The following sermon was delivered at Truro Episcopal Church on April 29, 1978. The preacher is the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Church. His topic this morning is Guidelines for Worship. 

Take our minds and think through them. Take my lips and speak through them. take our hearts and set them on fire with love for You and for Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen. 

It seems to me that we've come to one of those moments in the life of our parish in which it would be well to just stop and take a look at ourselves and see where we are and see where we're going.

Particularly that's true with regard to our worship. I don't know how much of an undercurrent of discussion you've been aware of, but I certainly have been aware of a kind of a rumbling of questioning and doubt and nervousness on the part of a number of people about what's happening in our worship. This is true especially in the last few weeks, and we spent our last vestry meeting talking about little else.

We devoted the whole evening to the subject of worship and the things that we've heard coming back from the congregation. It was a good meeting. It was a hard meeting.

It was a meeting characterized by a lot of prayer and I think a great spirit of sensitivity. And the vestry asked me if I would address myself to this very topic directly this morning. So what I want to share, I hope, will come in the way of a reassurance to some of you who have had some questions in your minds and perhaps an encouragement to all of us to wait upon God for what He has for us.

I'd like to remind us of the text from the epistle which we read a few minutes ago. Peter's first letter, chapter 3, and beginning with verse 8. He said, finally, all of you have unity of spirit, sympathy, love of the brethren, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

It seems to me that there are three somewhat related matters that at least I have heard people raising questions about. The first has to do with the use of Right To in our prayer book, which we've been using since Easter on an exclusive basis. And I've heard people raising the question, have we abandoned Right One, our traditional service that's not quite 1928, but it's nearly 1928, which we know and love and it's familiar and comfortable to us, and have we simply left that behind, never to appear again?

And the answer is no, we have not. I said when we first introduced our new prayer book a year ago last Wednesday that we'd been asked by our bishops here in Virginia and by the House of Bishops nationally to use the book, to become familiar with it, to become comfortable with it in all of its richness and diversity. And I said that it was my intention that we would use Rite One, morning prayer and communion, for a full year.

It is basically the traditional service, but just enough different that I wanted us to get one full year of use of that under our belts so that we really felt comfortable with that one. And with only a couple of exceptions to the rule, when we had Polkingham Mass on a Sunday morning two or three times, that has been exactly what we've done. We have departed into some of the other occasional services on other times of day, evening services and so on, but mornings for the past more than a year have been right one exclusively.

Then we came up to Easter, And we've begun to use Rite 2. And that is not going to be forevermore the case. As a matter of fact, our intention is to go back and use Rite 1 again on Pentecost Sunday, which is just a couple of weeks away, and then for the rest of the summer pretty much alternate back and forth between them.

I don't have, at this point, any final or ultimate determination of what we're going to end up with. for instance it could be that we continue the practice of alternating between right one and right two fairly indefinitely or it could be that we would say let's use one of the rights at one of our major services and the other at the other major service thereby giving people a choice and they can come to whichever they prefer or it might be that we would say basically speaking we're going to stick with one of the rites and use the other only occasionally for special events. But I, at least, and the rest of the clergy and the vestry, have made no such decision at this point.

And I want to say very clearly to you that I'm anxious to know your opinion on the matter, to have the input of the congregation. It might be that at some point we'll want to take an opinion poll and really find out where you are in relationship to such a question as that. But I believe that it's very, very much too early to make such a determination.

It's very much premature. I don't know if you've really realized that this Sunday morning is only the third time that we've used rite to in communion. With the exception, as I say, of a couple of occasions of using the Polkingham Mass.

On a Sunday morning, this is only the third time we've used it. And even so, we've stuck exclusively to Eucharistic Prayer A, and therefore alternatives. Prior to this morning, we have stuck exclusively to the form of intercession number six.

Today we ventured out into number three. But there are six alternatives there. And when you turn to morning prayer, the diversity is infinitely greater than that.

In Rite 1, morning prayer, there are seven canticles from which we might select. And most Episcopal churches, most of the time, have limited themselves only to two of those, Veneti and Jubilati. in morning prayer 2 there are 21 canticles you see we've only begun to become acquainted with what's there and in addition to the the collects that are printed as part of the service we're encouraged to go into other parts of the book and make use of other collects and prayers that are elsewhere available by my count there are at least 101 additional collects which might be used in morning prayer.

So you see, my point is that to conclude on the basis of the little exposure we've had so far, I like it or I don't like it, really isn't fair. We don't know it. At least I don't feel I know it.

I'm just getting used to it. But our intention, as I say, at least for the summer, would be that we'll try and balance right one and right two and continue to explore this book together and try to become familiar with it and try to find it an ever more useful vehicle of worship of God. The second issue that's related to that and to some extent arises out of it is the fact that in the last several weeks there's been a great deal more spontaneous or free prayer in the midst of our Sunday morning worship.

Partly that's because the new services encourage it. We see in the forms of intercession, the people may add their own prayers and petitions. The people may add their own thanksgivings.

Partly it's also because I encourage it. And that's really a matter of your understanding of liturgy. Some of you might think that that's some kind of a new innovation.

