McMillan, Matthew – Church visit #1

Church name: St. Joseph Orthodox Christian Church

Church address: 412 Crescent St; Wheaton, Illinois 60187

Date attended: 9 February 2014

Church category: Significantly more liturgical.

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context:

The overall level of structure and organization was fairly similar to my home church, with some key differences in details. One such difference is that (as we found out by talking to the priest after the service) their Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom has remained precisely the same since St. John’s day (c. 400AD), and is repeated each Sunday, whereas the service at my home church, while maintaining a similar overall structure from week to week, varies considerably in the details. I went with a friend, and we were surprised to find that the service was to be conducted entirely in Ukranian. The service began with a woman from the audience calling out a chant towards the iconostasis (a decorative wall in the front that separates the congregation from the altar), and the priest inside chanting back. At the beginning, he used a censor to distribute incense smoke around the room, going past all the icons. Throughout the rest of the service, with the exception of a brief message from the priest, the congregation stood and chanted the ancient liturgy and the priest chanted back, while he walked around doing various other rituals.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?

The rituals in the service, which included a lot of bowing, crossing, chanting, and incense, certainly contributed to a heightened sense of reverence. The priest wore black and gold robes, and the congregants all dressed very formally. The fact that we stood almost the whole time also added to the sense of reverence. I think that many mainline evangelical churches do not encourage the same sense of reverence and awe in worship, and that is something we should learn to do better. I was also interested to note that while we could not understand a word of the service, it seemed to be entirely in Ukranian, so all of the other congregants could understand (rather than, say, the Latin used in Roman Catholic services, which is not understood by all congregants).   

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?

I was not used to any of the rituals described above, so it really felt to me more like I was watching a spectacle than actually participating in a worship service. I think that if I had been accustomed to that traditional liturgy, I would have been able to participate much more (and it also would have helped to understand the language). At the same time, my observation of the other congregants, most of whom knew the words to chant, indicated that for the most part the rituals were something that could very easily become rote habit. I am not entirely convinced that the rituals helped to focus our attention on God, rather than on the ritual patterns themselves. Also, I think that I would be a little uncomfortable participating in some of the rituals they performed, such as kissing the icons.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

I think that worship needs to involve acts of reverence, rather than only casual singing, and this was really emphasized at St. Joseph’s. We talked to the priest afterwards and asked him to explain some of the liturgy. One phrase we had heard repeated very many times in the chanting was something like “hospody, pomyluy” which means “Lord, have mercy” (kyrie eleison in Greek). The priest’s message was about the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, in which the tax collector says just that: “Lord, have mercy [on me, a sinner].” The idea that we should beg for mercy is not something that can be seen as clearly in my home church, and I am guessing also in most mainline evangelical churches; and yet this is the example Christ gives of someone whose heart is right before God. One interesting thing is that in that parable, Jesus is contrasting the tax collector with the Pharisee, who is the one engaging in eloquent verbal rituals for the public show rather than for true worship. It seems possible that even chanting "Lord, have mercy" could become a verbal ritual rather than the original heart-felt plea of the tax collector.