good sermon – though he is trying to console the preacher if he is misunderstood or criticized.⁹ And the overflow crowds in attendance, with their shouts, applause, and jeers in reaction to Late-Antique preaching, would indicate that some of the congregation certainly got the message!

The Problem of Abstention from Holy Communion

What were the main liturgical issues Chrysostom felt the need to address in his preaching? By the end of the fourth century in East and West the decline in frequent communion had become a major source of pastoral concern,¹⁰ one that Chrysostom addressed head-on in his preaching and pastoral admonitions.

The degrees of canonical penance as articulated in some areas of the Late-Antique East had exacerbated the division of the Christian community into communicants and non-communicants by introducing a category of penitents who could remain after the dismissals. Those in this final grade of penance immediately preceding reconciliation and readmission to communion were called ‘bystanders’ or ‘those attending without an offering’¹¹ because its members were allowed to stay for the eucharistic part of the service, but without the right to make an offering – i.e., to present a prosphora or gift of bread for use in the service – or to communicate.

This grade of ‘bystander’ existed in areas like Bithynia, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia in Asia Minor,¹² as well as Constantinople, where we see it described c. 535–550 in a letter of a Syrian Monophysite bishop then resident in the capital.¹³ He tells us that in the final degree of penance, the penitent assists at the Eucharist with the faithful for two years without communicating. We have no earlier evidence for this grade in Constantinople,¹⁴ but since it is prescribed in the Councils of Ancyra (Ankara) in Galatia (AD 314),¹⁵ and Nicaea in Bithynia (AD 325), just across from Constantinople on the other side of the Propontis or Bosphorus,¹⁶ and it appears in Constantinople c. 535–550, it is not unreasonable to assume it was known there even earlier.

Chrysostom opposed this practice, arguing against those who attend the Eucharist without communicating that if they are not worthy to partake of the sacrament, then neither are they worthy to participate with the faithful in the prayers: ‘You are not worthy of the sacrifice nor of communion? Then neither are you [worthy] of the prayer.’¹⁷ So penitents, unworthy of the prayer as well as of the communion, are dismissed. Servants who have offended the master are sent away like the unbaptized. It is an insult for a guest at a feast to sit at table but refuse to partake. ‘Is he not insulting the host? … How do you stay and not partake of the table? I am unworthy, you will say. Then you are also [unworthy] of that communion in the prayers.’

But Chrysostom is not only among the first to draw attention to the decline in the frequency of communion; he may also have been partly responsible for it, telling his people over and over that many partake unworthily, stressing again and again ‘the sincerity and purity of soul’ needed to approach the Supper of the Lord. ‘With this [purity], approach at all times; without it, never!’¹⁸ And even when he laments, ‘In vain is the daily sacrifice, in vain do we stand before the altar: no one partakes’ – he immediately adds, ‘I say these things not so you will partake lightly, but so you will make yourselves worthy.’¹⁹

How often did the faithful receive communion in Chrysostom’s time? Obviously not often enough to suit him, from his constant preoccupation with the issue. Chrysostom’s frequent laments contain some concrete hints as to actual practice. For example, he has to preach not only against the unworthy reception of communion, but also against the notion that communion should be limited to feast days.²⁰ Similarly, in his sermon In Eph. hom. 3, 4–5 Chrysostom berates his flock for fal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• The Serious Business of Worship
• An Octopus in a Matchbox: An Introduction to the Work of Bryan D. Spinks
• Part 1 Early Church and Eastern Traditions
• Part 2 Patristic and Reformation Eras
• Part 3 Contemporary Liturgical Reform
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Copyright Page