It had never occurred to me that people think that different denominations make a difference to this debate, but I learnt a whole new way of thinking about which was more appropriate recently.

 

I wonder which you use, or which you prefer…

It’s that moment in the service, and the encouragement words are said, and you set forth with others in what might be the only moment in which a whole congregation gets to speak…

Have you caught on yet?

 

Post a funeral, I was hanging about a room collecting my abandoned things when I was caught.

“I’ve been meaning to chat to you about this.   It’s just someone finds it very uncomfortable when you insist on saying “which” in the Lord’s Prayer.    They think it should be “who””.

Ignoring my usual philosophy on finding out who someone is (please know that that is always for my own benefit and not so I can go and speak to “someone” about the particular matter), I said, “Oh..?”

“Well, why do you say “which?”    I’ve told this person its because you were “Episcoplian” before you joined the Church of Scotland.”

“Hmm…well I wouldn’t have said I was Episcopalian.   I was brought up in the Church of Scotland before I went to live in England and only joined the church there because that was the local church.   We only lived there for five years, and we came home when I was still a teenager and I joined the Church of Scotland then.   So I’m not sure it is because I’m Episcopalian.”

 

[Interluding thought – does hanging out in the Baptist Church on a Sunday evening because there are boys, and they are not bad-looking, and you can sing in a band with them make you a Baptist?   Because if so I’d maybe better never mention that…]

 

Back to the conversation.

“It just seems odd that you should say “which” when it really is “who”.”

“Well I think some people choose to say “who” and some choose to say “which”, and I think “which” is probably the older form but I personally use it because for me it is better theology than “who”.”

“It’s not very Church of Scotland.”

“It probably depends on the Church of Scotland.   It’s the version I learnt in church.   And I know it is in the Church of Scotland Book of Common Order from the 1940s because I have my great-grandfather’s copy.   But I use it because for me “who” means a person, and I think God is much bigger than a person and I would hope that prayer could give voice to that feeling, so that’s why I use “which”.

“It’s in an older prayer book, what date?   I think someone would like that, I think they would appreciate knowing it as the older form.   Maybe they’ll not wince so much when they are sharing the prayer.”

 

“Who” or “which”, they are like hymns.   The one you prefer is probably the one you’ve been saying since childhood, and then someone comes along and disturbs you and makes you ask questions.   Questions are great, because in the working out of an answer with which we’re all comfortable there is an encounter with the wonder and oddity of this overwhelming presence some of us call God.