Yesterday I attended the Protestant church service in the village. The minister is not resident in the parish. He comes from over the hill every Sunday to provide services to the dwindling number of Protestants in this part of Donegal. There were less than ten people at the service, all relatively old. In the past, the minister’s assistant played the organ but now they have a boombox to provide musical accompaniment to the hymn and psalm singing. I wondered if they chose the particular psalms for that Sunday based on the music they had available on a CD or if there was a liturgical thread through the selections. I suspect the former.
The sermon was a meditation on the historical significance of the Ark of the Covenant to the Jews. Somehow, the minister wove in his personal opinions about the revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. I felt I was witness to a skirmish in the Lace and Old Lady Wars. He postulated that the purpose of the revision was to encourage participation by ordinary people in the liturgy but he concluded that he hadn’t seen any difference in that regard. I think he was an traditionalist who was a little pissed that somebody had made a change to his Old Familiar.
One of the readings from the Gospels was on the death of John the Baptist. I am more familiar with the Salome version of that story so I was a little surprised by how it was described in the Gospel. It seems Herod had JtheB as an advisor on spiritual matters but when he started preaching against kings marrying their brother’s wives Herod became a little uncomfortable. He had JtheB imprisoned. The daughter of Heroditus (Herod’s brother’s former wife) took umbrage and asked for his head to be presented to her on a platter. Herod obliged. I’m not sure what the point of the story was but I sure am not going to complain too loudly if my brother marries my ex-wife.
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