A Lent Lecture
– Morden College – March 2024
Liturgical
Worship, Sacramentality and the Rural Landscape
I grew up in the Cambridgeshire Fens of East Anglia, with
its beautifully flat landscapes marked by endless waterways and vast skyline. One
of my earliest memories of Godly encounter involves a warm summer’s day,
sitting by a lakeside with rod in hand, waiting for the fish to bite. I will
have been no more than seven or eight years old. Nothing particularly remarkable.
Just a sudden realisation of sitting in the presence of God. I remember
catching my breath at my equivalent of the calling of Samuel.[1]
Undoubtedly, the raucous sound of nature all around me was influential, and the
sense that every time I met a fish on the bank, I was being given a privileged
opportunity to meet one of God’s fellow travellers on this earth. To this day,
on the rare occasions I find time to go fishing, and the even rarer occasions when
I actually catch a fish, I try to resist the temptation to weigh it (to give it
a number). I just admire its beauty and individuality, thank it for having
taken the time to say hello and gently and lovingly place it back in the
depths.
Around the same age, I occasionally attended Sunday School
at the church in the fenland town where I lived. I can’t say I remember
learning much, in a cognitive sense, but I do remember being captivated in awe
and wonder as we sat at the back of church observing our parish priest
celebrating the Eucharist, as he elevated the sacred gifts of bread and wine
each in turn. I had that sense of trembling on the edge of eternity. A
sensation I continue to have regularly to this day when I go to Mass.
I currently find myself ministering in five parishes located
in the beautiful Suffolk countryside. One of those parishes was the birthplace
of Dame Susan Morden. It is not difficult to see why she grew up to be such a
committed Christian. It is a place of divine encounter, with gently undulating
countryside and green pastures. The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Edwardstone
is a remarkable rural church that radiates a spirituality nurtured by centuries
of prayer and devotion, rich in symbolism and sacramental integrity. It is the
only place in my five churches that owns a fiddleback chasuble! For me, there
is a deep connection between liturgical integrity and the natural world, and
perhaps more than anywhere else I have known, the Church of St Mary the Virgin
in Edwardstone encapsulates that.
In previous places I have been, I have had the privilege of
teaching liturgy and the sacraments to cohorts of ministers in training. I have
a deep fascination of how God engages us through ritual and symbolism. The
other thing that good liturgy does is connect us to the timelessness of God
through the eternal wisdom of the earth.
The English church has always been marked by rich liturgical ceremony. We don’t have much by way of what the earliest church in England might have looked like. It certainly wasn’t centred on Rome, since there was already a thriving English church here by the time Augustine of Canterbury arrived with his Roman delegation to ‘evangelise’ the English. The ritual of those times is mostly lost to history, but likely as not it would have been earthy and rich in symbolism, building upon its Celtic roots and connection to creation. Later, England became the home of some amazing liturgical movements. In 1075 CE, the Sarum Rite came into being. This order for the Holy Eucharist became used extensively throughout England right up until Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s first edition of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, by which time the Sarum Rite had become bulky and complicated. Much of what became the Book of Common Prayer was influenced by the Sarum Rite, but the Book of Common Prayer’s great richness comes from its rich poetic language and use of the vernacular. It changed the landscape significantly. In 1570, the Roman Catholic church also moved to a new universal order called the Tridentine Mass, written by Pope St Pius V and rolled out from 1570 CE, but again drawing influence from the Sarum text. And that connection with our ancient Christian roots through liturgical consistency continues today in the ordering of our modern Eucharistic liturgies, with prayers, texts and much of the ordering owing allegiance to the liturgies of our ancestors.
Common Worship could be said to
be a mixed blessing; affording us the opportunity to add rich variety and
options to focus on special themes in the liturgy, whilst invariably disrupting
some of the constancy and memorability that is the fruit of repetition in more
simplified liturgical structures. At present, we have no less than eight
volumes, with other mini-editions open for use, such as Additional Eucharistic
Prayers for use with Children, Additional Collects, and Reconciliation of a
Penitent. You can see the challenge!
But the liturgy, properly understood, is more than just a
set of texts, and perhaps it is here that the modern church would benefit from
a little more focus and thought.
As the previous Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, infers;[2] rightly
understood, the Church is our corporate participation in the eternal reality of
God. We often fall into the trap of thinking that we make the church. We do
not. God builds the Church – always has and always will. The Church will
continue with or without us. But we are his hands for making it known in the
world, should we accept that challenge.
