Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy
The Secret and Seeking God:
The Openness and Mystery of Worship
Essay on How Two Priests Approach Worship
September 3, 2006
We have had a change in priests at St. Thomas. At the end of July Fr. Tom moved to the Twin Cities and Fr. Paul was doing services here on the first day of August. For those paying close attention, the transition has been a little bumpy. Fr. Paul is accustomed to more of the Byzantine tones while St. Thomas has historically used more of the Arabic and Russian tones, so the chanters and choir are trying to adjust as quickly as possible. The new priest also wants the acolytes to do things slightly differently, so they are also having to pay close attention so that they are in the right place at the right time. But overall it appears to be a smooth transition. The average attender probably hardly notices the differences.
And that makes sense. The Orthodox have been using the same services and service books for centuries. There is very little room for variation in worship, so it matters little who the priest is on any given Sunday, the service stays the same. But there are subtle differences between Fr. Tom’s and Fr. Paul’s style. After a month of services a distinct pattern is beginning to develop. I suspect the differences in style reflect a difference of theological emphasis toward one of the two poles of our understanding of God.
First, there is the reality of the inscrutable God. Heaven and all its works are shrouded in mystery; God has revealed himself but his essence remains unknown and ultimately beyond our grasp. Even the purpose of the works of God, when we consider the why’s and how’s, remain ultimately hidden from our understanding. God sent his Son to become human in order that we might be saved, but beyond the most rudimentary facts related to this, the incarnation remains as surprising miracle of grace.
At the same time, through that same incarnation, heaven is opened up because God has become one with humanity in Jesus Christ. We have direct access to God, as was shown to us by the Father when, at the death of Christ, God tore the veil in the temple from top to bottom. Not only do we have access to God, we can know God in an intimate and personal way that was unimaginable to the followers of God from Abraham, Moses, and Elias, to even Anna and Joachim (Mary’s parents) or Simeon, the old prophet in the temple awaiting the coming Messiah. God took on human form. We have heard him, we have seen with our eyes, we have observed and touched the very Son of God (1 Jn. 1:1). And those who have seen the Son have seen the Father (Jn 6:46, 14:9) according to Jesus.
So it is that Christianity lives with these two distinct realities that serve as the opposite poles of divine revelation. Through the incarnation of the Son and the coming of the Holy Spirit we have full and glorious access to God. But at the same time, the very God who has given us this unprecedented access to himself remains shrouded in mystery and incomprehensible majesty. The cloud hanging over Mt. Sinai, full of thunder and wondrously awesome majesty, when God gave Moses the Law, still clouds our heavenly vision. (We see into the mirror, dimly, after all, and only when we are glorified will we see face to face. 1 Cor. 13:12) At precisely the same time, when we look at the mountain, we see Jesus, the Teacher, sitting there and teaching us clearly the message of the kingdom.
This same mix of glory and mystery can be observed in Jesus himself. To the disciples and crowds he seemed to be an almost ordinary man, but the demons cried out, “Why have you come to torment us, Son of God?” When Elias and Moses visited him on the mountain, Jesus was transfigured and his heavenly glory shown through. The disciples were terrified. Yes, even in this fullness of revelation, the mysterious God remained shrouded and mysterious, always surprising in his majesty, yet always gracious in his mercy.
Fr. Tom’s worship sensibilities leaned toward the openness of heaven and the availability of God. Fr. Paul’s sensibilities lean toward God’s mystery. This difference is subtle but is becoming evident in the slightly different way that Fr. Paul does things.
Often when Fr. Paul presides at Great Vespers and Orthros (the evening and morning prayer services that precede Divine Liturgy), the sanctuary and nave are in complete darkness at the beginning and ending of the services, with only a small candle in the sanctuary to illumine the priest’s book and a reading lamp on the chanter’s stand. Over the course of the service the church is illumined by stages: a few candles here another light there, until the point of the entrance of Jesus Christ into heaven when the church is fully illuminated. And then the lights and candles are slowly extinguished until the church is shrouded in darkness once again. When we leave, the door to the sanctuary is closed, the curtain drawn so the altar cannot be seen, and only darkness flows up from behind the icon screen. Heaven is seemingly cut off and distant, but in the middle of the service, when, symbolically, Jesus makes his way out of heaven and we greet him and hymn his glory, heaven is illumined, the door is open, and the Way into the Truth and Life of God is clear. That is a mysterious yet accurate vision of humanity’s relationship to God through time: We are given glimpses of God’s glory, preeminently through Jesus Christ; but as long as we remain this side of glory, those moments of utter clarity are fleeting and much of our lives are lived in the mode of hope rather than realization, dim reflection rather than blazing light.
