A series of sermons on Eucharistic Worship preached at Ampthill 2004
The Lord is my herder of ovine animal comrades . . . (the Times).
I was asked to comment on a recent piece in the Times. When I was at theological college, we were told it was a duty to read the Church Times, but a sin to believe it. At least the second part is true of the Murdoch Times. The allegation is that the Church of England will shortly publish a book compiled by Christian Aid Pocket prayers for Justice and Peace of biblical translations which are inaccurate and dishonest.
Christianity, unique among world religions, depends on translations. This is obvious for the Old Testament, and (except for the Greek Orthodox) also for the New Testament - which itself has the peculiarity that the Lord, and many of the New Testament writers, thought in Hebrew (or Aramaic) so introducing a further layer of translation.
We have to translate, and we have to revise our translations partly as new information becomes available (e.g. the "Dead Sea Scrolls") partly as our own languages and needs change. One translation of the Psalms, for instance, cannot meet the needs of private study, public reading, Anglican chant, metrical psalms and attempts to reproduce Hebrew poetic forms. Ironically, the article objects to a new translation of the valley of the shadow of death in Psalm 23 when no scholar, however cautious, would defend those words as an accurate translation of the Hebrew!
It is very wrong to use a distorted translation in regular worship, as is done, for example, by imposing "inclusive" language where this is not the meaning of the original, or by leaving out "difficult" verses. These were sins of the Alternative Services Book and, for all I know, of Common Worship.
It is not wrong to make a free translation for purposes such as hymns, and this has been done ever since Isaac Watts. The test is not whether new thoughts are added, but whether the result is orthodox.
It is not wrong to make an expanded translation to meet a particular situation. Worthy bishops have, for example, published expansions of the Lord's Prayer to fit circumstances such as wartime. The tests are whether the original will fairly bear the expansion and, again, whether the result is orthodox. These expanded translations were not to replace the content of regular worship, but perfectly proper aids to private prayer.
I think the fair allegation made in the Times is that the original passages will not bear the expansion provided. There are plenty of passages in the Old Testament against exploitation and land confiscation, so why mishandle other passages which do not address these topics? Why abuse the Lord's Prayer with holy is your name in the hungry when the point can be much more honestly made from the Magnificat?
The reality is, I think, that the Times has a political complaint against a left-wing ideology parading itself as the Gospel. It is not for me as a preacher to judge of the wisdom of any form of secular politics. I have to warn that some of the matters complained of in the article are deeply rooted in the Old Testament - though not all. Land tenure is a Biblical topic - look at Naboth's vineyard for the case against nationalisation! The translations in the book may be dishonest and silly and the associated secular ideology is certainly not required of a Christian - but some of the underlying thought is biblical and so might (or might not) have current application in Africa or even in this country. It is not a scandal that we should be invited to consider the question. However, to use the form of prayer is not to help us consider the question, but to suggest only one view is possible for a Christian. To that extent, the book is unjust.
This rather odd sermon was a one-off response to a request for guidance, but it does relate to what follows
Understanding our worship
I was asked to have a series about our worship. So I want to start by looking at the worshipers - ourselves.
The People of God meeting together.
This is an emphasis fairly recently recovered but which makes much sense for us. When the church of the first three centuries "went to church", they did not have a building. They were meeting in somebody's house, or in rented property, or out in the fields. The people were the church.
Naturally then, like us, they had to bring almost everything with them. The Readers brought the Scriptures; the Sub-deacons the sacred vessels for the Eucharist; the Deacons equipped themselves to receive the alms which would be offered and to distribute them. The Bishop (for even a small town church like Ampthill would have had its own Bishop and a small committee of Elders, what we call Priests, to advise and help him) presumably brought his sermon. All the People of God brought their own offerings (bread, wine, other food or money) alike - for to offer was the great Christian privilege and this was common to all. I have mentioned several sorts of office in the Church, but all of these were unpaid. There were no paid professionals trained elsewhere and appointed to the congregation as outsiders - everybody had known each other and trusted each other (else how could they survive persecution?) and that was an essential requirement for ordination.
This idea of the People of God is reflected in the "Preface" which the 1928 Prayer Book wisely made available for ordinary Sundays: the Lord hath made us a kingdom and and priests unto thee our God and Father. The words (derived from the Apocalypse) struggle to hold together two essential truths about us. First, each individual Christian is a king and a priest with all the responsibility and authority that the words imply towards God and God's whole creation. Our behaviour and our prayers matter! Second, that we do not function in isolation but together, as a united body - a kingdom, and for that matter a priesthood, acting and praying as one.
Our worship, then, is a common act of all of us as a group of God's people coming together for that purpose. It is rightly a structured action, so that we can all take part. I may have many words to say, but I say them for all of us - and that is why I have no right to make up my own words, good or bad. When I offer our common prayers to God, I face the same way as you do, and this is important. Prayers are not addressed by me to you, but by us together to God.
The important feature of a priest or bishop is not that he is a paid professional or trained or a good preacher. These things may indeed be useful, but the Church has been well able to survive without them. It is that he has been given authority and responsibility both by God and by God's people (for nobody can take this office unto himself, it has to be given) before all else to articulate the worship of the People of God, and not his own imaginings. That is a reason why we (unlike the early church) also come to church with our prayer books. Not so that you can check that I am sticking to the text, but because we all consent to pray together, and I to make this possible by sticking to our accepted form of worship.
A final note: some people say that in the early church the bishop prayed facing the people. There is no positive evidence until the sad time when the Western clergy briefly aped the behaviour of Roman magistrates (in their newly acquired church buildings which resembled Roman law courts). To this day the Orthodox clergy do not pray facing the people; the Syrian church, which has some of the oldest Christian buildings, likewise seems never to have done so. The case for change has not been established
Understanding our worship - the readings. See Ezra chapter 8
It is tempting to dive straight into the meaning of the Bread and Wine - but very soon the church made it a rule never to celebrate the Sacrament without the Word. Both are important offerings to God. At Letchworth last Sunday I gave a sermon even for a congregation of one!
. . . the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as time permits. After the reader has finished his task, the one presiding gives an address, urgently admonishing his hearers to practice these beautiful teachings in their lives. Then all stand up together and recite prayers. Justin Martyr Apology chapter 67
This is part of an account of Christian worship in Rome in the middle of the second century. It may be slightly disingenuous, as it is (at least in form) an attempt to convince the Emperor that Christianity is harmless. Presumably the readings are from both new and old testaments - remember that at this stage nobody had ever seen a single book called the Bible and there was some dispute which books could be read as scripture. In practice, most churches would not have had all the separate books anyway - books were expensive and hard to obtain. Either they would have had the books they most wanted to use (Psalms and Isaiah in the old testament, Paul and the Gospels in the new) or they would have had the excerpts which they found useful, just as we still have "epistles and gospels" in the Prayer Book.
This part of worship is, we guess, derived from the Jewish synagogue service. I say we guess, because we know little about that service before the destruction of the Temple. There were chanted readings - with translation, possibly extempore and explanatory, from Hebrew into the local language; psalms were sung; there was a sermon and prayers.
The church seems from early days simply to have read the old testament in a specially invented form of its own local language, not in Hebrew. As soon as it began to read the new testament as well, again it seems to have followed the same policy. There were usually at least three readings plus use of psalms; the Prayer Book assumes we get the Old Testament and psalms at morning and evening prayer, but since most of us don't, we may have to revive older practice, as the Vicar General has recommended. [I have since this sermon discovered that the evidence for large-scale use of the psalms in the early church is poor - that comes in with the rise of monastic devotion.]
It is only half right to think that we read out scripture in order to inform ourselves - we could read and study it at home. And certainly we are not informing God - as if the author of scripture does not know it! The more important truth is that the reading of the Word and its interpretation are themselves acts of worship.
Sometimes, of course, we are receiving simple moral instruction from the readings. This is itself a gift from God; the confusion of the modern world suggests that mere human wisdom is not very effective at working out how to behave, let alone at actually doing it. But God has disclosed how we ought to live - while still requiring us to work at the details.
Sometimes, we are receiving insight into God's purposes - how we are brought into relationship with him. This is often true of the Epistles. This is not just information; the readings may be God's way of bringing about what is described.
In the Gospel readings, we are encountering Jesus. This is not a mere historical exercise. The living Lord can use the accounts we read of him to continue his earthly ministry among us, whether to teach or to heal.
The sermon should be a help in all this. You don't want my ideas (if you're wise) but to be helped into responding to God's purposes for you.
So the first part of the service is not a rather arid exercise to be gone through before we get to the more exciting part. In both Word and Sacrament, God comes to us and we to Him.
Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine (Genesis 14)
Bread and wine as part of a religious action were for Jews of our Lord's time very ordinary - they featured in the routine grace before and after a meal. No priest was necessary. So when the Lord said "do this in remembrance of me", the stress was not on the doing (which the disciples would continue anyway) but on the new remembrance of me. Automatically, a small group like the disciples would have before the main evening meal a brief grace, said by the host, in the form of a thanksgiving over bread which was then broken and shared. Automatically, they would follow the meal with a longer grace, starting with thanksgiving but leading to prayer for the coming of the Kingdom, over a cup of wine which was then shared.
The church of the late first and early second century was very confident that it knew what was and was not essential in these actions. Everywhere, and seemingly without any disagreement, we find that they:
- concentrated on a Sunday, not a daily, worship;
- changed the time of worship from evening to morning (usually);
- said a single combined blessing over the bread and wine together;
- generally, included the recitation of the "words of institution" in that blessing and so focused on the Lord's doing, not Israel's hope;
- kept the meal, quite often, but separated it from the main act of worship;
- put the synagogue service before the blessing of bread and wine.
What did not change was the idea that this was a shared action to which it was natural that all should make a contribution. As they might be able, they brought bread and wine (and indeed olive oil and other food) to the service. The deacons received these offerings; as much as was needed was set aside for the eucharist proper, the rest remained for the meal afterwards or for charity. We don't hear very much about gifts of money.
The bread and wine were therefore part of a very visible act of sharing. As St. Paul put it in I Corinthians 10: The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a sharing of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a sharing of the body of Christ? Seeing that we who are many are one bread, one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (Some translate "communion" or "partaking" instead of "sharing"; but the Greek word means sharing, having in common - it isn't particularly religious.)
They shared indeed:
- by all joining in bringing the bread and wine and other food;
- by eating the broken bread and drinking from the common cup of wine;
- by taking some of broken the bread home, to continue the sharing during the week;
- by eating the communal meal;
- by receiving alms from the surplus food (or gifts of money) if they needed them.
I suppose we rather suffer from the triumph of money in our culture; we don't bring offerings of bread and wine or of other food (harvest festival has a rather different meaning). In principle, though, the bread and wine are the first charge on parish funds because they are our gifts - all of us.
This sharing does not of course exhaust the meaning of the sacrament, but it is very important and, as you can see, it goes right back to our Lord's earthly life with his disciples.
This is my body . . . Do this in remembrance of me
It is time to consider our Lord's meaning. As I have already shown, he cannot have been instructing his disciples to repeat the Last Supper, for if they stayed together at all, they would do that anyway. No, the key must lie in the unexpected words which he used in the familiar context.
These words are not easy. The Greek of the New Testament is perfectly clear and the translation into English is right - but we expect our Lord was not speaking Greek and there is no word for "is" in Hebrew or Aramaic. In any case, when our Lord said "this (is) my body" in relation to a piece of bread, it was obvious to the disciples that the meaning could not be literal - his body was still intact before them and they were not cannibals. The same logic applies to the word over the wine, with the additional point that no pious Jew would consume any blood at all, much less human blood.
