Sarx

Continuing our serialised posting from Worship at St Gregory’s by Rick Fabian.

A service’s opening moments can set the context for all that follows, and these begin even as newcomers approach the church building. Our Members adopted a mission statement reflecting Gregory Nyssen’s teaching: “St Gregory’s Church invites people to see God’s image in all humankind, to sing and dance to Jesus’ lead, and to become God’s friends.” The Latin theologians Augustine and Thomas Aquinas agreed that religion begins in awe and ends in affection; and medieval Byzantines meant their church iconography to kindle affection for Christ and the saints surrounding the worshippers.

Thomas Matthews, in Byzantium from Antiquity to the Renaissance (1998), quotes the Second Council of Nicaea, which restored icons to Christian worship in 787: “in the churches of God, on holy vessels and vestments, in panels or on walls, at home or on the streets…the more often [Christ and the saints] are seen in their pictorial representations, the more the beholder is excited to the recollection and desire of the ones represented, and to offer them greeting and reverent worship.” Matthews comments: “It is most interesting that at this point the council expressly employed the language of love. Epipothesis (“desire”) is the word used for the lover’s yearning and longing; while aspasmos (“greeting”) is the word used for embracing and kissing, and in fact icons are commonly touched and kissed. The churchmen expected the faithful to fall in love with saints through their icons.” [p.56] Matthews argues that icons show the influence of women on public worship, where their formal role was severely curtailed; and “women were to play a decisive role in maintaining the tradition of icon veneration during periods of persecution.”[p.45f]

In this light, St Gregory’s designed our building and the opening moments of our service — even before the first word is spoken — to set the context of affectionate friendship with God.

Forty minutes ahead, clergy and lay ministers meet by the altar to coordinate their tasks. They begin with a quotation from Gregory Nyssen’s friend Gregory Nazianzen, and the day’s first prayer — both chosen to set the context in our leaders’ minds:

“Blessed be God the Word, who came to his own and his own recieved him not, for in this way God glorified the stranger.” O God, show us your image in all who come here today, that we may welcome them, and you. Amen.

Afterward they spread a rich cloth over the altar table — a symbol of Christ’s presence — while welcomers stand on the entry steps offering music books to new arrivals, and usher them to other tables inside where they can make nametags, sign our guestbook, and gather information about parish classes and programs. Regular attenders don permanent nametags to welcome strangers, and chat with any arriving early. Recent church growth studies show that most newcomers decide within three minutes of arriving whether they will join a church, and music is a chief consideration. Twenty minutes before the service, our volunteer Choir gather at the altar for a final rehearsal, so that newcomers will hear from their first arrival the high quality of our music.