“God has spoken” (Hebrews 1:1-4)

Central to our Christian faith is the conviction that our God is a God who speaks. The first picture that the Bible gives us is one of chaos and emptiness. And into that emptiness God speaks: “Let there be light.” And no sooner were those words spoken than the Bible tells us there was light.

So it continues over the six days of creation: “God said…”, “God said…”, “God said…” And each time we hear the refrain, “And it was so.” “And it was so.” And it was so…”

Our psalm this morning affirms that God’s voice, which brought everything that is into being—from the farthest reaches of the universe to the tiniest subatomic particle—continues to echo through his creation:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
     the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
     night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
     no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
     their words to the ends of the world…

The vastness of the night sky, the daily warmth of the sun: these and a countless array of natural phenomena all work together to reveal the God who is behind them. “Lord, our Lord,” we read elsewhere in the Psalms, “how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.” (Psalm 8:1)

John Polkinghorne, who enjoyed a long career as a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, would agree. He has written,

The universe, in its rational beauty and transparency, looks like a world shot through with signs of mind, and, maybe, it’s the ‘capital M’ Mind of God we are seeing … an origin in the reason of the Creator, who is the ground of all that is.[1]

If John Polkinghorne observed God’s creation from a macro-level, Francis Collins has investigated it on a micro-level. He is the geneticist who led the team that sequenced the human genome. He has observed, “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.”[2]

Is it any wonder then that Jesus used the things of nature to unfold the secrets of the ways of God? A mustard seed that grows to be the largest of garden plants, a measure of yeast that is folded into a lump of dough to make it rise, the buds on a fig tree announcing that summer is near, a cloud rising in the west heralding rain, the lilies of the field more beautifully arrayed than King Solomon in all his splendour…

Yet studying the phenomena of the natural world can lead us only so far. Job acknowledged this way back in the Old Testament. After reflecting on the remarkable works of God’s creation, he proclaimed,

These are but the outer fringe of his works;
     how faint the whisper we hear of him!
     Who then can understand the thunder of his power?
(Job 26:14)

So, as we move into the latter half of Psalm 19, we find that there is an additional, fuller, way in which God has chosen to reveal himself, and that is through the words of Scripture:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
     refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
     making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
     giving joy to the heart.…
They are more precious than gold…
they are sweeter than honey…
     in keeping them there is great reward.

Classic Christian teaching has always acknowledged that God addresses us both through his creation and through his divine word. One of the basic formularies of the Christian Reformed Church is the Belgic Confession, written in 1561. Here is what it says about the ways in which God reveals himself:

We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity… Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly by his holy and divine word, as much as we need in this life, for God’s glory and for our salvation.

Creator

All of which brings us to the opening verses of the letter to Hebrews, from which we read these words a few moments ago: “In many fragments and in many fashions in the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets,”—and here comes the critical word—“BUT in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son.”

Yes, God reveals himself through his creation. Yes, God has revealed himself through the words of his prophets. But it is in Jesus that we find God’s fullest and final revelation. Then the author (who is anonymous) goes on to list a series of astounding claims as to why this is so—why we look to Jesus as God’s ultimate expression of himself. I think we can summarize them under three headings.

The first is “Creator”. Somewhere along the way, as they walked with Jesus (and I suspect it was at a different point for each of them, or perhaps more accurately through a whole series of experiences) those first companions of Jesus came to the conclusion that this man, though made of flesh and blood as they were, was also something more—considerably more. Dare I say, infinitely more?

We see it in the gospels when Jesus asked them, “Who do people say I am?” The answers quickly rolled out. “Some say John the Baptist,” said one. “Others say Elijah,” piped up another. “And there are others who say you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” added yet another. Then Jesus looked them in the eye. “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” It’s not there in the gospels, but I always imagine a long silence at this point, until Peter, who seems always to have been the first to speak, blurted out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16).

The events that followed Jesus’ crucifixion only served to heighten and confirm this growing conviction. “My Lord and my God!” were the astounded Thomas’ words as he gazed on the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side (John 20:21). And as Jesus met with his followers for the final time, Matthew tells us that they worshipped him (Matthew 28:17).

