On Sitting Down in the Chancel

A reader asked for clarification about a line that I wrote in my piece entitled “Jesus is not in the Way” in which I referred to the Divine Service being “interrupted as a pastor or lay man or woman ‘preaches’ a ‘sermon’ while sitting down, often with distracting toys, and parents adoring their own children instead of Jesus.”

He asked about the posture of sitting in the chancel and the implication that this is disrespectful. And he was not being disrespectful in his question. He was just looking for clarification.

Indeed, as celebrant, I’m actually sitting down in the chancel a good bit of the service. The deaons and I have sedallias near the altar. Churches that have bishops sometimes even have special “thrones” designed for use by the bishop when he visits. Sitting in and of itself is not the issue. I know of a dear brother pastor who is wheelchair bound who celebrates and preaches while seated. That too is not the issue. The issue is the “children’s sermon” in which pastors are often sprawled out on the floor with their buttocks planted to the chancel steps, nursery-school style, engaging in the aforementioned behavior - often encouraging children to do the same in a kind of show for the congregation. And it is not only pastors, but lay men or women, vested in pastor’s vestments or in street clothes, splayed out awkwardly in proximity to the holy altar, acting as the gluteally-attached floor preacher.

In and of itself, getting on the floor with children is not a bad thing. Far from it! Rather it is a wonderful and blessed part of the vocation of father, grandfather, uncle, and brother. It is simply out of place in sacred vestments in sacred space during the sacred liturgy. And if it is a lay man or woman, wearing clerical vestments or not, it is equally a violation of the sacredness of time and space, not to mention the sacredness of the vocation of the preaching office (Articles 5 and 14).

This is just one more manifestation of the contribution of the Boomer Generation to the degradation of that which is sacred, the blurring of the various lines of division that God created: whether the blurring of the line between male and female, the blurring of the line between those in authority and those under authority, the blurring of the line of the vocation of the pastor and the vocation of the laity, and the blurring of the line between that which is sacred and that which is common.

The best treatment of this blurring of distinctions and why it is done is found in Fr. Peter Burfeind’s book Gnostic America.

Indeed, there are times when rolling around on the floor giggling with babies and toddlers and children is just exactly what we should be doing, but there are other times and places where that is not what we are called to do. The discernment of propriety of a given context - something that used to be common knowledge even to be taken for granted in previous times - has become virtually non-existent in our own Gnostic and egalitarian Zeitgeist.

It is little surprise, given that our grandfathers and grandmothers went to dinner, sports events, the airport, and even to church as gentlemen wearing coats and ties and as ladies clad in dress, hat, and gloves, whereas people of all generations now regularly go out in public in sweats, yoga pants, pajamas, sports bras, hair curlers, clothing with intentional rips, tears, and holes, and with underwear and abdomen visible - it is little wonder that we are culturally bereft of distinction and contextual propriety, even within the sacred spaces of worship.

This is why pastors must be “able to teach,” and it is our challenge to instruct people of every age and demographic that Scripture teaches the distinction between the holy and the common. And the best teaching is often simply setting the example.

Thank you, dear reader, for the question and the opportunity for further discussion!