Personal Note: Bad liturgists. No biscuit.

[nebroadwe]

This is me ranting about the liturgical idiom of my faith community, a topic almost certainly of no interest to anyone except perhaps kanja177 and nateprentice, so behold! A cut!

I was looking ahead in the Roman Catholic liturgical year to Lent, stocking up on hymns at the website of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, when I ran across the following directive regarding the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday:

If you intend to read the Passion Narrative in parts, the traditional division is threefold: narrator, Christ, and crowd (all other voices). Some communities expand the number of voices, though it is probably not a good idea to give the congregation the "people's part" of this narrative, because that puts them in an adversarial relationship to Jesus. Instead, they should experience themselves as sharing not only in the sin that led to Jesus' death but also in his act of self-sacrifice to which they will soon join themselves once more in the Eucharist. Therefore, it might be good to proclaim this reading with the traditional three readers (which helps to hold attention), but break it at several points for a sung acclamation by the people.

Gah. Lookit. This is a development that's been gaining some momentum over the past couple of decades, but I do not like it and will not support it, for two reasons. First of all, it's boring. I've attended Masses where the congregation got to sing a little acclamation every now and then while the presider and a privileged couple of lectors got to proclaim all the interesting bits, and I nearly nodded off. Long gospel is long. Long gospel is also a fascinating piece of narrative, and ever since I was a child I've enjoyed playing my role in it, whether I was one of those privileged lectors or just J. Random Congregant. (The year I went to the Cathedral and heard the whole thing chanted, which I admit was pretty darn cool, I just picked up the chant line after the first few iterations and joined in with the choir on the crowd bits.) Having a part to play is the best way I know to "hold attention" -- you can't lose track of the narrative when you know you've got a line coming up soon that you have to say or the whole exercise grinds to a halt.

Second of all, I know no better antidote to an anti-Semitic interpretation of the Passion than having to say, year after year, "If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you" and "Crucify him! Crucify him!" and "We have no king but Caesar." An adversarial relationship with Jesus Christ? Yes -- but that's my daily life as a sinner; I just use different phrases to deny him. Twice a year I call a spade a spade. Ten minutes later I'll experience a different aspect of the story, whether in the Eucharistic prayer on Palm Sunday or the veneration of the cross on Good Friday, when I remember the solidarity I also have with him. And I am that much less inclined to make the crucifixion a story about Those People Who Killed God -- in fact, when I first learned about that interpretation, while I was in grade school, I found it ridiculous, because I knew the story wasn't about that. After all, weren't we the ones saying, "Crucify him!"? That's because it was our diseases he bore, our common human infirmities that he carried, just like the other reading says, right?

tl;dr: Don't take the crowd parts away from the congregation during the reading of the Passion narrative on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. You know not what you do.

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I had a kind of a strange view of the Bible as a tot.

I remember being highly disturbed by all the rapine and pillaging done in the Old Testament. It still disturbs me, though I know it was going on everywhere (and still happens to this date).

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I didn't really notice those bits, despite being a fan of the history books. Now I do, of course. I also was bored silly then by the psalms and the wisdom literature, but that might have been because the translation I was reading reduced all the lovely poetry to the dullest of prose.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Being one for action adventure stories, I remember being impressed with some of the battles but then the heroes would do something stupid and I'd get irritated. *giggles*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I never could understand what David saw in that Bathsheba chick (though she was pretty savvy when it came to promoting her son to the throne over all those other claimants. Heh.).

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

That is one of the stories I was thinking of, indeed.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Veggie Tales version, by any chance? (It also happens to be a parody of The Madness of King George. I haven't kept up with recent developments in this franchise, but the early stuff is very smart and charming -- just witty enough that the moral lessons don't come off as tendentious or saccharine.)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I don't have any young enough children around to see the Veggie Tales though I do hear good things about them from sources.