The rationale that we hear offered to justify a practice often proves upon close examination to be a lot of malarkey. One of the arguments that is mustered in support of the Eastward Position is that everyone is facing in the same direction when they are praying. Since God is omnipresent and God in the person of the Holy Spirit indwells the believer, we are prompted to ask why face the Lord’s Table in particular when praying. Since Jesus says when two or three are gathered in his name, he is in the midst of them, should not we be gathered in a circle to pray?
If we are persistent, we will eventually drag out of the priest who is advocating the Eastward Position the belief that Christ is present in the sacramental bread and wine and the altar (not the Lord’s Table) is his throne and therefore we show Christ honor in facing his throne when we pray. His presence may even be lingering there.
This conjures up the image of Jesus sitting on the Table in a seamless white robe, swinging his sandaled feet—not quite the image that the priest might have had in in mind. He was thinking of one of those old prints that shows Christ hanging from the cross above the altar while the priest offers up the Host, flanked by two kneeling servers, heads devoutly bowed; or hovering over the altar, wearing royal robes and a crown, the sanctuary light glowing in the background to show that the reserved sacrament is present.
These images are very telling. They reveal how the priest sees his role and Christ’s presence. The priest sees himself as a sacrificing priest. He also sees Christ present in or under forms of bread and wine. They reflect the influence of the Catholic Revival in the nineteenth century. The Reformed Anglican Church, however, rejected his view of a priest’s role and of Christ’s presence as without basis in Scripture in the sixteenth century.
What about the Northward Position? We are seeing a revival of that practice in some quarters of the Anglican Church. The Northward Position was adopted at a time when “God’s Board,” as the Lord’s Table is called in the 1559 Elizabethan Prayer Book, was placed lengthwise in the body of the church’s nave or at the entrance of the chancel. The people stood or knelt around the table. In Elizabethan times churches did not have pews or any other kind of seating except for stools that the elderly and the infirm may have brought with them from home.
During the reign of Charles I the Laudians placed the Lord’s Table against the east wall and fenced off the table from the people with rails, ostensibly to prevent various profanations of the table. They also introduced the practice of reverencing the Lord’s Table on entering and leaving a church. In 1640 Convocation adopted the Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical of 1640 which required the implementation of these practices in all churches and chapels. Some Laudians also adopted the Eastward Position.
Except where the communion table is moved into the body of the nave or at the entrance of the chancel, the Northward Position is nothing more than a modification of the Eastward Position. Instead of standing or kneeling in front of the table with his back to the congregation, the minister is standing and kneeling on one side of the table, his right side to the congregation. If the chancel has choir stalls between the table and the congregation, the congregation may not be able to hear what he is saying or see what he is doing, defeating the original purpose of the Northward Position.
The original purpose of the Northward Position was to increase the audibility and visibility of the minister, removing the minister from behind the concealment of a rood screen and placing him in the midst of the congregation where his words could be heard, and his actions seen. The liturgical focus was not the communion table but the minister’s words and actions. When the table is placed against the east wall and “severed” with rails, the liturgical focus shifts to the table.
In the twenty-first century the position that best serves the original purpose of the Northward Position is the Westward Position in which the minister stands on the far side of the table, facing the congregation. This requires moving the table away from the east wall and into the congregation. When the table is moved into the congregation and the minister stands in the Westward Position, the positioning of the table and the positioning of the minister convey that what is transpiring is the communion of the Christ’s people with their Lord and not the offering of a sacrifice.
Transforming the Mass from a sacrifice into a communion service was a major goal of Cranmer’s reform of the eucharistic liturgy. This is why he replaced the 1549 consecratory prayer with the 1552 prayer for the communicants and placed the distribution of the sacramental bread and wine immediately after that prayer. Placing the table against a wall with the minister facing the table from the front or one side undoes that reform. Placing the table at a distance from the people with the minister standing behind the table also works against the same reform.
The concept of the eucharist as a communion service with the communion of the people as a major focus is a key reformed principle of historic Anglicanism. However, in too many Anglican churches the positioning of the table and the minister do not give expression to that principle. Rather they give expression to the idea that the eucharist is a sacrifice with the offering of the bread and wine to God as its primary focus.
Ministers who wish to genuinely replicate the Northward Position will move the communion table out of the chancel and into the congregation. They will place the table lengthwise in the body of the nave. They will instruct the congregation to gather around the table before the confession of sin. They will not leave the table in the chancel, resting against the east wall and separated from the congregation by rails.
Since the table is placed lengthwise, the minister is actually standing at the east side of the table if it had not been placed lengthwise. He is standing in what would have been the Westward Position.
Adopting what may be described as the Laudian Northward Position in which the table remains against at the east wall and the minister stands and kneels at the north end of the table, on the other hand, amounts to taking up what is an adaptation of the Eastward Position. It is at best a halfway measure and leaves much to be desired.
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