All Saints'

 After delaying my visit to an Anglican Church to give Reformation Sunday its due with the Lutherans, I took a bus downtown to worship at an Anglican Church that is known for outreach and thinking outside the box. My sympathies to those who take public transit to worship every week. I was nearly late as the bus I was planning to take only runs once an hour on Sundays (and it was not posted anywhere on the website.)

On entering, I thought I must have found a 'high Anglican' service, as the air was pungent with what I assumed to be incense.  Then I read in their bulletin that the parish employs an indigenous resource person, who offers smudges before the service. Their actual spoken land acknowledgement at the beginning of the service is very brief, but this investment in serving their indigenous members speaks more than any printed words. 

As I said in the last post, Lutheran and Anglican churches are similar in their liturgical approach to worship: I was handed a bulletin and 2 service books when I entered, which required a bit of juggling and I was thankful to have an empty chair beside me to keep it all sorted. I thought the gospel reading looked unusually long (raising of Lazarus) but then I noted there were 2 versions, New Revised Standard Version and the First Nations version, side by side. The gospel was then read from the First Nations Version, a translation of the New Testament that uses indigenous imagery for the stories; for example, Jesus' name is Creator Sets Free, and Lazarus is called Creator Helps Him.  In his sermon, one of the clergy made reference to this version of the story and said the reading may have surprised the listeners into looking at the story in a new way.

In some ways I think that observation reflected much of my experience with worship there.  I arrived with a stereotype of traditional liturgical worship and the expectation that I would hear more conservative theology. A lot of sacred tradition was involved, with lots of robes, marching, candles and other symbols calling us to deep reverence. At the same time, however, the theology of the sermon, the description of mission outreach projects, and practice of open communion were all very progressive, as was honouring whose land the church is built on. The blending of ancient tradition and present day issues did indeed surprise me into looking at our Christian story in a new way.