Lent 2 2019 (Lent Series on the Liturgy – 2. The Sacrament of the Word)
Sermon preached by the Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan.
Over the next few weeks I will be offering 5 sermons based on the Liturgy – the weekly offering of the church in which so much of God’s glory in Christ, and in us, is celebrated. This is the second in the series.
Each week the subject will be preceded by the word ‘sacrament’. I am using this word in its loosest sense because I do not want to confuse what we are doing with the 7 formally recognized Sacraments of the church. This ‘looseness’ of the word ‘sacrament’ I discovered recently when reading a book on the Eucharist by the great Orthodox theologian, Father Alexander Schmemann.
I am working with the basic meaning of ‘sacrament’, namely ‘the outward visible sign of a hidden invisible grace’. In other words, a mystery revealed.
To recap – last week we thought about the nature of the church focusing on the image of the ‘household’ and then we moved to thinking about the Gathering of the household of faith, and the immediate need for repentance, Kyrie Eleison, followed by the outburst of Gloria (except in Lent and Advent).
Now we move on to think of the Sacrament of the Word, in which we will include the Collect of the day, the scripture readings, and, because we cannot cover everything in one season of Lent, I intend to say nothing about the Creed, but I think the Creed will make another very good sermon series at another time.
First, the Collect; this is a prayer offered to God which relates to the theme of a feast day, or a Christian theme. Traditionally it is offered by the priest as the ‘presider’ of the household of faith at worship. The rubric states that the priest should say the Collect, but in some congregations everyone prays it together. It can be said or sung and is always addressed to God the Father – as all prayer is. There is one exception that I am aware of, the Collect for the 3rd Sunday in Advent, which begins, not with an invocation to God the Father, but with the words ‘Lord Jesus Christ’.
A good example of a Collect that is part of setting the theme of a feast is the one for The Epiphany ‘O God, who by the leading of a star…’ while others focus in some way on the formation of Christian life in Christ.’ More will be said about the Collect next week.
The next stage of our Liturgy is a substantial chunk of scripture. This is often referred to generally as the ‘Ministry of the Word’.
When we consider the word ‘word’ we have to operate in a twofold way. We have to remember both that we are children of the book, but also that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh as the great prologues of St. John’s gospel so gloriously reminds us. So we are both thinking of the book and we are thinking of Christ. Holding both in balance can be difficult, and the history of the Reformation in the west has shown this.
The great discovery of the Reforming Fathers in the 15th and 16th centuries, for which we should be eternally grateful, is the proper hearing, studying, and preaching of scripture. The bible has come alive to a large extent because of this development.
However, in reflecting on the Reformation it is necessary to understand as much what was rejected as what was discovered. In its most thorough form, the Reformation was ground shifting in Christian history. There was a rejection of the liturgical and seasonal life of the church, with its Lent, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent etc and in its place the bible, the book, became central. Remember that a crucial component of the Reformation is the invention of the printing press. Bibles could become personal or family possessions. The Christian household could gather and read the bible in their own language and without a priest and the church to mediate the scriptures for them. This had been impossible when Christian scriptures were hand written on parchment by monks, and because this was such a laborious hand writing task, only the local church held the scriptures as a common possession.
The holy scriptures could, for the first time, be printed in one book, and it became known as the Bible, though it is many books in one cover. ‘The word of God’ was more powerfully a reference to the Bible as it was to the ‘Word made flesh’ in Jesus. I would suggest that the best method to reconcile these two factors is to say that the Word of God in Scripture must all be understood through God’s Word incarnate in Jesus Christ.
So to our Liturgical use of scripture. In recent developments it has become common for the Anglican eucharist to have a provision Sunday by Sunday for an OT, NT, Gospel, and a portion of a Psalm. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer only an Epistle and Gospel reading were provided, as the Old Testament featured more highly in Mattins and Evensong.
