One entire hour on my feet. Not bad for a man with plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the tendons that run along the bottoms of your feet).
On December 22 I finally had the privilege of participating in Vespers at St Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church here in Baton Rouge. It is what in Protestant (and perhaps Orthodox) circles one normally calls a “storefront” church – they gather in rented space surrounded by stores and small businesses. And so it is interesting to observe how a parish transforms rented space into “holy space”. Many icons. Rugs/carpets. Candles. Plus various shelves and tables. If that sounds like a dig quite the opposite is true – I have a deep fondness for small storefront churches. For nine years I was part of Ithaca Baptist Church that also met in a rented building – complete with hideous paint and even a few cracked/broken windows. During the winter with the heat on full blast I think it sometimes got up to about 40 degrees inside. Ah – those were the days!
Of course I was nervous – “who is this guy? what are you doing here? hey you’re new!” But I was warmly welcomed by the lay pastor Br Mark Christian. (Turns out we were born in the same year – cool.) Soon two other people along with his wife and children plus a young guest entered as well. Got into a bit of a discussion/conversation with one gentleman sitting behind me.
The Vespers liturgy was available in a photocopied/bound booklet. Almost the entire service(?) was sung. I noticed that it began and ended the same way with two short prayers/sentences followed by the “Our Father”. I had read/heard that there is a great deal of bowing, crossing, prostrating in Orthodox worship but I only saw a little of this. I had also read/heard that in Orthodox worship there is a large amount of participating by the congregation but I did not see much of this either – huge portions were sung/chanted by Br Mark often with his wife (who has a nice singing voice – and she did this while trying to manage a restless child or two no small feat). I wonder if this is partly because of the occasion (Nativity) and partly because this was Vespers rather than say the Divine Liturgy with Eucharist as on Sunday morning.
The “huge portions” included a litany of prayer that I think covered just about every imaginable situation/circumstance – quite impressive. As well as pretty much the entire “story of salvation” from creation through prophets through the incarnation/birth of Jesus. And so “Christmas” (a word I do not think I ever hear in the Orthodox context) is not just “Jesus is born! Yay!” but rather the incarnation/birth placed appropriately within the entire scope of divine activity within creation.
At the conclusion of Vespers was veneration of the icons – which included kissing/touching. Old and young alike participated in this. I think I observed differences between what each person did. Some kissed these icons, some kissed those icons and not others. And – shock! wow! – they sang together a Western (gasp!) Christmas hymn. Albeit to a tune I was not very familiar with.
I had the chance to meet and talk briefly with the others who came including one gentleman who is a recent convert from the Methodist tradition. “I was chrismated a month ago” is how he described. And the older gentleman who sat behind me yanked off a book display “What Orthodox Christians Believe” and handed it to me. I read most of it while waiting for “I Am Legend” to start at the local theater a week later. It says much about what of Orthodoxy but not about the why. Informative if a bit dry. What surprised me is how most of it would sound very familiar and “right” to a typical (evangelical?) Protestant Christian. Mainly with regard to ecclesiology does one begin to note some of the distinctive emphases of Orthodoxy. (Like baptism as more than an “outward symbol of an inward change” and so on.)