Article XXVIII rightly says The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.
Efforts have been made to read a sacrificial meaning into "do this" or "in remembrance", but they are less than certain. We do well simply to understand that the Lord would have his followers repeat the traditional blessings with this new focus - himself and his Passion.
If you look at the various accounts of the Last Supper in the New Testament (Mark, Matthew, Luke and I Corinthians) you will notice that the wording is not consistent. Christianity is not magic and does not depend on exact words. Indeed, the early church saw no reason to follow any of the accounts exactly; some early forms of the Eucharistic Prayer merely allude to the Last Supper and do not, as the Prayer Book does, produce a text which draws on all of the accounts and so reproduces none of them.
Our duty is to obey - to take the bread and wine, to give thanks to the Father over them, to break the bread and to share both bread and wine.
That of course we do; but it is right for us to seek the Lord's meaning.
A little of it is our human response: we do commit ourselves to follow Jesus in his obedience to the Father even unto death.
But there must be more to it. Jesus was probably performing a prophetic sign - which is not just a gesture, not just a means of attracting attention, but the means whereby God makes something happen on earth. In this case, it is the carrying of His people through death and resurrection by their fellowship with him. In remembrance of me might mean not so much our remembering Jesus (though that is our duty) but "so that the Father will remember me" and make his Kingdom come.
Passages from Austin Farrer "The Crown of the Year"
These brief quotations were included with the previous sermon
Advent III: Jesus gave his body and blood to his disciples in bread and wine. Amazed at such a token, and little understanding what they did, they reached out their hands and took their master and their God. Whatever else they knew or did not know, they knew they were committed to him, body and soul; they were consenting that he should die for them, and that they, somehow, should live it through.
Trinity I: "This is my body", said Christ at the Supper, and it was so. He is well able to consecrate bread, for he speaks the word of God. The world itself only exists because God said that it should be, and it was so. Christ has consecrated bread, and it is consecrated; his consecration takes effect upon our altars. But why should he consecrate bread? Only that the consecration of bread might extend, and embrace the company which partakes of the bread. "This is my body" he declares, and it is his body. We receive it, and we are his body, signed sealed, consecrated by the word which made the world.
concluding essay "the Body of Christ": The sacramental body of Christ creates the whole texture of mystical body by turning men into communicants. The words "This is my body" are creative words, and as they consecrate the Host, so they constitute the mystical body. . . . Christ's natural body was present with his disciples at the table. But at the same time he held his body, sacramentally, between his hands; his body, not in the simple "truth" of its bodiliness, but in the special character of a gift made up for bestowal upon them. He held his body in his hands, neither as what it was in him, nor as it was to be in them, but on the hinge of change between the two, and as it were suspended in the act of turning from the one embodiment into the other.
The Eucharist - Holy, holy, holy
What was worship like in the early church? Here is the oldest example we have.
Let us give thanks unto the Lord. It is meet and right.
We give thanks to thee O God, through your beloved child Jesus Christ whom you have sent to us in these last days as Saviour,Redeemer and Messenger of your plan;
who is your inseparable Word, through whom you have created all things; and whom. in your good pleasure, you have sent down from heaven into the womb of a virgin; and who, having been conceived, became incarnate and was shown to be your son, born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin,
who fulfilling your will and acquiring for you a holy people, stretched out his hands as he suffered to free from suffering those who trust in you:
when he was handed over to voluntary suffering in order to destroy death and to break the chains of the devil, to tread down hell beneath his feet, to bring out the righteous, to set the term and to manifest the resurrection,
taking bread, gave thanks to you and said,
"Take, eat; this is my Body which is broken for you . . ."
The quotation comes from the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hippolytos, antipope and martyr. It was written about 230 AD but claims to represent older practice (it is a model rather than a prescriptive text).
Perhaps you notice that the "Sanctus" (Holy, holy, holy) is missing from this, the earliest practical text we have. That is because the Sanctus came somewhat later into the Eucharistic Prayer.
The Old Testament basis for it is Isaiah 6.3 (as you probably know) plus (originally) Ezekiel 3.12, but the Church modified the original on the basis of Matthew 21.9 (which in turn quotes Psalm 118.26) to give what we call the "Benedictus" (Blessed is he . . .). It seems that the Jews developed shortly after our Lord's resurrection a form of prayer based on those two texts from the Prophets, the mysteries of the Chariot Vision, which is still in the synagogue prayers to this day. The church was happy to borrow and modify it, and to build it into the Eucharistic Prayer.
Why did the Church do this? Essentially because our worship here in time merely latches on to the timeless worship in heaven. Two New Testament texts are here essential - Hebrews 7-10 for the eternal offering which Christ makes, and Revelation 4 for the eternal sacrifice of praise which angels and saints offer to God. (Oddly, and I can't go into this now, these are both books which were only with some difficulty accepted into the New Testament; but the right decision was taken!)
Both of these deeply concern us. If Christ had not already by his perfect offering of himself made us worthy, we could not participate in his offering, as we do in the gesture of offering the Bread and Wine to the Father at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, and then by receiving them. That is how we remember Christ before the Father, as he commanded.
Similarly, our worship here is only the feeblest echo of what is offered in heaven, and to which we will, please God, come to add our part after our own resurrection ("when sacraments have ceased"). It is as well we do not have the temptation to try to make our worship into an elaborate earthly event; worship is not a stunt, whether classical concert or pop concert. It is well that there is little earthly to distract us from the heavenly realities with which we are united.
The Eucharist - what does it mean?
The great historian of Christian worship Dom. Gregory Dix pointed out that in general the section of the Eucharistic Prayer (after the account of the Last Supper) contained the meaning which the author of the prayer thought it had. (This was a naughty comment, since in the 1662 Prayer Book there is no such section, just an "Amen"!)
Here is an early version of that section, again from the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytos, antipope and martyr. It was written about 230 AD but claims, probably truthfully, to represent older practice. The text, particularly of the last paragraph, is not completely certain.
. . . do this in remembrance of me.
Mindful therefore of his death and resurrection, we offer you this bread and this cup, giving thanks to you for accounting us worthy to stand before you and to minister to you as priests.
And we ask you to send your Holy Spirit upon the offering of Holy Church.
In gathering them together, grant to all those who share in your holy mysteries so to partake that they may be filled with the Holy Spirit, for the strengthening of their faith in truth; in order that we may praise and glorify you through your Child Jesus Christ, through whom be to you glory and honour with the Holy Spirit in Holy Church now and throughout all ages. Amen.
The early church took it for granted that the Eucharist fulfilled the prophecy of Malachi 1:11 in every place incense is offered unto my name, and a pure offering. The redeemed, precisely because God has saved them ("accounting us worthy") are able to make an offering.
The Reformers were very afraid of the language of "offering" because they feared an attempt to buy salvation by some means other than the Cross. That was not the intention of the early church. In Old Testament terms, the Eucharist is not a sacrifice for sin, but a communion sacrifice (of thanks, because we are free from sin).
Notice how we all (not just the celebrant) stand before you as priests. Worship is what the Church does together.
In this text, it is the Holy Spirit who gives efficacy to our worship and our offering - so making the Church holy. This is a truth which later forms of the Prayer in the West (not in the East) tend to neglect.
Naturally, the Prayer comes before Communion, and so asks for the benefits of a good Communion.
Like any other prayer, the Eucharistic Prayer ends by giving glory to God in Trinity (to the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit).
Our form of this section of the Prayer at Ampthill uses the Prayer Book words, but not in their 1662 position nor, probably, entirely with the meaning Cranmer intended them to have in 1552. If we compare our form to Hippolytos' form, many topics are found in both, though differently expressed.