So it is that scarcely a generation after all these events the apostle Paul could write to the believers living in Colossæ,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)

Radiance

We look to Jesus, then, as a participant with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the creation. To add to this, the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”. That word “radiance” is found only in this one place in the New Testament. It is related to the word for dawn. So the picture we are given is of the clear brightness of the morning sun with its spreading rays gleaming over the eastern horizon, bringing light to a world that has been shadowed in darkness.

Yet even that image fails to convey anything like the fullness of the radiance that is found in Jesus. What we are talking about here is nothing less than the shekinah glory of God. It is what Moses witnessed as he stood before the burning bush. The Bible tells us that he had to hide his face because he was afraid to look at God (Exodus 3:6).

Many years later, as he met with God again on the peak of Mount Sinai, Moses made a bold request—that God would show him his glory. To this the Lord replied, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:18-20)

Such is the indescribable radiance of the glory of God. And that is the radiance that we find in Jesus. “No one has ever seen God,” writes John in the introduction to his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God, who is closest to the Father’s heart, has made him known” (John 1:18).

Peter, James and John caught a momentary glimpse of that radiance as they stood with Jesus on the mount of the transfiguration. The gospels tell us that there Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white, as bright as a flash of lightning.

The apostle Paul observed that when Moses returned from God’s presence to meet with the people, the change in his face was such that he had to cover it with a veil. “But,” Paul adds, “whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away… And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is impossible to experience the radiance of Jesus and not find ourselves being profoundly changed.

Sacrifice

The picture of Jesus that the letter to the Hebrews gives us, then, is a glorious and exalted one: Jesus the mighty author and sustainer of creation; Jesus, the pure radiance of God’s indescribable glory. You might think there would be nothing left to say, but there is. And that is this: that this same Jesus came into our world for one purpose—to bring us purification from our sins.

Jesus, whose power brought galaxies into being, emptied himself of all power to offer up his life for you and for me. Jesus, whose radiance shines into eternity, willingly submitted to the ugly darkness of the cross. As Graham Kendrick has put it in the words of his powerful hymn, “hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered…”

This is the message that rings through the entire thirteen chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews. Indeed it has been described as the crimson thread that runs through the whole of the Bible. “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” wrote the apostle Paul to his fellow believers in Corinth (1 Corinthians 2:2). And again, to the Galatians, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

One of the last pictures that the Bible gives us is of a vast crowd of people—women and men and children beyond counting, from every tribe and nation, race and language. They stand around the throne of the Lamb of God and together their numberless voices thunder,

Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10)

Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise! (Revelation 5:12)

From its opening words to its last, the letter to the Hebrews is a call to worship, but not just the formal worship that we offer here on Sunday mornings (although that is a vital part of it). It is the worship of a heart overwhelmed with gratitude to the Lord of all creation, who shines with the pure radiance of the uncreated God, and who has trodden the road of pain and death, and by his sacrifice to claim for himself the likes of you and me.

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

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[1]     Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, 25

[2]     The Language of God, ch 10

“His Love Endures Forever” (Psalm 106)

I am told that there are three words known by Christians around the world: “Hallelujah”, “Amen” and “Coca-Cola”. The psalm we read this morning (Psalm 106) contains two of those words—and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which two! In fact even that is a bit of a trick question, because you aren’t likely to find “Hallelujah” either—unless you look at the footnotes in your Bible, where you’ll see that the opening and closing words of the psalm, “Praise the Lord!” are simply a translation of the Hebrew words Hallelu Yah.

So let’s take a look at this psalm. In my mind’s eye I can see an enormous gathering of people in Solomon’s magnificent Temple, its massive eighty-foot columns soaring above them. There is a sense of anticipation in the air that is almost palpable. Then a hush comes over the crowd as a cantor stands up on the dais before them and intones, “Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” Then from the choir and the congregation there comes the resounding response, “His love endures forever.”

It would have been a familiar chorus. We find it repeated more than forty times in the Old Testament—twenty-six times in Psalm 136 alone. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.” But then the psalmist has one of those moments. Perhaps you’ve had them too (I know I do), when something in the service causes your mind to fly off on a tangent. It may be a matter as mundane as, “Did I remember to turn off the burner on the stove before we left?” Or perhaps it is a more profound reflection, something that might never have crossed your mind before. For the psalmist those opening words prompt in him a question. And the question is this: “Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord or fully declare his praise?” Who really is qualified to offer praise to God in the first place?