It really isn't. It goes back as far as we can trace the history of Christian worship. In the second century, which is as far back as any kind of accurate records go, the typical approach to liturgical worship was that the leader, usually called the president of the assembly, would announce a topic for prayer. and then the people would have opportunity to pray about whatever that topic was and there might be several minutes devoted to that and a number of people would be praying silently and others would stand up in the midst of the congregation and would pray aloud on that particular topic and then after a reasonable amount of time had been given to that the president would collect or summarize the individual prayers and intercessions and that's where we get the word collect.

He would collect. He would summarize. And then move on to the next topic.

Most of you are probably aware that the word liturgy means the work of the people. It was never intended that our corporate worship would be a matter of somebody up at the front doing all of it by himself and the congregation just being passive participants. They were to be actively involved in making the prayers and intercessions, the praises and acclamations of God, their own, entering into them deeply.

Now what I've begun to realize is that there are some limits to the ways in which you can do that in a large assembly. It's one thing if there are a couple of dozen people or even 50 and there's opportunity for everybody to offer his prayers. It becomes a different kind of a situation when you have 250, 300, 400 people and only a very small minority of those present can pray aloud.

The other problem which accompanies it, which I'm acutely aware of, is just a plain acoustical situation with a high ceiling like this one it's very hard to hear each other and so whereas we wanted to enter into each other's prayers and share them and support each other most of the time we really don't know what's being said at all and two or three people end up praying at the same time and it gets lost and so while I'm committed to the goal and the principle it does mean that we need to think creatively about how to best accomplish this in the larger assembly. For instance, it might be that as we did this morning, we can make creative use of silence. Let's just observe a few moments for you to add your prayers silently.

Or we could instruct, especially as we come to thanksgivings, that it just be a word or a phrase rather than a lengthy prayer. And then it doesn't matter too much if several people are offering up several things at once in a kind of cacophony of praise to the Lord because we know where our spirit is. It occurs to me that in addition to all that, we might have some kind of a prayer list available.

That if you come on a given Sunday and there's some very particular concern that you'd like the congregation to lift up before the Lord, you might jot it in a book or on a little card and hand it to one of the clergy and we might share that in a way that everybody can hear and join into. I'm not sure how we work that out, but what I'm saying is we do want to work it out together and learn, again, how to do the work of the people as a congregation. Thirdly, and this one probably has received the most amount of attention, is that somehow in the last several weeks, we've seen a growing number of people raising their hands in praise to the Lord.

And others in our midst have begun to wonder, is this something new that I'm supposed to do? And more than that, is this some kind of a test of spirituality? And of course, depending where you're coming from, you measure your spirituality either by raising or by sitting on your hands.

and I think that's very unfortunate because it's not a test of spirituality in any way, shape or form. I'd like to share with you just a couple of things about the business of raising hands in worship. The New Testament says next to nothing about how we're to worship.

And the reason for that is that it presupposes the Old Testament, which is full of instruction about how to worship. In running through the Old Testament over and over and over and over again is the invitation for men and women to raise their hands in praise of God. Psalm 63, verse 4.

I will lift my hands and call on thy name. Psalm 88. Every day I call upon thee, O Lord.

I spread out my hands to thee. Psalm 141, which is often used as one of us. Just beg all of us to have that spirit of charity and love and respect toward each other that we would not become divided over such a thing as this.

If I may, I'd like to suggest that it is exactly parallel to any number of other things that Anglicans sometimes do. Some people frequently in the course of a service cross themselves, and others don't. Some people, out of a sense of reverence for the one who hung on the cross, come and bow before it. And others don't. Some people bow when the cross comes down the aisle.

And others don't. Some people genuflect, and we could go on and on. And it's deeply rooted in the whole spirit of Anglicanism, not to mention the New Testament itself, that we should permit each other the freedom to do or not do as we feel moved in our hearts about such matters. Archbishop Cranmer, who is the principal architect of the Anglican prayer book, wrote in a rubric in 1549, the first Anglican prayer book, the first prayer book in English under Edward VI, he wrote, As touching, kneeling, crossing, holding up hands, knocking upon the breast and other gestures, they may be used or left as every man's devotion serveth without blame.

We don't want to make any rules about any of these things. and more importantly neither would we want to look down upon someone else because he's not worshipping in exactly the same external expression as I am nor even more importantly should I speculate that he's looking down on me because the truth of the matter is the overwhelming majority of the time he's not looking down on me he's not looking at me at all he's looking at the Lord and that's the whole point isn't it some of you have seen the a little lapel button that Bill Gothard gives out to people. It just has a string of letters.

Looks like a great unpronounceable word. P-B-P-G-I-F-W-M-Y But what that means is please be patient. God isn't finished with me yet.

I'd encourage us to be patient with each other. and be patient as he teaches us and leads us as we worship and learn to worship together. I love the beauty of our worship but I confess to you that there's a whole lot more that I have to learn about how you worship, what it means to worship in spirit and in truth, what it means to worship corporately as well as privately, I think God has greater things for us as a parish as a congregation as the body of Christ if we'll trust each other and take the risk of allowing him to lead us into some new adventures he has greater things for us than we've ever yet experienced so let's learn to use our new book let's learn together how to become more creatively involved in liturgy.

Let's give to each other the freedom, the dignity, the respect of allowing each other somewhat different external expressions of our love of the Lord. Let's be patient with each other because God isn't finished with us yet. Let's pray together.

finally all of you have unity of spirit sympathy love of the brethren a tender heart and a humble mind. Father, help us to fall more deeply in love with each other and in love with you. For Jesus Christ's sake.

Amen.