If you visit St. Mary’s Church for a weekday service of the Holy Eucharist, you might be surprised. Often during weekday worship in the Church, when I actually approach the altar to lead the congregation in offering our bread and wine to the Lord so that we can receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in return, I stand facing the altar with my back to the congregation. Before someone wanders into one of these services and gets offended at their priest’s rudeness, I wanted to point out the way that this posture—standing here, facing that way—fits with quite a bit of what we do at St. Mary’s Church, where the direction we face reminds us of the One on whom we should set our focus.
I partly started this because during the pandemic I began making the Eucharist every day, and, spending this additional time in the Church, I started standing in the traditional place. This is how the Eucharist is done in our chapel, the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, where the altar is still attached to the wall. But for most of the life of our congregation, that is how the Eucharist has been said at our high altar as well. In fact, for the first 140 years of St. Mary’s Church the altar was attached to the wall, so the priest stood with the congregation facing the same direction as them. That is, until the early 80s when the altar was pulled off the wall (a decision the Junior Warden at the time made by himself, who for years always laughed about it whenever he told the story). There are certainly good things to be said about the priest behind the altar facing the congregation. It reflects the reality of what’s happening in a certain way, which I appreciate. But there are also many good things about the more traditional stance—where the priest stands with the congregation facing the same direction. There are actually several other occasions in our Church’s life when we face in this particular direction, and we do so for a particular reason.
One such occasion that people might be most familiar with is during funerals. During a funeral with a body in a casket, the casket is positioned during the funeral so that the person’s feet are toward the altar. (Mr. Scott Pellerin, whom I’ve mostly worked with on funerals at our Church, is good about following all of these old traditions.)
That’s how a person ends their Christian life, but their Christian life begins that way, too. Whenever folks are being baptized at our wonderful baptismal font in the back of the Church, I always make sure that people are facing towards the altar. This is true for babies or grownups. Recently we baptized Laney and Lacy Lauret, who stood with their backs to the font facing the front of the Church. They could just as easily have stood facing the other direction. But there is significance in facing that particular way.
The crucial moment comes just minutes before the candidate for Baptism is at the font. First, the baptizand and her sponsors come forward to the front of the Church. Standing here at the front, the person becoming a Christian enters into her “contract with Christ.” It starts with the renunciations. The baptismal party faces the congregation while the priest asks them three questions, during which they renounce “the flesh, the world, and the devil.” Then they turn to face the other direction, toward the altar, toward that magnificent window behind the altar. I actually walk around and stand on the other side of them, so they all remember to turn and face this new direction. This shift is reflected in the next three questions: “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?" as the person’s life is given to Jesus. Still facing this new direction, the person’s faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is declared as we all say the Apostles’ Creed together. The change of the candidate's posture reflects the reorientation of her whole life towards the Lord.
You’ll see an echo of this moment at our regular Sunday worship during the Creed. In just the same way, I step out and turn towards Jesus as we proclaim the faith that leads to salvation. When I do this, much like when I celebrate the Eucharist from the near side of the altar, I'm standing with the congregation. So my back is toward them, but only in the same way that the folks sitting in the front pews have their backs to the rest of the congregation, too.
This concern for what direction we face goes back to the ancient Church. This turn to Jesus was dramatized in all these ways. However, it was usually connected with facing east, the direction of the sunrise. So at the baptism, the candidate would start out facing west, towards direction of the dark, and renounce the flesh, the world, and the devil. (In many places candidates would even spit, showing their contempt for the Enemy from whom they were turning.) Then they would face east as they place their lives in Jesus’s hands. Again, during the baptism their feet were to the east (they were usually lying back while being fully immersed in the water). Eventually, funerals were carried out in a way that mirrored baptism. And then when they were buried in the ground, their feet were toward the east, ready for their own resurrection, when they would rise and meet Jesus at his glorious return, the dawning of the Day that will never end.
The ancient Church also celebrated the Eucharist with this eastward focus in mind. Hence, whenever the priest faces the altar away from the people, we still call it celebrating ad orientem, even if the priest and congregation aren’t facing true east. There were some instances, though, when a church wasn’t built with the altar toward the east, and in those cases it seems the priest might have stood behind the altar facing the congregation so that he could face the direction of the sunrise. However, this doesn’t necessarily reflect what you’ll commonly find in churches today: the congregation might have also turned and faced east with their backs to the priest!
The geographical sense of east and west don’t translate to St. Mary’s Church, but through our baptismal practices and funerary practices (and occasional Eucharistic practices), we have that same vivid sense of turning toward Jesus. Again, the baptismal covenant is the hinge on which this swings. A person begins the Christian life by turning away from the front doors of the Church and the world that lies beyond them. What happens out there no longer determines the shape of this person’s life. The world beyond those doors has some strong ideas about how things should go, and while we continue to love the world, we reject its expectations of us. Instead, the candidate for baptism turns and faces Jesus, whose image towers in front of us in stained glass. Accepting Christ as Lord means that he determines the shape of our lives, and we embrace his plans for us.
May the Holy Spirit move in us in such a way that we not only turn to Jesus with our bodies, but with our hearts as well.
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