Sacred Space
Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians
November 2015
Thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity,whose name is Holy, “I dwell in the high and holy place andalso with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit.” Isaiah 57:15
A few months after I was ordained, I was serving as an
assistant at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd in Beijing. The pastor called me one day and asked that I
take a pastoral care responsibility for him.
A retired Episcopal Priest had come to Beijing seeking traditional
Chinese medical care but had taken a turn for the worse and could not travel
back to the U.S. “Could you help him
through the process of dying, and conduct his funeral?” said my pastor, a
Presbyterian. I visited the elderly man
several times, gave him communion, and got to know his wife. When he died, early on a Sunday morning, I
went to give last rites. His wife asked
me to give him a proper funeral “with all the ceremony” in a Prayer Book
rite. I agreed, but regretted this when
I arrived at the funeral space she was able to book: the morgue of a Chinese military hospital
hidden alongside Beijing’s third ring road.
It was January, and the room was unheated. You could see your breath. Poorly lit, the carelessly cleaned area
smelled vaguely of formaldehyde and blood.
My friend had not yet been cremated, and was in a closed white cardboard
coffin arrayed on an examination table in the center of the room. “This is so grim,” I thought to myself,
blowing on my hands to warm them up, “maybe it’s a wrong idea to do the full
high church ceremony I promised.” But I
had made the promise, and was accompanied by my pastor to serve as altar
assistant, so we proceeded as planned.
I vested in white and gold, for a Eucharist of the Resurrection. On a small table beside the coffin, I set up
a small communion set for Holy Eucharist.
I lit the candles and got the incense going. A surprisingly large group gathered: several
representatives of the U.S. Embassy Consular office and its entire Marine
Security Guard (the deceased had been a war hero of sorts, surviving both
Midway and Iwo Jima, and the young men had visited him during his last
illness).
The newly lit candles created a circle of warm light around
the holy table and the coffin. The
incense drove away all the odors of the morgue, and made it smell like
church. I began chanting the opening anthems. The morgue fell away, and we were in a
special place for the next hour.
Everyone sang the simple hymns and few monotone chanted responses. Everyone took communion.
My Presbyterian pastor was silent on the way home. Two weeks later in a sermon, he talked about
recently finding himself, unexpectedly, in a space of pure, true worship. “What made it that way,” he said, “was that
it was done just for the beauty and love of God, and for no other reason.”
What I took away from the experience is this: the ancient
and at times strange practices of worship in the Church—the candles, the
incense, the vestments, the bells, the chants, psalms, and hymns, the bread and
the wine—have survived the centuries for a reason. Without a proper church, altar, organ, or
even a decent space, we had been able to enter into the beauty of holiness. These ancient practices created the sacred
space and time we needed to sing our brother off into the eternities and
welcome Jesus.
That does not mean that any of the specific practices is absolutely
necessary and to be used in all situations.
Simple, almost Zen, starkness can also create sacred space. Despite my misgivings about the morgue and
who might show up for the funeral of a foreigner far from home, the sacred
space was created as much by everyone’s openness and acceptance of the other
and the strange as by the ancient practices we used. Openness is the heart of true worship.
I think that is why God in Isaiah says he dwells not only in
a high and holy place, but also in the heart of contrite and the spirit of the
humble.
Grace and Peace,
Fr. Tony+
No comments:
Post a Comment