Maundy Thursday sermon

by Fr. Charles Lindsay

The Three Mysteries.

On this evening, over two thousand years ago, during the course of the last few hours Jesus would spend with his disciples, he inaugurated what one writer described as three “indispensable mysteries of the Christian faith.”

First, Jesus inaugurated the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

In the earliest written account of the Last Supper, Saint Paul says that Jesus, as the president of the meal, took bread, gave thanks for it, broke it, and then identified it with his body. In the same fashion, after the meal, Jesus took the cup of wine, and identified it with his blood, which was to be shed for the new covenant. Through these remarkably simple gestures, Jesus commanded his disciples to “do this” in “remembrance of me,” a reliving of his sacrifice until he comes again. (1st Corinthians 11:23-25)

Thank goodness Jesus told his disciples to “take and eat,” and not “take and understand.” Because since then, sacramental theologians have tried, without complete success, to explain literally what happens.

Rather than allowing the disciples to drink from their own individual cups, Jesus, at the end of the meal, passes his cup around the table. In normal Jewish meals, it was customary for the president at the meal to pass his own cup, and not to just anybody, but to someone he wished to point out for special honor. Because, drinking directly from the president’s cup allowed the person being honored to share in the blessing the president had said over the cup. Now, by his giving his “blessed” cup to all of his disciples – including Judas, who would betray him, and Peter, who would deny him three times – Jesus makes all the disciples recipients of the blessing and benefits of his death and resurrection. Regardless of any merit they might, or might not, have possessed, all the disciples are honored by Jesus. As a result, they literally consume his blessedness and aliveness into their own lives. And, at every Eucharist, as we eat the bread and drink the wine, so do we.

Second, Jesus inaugurated the institution of the priesthood.

Jesus’ command to the twelve disciples, “do this in remembrance of me,” has been cited as that text in which Jesus instituted the priesthood.

At first glance, we might think that Jesus is only setting up, what would become, the ordained priesthood. However, Jesus’ command to “do this,” was not limited only to those who were present. It is a command given to the whole Church. Those ordained, as well as those not ordained, are included in the command to eat the bread and drink from the cup. Certainly, the president – an ordained priest or bishop – presides, but the whole community consumes and celebrates the mystery together.

In fact, it is in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist where the nature of the “priesthood of all believers” is derived. By sharing in the bread of blessing, and by drinking from the common cup of blessing, the whole community of faith participates in and receives the blessings of Jesus.

However, what is most important, is the fact that, when we do this, we experience what one writer called “the great in spite of.” That is, in spite of the fact that “there is no health in us,” nevertheless we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." We are people who have been called out of darkness, into the marvelous light of Christ. And we take in to our very lives, the Eucharistic grace: that, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1st Peter 2:9-10)

Third, Jesus inaugurated the love commandment.

One of the marks of the Maundy Thursday service, is that it puts side by side, for easy comparison, the greatness of Jesus and the sinfulness of humans.

Let me give you an example. At the very moment when Jesus faces the looming horror of Gethsemane and the Cross, one would expect the disciples to be especially caring, providing Jesus with all the pastoral support he needed to face that ordeal. Not a chance. Jesus, in the last evening he would share with his beloved disciples, not only does Jesus have to endure the agony of Judas’ betrayal, but he also has to endure the heartbreaking reality that all the disciples will ultimately prove disloyal. As if that were not enough, consider the sad emptiness Jesus must have felt, watching his disciples compete with each other to establish who was “the greatest” among them.

And, at that point, we might expect Jesus to respond in anger and indignation; but he didn’t. Instead Jesus enacts perhaps the strangest behavior of his three-year ministry. The Gospel of John says that he gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, pours water into a basin, and then begins to wash the feet of his disciples’.

In this way, the “sacramental nature of servant-hood” is revealed. The revealing of agape love is made manifest as twenty-four dirty feet are washed and wiped clean. And in that action is revealed a new kind of power. It is not a power - over, the way of domination and control. It is not a power - against, the way of confrontation and coercion. It’s not even a power of mutual collaboration and cooperation. Rather, it is a power of servant-hood, which is Jesus’ path for us towards freedom and peace.

