Old Words Made New

Normally the main service on the first Sunday in each month at Swanvale Halt is a non-eucharistic Family Service with a sung eucharist in the evening, but this year of course Mothering Sunday fell on March 30th, so duties were moved around and this week we had a eucharist in the morning instead. That left a 'blank' Sunday evening when there would normally be a service, so I offered Evensong and Benediction, partly as a way of keeping my hand in regarding that form of service, so I remember how to do it!

At the last minute, and mainly because I didn't feel any of the people who turned up would be comfortable reading the lections without preparing them, I read myself, and decided to read from the Authorised Version of the Bible so that the texts were in keeping with the rest of the Prayer Book service. The extract from the Gospel of St Matthew felt curiously fresh and immediate expressed as it was in 17th-century English. This is almost certainly because we are so used to hearing the text read in modern idiom, so the antique version seems a welcome change. The companion reading from the Lamentations of Jeremiah had not the same sense to it, and I can imagine that some of the more convoluted offerings from the mind of St Paul would not have an equivalent effect, but here - once the texts are read with a natural rhythm of speech and not exaggerated churchiness - was a sort of vigour and energy that made an impression.