Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist

“You say amvon, I say ambo…”

So, in going over the Divine Liturgy of St. James with our clergy Monday evening, something which became clear is that the rubrics assume that there’s something in the middle of the nave on which one may place things, from which one may read things, etc. — that is, an ambo in it’s original location.

Initial discussions had us placing the memorial table in the middle of the center aisle, but then Fr. Peter thought it would be nice to put it on a raised platform of some kind. There is a rank of platforms back in the choir area of All Saints on which the women stand, and we moved one of those out and placed the table on it. Realizing the platform segments were of staggered lengths, however, it hit me that we could place them on top of each other, giving us two steps leading up to the memorial table, making something of a makeshift ambo. The prokeimenon, epistle, and alleluia could be sung from the first step — remember that the prokeimenon corresponds to the “gradual” in Western practice, known as such because it was sung from the steps of the ambo — and the Gospel from the second step. (No steps leading down on the other side, but oh well.)

The only problem was that, since the church ran out of carpet while covering the tops of these platforms, there was a decent amount of bare plywood showing, and setting them up this way only exposed it. Really, Fr. Peter said, the only thing we could do to make it something other than a horrible eyesore would be to paint over the exposed plywood with something like a gunmetal grey. Lucas and I looked at each other — “What are you doing tomorrow evening after work?” I asked him. “I think I’m painting these platforms with you,” he said.

So, following a quick trip to the hardware store for a quart of paint and brushes, we headed to All Saints yesterday to do what was necessary. “How good of an idea is this,” I asked Lucas, “letting guys like you and me into the nave by ourselves with paint and brushes?”

“I’m just hoping nobody notices that we’ve had to take out chairs to make everything fit in the space,” he replied.

It didn’t take more than 45 minutes or so to actually do the painting; we then had to move the choir up to the front of the church in order to answer some other logistical concerns the ambo created. After doing that, and destroying taking all of the displaced chairs into the fellowship hall, the paint was dry, and we set it up as it will be for tonight.

Hagia Sophia it ain’t, and I’m not going to argue that it’s gorgeous (particularly with the power outlets on the sides), but it at least looks more or less intentional. (Alas, Fr. Peter is just going to use the prothesis table behind the iconostasis rather than use one of our outdoor shrines as a skevophylakion.) We’ll see how it goes tonight — it sounds like we will have some number of visiting clergy and interested people from the community and around the area, including a contingent of folks from St. George, the big Antiochian parish in Indianapolis. Hopefully somebody will be around who can take pictures. A colleague of my wife’s is coming tonight out of curiosity, and he has never been to an Orthodox service before. Given its length and the fact that this is the first time any of us have ever attempted to celebrate this particular Liturgy, I’m pretty sure that all I can tell him is, “God be with you.”

God be with us all — St. James, pray for us!