Percy Whitlock, the composer of our communion piece today, is an example of a composer who one might consider a traditionalist. He didn’t write vast amounts of music, having only lived to be 42, however he held various positions in the English cathedrals, and he studied with well-known composers such as Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

I admire those who are replete with fecundity, but I also love those who apply new ways of conceptualizing old practices, like Whitlock does with his style of writing. He was innovative, but through traditional means. He was a great Meccano enthusiast too. Meccano is similar to an Erector Set, an English brand of model construction that uses reusable metal strips, wheels, plates, axils, and plastic gears to create working models and mechanical devices. Apparently, Whitlock used them to build his own clocks. He was also a railroad enthusiast and wrote extensively about trains in various books and journals.

Don’t ask me how I ended up there, but years ago, I attended a megachurch to hear a performance of a singing Christmas tree. A singing Christmas is a large, metal structure designed to hold singers, but it looks more like a terraced wedding cake. It’s fat on the bottom, semi-spherical in contour, and tapered as it ascends. It’s bedecked with layers of twinkling lights, and covered in unsightly garland, tinsel, and plastic filigree. Shoulders draped in what looks like a bib and alternating in color from one singer to the next, the choir members stand along each terrace of this ghastly structure, stacked from floor to ceiling. They are scrunched together, awkward faces peeking through a bedazzled array of décor. Because of its semi-spherical shape, the poor choristers on the far ends, whose torsos are pinned in the wrong direction, have to rubberneck to one side, just to see the conductor! With glowing eyes and teeth, the singing heads bobble slightly above the railings, as the lights draped upon them pulse with precision to the beat of a tacky, pre-recorded accompaniment. The “luckiest” chorister gets to be on top, the star that guides Frosty, Santa, and the three wisemen to the cradle, lovingly powdered in faux, confetti-like snow.

I wanted to sit in the church’s balcony for this particular performance, but it was closed. A sign at the bottom of the stairs read, “Thank you for worshiping on the lower level.” How ironic! That sign, although meant to indicate that the balcony was closed, instead perfectly summed up the performance itself, but I’d say it was not at the lower level, but the lowest level! For those of us who prefer to worship on the so-called upper level, it doesn’t mean we put our nose in the air. It means we fold our hands and bow our heads in respect. If everything is about innovation, including church, who’s going to champion the backdrop of constancy, out of which our perception of change exists in the first place?

There is always something new to discover in great, traditional music and ancient rites. Just like with God, each occasion to return into his presence is an opportunity to learn something new about his inexhaustible nature. I’m not done learning about the changelessness of the one who created me, and traditional worship and music are still teaching me, quite effectively. By the way, I don’t think there are plans for a lighted, singing Christmas tree this year at St. Andrew’s. If there are, the only lights you’ll see from me will be the taillights of my antique, yellow Mercedes Benz, feverishly driving away from the church parking lot! Soli deo Gloria!