At 8am this morning I read this:

the Priest standing at the north side of the Table shall say the Lord’s Prayer, with the Collect following, the people kneeling.
UR Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; But deliver us from evil. Amen. The Prayer Book Society.

I was leading the early communion service. I found myself noticing and reflecting at various points on the service. One of the main reflections, of necessity, was how the customary usage varies from place to place. And in fact how many of the changes are not signalled in the rubric (helpfully actually in red above) but simply in the heads and habiti of the congregations using it. Some of the differences are due to changes in church layouts between Cranmer’s intent and the actual willingness of congregations to enact or continue them. There is evidence, if you like, of a four-hundred year praxic negotiation between theologies, politics, custom and sensibilities. Part of the result of this is that many who promote and defend the use of the BCP are actually promoting and defending a set of usages which may be inimical to the intent and even theology of Cranmer. The irony is that in opposing liturgical development, they are defending a set of liturgical developments, de facto.

So this ‘north side’ thing: it goes back to Cranmer’s desire to remove altars (and the theology that referred to them thus and positioned them at the west end against the wall) and replace them with tables but tables set lengthways in chancels around which people would stand or kneel for the communion. This was too radical and custom reverted to a table at the west end. However the north side president remained in the rubric and in practice, the differenc being that in the original intent the president would have been standing at a long side of the table facing at least some of the congregants, when the table moved back to the west end (altarwise) then the presider now stood at a short end with the congregation entirely to his right hand side.

So, I obeyed the rubric at this point and stood at the north side (short, left hand side as the congregation looked) of the communion table. I tend to take the view that if ‘they’ want the BCP, then they should get it not the modified version. In practice I step back from this but at points I like to symbolically make the point. Most presiders would probably turn and face the congregation from the chancel step and perhaps even make some greeting before turning to say the Lord’s prayer. I think that this felt need to greet is important to note. I followed the rubric and did not do so, but it feels wierd, even wrong; there is no sense of human contact or connection which is surely and important dimension of a congregational act: the congregation needs to be (liturgically -formally or informally) acknowledged and ‘made one’ with the presider.

In most churches I’ve led this service in, the congregation would say the Lord’s prayer and also the collect for purity. Today’s congregation don’t. In that they stick with the rubric which has the minister saying them solo. Though I forgot that this was their custom with the collect resulting in my inviting them to say it with me and them only joining in in a ragged sort of way (whoops -one of the difficulties of having local custom and rubrics so far apart; occasional ministers don’t necessarily know or remember just what variation goes on where and every congregation seems to think that their way of doing it is ‘the normal’).

Another main trip point for the ‘occasional minister’ is the prayer for the church militant. Some congregations just do this straight, as rubricked and laid out. Others substitute a locally devised and changing form more like the intercessions at a parish communion. Hardly anyone thinks to advise the visiting minister which it is and I often don’t think to ask until we reach that point and then have to go with it, essentially. What I tend to do is to pause for about 20 seconds at the end of each semantic section before moving on. I do this so that there is, in effect, an illocutionary bidding which signals that people are meant to be ‘working’ here and not just letting the priest read it.

Today I read the prayer whole with pauses, but prefaced the prayer with a suggestion of a couple of intentions that people might bear in mind during the silences. I may do this again but I think I need to make sure that what is mentioned is expressed so that it dovetails more neatly with the petitions in the prayer, otherwise I reckon the congregation may find it hard to know with ‘intention’ to put where. I have, in the past mentioned something briefly in the midst of the silence. Perhaps that is the better way. Though it should be noted that it is stretching the rubric and certainly overstepping the intent which was to have a uniform usage and to avoid (I suspect) too much possibility of people praying bad theology or seditious sentiments -the prayer is quite monarchist and ‘establishment’.