WORSHIP Volume 74, Number 4  July 2000

Fritz West
Scripture, Bible, and Lectionary:
A Quest for Common Ground, pp. 290 - 307.

Summary. Fritz West observes that the three-year lectionary pattern was adopted in both Roman Catholic and Protestant circles to strengthen the role of the Bible in worship and preaching; however, the understanding of the relationship of the Bible to the lectionary varies widely. In this regard, West explains that the Roman Catholic Church holds the lectionary to be a vehicle by which the church sets before the faithful the revelationary riches of the Bible. In contrast, some Reformed Protestants see the lectionary governed by a liturgical hermeneutic which mitigates against the systematic interpretation of Scripture.

West suggests that perspective on these contradictory positions can be gained by bringing to bear upon the problem two hermeneutical considerations: 1) the relationship of Bible and lectionary to Scripture and 2) the linguistic worlds employed for understanding them. He explores these two dimensions of the issue, with the hope of providing common ground for sorting out the various understandings of the relationship of Bible and lectionary.

In conclusion, West writes that a ground of common understanding can further ecumenical charity. He comments that despite the ecumenical spread of lectionaries on the three-year pattern, the understandings abroad about the relationship of Bible and lectionary have remained remarkably parochial. A critical understanding of Scripture, Bible and lectionary can provide the perspective needed to celebrate our commonalities while allowing for our differences.

Bryan D. Spinks
What was Wrong with Mr Cosin's Couzening Devotions?
Deconstructing an Episode in Seventeenth-Century Anglican
"Liturgical Hagiography," pp. 308 - 329.

Summary. A Collection of Private Devotions or the Hours of Prayer appeared in 1627 and is considered the work of John Cosin, chaplain to Bishop Richard Neile of Durham. Bryan Spinks recounts the stories about the genesis of this collection and notes that the book is regarded as sufficiently important to find mention in most histories of Anglican liturgy. At the time the book appeared, however, it evoked scathing criticism from some of Cosin's contemporaries. The purpose of Spinks' essay is to investigate why the criticisms by Cosin's contemporaries are at variance with the views of modern Anglican liturgists.

Spinks first provides the reader with background information on John Cosin and on the Devotions, which includes details about the attacks levied against the book in the seventeenth century. Next, Spinks considers the genre of private devotions in the early seventeenth-century Church of England. Here, he reviews various collections of prayers of the period and comments that Cosin's Devotions was out of step with what had become the common genre of Anglican private devotions. The Devotions, he writes, was an attempt at a recovery of the forms of private prayer issued in the reign of Elizabeth I.

Spinks concludes by considering the implications of this review of Cosin's Devotions for present day devotions. He notes that the initial lesson is that what appears to be an enrichment and "historically correct" liturgy authored by clergy and liturgical experts may not always address the needs and habits of the laity. Spinks then assesses current efforts to devise daily prayer forms and suggests that a family "core" daily prayer might be the more appropriate building block upon which to construct the daily service, a Sunday Morning and Evening Service, and monastic office, rather than what appears to be the present trend to derive all daily prayer from monastic or monasticised forms.

Jan Michael Joncas Tasting the Kingdom of God:
The Meal Ministry of Jesus and Its Implications
For Contemporary Worship and Life, pp. 329 - 365.

Summary. Jan Michael Joncas examines the meal ministry of Jesus and suggests what implications it carries for present-day worship and life. Joncas begins his analysis with an explanation of the historical and social-scientific perspective on ancient meals. He then focuses on the Greco-Roman and Jewish meal customs in the first century C.E. In reviewing these customs, Joncas asks five questions – who ate and drank with whom, when and where did they eat and drink, what did they eat and drink, how did they structure their eating and drinking, and what did they think their eating and drinking meant.

Next, Joncas explores the meal ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Joncas poses the same five questions addressed with respect to ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish meals, as he considers the meals associated with Jesus the prophet, the Christ, and the Lord. Finally, Joncas suggests what implications his investigation of Jesus' meal ministry has for contemporary Christian eucharistic worship.

Joncas ends with two observations about what bearing the recovery of Jesus' meal ministry through the ritual structures of Christian worship might have for our communal life. First, he comments that Jesus' table-fellowship should commit us to a world where all human beings have access to the goods of the earth bestowed on us by our Creator God. Second, Joncas writes that the fact that Jesus chooses bread and wine – the fundamental staple and most common potable of his day – as the central elements to be transformed should invite us to reflect on human stewardship of the goods of the earth.

