Thank goodness John Wesley was Anglican. If the Moravians had converted him I would probably never get the chance to change the paraments in the Sanctuary.
Not all of my colleagues understand the beauty of this. There are loads of pastors who delegate duties like parament changing to the worship committee or some good steward who likes to watch the calendar. Other churches have dismissed with paraments all together in favor of worship space that is more “contemporary” and lacks things like silly banners whose colors rotate according to an archaic code.
But the KS West Cabinet, in all its wisdom, appointed me to a church that still has paraments, carefully hung in a wall cabinet off of the Sanctuary, and to a congregation who expects them to be purple during Lent and white on Easter and red on Pentecost. It is one of my secret pleasures to change them myself.
I walk into the dark and quiet and cool Sanctuary and up onto the chancel where most of the congregation never goes. I move the Bible off the lectern and the candles from the altar and pull the bright and silky cloths from their resting place, neatly folding them over my arm while I hum some hymn or another. (in an empty Sanctuary, one is compelled to sing). At the sacristy closet I exchange one color for another and return to the chancel to restore what I have disturbed. With the new paraments hung, I step back to examine my work, pleased that I have once again kept sacred time.
It is a small and tangible moment of preparing the place for worship, for our worship, for our gathered praise to God. And it is an act physically more satisfying than the work I do at a static computer desk to get ready each Sunday. Changing the paraments is at once ancient and now, it is mundane and full of meaning, it is pastoral, it is prayer.
This afternoon I took down the white paraments of Transfiguration Sunday but left the altar and pulpit and lectern blank. Their barrenness is a sign of the stark nature of the Ash Wednesday ritual. No pretty cloths today. From dust you came, to dust you shall return.
Not all of my colleagues understand the beauty of this. There are loads of pastors who delegate duties like parament changing to the worship committee or some good steward who likes to watch the calendar. Other churches have dismissed with paraments all together in favor of worship space that is more “contemporary” and lacks things like silly banners whose colors rotate according to an archaic code.
But the KS West Cabinet, in all its wisdom, appointed me to a church that still has paraments, carefully hung in a wall cabinet off of the Sanctuary, and to a congregation who expects them to be purple during Lent and white on Easter and red on Pentecost. It is one of my secret pleasures to change them myself.
I walk into the dark and quiet and cool Sanctuary and up onto the chancel where most of the congregation never goes. I move the Bible off the lectern and the candles from the altar and pull the bright and silky cloths from their resting place, neatly folding them over my arm while I hum some hymn or another. (in an empty Sanctuary, one is compelled to sing). At the sacristy closet I exchange one color for another and return to the chancel to restore what I have disturbed. With the new paraments hung, I step back to examine my work, pleased that I have once again kept sacred time.
It is a small and tangible moment of preparing the place for worship, for our worship, for our gathered praise to God. And it is an act physically more satisfying than the work I do at a static computer desk to get ready each Sunday. Changing the paraments is at once ancient and now, it is mundane and full of meaning, it is pastoral, it is prayer.
This afternoon I took down the white paraments of Transfiguration Sunday but left the altar and pulpit and lectern blank. Their barrenness is a sign of the stark nature of the Ash Wednesday ritual. No pretty cloths today. From dust you came, to dust you shall return.
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