The way of servant-hood, does not mean Christians are co-dependent. It does mean that, like Jesus, we are to “lose” our lives, believing with wholehearted trust, that Christ’s love is unconditional and unfailing. It means that we have given up trying to “save” our lives by “winning”, but, as Paul said, by running the course. It means that, through the power of the Spirit, we can realize our potential, as human beings, to its fullest: That is, Christ has freed us, to be able to serve, without first trying to decide if someone is “worth it”; -- to serve, without worrying how our service is going to be perceived; --  to serve, without concerning ourselves over what “results” will be forthcoming. Remember - God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost already know. So why worry?

Conclusion

On this evening, over two thousand years ago, three important things happened.

Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist, so that we might forever share in his blessings. Some of us call it Communion. (Meaning Common Union with Christ.)

Jesus instituted the priesthood of all believers, so that we might remember that each of us has been equally commissioned to do the work of Christ. This does not mean that we are all ordained Priest, but that we all have the responsibility to do the work of Christ.

Jesus instituted the love commandment, so that we might remember that there is no one who should be beyond the reach of Christ’s love and compassion, as expressed through each of us.

*****

Fr. Charles Lindsay came to Chapel Hill as a retired rector. Currently he serves as Curate at St. Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church, Chapel Hill North Carolina.

THOUGHTS ON THE LITURGY OF HOLY WEEK

MAUNDY THURSDAY

THE CHRISTIAN SEDER When our Lord invited His disciples to go up to Jerusalem with Him, this was no unusual journey. This trip was an annual pilgrimage, in which devout Israelites arranged to spend the Passover in the holy city near the Temple. There they could obtain a lamb slaughtered in the Temple itself for their Seder, the Passover meal. Jesus, we must never forget, was a devout Jew who faithfully practiced every ritual set forth in the Law of the Old Testament. This included supremely the annual observance of the Passover. To understand this evening's liturgy we must have some information about the Passover ritual.

Passover was the annual commemoration of the Event of the Exodus, when God had rescued and set free His chosen people, the twelve tribes of Israel, from slavery in Egypt. The word Passover itself refers to one detail of that ancient miracle of liberation, when the angel of death, sent by God to smite the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, passed over the homes of God's covenant people the Israelites, provided that their homes were marked with the blood of the lamb which had been sacrificed. Before they departed in haste from Egypt, the Israelites had a final meal there consisting of the sacrificed lamb, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. These three items became the basic menu, used in the time of Jesus and even today among observant Jews.

As we find the account of the Seder celebrated by Our Lord and His disciples in tonight's Epistle, it may seem odd that there is no mention at all of any lamb. Probably this is a deliberate omission. Jesus Himself is now the lamb! Where His blood is present, the angel of death (his name is Satan) is driven away forever. The unleavened bread is no longer just memorial bread. Henceforth Jesus makes it His flesh, our food of eternal life. Finally, we celebrate not just manumission from earthly slavery, but God's redemption of us from sin, death and hell. The tyranny of a human Pharaoh can be replaced all too quickly by other earthly tyrannies. But as Jesus says, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

As we eat the unleavened bread of our Passover meal, we recall that Sin is our Pharaoh, Jesus is our Paschal Lamb, in Baptism we have crossed the Red Sea, His Holy Supper is God's manna in our wilderness, and Heaven is our promised land.

GOOD FRIDAY

The special liturgy for this day is one of the great treasures of Christian spirituality. As a sign of unusual mourning and penitence, both today and tomorrow the Church refrains from celebrating the Holy Eucharist and still in most places does not administer Holy Communion to the faithful. In effect, we place ourselves under a sentence of excommunication as we remember the crime of our Saviour's death. Today's liturgy is merely a "liturgy of the Word," which Anglicans of another generation called the Ante-communion.

Two further features of the Good Friday liturgy are the Solemn Collects and the Reproaches which are chanted or read during the Veneration of the Cross. Both of these have archaic qualities which recall the earliest centuries of Christian history. In the "Solemn Collects" we remember that in His very death our Lord was officiating as our Great High Priest . His first "word from the cross" was a prayer of intercession, "Father forgive them." So His Church, keeping vigil with Him on Calvary, intercedes for all her children and likewise for the whole world.

The nine prayers of intercession are comprehensive, beginning with the bishops and hierarchy of the Church, proceeding with "all estates of men in thy holy Church," continuing on with various special needs, and concluding with separate prayers for the Jews and for the heathen. Each intercession has a special bidding, "Let us pray for..." One phrase runs through and unites them: "the Lord our God." Here we have an echo of the covenant formula which unlocks the entire Bible, "I will be your God, and ye shall be my people, and I will dwell with you."