Over my forty-plus years of pastoral ministry I have seen an increasing trend to emphasize informality, casualness, in worship. Maybe you are familiar with the contemporary praise song that runs,

Come, just as you are to worship,
Come, just as you are before your God,
Come…

Now before I say another word, let me tell you that I love that song. I love it because it says something important: that we don’t have to clean up our act, to get our life together, before we come to the Lord. The God we worship is the one who ate and drank with outcasts and sinners. Thank God that we have largely done away with the fustiness and formality that characterized so much of what was called worship! A friend of mine once told me of how he went to preach in a church in a high-end suburb of a large American city. He dressed (as he thought was appropriate) in a blazer and tie. When he arrived at the door one of the leaders, an executive in a large multi-national corporation, recognized him as that morning’s guest preacher. He introduced himself, then discreetly took my friend aside and said to him, “Now are you going to take off that tie or do I have to rip it off?” I am tempted to call that approach “formalized informality”!

Praise

Let me say that I think that all in all the emphasis on informality has largely been a healthy influence on the church. At the same time, however, we need to remember that worship is a privilege. Frederick Faber expressed it well in his hymn:

My God, how wonderful thou art,
Thy majesty, how bright;
How beautiful thy mercy seat
In depths of burning light!

How wonderful, how beautiful,
The sight of thee must be;
Thy endless wisdom, boundless power,
And glorious purity!

That is exactly where the psalmist is coming from in this morning’s passage. For him this was an honour with which nothing could be compared: to enter the presence of the Creator of heaven and earth! Elsewhere in the psalms we read,

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked. (Psalm 84:10)

We find this sentiment expressed in Psalm 24:

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
     Who may stand in his holy place?

To which comes the reply,

The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.

Our psalmist this morning is drawn to a similar conclusion: “Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord?” he asks. “Who can fully declare his praise?” The answer: “Blessed are those who act justly, who always do what is right.” Now that is a tall order! We might just squeak through on the first qualification. But who can claim always to do what is right? Well, there may be a few rare saints for whom that is true much of the time; for most of us the best we might be able to answer truthfully is some of the time. But all of the time? The psalmist is setting the bar considerably higher than I know I can can reach.

Penitence

No wonder then that his mood turns from one of praise to one of heartfelt petition: “Remember me, Lord, when you show favour to your people; come to my aid…” This in turn leads him to take an honest look into his own heart and into the history of his people—and what he sees there is not a pretty sight. “We have sinned,” he laments, “even as our ancestors did; we have done wrong and acted wickedly.”

In the twenty-three verses that follow he leads us through a tragic catalogue of sins. We won’t go into them all in detail, but suffice it to say that they include unbelief (verses 7-12), impatience with God’s plans (verses 13-15), contempt towards their God-appointed leaders (verses 16-18), idolatry (verses 19-23), discontent with God’s gifts and promises (verses 24-27), apostasy (verses 28-31), rebellion against the Holy Spirit (verses 32-33), and finally the murder of their own children in sacrifice to false so-called gods (verses 34-39). It is all summed up in the words of verse 43: “They were bent on rebellion…”

As you look at all those misdemeanours you might be inclined to protest, “But those aren’t the psalmist’s sins! They were committed centuries before he was even born. How can he hold himself responsible for what his ancestors did?” But here’s the catch: It’s not that the psalmist actually did all those things, but that he recognized himself and his own evil inclinations in their acts.

That may be a difficult concept for some of us to get our minds around. So let me give you an illustration. In his book The Body Charles Colson recounted the chilling story of Yehiel Dinur. He was one of a number of Auschwitz survivors who were called in to testify at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1960. Here is what Colson wrote:

On his day to testify, Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man in the bulletproof glass booth—the man who had murdered Dinur’s friends, personally executed a number of Jews, and presided over the slaughter of millions more. As the eyes of the two men met—victim and murderous tyrant—the courtroom fell silent, filled with the tension of the confrontation. [Then] Dinur began to shout and to sob, collapsing to the floor. Was he overcome by hatred, by the horrifying memories, by the evil incarnate in Eichmann’s face?

