A Tasty Hymn Sandwich

When Methodists receive non-alcoholic communion wine, they do not share a big cup but each receive their portion in small glasses that look like the ones commonly used in American bars to serve up hard liquor. This comparison does not fit well with Methodism's temperance tradition but is illustrated in an episode of Antiques Roadshow in which a Methodist communion set was wrongly identified by an expert as a gentleman's drinking set.

I was never that comfortable when participating in a Methodist communion service for all sorts of reasons. Whilst I always considered it purely symbolic and open to multiple interpretations (such can be the value of ritual), part of me could not escape the dramatic sense of it being a form of ritualistic cannibalism no matter how hard I tried. The imagery of the death of Christ is powerful but there is a danger that in the image of the empty cross or the sharing of the body and blood of Christ in bread and wine, we legitimise violence and render it less shocking than it ought to be.

As a child I also disliked communion services because they seemed too pompous, cold and serious and I associated Methodist churches much more with warmth and friendliness. Occasionally I had the job of collecting the non-alcoholic communion wine from Boots, where it was kept under the counter (in a way that might have seemed interestingly illicit if it wasn't Boots) but there was apparently one Easter when no one remembered to collect it and at the church where my dad was minister, there was a need for improvisation.

What happened slightly defies belief but apparently someone at the church in a panic used whatever was available in the kitchen and the only things that was remotely the right colour was some jelly mix (jell-o to any American readers).  This set in course a disastrous but inevitable course of events. The early preparation of the communion combined with the warmth of the day and length of the sermon to ensure that when the communion came around the jellies had at least partially set. This left members of the congregation with a terrible dilemma. Was it okay just to pretend to receive the wine or should they ask for a teaspoon?

As the above illustrates, any act of worship can go wrong which is why using PowerPoint in a service is almost always a bad idea. Lately, however, I noticed an interesting  discussion on the UK Facebook page about something a little deeper than that, a feeling that Unitarian worship is an eternal hymn sandwich for which no one is particularly hungry.

This is an old complaint (which is not to say it is not justified). However, in the Methodist tradition from which I have come, doing worship differently has always been greeted with suspicion by some. For example, introducing a new hymn book is always controversial (so much so in the middle part of the nineteenth century that a group of people actually left the Methodist mainstream to form a shortlived group known as the Old Hymnbookers). A more recent innovation met with hostility was the decision to project the words of hymns onto the walls of churches to save printing costs and allow people to express their emotional response to the words and music without having to look down or hold a book. The controversy surrounding this is older than you might think, first erupting in the 1890s when magic lantern projectors were used. For the anti-modernist brigade this was, if you will pardon the play on words, the writing on the wall.

My own experience tells me that being different just for the sake of being different is not where the future lies. I heard, for example about a Methodist congregation who were tired of singing the doxology to the same tune, so one week they tried it to Hernando's Hideaway and whilst the metre was right it just didn't feel like worship. Try to imagine what that sounds like and you may agree that when the traditionalists made their protest, they had a point.

However, I can also think of times when something really special has emerged from thinking outside of the box. At a church where I was a member in Sheffield we started a Sunday evening alternative worship experience that we thought might appeal to students but it was too different for their taste and ended up being most popular among the more settled members of the congregation, including the older ones so often assumed to be traditionalists. One week, my architect friend, Alan, built a set in the hall based on the one used in Lars Von Trier's film, Dogville. It consisted of a town laid out in outline, like a large-scale architect's plan.   In our version there was a church, a library, a park, various houses and shops, a café, and in the middle, a clock hanging down from the ceiling. At the service, participants were given cards with instructions such as 'Find a place where you feel peaceful' and given twenty minutes to wander around before meeting under the clock to discuss their experiences. This sounded like a service that was never going to work because there was clearly nothing to it (I helpfully shared this thought with Alan twenty minutes before the service started) but it did work in a profound and moving way because of what people brought to the experience. To me it was just some lines on the floor and some cards but to the participants it was an opportunity to share stories about the places that were special to them as well as personal insights on themes such as the possibility of finding peace and what it means to belong.