The covenant of grace, first intimated in the Garden of Eden in God's curse of the serpent and later inaugurated with Abraham, comes into sharp focus today. When was that promise ever so rejected, or ever so confirmed, as it was at the death of the Messiah? When the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ, human wickedness (the depravity of all mankind) reached its lowest and vilest point in His murder. But never has the covenant promise been so ratified as it was when He prayed "My God, my God." We might lose our way in the rest of that word of dereliction, "why hast thou forsaken me," if we forget that He was pleading the covenant promise, "I will be your God." Never was God so perfectly "our God" as when He put forth His only-begotten Son to be the propitiation for our sins. The covenant language in the Solemn Collects should remind us that like our dying Saviour we are pleading the promises of the Covenant sealed in His Blood.


In the Reproaches, we have a meditation on a passage from the prophet Micah. Here are the original words (Micah 6:3--5).

O my people, what have I done to you?
How have I wearied you?
Answer me!

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
And redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam.
O my people, remember what Balak, king of Moab devised,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
That you may know the saving acts of the LORD.

This address of the LORD to Israel was part of a covenant lawsuit, in which He had called on his unfaithful and idolatrous people to to give an account of their breach-of-contract with the God who had redeemed them. Their situation is untenable, they have no defense in the LORD's courtroom, they have invoked His curses, their doom is certain.

Micah's description of the covenant lawsuit of God against His people is recalled on Good Friday because on Calvary this untenable situation was resolved, when Jesus Christ took upon Himself our guilt and our doom, by enduring the curse which we have justly provoked. It is of some interest that Micah describes this lawsuit as taking place "before the mountains." He may have foreseen Jesus' walk up Calvary's hill to answer for us. Surely it was there that the greatest "saving act" of the Lord took place.

It is truly sad this this magnificent bit of liturgical poetry (brilliantly set to music) is so little known. This is owing to the frivolous notion that the Old Testament allusions are somehow anti-Semitic and offensive to the Jewish people. We must be quick to say that the address "O my people" in the Church's liturgy is not directed toward the idolatrous Israelites of Micah's day, nor to the Sanhedrin which sent Jesus to Pilate, and certainly not to the Jewish people of later centuries. The Reproaches are addressed, specifically and painfully, to ourselves, the Christian community of here and now. Because of the "new covenant" which our Saviour announced in the Upper Room (really the ancient covenant of grace re-established and made new), we are God's covenant people. And we too are faithless, idolatrous, guilty covenant-breakers. I am not convinced that it was sensitivity for Jewish feelings that has placed the Reproaches in our liturgical attic. Each time I read them I feel bound to respond, "Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy" not upon them, but "upon us." The Holy Spirit still speaks in Micah's words, but now those words confront 21st century Christians.

Mercifully, the Reproaches do not end with the covenant lawsuit in which we are convicted. The conclusion is, "We venerate the Cross, O Lord, and praise and glorify thy holy Resurrection, for by virtue of the Cross joy hath come to the whole world."

Palm Sunday Sermon Notes

“the veil in the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom”+

In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us there is a time to rend and a time to sew. In other words there is a time to tear things apart and a time to stitch them back together. The Cross was both.

At that event, just as Christ dies, we see a physical tearing of the earth itself (in a 'quake) and of a deeply significant curtain in the Temple in Jerusalem.

The tearing of the earth is associated with the opening of graves and the resurrections of unspecified holy men and women, a kind of precursor to the great Resurrection to come. And so the material elements are, as it were, forced to give up their hold on God's people. We see here a hint that the normal laws of nature as we know them are now beginning to be rewritten so that death and decay will no longer have final dominion. But as rocks are ripped apart, souls are reunited with bodies. The spiritual re-integration, the healing of the Cosmos, has thus begun. Rending and sewing are inextricably linked here.

The torn curtain separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple, so that the Holiest place, representing God's abode, could neither be seen nor approached. Only the High Priest, and he only once a year, could enter in. But now this barrier is parted, symbolising not just an end but a beginning. For symbolised here is the mending of the relationship between God and man. As the book of Hebrews teaches us, the torn veil, representing Christ's torn flesh, also represents an opening of access for all of us to God's intimate presence. The holiest place can now be entered “boldly” (Hebrews 10: 19ff). Again, a rending apart leads to a joining together. The Cross is both destructive and healing.

This barrier to entering God's presence had been enforced by the Law of Moses. It reminded the people of God of not only of His Holiness, but of their unholiness and unworthiness, as did much of the Law. For the Law, as St Paul teaches, primarily functions to restrain sinfulness already present and to reinforce to sinners the consequences of their actions (Gal. 3:19-25, 1 Tim. 1:9-10, Heb. 10:3).

So, how does Christ's Cross tear down the wall of separation and reconcile us to God? How does it slice open the veil but link us to God? This, truly, is a question that cannot be fully and adequately answered in one sermon, or even in a lifetime of Sermons. At the Cross we approach a mystery hidden deep in the heart of God, and one which engages his fathomless love and wisdom.

But this we can say: Through Christ's voluntary acceptance of the Cross we have God fulfilling his own Law, which prescribed, by God's holy decree and promise, human death for human sin. The penalty of evil is not merely forgiven by God, though he certainly does freely forgive us. Evil is not simply overlooked. What is free to us was not free for God. He pays the price we could not. He fulfills completely, in Christ, both the positive commands of the law and, paradoxically, the demands of the law for negative consequences when the Law is transgressed. And he does both of these things by “obedience unto death”, as the Epistle states, “even death on the Cross”. As God the Son his obedience to God the Father is perfect and has infinite value and power. (What is the power of this obedience? The power to connect us to itself and create us anew within it.) As the Son of Man he can truly stand in for us and absorb in human nature the results of human sin. And he can, through that divine power just spoken of, incorporate our humanity into his. His sacrificial offering of holy obedience thus becomes both the “end of the Law” as an external threat to us and the beginning of our own obedience through grace (Romans 10:4, 6:22-23).

Thus he not only acts “instead” of us at the Cross. He represents and carries us within him at the Cross. In one action he has dealt with the penalty of sin and the sinfulness within us that led to it. In one action he has torn down the barriers between us and God, and ripped sin away from us and even joined it to himself in a sense, in order to overcome its power, yet he has also mended the ancient tear within and among ourselves, and the rupture between Man and his Maker.

Allow me to finish with three quotations to emphasise these truths. One from Scripture, one from the Fathers, and one from a more recent theologian, arguably the most profound theologian of Atonement of modern times.

St Paul, 2 Cor. 5:14-21

“if [Christ] died for all, then were all dead … he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again … Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. … God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them … For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

St Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Logos, 6-7, 9 and Orations Against The Arians 2:69

“It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word [Genesis 2:17] and that humanity, having transgressed, should not die. it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back on His word regarding death [Genesis 2:17] in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not make Himself a liar. What, then, was God to do?. The Logos perceived that our perishing condition could not be abolished except through death. Yet He Himself, as the Logos, being immortal and the Father's Son, could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that this body, through belonging to the Logos Who is above all, might become a sufficient exchange in dying for all. … By surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, He immediately abolished death for His human brothers by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Logos of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled by death all that was required.” “[God] sends His own Son, and He becomes Son of Man, by taking created flesh; that, since all were under sentence of death, He, …. might Himself for all offer to death His own body; and that henceforth, as if all had died through Him, the word of that sentence might be accomplished (for all died in Christ), and all through Him might thereupon become free from sin and from the curse which came upon it, and might truly abide for ever, risen from the dead and clothed in immortality and incorruption.”

P. T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ, pp.147-148

“Christ entered voluntarily into the pain and horror which is sin’s penalty from God. Christ, by the deep intimacy of His sympathy with men, entered deeply into the blight and judgment which was entailed by man’s sin, and which must be entailed by man’s sin if God is a holy and therefore a judging God. It is impossible for us to say that God was angry with Christ; but still Christ entered the wrath of God, ... He entered the penumbra of judgment, and from it He confessed in free action, He praised and justified by act, before the world, and on the scale of all the world, the holiness of God. You can therefore say that although Christ was not punished by God, He bore God’s penalty upon sin. … we may say that Christ did, at the depth of that great act of self–identification with us when He became man, He did enter the sphere of sin’s penalty and the horror of sin’s curse, in order that, from the very midst and depth of it, His confession and praise of God’s holiness might rise like a spring of fresh water at the bottom of the bitter sea, and sweeten all.” +

PALM SUNDAY

Phil. 2:5-11

Matt. 27:1-54

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus

In a rather unhappy conversation with a man who aspired to be a priest, I asked the question, “What is it that you want?” He answered me, “I want to be a priest; in fact, I want to be a bishop.” He even said, “Isn’t it right to want to get to the top of your field?” I told him that he should forget the whole idea of Holy Orders for himself. I said I would not help him with it at all. I went on to explain to him that this is not about ambition. Every priest, including the Archbishop, is forever a deacon, that is, a servant. He said that he had never heard that before. Had he not read what Saint Paul tells us? “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” In fact, that is for everyone.