As he later explained in a riveting 60 Minutes interview, it was because Eichmann was not the personification of evil Dinur had expected. Rather, he was just an ordinary man, just like anyone else. And in that one instant, Dinur came to the stunning realization that sin and evil are the human condition. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said. “I saw that I am capable to do this exactly like he.”

Dinur’s remarkable statements caused Mike Wallace to turn to the camera and ask, “How was it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted?” Yehiel Dinur’s shocking conclusion? “Eichmann is in all of us.”[1]

When the prophet Isaiah was confronted with the full reality of God in all his holiness, he cried aloud, “Woe is me! I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5). Like the psalmist and like Yehiel Dinur, Isaiah recognized his solidarity with the rest of his people and his profound need for forgiveness.

Pardon

So it is that in the last two verses of this morning’s psalm we pray, “Save us, Lord our God, … that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise.” These final verses are a direct quotation from an earlier incident in the Bible. And in using them as he does the psalmist shifts our thoughts from the low points in Israel’s collective history to one of its high points. The scene he is calling us to recollect is in the streets of Jerusalem, where all the people, from the lowliest peasants all the way up to the king, are to be found dancing and singing with exuberant joy. Why? Because the ark of the covenant, Israel’s most holy object, the sign and symbol of God’s holy presence, is being brought to rest in their midst.

So it seems to me that what the psalmist is saying is that in spite of all our sin and waywardness, in spite of the long history of human depravity and corruption, God remains faithful to his people. To take words from Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner, God’s steadfastness is greater than our perversity.[2]

To this great expression of faith the people are invited in the final verse of the psalm to add their own “Amen”. Yet if this psalm has taught us anything, we are tragically aware that our “Amens”, no matter how earnest or well-intentioned, will always be fickle and temporary. Far more importantly than ours, we have a God who has proclaimed his own “Amen”.

In the final book of the Bible Jesus reveals himself as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation” (Revelation 3:14). So it is that God’s “Amen” comes to us in human form—more than that, in the shape of a cross and the one who hung there for you and for me. And it comes to us in his words, “It is finished”. It was at Golgotha that our God in his unquenchable love both demonstrated the extent of his faithfulness to us and dealt the final blow to our human sin. We can stand in God’s presence because in Jesus he has stood in your place and mine, and taken all our sin and wrongdoing, all our waywardness and rebellion, and absorbed them into himself. It is because of Jesus that we can approach God’s throne of grace with confidence and glory in his praise, knowing that there we will receive mercy and grace.

So with humble and penitent hearts and with joy that no one can take from us, let us give thanks to the Lord, for he is good: His love endures forever. Hallelujah!

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[1]     Charles Colson, The Body, 187-188

[2]     Psalms 73-150, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, 382

A Deeper Relevance

This article appeared in the May issue of Christianity Today. It is the second article on liturgical churches and their worship this year. What is happening in the evangelical world?

… Many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of those evangelicals, I’d like to explain what the attraction is for me, and perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance. “The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world,” writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to “make Christianity understandable to this mythical ‘modern’ man on the street”, we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they’ve come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day…

Worshiping in the liturgical tradition is no panacea. When not approached wisely, it can be misused and abused; it can tempt participants to substitute mere religious ritual for a vital, personal faith in Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, this tradition does have much to offer contemporary evangelicalism. Take our fascination with relevance: the first thing this liturgy asks us to rethink is what we mean by “relevant” worship…

This is one reason I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group’s needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God…

The liturgy, from beginning to end, is not about meeting our needs. The liturgy is about God. It’s not even about God-as-the-fulfiller-of-our-need-for-spiritual-meaning. It’s about God as he is himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not about our blessedness but his. The liturgy immediately signals that our needs are not nearly as relevant as we imagine. There is something infinitely more worthy of our attention—something, someone, who lies outside the self.

With talk of “God” and “kingdom”, it announces another order of reality we are being called into. We are in the habit of thinking that our culture—the reality we strive to be relevant to—is the measure of meaning. That’s why we’re tempted to shape our churches to look like that culture, because that is what people in this culture will find meaningful. It is logical on one level, and there is no question that we have to be culturally sensitive in our outreach. But the liturgy wants to show us a deeper logic and relevance.