I have another memory of worship outside of the box, something that worked because it was not obviously an act of worship until it was over. I was a drama student in York and as a piece of coursework we had to produce an 'event' on the streets of the city. I decided to do a sort of walking tour, using the streets and the audience as props in an exploration of where people find what they consider holy. Each member of the audience was also given a prop, which extended the possibilities of what I could do but also ensured that the piece began with each audience member aware that they were not to be passive observers but participants in what occurred.

Sex, Beer and the Holy Trinity (I probably wouldn't call it that now but at the time it seemed suitably provocative) started at York Minster where I rambled on for slightly too long about the strengths and weaknesses of organised religion in an attempt to assure the audience (who numbered around 30) that no evangelistic agenda was at work. We then walked to the Roman pillar opposite the Minster for an exploration of our attitudes to time. How little time we have on earth compared to this pillar was the thrust of my theatrics, which ended with the audience walking backwards away from the pillar towards a pub whilst singing 'When I'm 64.' The ghosts of leaders of the Band of Hope and other temperance groups were given voice outside the pub, where I officiated at the marriage between a member of the audience and a can of beer before recognising that there are times when pubs provide for spiritual needs (a place to find belonging, meaning, and deep conversation that, unlike most churches, is open most of the day, every day).  At Monkbar I invited the audience to think back to exciting tales of childhood and improvised a sword fight with a willing audience member before turning into a cowboy from a 1950s western and walking along Lord Mayor's Walk to the tune of Wichita:

In the town of Wichita, Kansas, there was a man, a man of peace,

Things were bad in Wichita, Kansas, he told them all this killing must cease.

Tex Ritter was singing these words through my eighties boom box as I led the audience across a pedestrian crossing. As I looked back, I was surprised to discover that the entire audience, without any prompt from me, was now pretending to ride on horseback.

After the audience dismounted, we had a short communion ritual, celebrating the connection of everyone to everyone which ended with the audience being invited to place the props they had been given on a big pile which was supposed to signify the great diversity of things in which people discover the holy. This I expected to be the end. There would be polite applause and everyone would go home or to the pub across the street but this did not happen. Instead people hung around and carried on exploring the themes that I had begun with my irreverent role playing. People chatted for an hour or more, new friendships were established and I realised that what I had presided over, irreverent though it was, had as much in common with an act of worship as it did a piece of theatre. Fortunately, the event was not video-taped for I imagine I would find it embarrassing to see now, but like the Dogville experience outlined above, it was made as much by what others brought to the experience as what I had prepared.

So apart from reminiscing for its own sake, what's my point? I think I have several:

1. Once in a while a congregation or group of congregations can really benefit from a worship experience that is an event. Expanding definitions of what counts as an act of worship can really help here – as well as the above I have been to services that have taken the form of a church crawl (one hymn in every chapel with a growing congregation all the way round), a reflective walk around a museum or a series of games. 
2. All worship, whether traditional hymn-sandwich or something completely different, is affected as much by what the congregation bring to it as what any leader actually prepares. If you make up your mind ahead of time that you won't like it, you won't like it. If, however, you go with an openness and expectation that something worthwhile will happen, then it usually will, even if it just the words of a particular hymn, or a conversation you have over coffee. 
3. The hymn-sandwich can seem old and tired but it has survived so long partly because it can work well. I have heard some terrible sermons over the years but I still go to church with a sense of expectation because I have also often been inspired by preaching. Whilst some people who are willing to lead worship thrive on doing something different, others challenge us with quite radical thinking in the context of a traditional hymn sandwich format. They are at home with this approach and if they were made to do things differently, the worship they led might swiftly begin to feel inauthentic. In my experience of preaching within the Methodist Church, I noticed occasions when an emphasis on contemporary styles of worship left leaders of worship feeling distinctly uncomfortable and unable to be fully themselves.

My conclusion, then, is that the hymn sandwich is not by its sell-by date. It can be really good for you, it comes with a range of delicious fillings but if you have had one too may or you encounter a stale taste, then it is important to try something different.  And remember, if this Sunday you encounter a sermon that's a little dull, at least it's better than this: