Just before Easter I had a zoom conversation with a Muslim professional. He said that he had read that I was a man of faith and therefore asked how I was going to celebrate Easter. I replied that Easter was the highlight of the Christian year, more so than Christmas, and that it was a season that I had always enjoyed. Not least, it was the arc of the liturgy, over four days, taking us through the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, that I found most inspiring. I wished him well for Ramadan and Eid and we both agreed that it was a change to have the opportunity to talk of faith in today’s world.
Now, on the Tuesday after Easter, I realise just how privileged and honoured I am to have been able to celebrate Easter at a church that continues to use the extraordinary form, the unrevised Latin rite from 1962. Unlike many in the congregation I do not believe for one moment that this is the only form that should be used. I am not particularly committed to it theologically or ecclesiologically. I just find it so much more satisfying, ritually and liturgically, than any of the modern alternatives. And, as with any liturgy or worship, from whatever tradition, when it is undertaken with commitment and enthusiasm, in the best possible way that it can be celebrated (with full complement of clergy and servers, with a professional choir, and with all the relevant beauty and dignity that could be employed) then it creates an experience of holiness and worship that, for me, is beyond compare. While the Easter vigil, for example, took two and three-quarter hours, it was, in my view, perfect and a fitting celebration of the depth and complexity, emotionally and spiritually, of the feast.
I don’t share what I assume to be the very conservative moral and social values of many of the congregation at the church I attend, but I would not expect to differ on any of the essentials theologically. The sermon on Easter morning, drawing out the biblical allusions to bread, wine and the lamb from the first Passover meals, through the Last Supper, to Jesus’ words on the Cross was a wonderful expression of core of the Catholic faith. I think it is sad that the Pope has chosen to conduct a campaign against the conservative wing of the Church through their commitment to a particular form of liturgy. I am sure there is nothing in the rite itself that the Pope can find objectionable, it is those who choose to use it as a badge if identity, and opposition to current trends in the Vatican, that he appears to have difficulties with. As I say, I think this is sad, but I am still grateful for the opportunity to worship using that rite in a church that does it so well.
On Easter morning I also listened to the liturgy from Canterbury Cathedral as broadcast on Radio 4. It was the Archbishop’s sermon that has caught the headlines and created controversy, asking once again whether church and politics meet. I have no objection to that sermon and support much of what the Archbishop was saying. A very different sermon to that in my own church, but equally profound and theologically appropriate. My difficulty was with much of the rest of the service. It appeared to seek ‘relevance’ in a way that led it to be almost humanist in tone. There is, of course, a place for humanism in the church, and perhaps in the liturgy. However, in my view not at Easter, when we celebrate what God has done for us, not what we have done for God, or for each other.
Where I and many Muslims would probably be in agreement is that the worship of God is not about ‘relevance’. Whether that worship is in Latin or Arabic is not important. It is an attitude of devotion and subservience to the power that created us, loves us, and brought about our salvation, that is pre-eminent. That demands a certain detachment from the things of this world, a glimpse of heaven, as the Anglo-Catholic slum priests of the early twentieth century East End churches would stress. It is the ability to take us out of ourselves and present us with something totally other, utterly divine, that worship comes into its own.
And I am clearly not the only one who thinks like this. At a time when church attendance continues to decline across all the denominations, the church I attended over Easter was full every day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, congregations of two to three hundred, and much to my surprise, different on each day. There are, of course, some regulars, and the weekly Sunday liturgy has itself maintained a full church every week since the end of lock down, but over the feast there were clearly people who had travelled in from miles around to share the experience, to worship in the traditional ways, and probably some new people, returnees who remembered something of this in their childhood, whether in the UK, or in Poland or other European, Asian and African nations, but also young families who believe this is the right environment to bring up a new generation of Christian youth. There is something here that is clearly attractive, and clearly not only to me.
Happy Easter, and may the peace of the risen Lord be with us all…
Martin Stringer Quartet 