The liturgy begins by saying that our culture needs not so much to have its “presenting needs” met as to be gently and calmly invited into a wiser culture—the culture of a Trinitarian God and his kingdom. This is what is blessed, now and forever. Our culture is the transitory thing, an apparition that will someday have to pass away, just as childhood has to pass away. The liturgy says to us as we enter, “You’re in the culture of God and his kingdom now. Things will be different from now on.” …

In what’s now an old essay, F. H. Brabant put it this way: “All liturgical acts … have a double function: one directed Godwards, expressing in outward form the thoughts and feelings of the worshippers, the other directed manwards, teaching worshippers how they ought to think and feel by setting before them the Church’s standard of worship.”

We have to pay attention to cultural context, no question. The history of liturgy has been in part about finding words and ritual that help people in a given culture express their thoughts and feelings to God in ways that make cultural sense. The liturgy has always had freedom and variety within its basic structure.

But it has steadfastly refused to let the culture determine its shape or meaning. Liturgical churches know that as profound a reality as is the surrounding culture, there is an even more profound reality waiting to be discovered. The liturgy gently and calmly gets us to open our eyes to the new reality, showing us the “necessary separation” from the old. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, we find our gaze directed away from ourselves and toward God and his kingdom. When we return to our homes, we are never the same.

You can read it all here.

Our Anglican Heritage: (19) Liturgical Revision

The variety of liturgical resources now available is enormous and ranges from some very fine prayers to others that are paltry and trite. One liturgiologist has described the task of the modern clergy or worship team as having moved from being supplied with a complete TV dinner to being given a package of frozen peas and told to go ahead and make a meal. As a result, a great deal more creativity and thought is being demanded in the preparation of worship from local churches, their worship committees and the clergy than might have been the case a generation ago.

While there is no longer a set of common words, there is agreement across the Anglican Communion in what the shape of the liturgy should be and in what it should contain. At the Anglican Consultative Council meetings in 1973 it was agreed that any celebration of Holy Communion should contain eight basic elements: (1) The Preparation (including a greeting, a prayer for the Holy Spirit’s help, an act of praise and an act of penitence); (2) the Ministry of the Word (one or two Scripture readings, with the Gospel, a sermon and the creed); (3) the Prayers (intercession and thanksgiving, followed by a confession of sin if not already said, and the Peace); (4) the Offertory; (5) the Thanksgiving over bread and wine; (6) the Breaking of the Bread; (7) the Communion, with a post-communion prayer or canticle of thanksgiving and dedication; and (8) the Dismissal.

The outcome of all this is that, while you may not be able to walk into any Anglican service and follow it blindfolded, you should be able to perceive a pattern that is recognizably Anglican.

In his posthumously published Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, C.S. Lewis urged that the task of liturgical revision be carried out slowly and imperceptibly—“one obsolete word replaced in a century”. The intervening forty-three years have taken us too far for that. However, Lewis states an important principle if revision is to be successful:

Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best—if you like, it “works” best—when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice…. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

Our Anglican Heritage: (18) Moving on from 1662

There was a day (not very long ago) when you could walk into any Anglican church anywhere in the world and join in the service blind-folded, as it would be practically word-for-word the same as what you were accustomed to. Over the past twenty years that has become less and less the case.

The main reason for this was that, although there have always been moves to revise the Book of Common Prayer historical and political circumstances have made this impractical (if not impossible). What began to happen in the mid-nineteenth century, however, was that while the words of the services may not have changed, the way in which the services were conducted began to vary widely. Candles, colored vestments and hangings, genuflections, processions, incense and a host of other practices began to be introduced in various combinations from parish to parish. At first there was trenchant opposition, but gradually, by the early years of the twentieth century this had given way to acceptance of a breadth of expression in worship within Anglicanism.

The first attempt to make any major changes to the Prayer Book itself and to gain popular support within the church came in England in 1928. In that year the church convocations gave permission for a revised Prayer Book (rather like the 1929 book or Rite I of the Episcopal Church) to be authorized. The attempt was thwarted in parliament, however, and the revised Prayer Book became the “deposited” Prayer Book of 1928. At the same time, elements of the new book came into popular usage in many of the parishes and college chapels in England. While the revision of the Prayer Book had been quashed for the moment, the need for revision along a number of lines became increasingly apparent.

For one thing, the Book of Common Prayer had been devised to suit the needs of a single national church. It did not take into account the fact that that church had begun to spread to almost every corner of the world, to cultural and political milieux quite different from England in the sixteenth century. In many of these places Christianity (much less the Anglican form of it) was not the national religion or even the dominant one. Yet that seems to be assumed at many points in the Prayer Book.

In addition there were local customs and traditions that needed to find their way into the worship of the church. One Canadian contribution in this respect is the service of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest, which was added to our Prayer Book in the revision of 1918. Besides this, one of the underlying principles of Anglicanism has always been that within each country the church has authority to develop its own forms of service (always, of course, in conformity with Scripture).

A second factor was that liturgical scholars were becoming familiar with documents such as the Apostolic Traditions of Hippolytus and the Apostolic Constitutions, which had been unknown before the nineteenth century. A new awareness of the worship of the primitive church brought with it new debates about the propriety of some of the practices contained in the Prayer Book. With regard to the Holy Communion, for example, a new understanding of Jesus’ words, “Do this in memory of me,” had arisen out of recent studies of the Jewish concept of anamnesis.

Thirdly, the language of the Prayer Book, which had once helped the English language to soar to new heights of eloquence, was becoming less and less the language of the common people. The Anglican Church was in danger of becoming like the Coptic Church or the Russian Church, both of which use classical forms of the language frozen in time and no longer understood by the vast majority of the laity.

This fact came into sharp relief when the Roman Catholic Church began translating its liturgies into the vernacular and contemporary texts of English liturgical materials common to most denominations (e.g., the creeds and the canticles) began to be produced. One of the principles of Anglican worship has always been that it be “in a tongue … understanded of the people” (Article 24).

What this has meant is that, since the 1960s a host of liturgies has burst onto the scene. While in many cases the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (or one of its near relatives) remains the lawful pattern, almost every branch of the Anglican Communion has now produced its own service book.

Initially the pattern was to merely revise the original Book of Common Prayer. The church in New Zealand was the first to move into “you” language in addressing God in the late 1960s. Since then liturgical committees have been increasingly innovative in what they have produced, to the point where in many places it is possible to conduct a service without the appearance of a single word or phrase from the Book of Common Prayer.

Our Anglican Heritage: (17) Humble Access

One of the jewels of the Prayer Book communion service is a prayer that has become known as the Prayer of Humble Access. I regard its removal from many contemporary liturgies as a retrograde step, as I believe it is the quintessential expression of Anglican piety.

We do not presume
to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in thy manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.
But thou art the same Lord,
whose property is always to have mercy:
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

This prayer has been described as being like an onion, for you can peel off layer after layer of profound biblical imagery as you make your way to the heart of it. We hear echoes of the Old Testament prayer of Daniel, who pleaded with God on behalf of himself and his people, “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy” (Daniel 9:18b). We hear the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his servant who was at the point of death and confessed, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof” (Matthew 8:8). We hear the Canaanite woman who desperately wanted her daughter healed and was not satisfied with Jesus’ apparent rejection of her because she was a Gentile. “Yes, Lord,” she said to him, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Matthew 15:27). We hear a prayer of David in the Psalms, “Turn to me and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name” (Psalm 119:132). And lastly we hear the words of our Lord himself following the miraculous feeding of the five thousand: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him” (John 6:56).

If it does nothing else, perhaps this prayer can serve to remind us of the profound mystery that lies at the heart of Holy Communion: that people such as you and I should be called to dine at the table of God; that Christ the pure and spotless Lamb of God, who suffered and died for us on the cross, holds out his grace and his very self for us today; and that at the last we shall stand in the company of angels and archangels in blood-washed robes of spotless white as guests at the Supper of the Lamb.

The Advent Wreath

Advent begins next Sunday. Here is a short Advent wreath liturgy we will be using this year:

Advent 1
Leader: Light and hope in Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Thanks be to God.
Leader: God of hope, as we look to the coming of Jesus, make our hearts ready and help us to place our hope in you. And strengthen us to do your will by sharing your hope with others. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the light of the world.
All: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Advent 2
Leader: Light and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Thanks be to God.
Leader: God of peace, grant that we may find peace as we prepare for our Lord’s coming, and help us to remember that you alone are the giver of lasting peace. Help us to seek the paths of peace in our lives, and give us courage to follow them. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the light of the world.
All: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Advent 3
Leader: Light and joy in Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Thanks be to God.
Leader: God of joy, we praise you for the fulfillment of your promise of a Messiah and for the gift of salvation through your Son, Jesus. As we wait for his coming, fill our lives with the joy of your life-giving Spirit, and help us to spread the joyful news of your love. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the light of the world.
All: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Advent 4
Leader: Light and love in Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Thanks be to God.
Leader: God of love, as we prepare for Jesus’ coming, fill our hearts with love for you, that we may always put you first and follow his footsteps. And help us to show your love in our lives, that others may know it too. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the light of the world.
All: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Christmas
Leader: Light and grace in Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Thanks be to God.
Leader: God of grace, we thank you for the light that guided humble shepherds to the holy child. Lead us too, knowing that as we follow you, we will never walk in darkness, but will have the true light of life. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the light of the world.
All: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Our Anglican Heritage: (16) Sacramental theology

If it was Thomas Cranmer’s intention to have Morning and Evening Prayer said daily in every parish, it was the intention of all the Reformers that Holy Communion should be the primary act of worship each Sunday. Unfortunately, medieval superstition made this impossible and what occurred most Sundays was “ante-communion”, that is, Morning Prayer, the Litany and then the Holy Communion up to the end of the “Prayer for the Church Militant” (Prayers of the People), followed by one of the “table prayers” which are printed after the communion service in our Prayer Book.

Debate over the nature of the Lord’s Supper was one of the central issues of the Reformation. The mediæval church had come to see it as a re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, in which the elements of bread and wine were transformed into his own physical body and blood. Some of the more radical leaders in the Reformation viewed it as a bare memorial, with the bread and wine as symbols representing Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. However, most of the Reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin and Thomas Cranmer, stood somewhere in between.

An Anglican understanding of Holy Communion is clearly expressed in the Exhortation printed after the communion service in our Prayer Book. While some may balk at its length and its dire warning of God’s judgment, the Exhortation is in reality unsurpassed as a meditation on the meaning of the sacrament. It bids us come to the Lord’s Table “with a true penitent heart and living faith”—

for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink his blood; then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with Christ, and Christ with us…

Here we see the sacrament of Holy Communion as a spiritual act involving the heart and will of every worshiper, and not merely a priestly ritual. The words of the service are important, but equally important is that every worshiper should come to the Lord’s Table in the right frame of heart and mind. The reading and proclamation of God’s word, the affirmation of our own faith in Christ in the creed, prayer for the church and the world, and the confession of our sinfulness are not merely preludes to the eucharistic prayer, but vital and essential aspects of that abiding in Christ of which the partaking of the bread and wine of Holy Communion are the expression. As we receive the bread into our hands and take the cup to our lips, it is an opportunity to open our hearts ever wider to Christ and to his love, who gave himself for us on the cross.

Before we leave the service, we offer ourselves to him, as he has offered himself for us, to serve him in his power in the world.

Our Anglican Heritage: (15) Morning & Evening Prayer

Following the Exhortation, in logical sequence, the services of Morning and Evening Prayer set out to do what it proposes. It is suitable that worship should begin with a public confession of sin. Like Isaiah in the temple, as soon as we enter God’s presence we become conscious of our unworthiness and of the sin that pollutes our being: “Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” Following the imagery of Isaiah 53:6, we confess that we have strayed from God’s ways and that we stand in need of his mercy and restoration. The words of absolution are from Ezekiel 33:11, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.”

Having confessed our sin and been assured of God’s forgiveness, we are ready to sing God’s praise in canticle and psalm. In the course of a short series of versicles and responses we move from our knees in penitence to our feet in worship and adoration. From the beginning, Cranmer allowed for a variety of canticles to be said or sung at Morning and Evening Prayer. For the most part they are biblical material, taken from the Psalms (Venite, Jubilate Deo) and the Gospels (Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis).

The Te Deum Laudamus (“We praise thee, O God…”) is an ancient song of the church, traditionally ascribed to St Ambrose and St Augustine on the occasion of the latter’s baptism. The Benedicite, Omnia Opera (Song of the Three Children) is the apocryphal account of the song of praise uttered by Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery flames of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace.

