For those of you unfamiliar with the Anglican church, it is basically a mash up of Methodism and Catholicism. How does that make sense? Well, for a _really_ simplified rundown...
The Anglican church broke off from the Catholic church so that Henry VIII could get married and divorced a lot, but they retained a lot of Catholic liturgical practice, just with no pope. Over the years they leaned more Protestant and after Queen Elizabeth I, the Anglican church (i.e. Church of England) was pretty firmly established as Protestant. Fast forward to the 1700s and you get John Wesley and his buddies espousing a sort of mini-reform of the Anglican church and establishing it both in England and in the American colonies. Well, post-Revolutionary War and the Methodists are firmly established in the US and NOT under the control of the Anglican church (can't really blame the Colonial folk- I wouldn't want anything to do with the national church of the country I just won a revolution against), despite the initial plans of the founders of Methodism. Over the years, American Methodist churches (at least, the United Methodist churches which are the ones I'm most familiar with) have moved further away from some of the Catholic traditions preserved in Anglicanism, but they still have similar prayers, hymns, etc. as the Anglicans. So, since Anglicanism is the halfway point between Catholicism and Methodism, I'm totally not surprised that it resembles both.
For Easter, we began and ended with a procession of various church officials, clergymen, the choir, and a whole slew of people carrying banners, crosses, scepters, books, chalices, etc. Plus loads of incense! (I'm not a fan of the incense.) The other glaringly Catholic-derived aspect was Communion. While they did let any "communicant member of a Christian church" partake, they have you kneel and press a wafer in your hand and hold the cup to your mouth for you to drink. The germophobe in me has always been creeped out by drinking from the same cup as all those people. That's a practice that has been replaced at a lot of Methodist churches, where instead you either dip the bread into the cup and consume both together, or they pass around thimbles of juice/wine. The sharing the cup thing still persists some places, but it isn't nearly as common. And I've never had communion wafer before- always real bread of some sort, often pita bread.
But what surprised me was the Lord's Prayer there. When I learned the prayer when I was young, we happened to attend a church that said "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" instead of "trespasses." A lot of churches have stuck with "trespass" over "sin" because it is more traditional and old school I suppose. But the Anglicans! Now, to be fair, I can't say for certain whether this is a widespread Anglican phenomenon or if the Minster is just really radical and new agey, but somehow I doubt that.
The "standard" (i.e. the way I've always said it) Lord's Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins/trespasses as we forgive those who sin/trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
The Minster Lord's Prayer:
Our Father in Heaven, hollowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.
Its in more "modern" English than any version I've ever heard. Still, it was a lovely service, and the archbishop is my new favorite person of the moment. He did an excellent job with making the sermon both relevant to Easter and to modern life and the struggles of modern Christians. I will leave you with a word of advice. If you ever have the chance to go to a service in a grand old cathedral/minster, you should totally do it. But dress warmly because they do not heat those things and it gets FRIGID. Although I'm sure it feels really nice inside in the middle of summer, in early spring & winter it is a major brrr! fest.
After services, I came home to start cooking! A few of us got together for an Easter dinner of roast lamb (hey, when in Rome right?), sweet potato casserole provided by yours truly, roast potatoes & carrots, and asparagus in a garlic cream sauce. Are we classy or what? I totally meant to photograph our feast and took my camera down and everything annnnd forgot. But trust me it was delicious. We modified a recipe for lamb with pomegranate molasses because pomegranate juice was SUPER expensive. So we used cranberry apple instead. I highly recommend it. Super flavorful. And I made 3 new converts to the deliciousness of sweet potato casserole. As I was working on it, one girl was like "I'm more of a squash person than a sweet potato person, but I'm entirely intrigued by whatever it is you're making." She is now a believer :) Another girl announced at dinner, "Excuse me, I have to do something I've never done before and get seconds of the sweet potatoes." That's right. All shall bow down before the sweet potato casserole, cuz it just isn't a holiday without it! Even if it does take about 3 times as long as it should to cook potatoes (sweet or otherwise) on the silly electric stove tops.
No comments:
Post a Comment