The passage we heard in the Epistle appointed for Palm Sunday, the great Christological passage in Philippians, has been the subject of very important, indeed necessary, theological writing and teaching since the earliest times. In no uncertain terms it teaches us that Jesus Christ is equal to God, that is, by His very nature He is God; as the Creed says, “Light of Light, very God of very God, of one substance (homousion)  with the Father.” And, just as St. John tells us that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” St. Paul tells us that this Person, equal to God, was “found in fashion (σχῆμα) as a man.” This passage tells us what John told us: “And the Word was God…and the Word was made flesh.”

          And, it goes on to tell how He emptied Himself, which means that He humbled Himself. He remained equal to God, and is equal to the Father as God, but nonetheless took upon Him the form of a servant. And, as a servant He “went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. (Acts 10: 38)” Above all, in that role of a servant He was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

          “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Important as the theological meaning to this whole passage is, the Apostle wrote it for a pastoral reason that included that same call Jesus had made to everyone who would be one of His disciples:

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:24-26)” 

As we begin Holy Week, we need to hear this call. When I consider the damage that has been done to the Continuing Church, I know that much of that damage was from men who wanted to slice off a portion of the Church in order to rule over something. They were not servants in their hearts.

When the Lord told His disciples that He was going to the cross before entering into glory by His resurrection, it was the same St. Peter, who had only just said his great confession, who took the Lord aside and tried to talk Him out of it. One minute earlier, Peter was told that he was blessed, because flesh and blood had not revealed to him that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The Father had revealed this to him. Jesus then gave a new meaning to Simon’s nickname, Peter, the Rock upon which Christ would build His Church (a special calling that Peter would later fulfill in the early chapters of the Book of Acts). But, now Jesus corrects Peter for speaking the devil’s words.

“From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (vss.21-24)”

Well, that only goes to show that Peter was not yet ready, and he would not be ready until he had seen the risen Lord, and until he was filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. He had not yet learned to have the mind of Jesus in him. He had not yet learned the meaning of the cross.

          And, we see that ignorance of that way, the way of Christ’s cross, made even this blessed man a mouthpiece of Satan; this same man who had been given the most important of revelations directly by God the Father. He had been given the revelation of Christ’s glory, but he needed to learn the way of Christ’s cross. Jesus resists Peter’s words, of dissuasion from the cross, in a way that is reminiscent of the temptations after His forty day fast in the wilderness.

          Whatever your personal opinion may be of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, it does show the real horror to which the Lord submitted Himself. It is consistent with Scripture and informed by archeology and history. Roman “justice” was that cruel. The soldiers did get their fun by crowning the Lord with thorns, beating Him and mocking Him after a near fatal scourging that would have killed a weaker man. The theory of Biblical interpretation upon which the movie was based seems to have gone over the heads of many critics, especially over the heads of those who thought it portrayed the Lord as weak or helpless.

          From the first scene in Gethsemane, the devil is trying to talk the Lord into refusing the death of the cross, and the burden of carrying the full weight of human sin. It shows a contest, a wrestling match, between the Lord and Satan. When the Lord, in the garden, says to the Father, “not my will, but thine be done,” the moon goes behind a cloud. If the Lord is willing to submit Himself to the power of evil men, then the devil is going to make sure it is as painful as possible, to tempt Him. Recall the words that were flung at Him when He was on the cross:

“Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. (Matt. 27:40-42)”

In fact, the movie was all about Christus Rex, or Christus Victor, that is, that on the cross Jesus was still in complete control as King of kings, and by His death Jesus won the victory.

            Listen to the words Jesus spoke:

“Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? (Matt. 26:51-54)

And this:

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:17,18)”

Why did Jesus make His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane? What is the real reason for His words? “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt… O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. (Matt. 26:39,42)” We know from other occasions that Christ spoke prayers so that others could learn from them, saying when He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, “And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. (John 11:42)”

This is all about why the Lord would so willingly fulfill the Scriptures about the Suffering Servant of YHVH (Isaiah 52:13-53:12): Because without Christ’s cross the will of God is not possible. That gracious will by which we, lost in sin and death, could be saved. “If it be possible,” said Jesus in the Garden. If what be possible? If it were possible that we could be forgiven, that the sins of the world could be taken away—for they could not be taken away unless Jesus gave Himself as the Lamb of God. His prayer in the Garden was not a moment of fear (he expressed no fear, but only sorrow). He did not pray to be spared: In fact, the effect of His words was very much the opposite: “nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt… thy will be done.”