It was Cranmer’s original intention that the entire Psalter be recited once a month and the whole Bible be read in the course of a year at Morning and Evening Prayer. This meant that a considerable proportion of the services was taken up with the reading of Scripture. Successive revisions of the lectionary have reduced the amount of Scripture that is read at each service. It may have been that Cranmer was asking for too much from the beginning. Yet I cannot help but fear that in our world of sensory overstimulation we have lost the art of listening to, meditating upon and taking in longer passages of the Bible.

The proper response to God’s word is faith, and this is expressed liturgically in the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed following the lessons. Hammered out of the early controversies of Christian history, the creeds provide a useful summary of the content of Christian faith. While the creeds are formulaic at best, they do afford us the opportunity, within the context of worship, to give testimony to the faith that is within us and to confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord.

The word of God not only shapes our faith. It also leads us into prayer. In the Book of Common Prayer, our intercessions and thanksgivings begin with the Lord’s Prayer; in the Book of Alternative Services they conclude with it. Either way, by reciting that prayer we are acknowledging our dependence on Christ and our desire to be led by him and to pray as he would have us pray. Usually the prayers are in the form either of a litany (a series of biddings and responses) or of collects.

The collect could be said to be a classic Anglican form of prayer. The general pattern of a collect is to begin by addressing God, then acknowledging some aspect of his being or character (e.g., “Almighty God, from whom all holy desires, all good thoughts, and all just works do proceed…). The address is leads into a petition (“Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give…”), followed by an aim or object (“that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments…”). Finally there is a concluding phrase (most often “through Jesus Christ our Lord”) and sometimes a doxology (e.g., “to whom be glory for ever and ever”).

Not all collects follow this pattern slavishly. Some begin with a petition; others contain a number of petitions; still others are mainly praise. However, their brevity makes them memorable. It also enables the congregation to follow them easily and therefore to join heartily in the “Amen” at the conclusion.

Dyson Hague summarized the service of Morning Prayer under four p’s, which reveal the logic of the service and make it easy to remember: penitence, praise, proclamation and prayer.

Our Anglican Heritage: (14) Common Prayer

When Thomas Cranmer set about preparing the Book of Common Prayer, one of his goals was that prayer and the regular reading of Scripture should be exercises in which the whole people of England were engaged. This he sought to accomplish by five means: the rendering of the services into plain English; the reduction of the number of daily services from seven to two; the streamlining of the lectionary; the simplification of the services themselves; and the placing of the straightforward reading of the Bible as the centerpiece of each.

Much of the rationale for this is explained in a document that can be found in the back of our Prayer Book and deserves a full reading: the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (1549). Another statement worthy of study, no longer in the Episcopal Prayer Book but still found in the Canadian book of 1962, is “Of Ceremonies: why some be abolished and some retained”.

Here Cranmer explains the abuses which had gradually been allowed to encrust the ancient services, to the point where they had become filled with legendary and virtually impossible to follow. In place of these Cranmer offered services which gave pride of place to the clear and straightforward reading of Scripture and which were themselves biblically based.

So here you have an order for prayer, and for the reading of the holy Scripture, much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers, and a great deal more profitable and commodious, than that which of late was used … and nothing is ordained to be read, but the very pure word of God, the holy Scriptures, or that which is agreeable to the same; and that in such a language and order as is most easy and plain for the understanding both of the readers and hearers.

Not only did Cranmer give central place to the reading of Scripture, he made certain that the services themselves were scriptural. The result is that our services of Morning and Evening Prayer are a carefully arranged catena of direct quotations from the Bible and of material based directly upon biblical imagery and teaching. For this reason the Book of Common Prayer has more than once been described (not inaccurately) as “the Bible arranged for public worship”.

The services of Morning and Evening Prayer begin with the reading of one of more sentences of Scripture. Originally these focused on the topic of repentance and forgiveness and were intended to lead directly to confession. Nowadays there is a broader range, and the opening sentences, if carefully used, can help to set forth the theme of the service from its outset. The sentences are followed by the Exhortation, which offers at its center a marvelous picture of what Christian worship involves: penitence, thanksgiving, praise, the reading of Scripture and prayer—

… humbly to acknowledge our sins before God; … to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul.