Another sun-filled early awakening. Summoned by bells, I walked to worship at the church I can see from the bedroom balcony.Its clock strikes the hours and signals the beginning and end of the working day for people in the parish. It's the parish church of Swiss Reformed community, I discovered when I arrived and joined the assembly - a large building with balconies, seating over six hundred. There were about eighty people in church, two thirds of them belonged to a couple of families bringing babies for baptism. My guess that the regularly attending congregation is around thirty people was later confirmed by Heinz.
Yesterday in Alt Sankt Johannes, the Swiss Reformed Church I looked at had been renovated in recent times, and the sanctuary was furnished with a small pulpit, font and altar table, in keeping with contemporary liturgical design practice which has been truly ecumenical as well as widespread in its influence. The Grabs Gemeindekirche reflected an earlier movement of renovation and restorations, probably 19th, early 20th century, still faithful to reformation tradition.
Thus, on the north side of the nave was a finely carved wooden pulpit fifteen feet above floor level, high enough for the preacher to be able to eyeball people sitting in the gallery. The semi-circular vaulted gothic apse, had one central stained glass lancet window depicting Christ the Good Shepherd and was empty apart from a dozen chairs around the wall. At what Anglicans would call the chancel step stood the font, with the lit paschal candle nearby - one concession to the modern liturgical emphasis on the importance of baptism. However, the font cover provided a surface on which a bookstand could be placed for the pastor to use while officiating. There was no altar - very Zwinglian. The first time saw this was in a Wintertur church 25 years ago.
The Pastor, dressed in dark suit and tie, looking like an undertaker on a home visit, led the baptismal families in at the start. He addressed the congregation, and the making of the baptismal promises seemed to be no more than a simple 'yes' on the part of the parents and sponsors. Then came the baptism. He didn't use the font, but rather a small silver ewer and bowl for the baptismal water. He held each child and put a drop of water on the forehead of each as he spoke the trinitarian words. After saying some prayers and then a hymn together, he went up into the pulpit, read a passage from Exodus, then preached for fifteen minutes. We stood to pray and sat to sing hymns. The service ended with the Lord's prayer said together, a sung prayer from the hymn book, then we were dismissed with the Pastor's benediction.
When I got outside I realised no collection had been taken. I wonder if this was because the church is still funded through the kirchensteuer - the church tax or some other means of subscription which takes the offering of gifts right out of the liturgical action. The point of the reformation was to re-engage all people fully in church life and this was meant to be expressed in the liturgy, which up until that time had been mainly a clerical monologue with a passive audience, unless there was a choir to sing parts of the service. Congregational hymn singing is part of the historic legacy of the reformation for protestant and catholic churches alike. Up until the liturgical reform movement of the 20th century worship remained for the most part a clerical monologue with a passive audience, except for hymn singing. It was like that in some non-conformist chapels when I was growing up. Anglican lay people were reading lessons and sometimes prayers also, however. That made us different. Still, participation has to be worked at, developed and sustained in any religious tradition, or else the tendency to revert to passivity reasserts itself.
It was good to be reminded about how things used to be, and as my German is not too good, it was quite a struggle to follow the monologue. Vernacular speech is right and proper to use in any local worship setting, but this always makes it difficult to enable visitors who do not understand the language to feel at home. Being a a non-eucharistic liturgy exacerbates the difficulty, for at least the commonly accepted form of a eucharistic liturgy makes the entire activity accessible to participation if if it is not wholly intelligible. And this holds true wherever you are. I was glad to have attended a service with a baptism, because that has a recognisable form and identity as a pastoral social action. Without that I think I would have felt quite lost, more like a stranger in the Lord's house.
After brunch and a siesta, we took a leisurely afternoon stroll along footpaths around the village of Grabs and sawe something of its colourful mix of old and new housing, and small industries, not set apart, but in among the houses as they have been since the village was more thinly populated and quite rural. Ringed around by high cliffed mountains and wonderfully green alpine hillsides below them, it's a pleasant place to live, well connected to the rest of the region by superb public transport, if you have to work elsewhere. Heinz is blessed with his own dental practice in the heart of the village, ten minutes cycle ride from home, and Marie-Louisa, works at home and in the community with mothers and infants.