Edward P. Hahnenberg
Forum:
Who Is at Work?: Ecclesiology and Domus Dei, pp. 365 - 370.

Summary. Church architecture embodies ecclesiology, a particular theology of the church. With this principle in mind, Edward Hahnenberg comments that it is unfortunate that in the recent debates surrounding a new document on environment and art, there is a lack of attention afforded the ecclesiological foundation on which such a document is to be built.

The current BCL draft document on church art and architecture, Domus Dei, was presented to the U.S. bishops for initial discussion in November 1999. Since that time, the BCL has invited comments in the hope of improving the text. In response to this invitation, Hahnenberg offers his assessment of the ecclesiology expressed in the draft Domus Dei. He then discusses the draft document's treatment of the roles of the assembly and the presider. Here, Hahnenberg opines that both a healthy ecclesiology and a healthy liturgical theology need to recognize diversity and distinctions in ministerial roles. There is a danger, he says, when this distinction removes the ordained minister from the context of the community.

Hahnenberg concludes that the current draft of Domus Dei makes several positive moves in that it goes beyond Environment and Art in its attention to certain issues. At the same time, he suggests that the limitations he outlines in his essay would be improved if the document were to strive to complement its predecessor rather than replace it. He comments further that this could be achieved by confronting rather than avoiding the concept to central to the earlier document, the assembly. Hahnenberg believes the draft Domus Dei will be stronger to the degree that it sees assembly and God's activity as complementary and not contradictory, presenting an ecclesiology to support its liturgical theology.

Nathan D. Mitchell
The Amen Corner, pp. 370 - 379.

Summary. Nathan Mitchell considers the differences between the ceremonial and the liturgical. Whether in art or in worship, the ceremonial embellishes; the liturgical establishes. Ceremonial stories, for instance, are well-mannered, adulatory, and are aimed at embellishing. Liturgical stories, on the other hand, are "lies" – the fictions – we create in order to arrive at the truth. Quoting novelist Ron Hansen, Mitchell writes that "we look to fiction for self-understanding, for analogies of encounter, discovery and decision that will help us contemplate and change our lives. And so it was for Jesus himself as he formulated his parables."

To illustrate his observations about the contrasting purposes between the ceremonial and liturgical, Mitchell points to the gospel accounts of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Mitchell comments that Jesus rejected ceremonial pomposity in favor of liturgical "fiction," and that by doing so, he reclaimed those principles that grounded Israel's communal life of worship: divine initiative, mutual responsibility, faith, and service to the world. Jesus believed in the "holy lies" of liturgy, not in the sacred pretensions of ceremony. Ceremonialism, Mitchell says, demands "hands off;" liturgy requires "hands on." Jesus was a liturgist.

In the end, the crucial difference is that the ceremonial imagination believes the lies it tells itself; the liturgical imagination does not. Liturgy offers us a way of seeing in the dark, of composing those words and images whose "artful lies" lead us to the truth. Liturgy says "If you aren't surprised when God shows up, you haven't been looking in the right places, you haven't learned how to see in the dark." Liturgy knows the principle of radical indeterminacy which Easter introduces. It knows that you must look for the Risen One in neighbors, "in the world at large and in the faces of strangers."

Book Reviews

Medieval Music as Medieval Exegesis. Studies in Liturgical Musicology No. 8. By William T. Flynn. Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press 1999. Paper, xxii-271. Hardcover, $55.00. ISBN 0-8108-3656-4. Review by Rosemary Dubowchik, pp. 381 - 382

Ecumenical Theology in Worship, Doctrine, and Life. Edited by David Cunningham, Ralph Del Colle, Lucas Lamadrid. New York: Oxford University Press 1999. Pages, 312. Cloth, $49.95. ISBN 0-19513136-3. Review by Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C., pp. 382 - 383.

Antisemitic Hate Signs in Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts from Medieval Germany. By Ruth Mellinkoff. Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1999. Pages, 158. Cloth, $40.00. ISBN 965-395-009-4. Review by Marilyn J. Chiat, pp. 383 - 384.

Worship July 2000 - Index of Issues - Worship