Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy
Worship Beyond Words
Essay on Matins (also called "Orthros") the service immediately preceding the Divine Liturgy
March 27, 2005
The folks at the Orthodox church where we have been attending go to great lengths to be helpful. Today, for instance, one of the chanters came over and showed me where the Matins service was found in the prayer book. About twenty minutes into the service a woman a couple of rows back came up and showed me where we were because the service had varied from the book, and since I had set the book down, she thought I might have gotten lost trying to follow along. What had actually happened was that after following along for one psalm I had set the book aside, deciding just to listen.
Orthodox worship, among other things, is an aural experience. At St. Thomas, where we worship, the whole service is chanted except for the Gospel reading. Chanting gives the words a particular character which allows them to be heard in two very different ways. On the one hand, the worshiper can follow along in the prayer book so the words can be read, their meaning understood and digested. For Westerners, and particularly Protestants I suspect, this would be the normal way of “getting something out of” Matins. There is no Matins sermon; instead it is a long string of psalms occasionally interrupted by prayers or hymns, both chanted in tones similar to those used with the psalms, creating a mellifluous consonance to the whole service. The rising and falling chant can lull the hearer and following along in the prayer book allows the hearer to catch the content of the psalms (as well as prayers and hymns). This approach treats the hour's worth of words in manner similar to that of the sermon or scripture reading in a Protestant worship service. In both, the content or meaning of the words is central, allowing the worshiper to follow along (or in the case of Orthodox Matins, pray along) with the chanter.
But there is another way to approach Matins. Instead of focusing on the words on the page and the meaning contained therein, one can simply sit in the presence of the conversation going on. This approach is more akin to a living room full of extended family the hour or two before Thanksgiving Dinner than it is to the scripture reading and sermon at Protestant worship. When sitting with family there are often multiple conversations going on. The individual can float in and out of the conversations. The conversations themselves are typically not content or information driven; rather, they are the means of connection. People who know each other well but only see each other a few times a year gather and the conversation is the means of reconnecting, of strengthening the bonds of friendship and family, of communicating love, acceptance, contentment, and joy. Horses and cattle, when they are corralled, do the same thing by nuzzling each other and touching, withers to flank, as they pass. In a much less elegant example, monkeys do the same thing by grooming each other and picking vermin out of each other's hair. But we are neither horses nor monkeys; we are humans, and this subtle social dance of community and extended family is accomplished through words.
We are living beings—souls and bodies—gathered together in a single space. If the setting were more intimate, husband and wife or parent and child, the connection might be more intimate—body to body—through caresses, hugs, kisses, sitting on laps, or the like. But in the less intimate but still familial context of a family gathering, such as Thanksgiving Dinner, this connection between living beings, souls and bodies, is accomplished soul to soul rather than body to body through the means of words, which mingle our inner beings and intimate selves in the sound of conversation and laughter. It matters little what is being talked about; it is rather this interaction by means of presence and through conversation that is important.
In Matins, and other Orthodox worship services, the words almost float upon the air much like the incense, carried on the currents of the chants. To carefully read along in the prayer book, carefully digesting the meaning of each sentence as it passes, is to reduce their living character to a series of propositions that have to be understood. But the chanted psalms, prayers, and songs of Matins are more akin to the living room conversation before Thanksgiving dinner or the two horses passing withers to flank, gently touching and connecting. This is what I did this morning when I set aside the prayer book and simply listened.
When there are that many words (Matins, as I said, is an hour service), the content and meaning of all those words begins to fade in and out of consciousness. What happens on a practical level is that the mind catches a profound sentence or paragraph here, or an interesting turn of phrase there, as they airily float about the room upon the melodies of the chant. The mind picks the occasional phrase out of the air and turns it over, just enjoying it or maybe considering it's meaning carefully, and then returns its attention again to the words of the psalm, the process beginning all over again. At other times the words of the service fade into the background as one is embraced by the icons all about or the activities of people preparing for worship. When the prayer book is set aside, freeing the mind from the linear thought processes of the words on the page, the mind is free to engage, withers to flank, with the presence of the living Word, the other worshipers, and the words of patriarchs, forefathers, and saints from generations past all awaiting the great feast that we will soon partake.
It is easy to be seduced by the power of the written Word of God in and of itself. The scriptures, after all, tell us about God and about God's Son, Jesus Christ, about salvation, about God's Holy Spirit who would come into the world after Jesus ascended to heaven, about the church, the people of God in the world today. But knowing stuff about God is seductive because it is easily confused with knowing the living God who desires to enter into relationship with us. And it is needful to pause at this point. God entering into relationship with us is vastly different than God doing something for us. In the Christian circles I have been associated with throughout my life, these two ideas have often been confused. Christians say that Jesus Christ forgave them of their sins, so they are now in relationship with Christ. The divine act of forgiveness and reconciliation certainly must precede a relationship, but it is not the same thing as a relationship. A relationship is a conversation over time, a being present with each other over time.
And sitting in Matins this morning with the prayer book shut, participating in this gathering of God's family as I might on Thanksgiving morning when my human family gathers, with no particular agenda other than being together in the midst of good conversation while we wait for the meal, I was suddenly freed of any seduction that God's written Word might offer at the time. (Remember, the Deceiver can use even holy things to seduce us.) I was simply there to be with my Lord Jesus Christ, the fellow worshipers, and that great cloud of witnesses also gathered there, withers to flank, as it were, waiting for the meal to come.
Copyright © 2005 James E. Nelson (Just Another Jim). All Rights Reserved.
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