Yesterday in Alt Sankt Johannes, the Swiss Reformed Church I looked at had been renovated in recent times, and the sanctuary was furnished with a small pulpit, font and altar table, in keeping with contemporary liturgical design practice which has been truly ecumenical as well as widespread in its influence. The Grabs Gemeindekirche reflected an earlier movement of renovation and restorations, probably 19th, early 20th century, still faithful to reformation tradition.
Thus, on the north side of the nave was a finely carved wooden pulpit fifteen feet above floor level, high enough for the preacher to be able to eyeball people sitting in the gallery. The semi-circular vaulted gothic apse, had one central stained glass lancet window depicting Christ the Good Shepherd and was empty apart from a dozen chairs around the wall. At what Anglicans would call the chancel step stood the font, with the lit paschal candle nearby - one concession to the modern liturgical emphasis on the importance of baptism. However, the font cover provided a surface on which a bookstand could be placed for the pastor to use while officiating. There was no altar - very Zwinglian. The first time saw this was in a Wintertur church 25 years ago.
The Pastor, dressed in dark suit and tie, looking like an undertaker on a home visit, led the baptismal families in at the start. He addressed the congregation, and the making of the baptismal promises seemed to be no more than a simple 'yes' on the part of the parents and sponsors. Then came the baptism. He didn't use the font, but rather a small silver ewer and bowl for the baptismal water. He held each child and put a drop of water on the forehead of each as he spoke the trinitarian words. After saying some prayers and then a hymn together, he went up into the pulpit, read a passage from Exodus, then preached for fifteen minutes. We stood to pray and sat to sing hymns. The service ended with the Lord's prayer said together, a sung prayer from the hymn book, then we were dismissed with the Pastor's benediction.
When I got outside I realised no collection had been taken. I wonder if this was because the church is still funded through the kirchensteuer - the church tax or some other means of subscription which takes the offering of gifts right out of the liturgical action. The point of the reformation was to re-engage all people fully in church life and this was meant to be expressed in the liturgy, which up until that time had been mainly a clerical monologue with a passive audience, unless there was a choir to sing parts of the service. Congregational hymn singing is part of the historic legacy of the reformation for protestant and catholic churches alike. Up until the liturgical reform movement of the 20th century worship remained for the most part a clerical monologue with a passive audience, except for hymn singing. It was like that in some non-conformist chapels when I was growing up. Anglican lay people were reading lessons and sometimes prayers also, however. That made us different. Still, participation has to be worked at, developed and sustained in any religious tradition, or else the tendency to revert to passivity reasserts itself.
It was good to be reminded about how things used to be, and as my German is not too good, it was quite a struggle to follow the monologue. Vernacular speech is right and proper to use in any local worship setting, but this always makes it difficult to enable visitors who do not understand the language to feel at home. Being a a non-eucharistic liturgy exacerbates the difficulty, for at least the commonly accepted form of a eucharistic liturgy makes the entire activity accessible to participation if if it is not wholly intelligible. And this holds true wherever you are. I was glad to have attended a service with a baptism, because that has a recognisable form and identity as a pastoral social action. Without that I think I would have felt quite lost, more like a stranger in the Lord's house.
After brunch and a siesta, we took a leisurely afternoon stroll along footpaths around the village of Grabs and sawe something of its colourful mix of old and new housing, and small industries, not set apart, but in among the houses as they have been since the village was more thinly populated and quite rural. Ringed around by high cliffed mountains and wonderfully green alpine hillsides below them, it's a pleasant place to live, well connected to the rest of the region by superb public transport, if you have to work elsewhere. Heinz is blessed with his own dental practice in the heart of the village, ten minutes cycle ride from home, and Marie-Louisa, works at home and in the community with mothers and infants.
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