This same sensibility is at work in Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy, as a whole, is a movement from the everyday world to the most secret and mysterious center of Divine Presence in heaven. It is often called a journey. Much of the movement has been lost over time. The first hymn or hymns were originally sung on the way to church. They were travel music as people went from the workaday world and gathered for worship. Once gathered the movement continued from gathered community on earth to the glorious congregation of heaven, singing “holy, holy, holy” around the throne. Eventually that movement continues farther up or into the very heart of God and the Divine Heart’s self-giving love. That always remains a mystery. How could God give his only Divine Son for our sake? We can never understand; we can only accept it.
That moment when we are elevated into the very mystery of Divine Love, is, in a sense, the very heart of the Divine Liturgy. At that moment, Fr. Paul shuts the Holy Doors and closes the curtain. And we stand (or, if it is not a Sunday morning, we prostrate ourselves) in awe of the ultimately unknowable love of God. Clouds of incense smoke rise from behind the icon stand, reminiscent of the revelation of God’s love to Moses on the Holy Mountain.
In the West there has always been a stronger temptation to define what happens in worship at the Lord’s Table than in the East. It’s the difference between the Latin legal/bureaucratic sensibility (that both Catholics and Protestants inherited) and the Eastern mystical sensibility. In the Mass it has been “determined” that the change from bread to body occurs at a specific moment and so it is that the bells are rung in order to remind people of the holiness of the moment. Protestants reacted deeply to this “hocus pocus.” The mystery of presence was reduced to the magic incantation and process (as it was explained to me in both Bible College and seminary). This battle between mystery and magic strikes a very deep chord in the Western sensibility. In response it is not uncommon for the Holy Doors and curtain to remain open in Orthodox churches of the West. It’s as if there’s a purposeful rejection of anything magical; all is open to scrutiny. God is not tucked away beneath a magic handkerchief and incantation but rather open in his dealings with humanity.
The Orthodox have always steadfastly refused to define the process or even think that there was some magic moment when some change in the substance of the elements occurred. The Christian Church (East and West) has always believed that the faithful truly partook of the Body of Christ at the Eucharist, but Orthodox theology never reduced the process to the Aristotelian philosophic categories of substance and accidents. Thus, the closing of the Holy Doors and curtain was not a way of hiding some mysterious or even magical process; it was rather an act of hiding our face from the utter holiness and majesty of the very heart of God.
But even today, when a priest closes the Holy Doors and Curtain and prostrates himself before altar, one can often hear a convert, or even a poorly taught cradle Orthodox say, “Now that’s the moment when the bread becomes the Body of Christ.” It’s the inherent danger of trying to be Christian in a religious/theological world saturated in the Aristotelian philosophy inherited from the Middle Ages.
How does one combat such magical misperceptions? Fr. Tom, like many Orthodox priests trying to be faithful in this Western context, did it by leaving the Holy Doors and curtain open. Everything was laid bare. It was an announcement that God didn’t need magic. And in the certainty of Christ’s salvation offered to us and made effective through the Holy Spirit, we all stood in confidence before the very mystery of the heart of God.
Fr. Tom had what we in the West often consider the classically Protestant sensibility (in contrast to a Medieval Roman sensibility) of the openness of heaven. We didn’t have to go through bureaucratic layers of Priest and Bishop and Cardinal and Pope, with a saint or two added into the insulation around God (as the Roman system was typically perceived). It was a child-like wonder before the truth that Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith opened the path to heaven. Most of the time the Holy Doors were open because Christ had torn the curtain to the Holy of Holies and opened the way. Except in seasons of most severe repentance, the sanctuary and nave lights were always on. It was a joyous confidence in the finished work of Christ. It was a holy boldness to enter the throne room of God. And this is a most natural and appropriate response to the changes in Western theology and practice that were introduced during the Medieval period.
But boldness and light are not the only dimension. Mystery and shadow (as distinguished from magic and incantation) are every bit as much a reality for the believer. Thus the liturgy feels different since Fr. Paul has arrived. The liturgies are word-for-word the same whether Fr. Tom or Fr. Paul is presiding; the movements and motions are the same too, but there are different emphases: Fr. Tom on the boldness of grace and Fr. Paul on the mystery of love, lead them to these subtle changes in the visual cues of worship.
As a Protestant converting to Orthodoxy it was no doubt very helpful to enter Orthodoxy with this bold sensibility of grace. In turn, at this same time, I find the mystery of darkness and light, the awesome hiddenness of the very Heart of God to be deeply satisfying. Our God is an awesome God and the work of salvation accomplished through the mighty arm of God is a fearful and mighty work. As the ancient hymn says, “Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand; ponder nothing earthly minded, for with blessing in his hand Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.”
Copyright © 2006 James E. Nelson (Just Another Jim). All Rights Reserved.
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