Why do we have incense? (Surely we have moved on
from having to give smoke signals to God?)
In Helmsley Church incense is used at the Sunday Eucharist, which stages the greatest drama the world has ever known. The centre stage of the Eucharist is the Last Supper, when Jesus shared a special meal with his friends, and we pray and trust that as we share in a similar meal, our Lord may be with us. The drama is also rich in flashbacks and in glimpses of the future, as week by week, God's work of salvation is explored.

The priest celebrating acts the part of Christ. The congregation, far from being the audience, discover that as the drama progresses they act as, indeed are the disciples, who are fed by Christ and sent out to be his witnesses to his saving death and resurrection.

In the theatre, dry ice is used to evoke a sense of mystery or thrill, to make the hairs rise on the back of your neck. The smoke from the incense has a similar effect. There is also other rich symbolism. In Temple Judaism, incense was offered along with prayer, symbolising our prayers rising towards heaven, perhaps taking their time, spiralling around a bit! In Luke's Gospel, Zechariah the priest is offering incense when Gabriel tells him he is to father John the Baptist. Incense at the Eucharist dramatically flags up that prayer is being offered.

In the Old Testament, God's presence is often represented as a bright cloud, which leads and blesses the Israelites in the wilderness, a symbolism which is repeated in the New Testament at the Transfiguration and at the Ascension, denoting the mighty presence of God. Incense at the Eucharist is a dramatic re-enactment of all that.

Why is the sacrament reserved in St Columba's Chapel?
The Eucharist includes a fourfold action - He took, He blessed, He broke, He gave. 2000 years ago, Christ took the bread and blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples, symbolising his being broken on the cross and then returning to charge his disciples with the Easter faith. Today the priest, in Christ's name, takes the bread, offered by the congregation, symbolising all that we are: our work; our leisure; our life. The priest proclaims God's blessing on it, and on all that we are. The priest breaks it to enable us to enter into the broken-ness which afflicts our world and is part of every human life. Then it is given back at the administration to feed our restored and resurrected life and witness.

Without going into complex theological and philosophical arguments, my faith is to treat the consecrated bread and wine as if they were the body and blood of Christ. When I take communion I treat a physical feeding as if it were a spiritual feeding on Christ. What difference does it make to me having Christ within me? How much of what I do shames my guest? How much of what I do is worthy of Him? Communion is a visual aid of the fact that Christ is with me every moment, both pulling me up short and giving me the nerve to act for Him.

The consecrated bread and wine are therefore powerful symbols of the presence of Christ. They are reserved to be used in emergencies, when someone near death wishes to receive the blessed sacrament and there is insufficient time to celebrate communion for them. The reserved sacrament is treated with reverence because it is the heart of our faith. Wherever the sacrament is reserved, a white light burns to symbolise the continuous presence of Christ.

Why do you wear such elaborate robes at Communion?
Many professions have a uniform to advertise their role. Robes are the priest's uniform.

The robes used in Helmsley, as detailed in Cranmer's first Prayer Book of 1549, include a white alb, a girdle (rope tied around the waist), a stole (like a scarf) and a chasuble (like an overcoat), and are basically the garb that a snazzy dresser of a senior court official would have worn in Constantinople, the cultural capital of the Roman Empire, when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire. The robes therefore flag up that what we are doing here goes back a long way, through two millennia, back to the Roman Empire and to Christ himself.

The robes themselves have religious symbolism, derived in part from Ephesians 6:10ff. Priests pray as they don the white alb, they will be pure in their ministry; as they surround themselves with the girdle that they will be surrounded by truth; the stole is like a prayer shawl, dressing oneself for prayer; the chasuble represents the breastplate of righteousness.

Other robes worn at non-eucharistic services include a black cassock, white surplice, scarf and hood, which was the dress worn by academics in Oxford and Cambridge at the time of the Reformation. Clergy wear them to signal that the Reformation is an important part of Anglican history, although not the only part!

Why do you have six candles on the altar?
We are back to theatre again. In the days before electricity, candles were stage-lighting, and you wanted the centre of the play's action, the altar, to be well lit rather than cast into gloom. Jesus, present in his sacrament, is the Light of the World and so deserves to be well lit. His Gospel is good news which brings light out of darkness.

Aren't votive candles superstitious?
Not really. Sometimes prayer can be too much in-your-head stuff, and we need to liberate it to other areas. For instance, I find cooking and cycling very prayerful activities, where my skill (if I have any culinary skill) and physical exercise can be used to focus on God. Lighting a candle is a physical act of prayer, that God's light may dawn in your particular darkness.

Why do we have a statue of Mary?
Since the start of Christianity, Mary has been honoured as the mother of Jesus, the girl whose "yes" to God enabled the salvation of the human race, the mother who raised and nurtured the Word that brings life and hope for us all. In St John's Gospel, there is an incident at a wedding at Cana where the wine runs out and Mary pleads with her son to rescue the party. Some Christians see this as a route for prayer, that Mary is sympathetic to their cause and praying to her means that she will be a soft and caring ambassador for them before her son. Other Christians see Mary as representing the heart and strengths of femininity within a God who so often seems fiercely masculine. My faith is that God is a loving father and that his Son, Jesus, rather than sitting like a fierce king on a throne of judgement, presides over a mercy seat. In other words, people expect God and Jesus to be forbidding but instead find them pure love and compassion. If Mary helps some Christians eventually to come to this conclusion, then all to the good.

Personally I am sad that so many statues of Mary make her look like an anaemic saint who would bust a gut giving birth to anybody's child, let alone the Son of God. I prefer my Mary to be fully human, flesh and blood, teenage and bolshie, humanity warts and all, flawed and prone to failure, the very context within which God's incarnation was staged. God didn't opt for the perfect stage for his incarnational road show, but the squalor of the stable and the cross and all stops in between. A really human Mary shouts that Christian truth from the hilltops.

© David Wilbourne 2008