Both Cranmer and Hippolytos assumed (unlike many who came between them) that all those present would receive Communion.
The big difference is the loss of Christian confidence. We are not so much priests as sinners; unworthy to offer the sacrifice which we nevertheless ask the Father to accept. This is an unfashionable view in the modern church, but we should take it seriously.
The Prayer Book, like most later Western forms of the Eucharistic Prayer, does not mention the action of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament. (Cranmer tried "with thy holy spirit and word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine" in the first Prayer Book of 1549, but later removed these words.) The Holy Spirit's action does not depend on our words!
More positively, our receiving the Sacrament is an offering of ourselves; only on these terms can we "be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction".
The Eucharist - why don't we stick to the Prayer Book?
This is perhaps a dull subject, but it is something which I know worries some people, so it is best you should have some answers. If you are not worried, "God mends the text and preaches patience".
An initial puzzle: when did the Church of England adopt the Prayer Book? Quite possibly never - because it was simply imposed by Parliament. The nearest the Church came to adopting it was in 1660, but even then Parliament was holding a pistol to its head - if you want to say yes to what we want, well and good; if not, we will impose it anyway! Neither the clergy nor the laity had any free choice until 1928 - and then Parliament rejected what they decided. So the Church did not adopt the Prayer Book - it simply conformed to it, under criminal sanctions. Thank God, these no longer apply.
The most striking change we and everybody else has made is to have hymns and indeed singing. The Prayer Book forbids them in parish churches. We believe the reformers were wrong.
We don't use the Ten Commandments. The Prayer Book is unlike the service books of other churches in using them in Christian worship.
We don't use the collect for the King (which is supposed to come before the collect for the day). Not because we are republicans - we do pray for the Queen - but the Prayer Book, from fear of treason after 1662 rather than devotion, imposed far too much such prayer.
We don't recite the long "exhortations". I doubt the reformers, addicted as they were to such things, would have persisted much longer with them if they had been given the chance. They don't work.
We have made small changes to the Prayer for the Church, so that it reflects modern realities. We are not governed by the Privy Council, for instance, and most nations are not even in theory Christian.
We have gone back to Cranmer's original idea of 1548 in grouping all the preparation for communion together (confession, absolution, comfortable words, prayer of humble access). He was right first time.
We try to "give thanks unto the Lord" for something definite - the prayer book often provides no specific thanksgiving. That is a weakness shared with most of the Western church at that time.
We have restored the ancient shape of the Eucharistic Prayer, much as Cranmer had it in his first Prayer Book of 1549 (it was spoiled later). That is why we don't break the bread until after the Prayer, in the ancient place.
We have restored the "Benedictus" and "Agnus Dei" texts which were in the first Prayer Book of 1549, as in all the rites of the Western church.
Unlike many congregations, Ampthill follows the Prayer Book in keeping the series of post-communion devotions (Lord's Prayer, Thanksgiving, "Gloria" and the blessing) because though this arrangement is not typical of the Western church, it is good in itself. But we do cleanse the Communion vessels at once, not at the end of the service, in accordance with ancient practice.
What then can we say for ourselves? Sometimes, that Cranmer's early thoughts were much better than his (or somebody else's) revisions. Often, that the church has found out since his day far more of what the Bible means and what the Church had done from early days; we have gone back to earlier models. Either you believe some of the reformers were directly inspired by God, or you accept that their own attempts to go back to the sources were the right approach - and so do it better. Essentially, our meaning in our service is that which quite a few Anglicans held in the seventeenth century. They tried to reform the Prayer Book so that it reflected their faith. They only partly succeeded then; but we learn from them and from the way the early Church created its worship, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
This last sermon was actually preached slightly earlier in the series, but it seems best to have the two sermons which use the "Apostolic Tradition" together. It assumes the Ampthill liturgy, which is effectively 1662 reordered with a few additions from 1928.