A Cross-Cultural Experience

Today Dianna and I attended a Greek Orthodox church for our worship paper for Intro to Christian Thought. (Wow, that's a mouthful.) It was quite an experience, so I'm going to tell you all about it.
The church is just a few blocks from campus, so it was easy for us to walk there. The building is rather small, but very beautiful. As an orthodox church, they have a lot of icons. The front was completely covered in them. Some looked familiar to me from my art history class. They had images of the archangels and the life of Christ and a huge image of the virgen Mary surrounded by images of the apostles. Their stained-glass windows were also quite attractive, and definitely iconic--the faces of the people were clearly defined.
In the front, of to the right side, was the "choir." They answered the priest in a sing-song sort of chant that was tonaly beautiful, but hard to understand. They spoke Greek half the time, but even when they were using English their singing style made the words hard to decipher. They had given us books to follow along with the service, but at times it was hard to know just where in the service we were. (I must have seemed very lost, because this lady kept bringing me books and pointing out the spot we were at. There are now two extra books in the pew we sat in because I didn't know where to put them back.)
For the most part, we tried to follow what was going on. we stood up when everyone else stood up, and we knelt when they knelt. Of course, kneeling was rather interesting. Dianna and I had decided to dress up for this, so we were both in skirts. It's hard to kneel in a skirt. They had these little bench-thingies that we pulled down to kneel on, but they were very smooth wood. That, coupled with the proximity of the next pew made my stance unstable. The entire time we knelt all I could think was, "I'm going to fall off this thing and embarass myself. I am so going to fall." Thankfully, we didn't keel long, so I didn't fall.
As an orthodox church, they have a great sense of tradidtion. Everyone involved in the service had a special robe of some sort, even the young boys whose job, it seemed, was simply to walk around periodically carrying huge gold symbolic objects. the priest's robe was cool, it was green with all sorts of gold trim. Several times during the service he used incence. The incence was in a chalice-shaped dish suspended on chains with bells so that when he swung the incence the bells would ring. At one point he also hled up a gold Bible. I'd never seen one like that before. It had portraits on the front that I can only assume were Jesus and the four gospel writers. At least, that's what would make sense to me, I didn't get a very good look at it.
Whenever the boys came out with their gold staff-thingies, they came through a door with the archangel Michael on it. When they were done standing in the front, they would go into the back again through a door with the archangel Gabriel on it. On the way back in, they would kiss the image. That kind of weirded me out.
Another thing I noticed that doesn't happen where I usually go to church was people crossing themselves. There were many times during the service when the entire congregation did it at the same time, some of them over and over again.
Communion was definitely different. The boys led a procession out of the little door which included more incence and the priest caring the covered elements. When it was time for people to go forward, only a few of them did, including all of the children. when the priest served them the wine he used a little spoon and they had to lean over or squat while he did it.
There was no sermon. There was a reading from the scripture, done in sing-song fashon by a man who obviously had not practiced singing that passage before. The main priest, on the other hand, had obviously learned English as a second language and was more comfortable doing the Greek side of the service. Later there was a reading that commented on the scripture, but I don't know who wrote it.
At the end of the service they brought up the guestbook and read our names to the congregation--I certainly wasn't expecting that. Afterward the priest was giving communion bread at the front and we were told that we didn't need to be members to take it at this time, that it was a "gift," so we did. On the way out a man stopped us and explained some of the icons at the front of the church. He said that since they are the Church of the Transfiguration, the image of the transfiguration of Jesus had to be in a special place in relation to the altar. It was all rather interesting.
One thing that struck me was the evident effort they had put forth to make the service as modern as possible without breaking tradition. The choir had microphones and there were two young girls singing with their mother in the choir. Also, although the book we followed used words like "thee," when they sang it they used "you."
After visiting this church today, I'm glad that I don't go there every Sunday, but I'm also glad that I've experienced it. Life lived in a bubble isn't very intersting. (And I should know.) I now have a better appreciation for what the denomination is like, and I should be able to get some good stuff out of it for my worship paper.

Take care of yourselves today--praise God, take some time off, and give someone you love a hug.