On building a new vernacular for worship

I knew the words of the prayers before I could read them in the prayer book. They are my familiar, the words I have always known by heart.

As a writing student, and then as an English teacher, I learned that once I knew the rules of grammar, I could also learn how and where to break them — never for the point of the breaking, rule follower that I am, but in order to say something that the rules themselves wouldn’t have allowed for. (Like, say, ending a sentence with a preposition.)

Later, as a priest, I would learn that same truth as one who crafts and leads liturgy. I needed to know where the seams were, for the purposes of unstitching and putting the fabric together differently than it was.

Again, that was never about the unstitching of our existing material. But the stretching and reconfiguring of language and ritual has made room for people who didn’t easily recognize themselves in God’s presence to do so.

The words of the prayer book are in my bones. They are a part of me.

I grew up praying in thanksgiving to God for all God’s “goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men.” And I would choose the poetry of a heart that is “unfeignedly thankful” with every opportunity I have to choose it.

I love the language. It’s in my bones. And it does not always serve.

No single language does, no single language can.

Queen Elizabeth I might not have been the official first leader of the Anglican Church and Communion, but I count her as its first leader by heart. She called the people to common practice in worship.

As a wise leader, though, she declined to serve as dictator over their souls. Instead, she required that the church accommodate the people who comprised it, by using the people’s language for prayer.

I believe that Elizabeth’s imperative that the people worship in their own vernacular takes on new meaning when we recognize time and place, orientation and tradition, and a commitment to hospitality.

We are a people with the freedom to worship in the language that is our own.

I hear in that the call for a freedom of flexibility, of innovation that’s not just about a praise band or music on screens — unless that’s the vernacular of a particular community, in which case maybe it makes sense.

Instead, the instances I think of are the places where we’ve made room in our parish for our worship to reflect who we are:

The women of our altar guild vesting the altar with the tapestry given by a beloved member of the guild as the opening rite of her funeral, their hands smoothing the edges of the fair linen.

Two brothers making the sign of the cross on their little sister’s forehead as she processed into church for her baptism.

The entire congregation praying and laying hands on our transitional deacon on the Sunday before our bishop and priests of the diocese would pray and lay hands on him at his ordination, making him a priest of the church.

We shift the vocabulary to fit our vernacular. We bring ourselves into the story of the feast, and welcome everybody, everybody, everybody to the table. We might break the rules, but never unadvisedly, and never for the point of the breaking: only that the church may be opened.

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