Why do you do that - Eastward facing

For the first ‘why do you do that’ post, I thought I’d pick the thing we are asked the most, and as it’s about the altar, it’s also at the heart of all that we do.

‘Why do your altars face the wrong way?’

The short answer is ‘they don’t, most other peoples do’. That might sound a little arrogant, but let me explain.

A church is a building in which the people of God can gather to offer worship together, as we are commanded to. Our worship is based on the mass, as we are also commanded to - ‘do this in memory of me’ - so we do. Often, and joyfully. A mass/eucharist/ holy communion needs a table of course as it is a meal, and Christ offered the first mass, the Last Supper, at a table in the upper room and said ‘do this in memory of me’. Therefore the focal point of our church is naturally and rightly the altar. We have a number of them, to suit different sizes of congregation.

At the Mass, the priest takes the place of Christ, but is not Christ. Therefore he stands at the altar, facing the same way as all of us, offering the sacrifice to God, to the Rising Sun in the East, as we have always done. He’s not having a conversation with us and we are not having a conversation with him. We are all talking to God as equals, albeit as equals with different roles. This explains the vestments, which we will look at another time.

For the first one thousand and nine hundred years, all altars were like ours, facing east. In the 1950’s and 60’s, it was felt that we should in some way gather around a table, which forces us to look at each other and in some way perform. This is not what we are about - we are gathering in the building to face God and offer a corporate sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to him and him alone.

It is our belief that one day the church will look back at the last eighty years and think ‘why did we ever do that?’ (Turning the altars around) and quietly forget about it all, as is happening slowly now, and which has forever been the case in the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches. It’s a timeless, corporate way to stand as God’s people together, equal and in love. And that’s what it’s all about really.