Unless for exceptional reasons, we are bound by a common lectionary in the Church of England. All readings are set – they are not a matter of personal choice, and nowadays they follow a three year cycle, so with a few exceptions the same set of readings only comes round every three years.
In the early days of the Christian era there was a debate about whether the ‘household’ of those following Jesus should be reading Jewish scriptures. At various times this became an acute argument, and there were some notable exponents such as Marcion, who wanted only Christian scriptures to be read. The Marcionites did not win the day. We must remember that Jesus was a circumcised Jew, that his first followers were circumcised Jews, and both he and they had been nurtured on the holy scriptures of Judaism, which we as Christians call the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a major part of understanding our continuity from our Jewish ancestry. To remove the OT would be to remove the very foundations on which Christianity is built.
The OT is a series of books of different types. There are prophecies, songs or psalms, histories, and even some scriptures that crept in from other Middle Eastern cultures, which we call the Wisdom literature. The first five books have a distinctive foundation for Judaism and are referred to as the Pentateuch. Throughout these scriptures there are different writers, different experiences of God, and even revisions of older texts. At times difficult and brutal, the OT provides some of the most beautiful sign posts towards the one who would come as the Messiah, the Christ. We need to hear the Old Testament read in in our Liturgy.
St. Paul was schooled in these same holy scriptures, but his heart and mind was opened to the revelation contained in those writings – namely that the crucified and risen Jesus is Lord and Messiah. Paul grapples with many of the early issues surrounding this new Way, as it was called to begin with. Remember there were no guide books about how to be a Christian, and in Paul’s time, no written version of the life and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul’s contribution to developing a Christian ethic and doctrine is second to none, and as he travelled around the Mediterranean he wrote letters, epistles, to the small ‘households’ of believers who were seeking to form themselves on Christ’s life and teaching. So much more could be said about the Pauline Letters.
The other main section of scripture is the gospels. These four gospels contain the life and sayings of Jesus, according to four different perspectives. It is important to maintain their difference. Early critics of Christians, and maybe even contemporary critics, point to the fact that we have 4 gospels, sometimes inconsistent with each other, as a weakness in our apologia our claims about Jesus as Christ. As early as the time of the great theologian and bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus, someone by the name of Tatian was ‘harmonizing’ the four gospels into one. This is referred to as the diatessaron. However the distinctiveness of each gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, has been preserved in the church.
Traditionally it is the role of the deacon to read the gospel. Hence when we have a deacon present, this practice is preserved. The deacon asks ‘permission’ from the presiding priest to read the gospel. Recently you will see from our Liturgy that the deacon has been asking the whole household of faith for that consent. When we do it, note the words of our response, because this corresponds to the threefold signing of the cross on the forehead, the lips, and the heart (or chest).
The gospels were, and are, a precious possession, so the reading of the gospel, above all other scriptures, is surrounded by the ceremony of a procession. We turn to face the gospel wherever it is read, echoing the words of the baptismal liturgy, ‘I turn to Christ’. Proclamations are made both before and after the reading of the gospel scripture as an expression of our lives touched and formed by the good news of Jesus Christ.
So our ‘Sacrament of the Word’ is constituted in our reading of the OT, NT, and gospels. There is a natural integrity to this part of our Liturgy, and with a psalm, sung in one form or another (for the psalms are songs from the worship in the temple in Jerusalem), and a sermon preached. However this section is not ‘book bound’ because, as I have previously mentioned, the true Word of God is none other than the ‘Word made flesh’ the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus, who is our crucified and risen Lord.
Printed copies of this sermon are available after the Liturgy, and will appear on our website in the next day or so. Next week we will move on the ‘Sacrament of Prayer’ , but I end with another Collect, for the Last Sunday of the holy season of Trinity. Note how the Collect is formed, to whom it is addressed, and how it ends. All collects are deeply Trinitarian as well as giving us an anchor for focus, thought and prayer each week.
‘Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.’ Amen.
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