This has profound consequences for our
understanding of what we do in the worship space. It could be said that the
modern mindset too often values worship on an experiential basis, treating it
as a form of entertainment. Consequently, it is too easy to approach church as
we might a supermarket. If I don’t much
like or fancy the worship that is offered in my local church, just as if I
might not like the produce on offer in my local shop, I will go somewhere else
to find something that is more my style, and I will keep moving on to somewhere
else until I find what I want. Then, when that no longer meets my fancy, I will
move on again. I may be being a little disingenuous here to make a point, but
you can see the danger.
On the other hand, when we understand
the Church to be of Divine and not human origin, something profound happens to
the way we engage with it. No longer can it only be on my own terms. Regularity
and rhythm suddenly become important, and we see how the routine of ‘just
turning up’ brings deeper fruits than simply feeding the cravings within us to
have our consumerist mindset, and ever decreasing attention spans, appeased.
It is in that faithfulness that God calls to
the recesses of the heart and the real fruits of a life of prayer come; but
prayer is never passive and always prompts a response in us as we enter more
deeply into our Trinitarian God’s loving and self-giving life. Sacrament and
symbol draw us more deeply into the eternal mystery of God.
The liturgy of the Church is
inherently missional. Through it we enter more deeply into the divine dance of
the Holy Trinity, the very life of God, as he feeds and nurtures us. As we grow
more deeply into him, so we model his life of love and self-giving. Sometimes,
as we gaze upon Christ in the Sacrament, we see him staring back. And it
is as we are fed by his eternal gaze that
together we grow in confidence and become ever more visible in the streets we
inhabit, for the glory of God and the growth of his Church.
And it is here that we come full
circle. As we step more deeply into the life of God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, so we become more at one with the world around us. We begin to
recognise his hand in the moulding of every nook and cranny of our natural landscape
and in the intricate design of every living thing: a truth we can see all the
more vivid in the rural landscapes of our country. We are a significant but
tiny part of the Creation into which God breathes life: intimately loved and
cherished by him, no more and no less than every other person in whose face we
can see Christ if only we look with the right kind of eyes.
We are, of course, in one of the richest liturgical moments
of the year. As we walk through Lent with Lent array draping our Altars, we
move with increasing rapidity towards Holy Week and Easter. Holy Week is a
season of extremities, with Palm Sunday beginning with dramatic procession
through the gates of Jerusalem singing hosannas and ending at the foot of the
cross. Maundy Thursday’s dramatic gathering in the upper room places
servanthood in its rightful place of eternal value uniting earthly and heavenly
realms. And in the actions of the Last
Supper, Jesus gives to his disciples as a last offering before he is ripped
from them which is more than just a memorial. In this re-formed Passover meal,
Jesus gives them, and us, an eternal rite that we are to do ‘in remembrance of
him’[3],
each time bringing the past into the present where he meets us in the ‘breaking
of bread’[4].
In so doing, he establishes for all time that, at the heart of the Eucharist, is
the sacrifice of the Son to the Father in the power of the Spirit.
Good Friday’s starkness then plummets the subliminal depths of the soul as we focus upon the instrument of torture on which our Saviour died, whilst also contemplating our own ongoing part in that tragedy. There are times when we must walk the way of the cross, both in our individual and corporate lives. In the liturgy of Good Friday, we live this out. Good Friday’s starkness then plummets the subliminal depths of the soul as we focus upon the instrument of torture on which our Saviour died, whilst also contemplating our own ongoing part in that tragedy. There are times when we must walk the way of the cross, both in our individual and corporate lives. In the liturgy of Good Friday, we live this out. But God does not abandon us to the gloom. ‘The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it’.
And so we
arrive at Easter Day, no less taken by surprise than those first disciples by
the ethereal richness of encountering the risen Christ at the tomb. As we are
renewed in our commitment and promises to him in the Easter Day liturgy, his
light illuminates our lives and re-establishes our calling as God’s adopted
children, and with it the hope that Christ instils within us. Just like the
disciples on the road to Emmaus[5],
we celebrate the Eucharist in a strangely transformed way as the risen Christ
makes himself known in the ‘breaking of bread’ once again, and with it our
spiritual eye becomes aware of being surrounded by countless saints and angels
as Christ breaks through the barriers of death and hell opening for us a new
eternal reality. Then we will realise, that we are a resurrection people and
alleluia is our song!
R.T. Parker-McGee 2024
