High Church--Low Church (part 8)

 Fourth Wednesday of Advent

Thanks very much, Chris, for your comment. When people have a strong emotional investment in something that they believe is correct, and new facts prove it to be wrong, many still cling to the their old belief. As I recall, eight different labs tested the Shroud of Turin. All of them found it to be 13th or 14th century. Pope John Paul II himself pronounced it inauthentic. Yet, as you note, some still cling to a belief in its authenticity. 

The papyrus fragment of the so-called "Gospel of Jesus Wife" was radio carbon dated to the eighth century. Karen King contended that it was an eighth century copy of what was originally a late second or early third century document. Separate analysis of the ink (I think it was spectometry) showed the ink to be present day. The forger had apparently either found a blank sheet of eighth century papyrus, or more likely cut the margins off a written papyrus from eighth century. It was only a fragment that King obtained. Coptic papyrologists easily saw the handwriting not to be authentic. The book Veritas goes into great detail on this. Despite all the evidence, King found it very difficult to admit she had been duped. 

Now to the topic at hand. Special worship services are very much a part of high church worship. By special services I mean any worship service other than Sunday morning or regular Sunday evening or Wednesday evening worship. My parents believed in going to church every Sunday. We did. We never went to church any other time. When I got to MYF age, we had church camp and retreats. These always had worship services. Methodist churches, or at least all the ones I knew about, did not have Christmas Eve services back in those days. Some did have Christmas pageants, usually the Sunday night of the week leading to Christmas.  I was always studying in college, divinity school, and graduate school. I thought the only time I could spare was Sunday morning. We weren't at school during Christmas time. I never went to Holy Week services. We had no Christmas Eve or Holy Week services in the small rural churches I pastored in Tennessee and North Carolina during the 1970's.

In 1980 I was in Athens, Tennessee, being Chaplain and Assistant Professor at Tennessee Wesleyan. I wasn't going to N.C. to see my parents and daughter until Christmas Day. I saw an ad in the local paper for a Christmas Eve service at St. Paul's Episcopal there in Athens. I decided to go. The beauty of the service overwhelmed me. I was later told that Christmas Eve was the most important service of the year for Episcopalians. I have never missed going to or being in a Christmas Eve service from that time until now. Alas, tomorrow that streak will end. 

 

Over the last 40 years Methodists in general have become more high church than they were. At Christ UMC Greensboro the big service of the year was the traditional "Festival of Lessons and Carols," only they didn't call it that. They called it "Christmas Candlelight." It was always the Sunday before. Early on in our 21 years there, I got to read the last lesson, John 1:1-18. I became typecast in that role, read it every year.  Public reading of scripture is something I'm pretty good at. The year after I left Christ, Greensboro and went to North Wilkesboro, they asked me to come back and read the last lesson again. We had Christmas pageant at N. Wilkesboro that night, so I couldn't go. At UUMC in Chapel Hill the big service is a Moravian Love Feast the Sunday before Christmas. There are two or three Christmas Eve services, but not as big.

In high church worship special services tend to involve many people, much planning, the best rehearsed choir and organ music, bell choirs, children's choirs, additional instrumental musicians, elaborate church decoration (and a sermon). Low church worship is uncomfortable with lots of candles and church decoration. Plain is always preferable. High church always has communion Christmas Eve. Low church usually doesn't have communion. The service is the Sunday before Christmas. The sermon and altar call are central. Hardly any churches have services Christmas Day services.

The more I write this; the more I miss church.

Tomorrow will be my own confirmation bias story. Of course, I think my confirmation is right. It will have a little something to do with Christmas. The title is Air, Angels, and Quantum Entanglement. 

Faithfully,

Christian