A sad Maundy Thursday

Last night Laurent had to work a little bit late at the office (in view of today's early office closing for Good Friday), so we scanned the Internet to see who had the latest Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday services at a church that was easily Metro accessible for us, and we discovered it was St. John's-Lafayette Square, a place we've been many times previously. We called our friend Graham, who's a member of that parish, to tell him we were coming, and it turns out he was slated to be a altar boy last night...and when we saw him at the church, he looked so angelic in his all-white vestments! LOL

Now, I've always known that St. John's is a very "low church" parish, in the mold of old Virginia churches, but I wasn't quite prepared for last night. On top of that, the parish is undergoing a bunch of earth-shattering changes right now, from the resignation of their long-time music director to join the faculty at Virginia Theological Seminary, to their remodeling and updating project that in about a month will close their building and worship space for several months during construction.

Well, I'm used to a packed church on Holy/Maundy Thursday, but they only had about 80 people in the sparsely populated nave, and that was including choir and clergy. The clergy processed in, with none of them wearing copes or chasubles (that's not a surprise at St. John's), and with the three of them wearing unmatched stoles, with one in reddish violet, one in red, and one in a burgundy that matched the altar frontal. The procession was led in by a crucifer carrying a processional cross veiled in black; the cross is only supposed to be veiled in black on Good Friday, so that made me cringe.

The liturgy was a very basic low Mass with hymns, or what I'm sure they'd call just "Holy Communion." The traditional footwashing ceremony was absent. The prayer of consecration was so abbreviated and short that if one were to have sneezed, one would have missed the entire consecration. At the end of the service, they did (thankfully) have the Stripping of the Altar, but they only cleared off the altar and retable, and left the other furnishings in the sanctuary. What's more, during that ceremony, they had the congregation standing and singing a hearty hymn, Petra, and between the penultimate and last verses, the organist improvised a loud, festal, key modulation. Then, as filler whilst the clergy finished up, the choir sang an insipid little Taizé chant that kept reminding me of Moonies at the airport. At the end, there was the standard formal dismissal (Go in peace to love and serve the Lord) and the clergy and choir had a formal procession out, behind the black veiled cross. After everyone was out of the sanctuary and much of the congregation had left, someone finally dimmed the lights, but I'm not sure if that was for meditative purposes or just to hurry people out the door. Out in the narthex as we "departed in silence," cheery ushers thanked us for coming and bid us good night.

The music throughout also was rather disappointing. St. John's usually can be counted on for solid, well-known hymns, and they can do good anthems with their small, but good, professional choir. Well, the professional choir sang the noon service, so we had the volunteer parish choir last night. That's not necessarily a problem, but they weren't together, and there was some man who occasionally tried to sing parts who was perpetually off pitch, and it was driving me crazy. And the hymns were unfamiliar and uninspiring, leading to the congregation not singing, and making me feel like I was in a sleepy Catholic church instead of an Episcopal parish that usually sings heartily. The processional hymn was Ubi caritas (Murray) and then during communion they used a Taizé chant of Ubi caritas as little more than filler music. I guess somebody likes Ubi caritas. And somebody likes way too much Taizé music.

The communion Taizé chant pointed out another problem. A 50- or 60-something woman with wild grey and blonde hair came in late during the end of the readings and sat in the pew right behind Laurent and me. She was a little too enthusiastic. During the congregational prayers and responses, she spoke out loudly, much louder than the rather subdued and reverent volume of the congregation as a whole, and she was one of those people who had to pray with "meaning." She sang the hymns louder than anybody else. She was way too excited about passing the peace and acted like she actually wanted to talk to me then before I turned away and she bounded out of her pew to shake hands with people across the aisle (fortunately, St. John's isn't one of those awful parishes where people try to shake hands and/or hug everybody in the church). Then, when we got to this communion Taizé chant, the music in the program happened to have four part harmony (but people at St. John's in the congregation never sing parts), so she took it upon herself to sing the alto line, fishing around for pitches and constantly being painfully flat. I don't know why, but I have this vision in my mind of her driving a Volvo, supporting Hillary Clinton, and working for a non-profit.

There was no sequence hymn, but they did do a sermon hymn between the Gospel and the sermon, Chereponi, a Ghanian folk song that's actually in the hymnal, but I've never heard used at a church service before (same with the processional hymn). One of the priestesses read a cheery little sermonette. For the Mass setting, they only did two things, a responsorial Kyrie from Music for the Lord's Supper by McNeil Robinson that the congregation didn't sing at all, and a Sanctus and Benedictus from David Hurd's New Plainsong Mass. They did a Catholic-style responsorial psalm antiphon "I love the Lord" by James Barrett that the congregation didn't sing with the choir attempting the verses in unison chant and making a huge pause at the asterisks in the verses.

The anthem was "A New Commandment" by Richard Shephard, a contemporary Brit who has had a stint as a visiting professor at Sewanee. This particular piece was very simple and saccharine. I guess should have gone to the noon service with the professional choir (although who ever heard of a noon Maundy Thursday service?), which I gather was the larger of the two services. They sang the same offertory anthem, but the program indicated they did Duruflé's Tantum ergo for communion and the hymn "Now my tongue the mystery telling" (though it doesn't say if they used Pange lingua or Grafton) instead of that nasty Taizé chant.

Alas, I left the church feeling very unreverent and spiritually unfulfilled. They desperately need a liturgist at that parish; even low church parishes need to do things correctly and have an understanding of their tradition. And the music clearly wasn't meeting the needs and interests of their largely older congregation, either, as evidenced by the stoney silence from them during singing opportunities. Perhaps that is why there was practically no one at the service.