After having barely taken note of Lent, I did a sort of penance by binging on Holy Week, at St. Peter's and a number of other houses of worship besides. Appropriately for news first released to women (the painting's by Fra Angelico, from the Convento di San Marco, Florence), my Easter began and ended with women-run services, though of very different kinds.I started Maundy Thursday at St. Mary's, North Melbourne, in whose choir a new friend of mine sings. St. Mary's is Anglo-Catholic like St. Peter's, but has a different feel, less established, edgier but also more down to earth. The vicar is a woman; I hadn't realized how much I miss hearing a woman's voice saying the mass. The sermon was unpretentious but serious. The choir did valiantly with some Duruflé, Bach and plainchant, but the hymnal we used is a snazzy ecumenical thing called Together in Song with melodies from a hundred countries. Besides something to a traditional Ghanaian melody we got to sing this anthem to the church's belated discovery of women's ministry (I think it's originally Presbyterian: my source):
A prophet-woman broke a jar
by Love's divine appointing.
With rare perfume she filled the room,
presiding and anointing.
A prophet-woman broke a jar,
the sneers of scorn defying.
With rare perfume she filled the room,
preparing Christ for dying.
A faithful woman left a tomb
by Love's divine commission.
She saw, she heard, she preached the word,
arising from submission.
A faithful woman left a tomb
with resurrection gospel.
She saw, she heard, she preached the word,
apostle to apostles.
Though woman-wisdom, woman-truth
for centuries were hidden,
unsung, unwritten, and unheard,
derided and forbidden,
the Spirit's breath, the Spirit's fire,
on free and slave, descending,
can tumble our diving walls,
our shame and sadness mending.
The Spirit knows, the Spirit calls,
by Love's divine ordaining,
the friends we need, to serve and lead,
their powers and gifts unchaining.
The Spirit knows, the Spirit calls
from women, men, and children
the friends we need, to serve and lead.
Rejoice and make them welcome!
In the Anglican Church of Australia, where the ordination of women is still a far-off dream for many, this was prophetic indeed. Not to get into the causes of the latest self-flaggelation of the Anglican Communion, but I don't imagine this sort of thing gets sung much in Ghana.
The morning of Good Friday I went to St. Peter's for a lovely service, the austere but perfectly choreographed medieval liturgy seeming entirely appropriate to so somber an occasion. Particularly moving was the long silence as the three priests prostrated themselves before the stripped altar, and the liquid gold of the choir's singing of the Reproaches (the setting by Vittoria, I think), by turns loud and very soft.
As we finished we could hear a crowd gathering outside the church, the Melbourne City Churches in Action's seventh annual Stations of the Cross Walk. It had begun at the city's oldest Catholic church, and ended at St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral, picking up people along the way from a Welsh church, a Church of Christ, a Wesley Church, St. Peter's, St. Patrick's Catholic cathedral, the German Lutheran church, a Uniting Church, the Scots Church and a Baptist Centre; the Salvation Army sent a banner.
At each stop part of the passion narrative from John is read and a prayer or meditation or reflection furnished by that church (each quite different from the others even in style!), followed by a verse of the passion anthem from Bach's Matthäuspassion. It's a nice idea, my first real experience of ecumenism, though I was by the end of it very sick of the dirgelike Taisé chant we sang in all manner of keys as we moved from one church to another, "Jeeeeeeesus, remember meeee, when you come into your kiiiiingdom..." But it was a nice way to spend a sunny noontime on a public holiday, and fun, as we spilled down Collins Street, to see people's reactions. A panicked young body-pierced couple in black who hadn't noticed us coming round the corner looked like campers caught in a flash flood.In the evening I came back to the Scots Church for a performance of Bach's Johannespassion, which I hadn't intended as a Lenten austerity but became so, starting with an evangelist who sounded like a squeaky attic door. (The choir, orchestra and one of the base soloists were fine.) But even so, it was impressive to have a big church full of people devoted to such music sung in German in the Antipodes.
Saturday night I went back to St. Peter's for the Easter Vigil, which started at 10:30 and lasted until well past everyone's bedtimes. It was very slow, needlessly so. Some visitors from a local Islamic society had come, and I imagine they went home reassured that Anglo-Catholicism is a harmless wraith. This is a pity, since the change from the darkened church to the bright first eucharist of Easter should (one might have thought) be the perfect occasion for appreciating the spirituality behind its theatricality.
This morning, being Anglo-Catholicked out, I decided to go across the street to St. Jude's, the Anglican church my friends talk about like al Qaeda. (In America we'd call it evangelical.) It was a combined service for adults and children, and kids were running up and down the aisles when not asked to participate, making noise to the band which accompanied us through bland modern anthems (the text in powerpoint) or lining up with balloons with the words of the Bible quote we were to memorize on them, the youth minister popping them one by one to jog our memories. The sermon was delivered by a youngish male priest, a recently returned missionary by the sound of it, but the rest of the service was run by women. This wasn't what I was expecting at all, since the Sydney Anglicanism I've been told St. Jude's represents is dead against the ordination of women, and so committed to male "headship" that it argues for a hierarchical Trinity.
Then came the biggest surprise. A bare-bones communion - "symbols Jesus gave us to remember his sacrifice by" - was said by a woman, a layperson, in ordinary dress! It felt like a Tupperware party. Shocking! The priest came out to help share the bread and wine, but was nowhere to be seen during the consecration of the sacrament. Of course it probably wasn't meant as a "consecration" but as a "commemoration," and they probably think of it as a "symbol" rather than a "sacrament." (Someone has suggested the Sydney Anglicans are best described as Neopuritans.) I remembered another thing I'd heard about Sydney Anglicanism - that they're going full-tilt for what they call "lay presidency." Who needs priests anyway? It hadn't occurred to me when I read about this that it might prove a back-door way to a form of women's ministry.What a broad tent is the Anglican Church, unbelievably broad, really. How sad it would be if its various factions were to break apart; its great gift to the larger Christian community is precisely the variety it manages somehow to sanction, if not always to celebrate.