He willingly drank the cup of sorrow. And, about that prayer in Gethsemane, He said it for our sakes. We need to know that only by His cross, only by His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, was the curse and burden of sin carried away; and that it could not be carried away by any other means. Could God forgive and justify sinners without the cross? No; for He would then be neither just nor holy (Rom. 3:26). Could God then destroy the human race? No, “for God so loved the world…” For our sakes, Jesus submitted to the will of the Father who loved us, Who gave His own Son for us (“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Rom. 8:32”).

Jesus was Christus Rex on the tree. And he was Christus Victor by His death. In all of this, He also shows us the way to live. If the One Who is equal to God could “humble Himself to behold the things which are in heaven in earth (Psalm 113: 6),” so much so that He “took upon Him the form of a servant,” just who is any one of us? Are you too good to be a servant? Am I? Is anyone here willing to claim a station, in this world, greater than that of God the Son? He became a servant, the Suffering Servant.


Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Fr Wells' Bulletin Inserts

PALM SUNDAY

One neglected key-word in the Biblical vocabulary is the word “memorial.” This word appears inconspicuously in the Words of Institution, “Do this in memory of me.” A more precise translation of the Greek would be, “Do this for my memorial.”

To us the word memorial refers to a purely mental exercise, a straining of the mind to think of something far away and long ago. We hold a “memorial service” for someone dead, not for someone alive. This word memorial might refer to the re-enactment of a battle, which everyone knows is not the real thing.

But as the Bible uses the word, a memorial (and here the Eucharist is the example par excellance) is not for someone absent but for Someone Present. A true memorial brings things out of the past and makes them contemporary. This is because the One who does the remembering is none other than God Himself! Think of all the times the Psalter calls upon God to remember His covenant and His promises, or think of how we pray in the Litany, “Remember not, Lord, our offenses, nor the offenses of our forefathers.”

In the Eucharist we are permitted to do something far greater than just sitting around and thinking about the death of our Saviour. Instead, we call upon God to remember that sacrifice, to make it present before our very eyes, to make it effective and powerful here and now. As Hymn 189 expresses it,
“Look, Father, look, on His anointed face,
And only look on us as found in Him.”
We sing of His sacrifice as truly present, because in the sacrament of the Altar, it is truly there before our eyes. Calvary does not have to be re-enacted, because Calvary is now.

Now we come again to Holy Week. This is emphatically not just a historical commemoration, like Columbus Day or Independence Day, of remote events from another time, whose relevance we must strive to recall. In the Blessing of Palms today, in the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Maundy Thursday, in the Vigil around the Cross during the sacred Three Hours of Good Friday, we are permitted to re-live the mighty acts of God for our salvation—acts which we treat rather cheaply. The special services of Holy Week are a unique opportunity to encounter Christ and to grow closer to Him.

St John's Gospel emphasizes that Peter did not merely look at the empty tomb, but moreover Peter went into the tomb. Not only did he contemplate the evidence of the Resurrection, but entered himself totally into the Event itself. That is what this holy season is all about. We make and keep this Memorial of our Saviour that we may climb down into Him and find our resting-place in Him.

+

The liturgy for the final Sunday in Lent, when we come to something like a pre-climax just before the real climax on Easter morning, is an embarrassment of riches. We have two moments of real drama today: first, the re-enactment of Our Lord's not-quite-triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and second, the long reading of St Matthew's Passion narrative. Between these two splendid moments, the Prayer Book gives us a brief reading from Philippians as the Epistle appointed for the day.

Bible scholars are almost unanimous in their suspicion that in these verses Paul was quoting a hymn from the early church's worship. These verses read like a hymn of six stanzas, three devoted to our Saviour's humiliation and three more (beginning at “Wherefore God”) proclaiming His exaltation. This passage almost begs to be sung and is the basis for one of our finest hymns. See Hymn 356, The Hymnal 1940.

Today we must concentrate on the first part of the hymn Paul was quoting. There we meet the contrast between “the form of God” and “the form of a servant.” Those two expressions reveal the amazing chasm of distance which the Incarnate God traveled for us. How far is it from heaven to earth? No, the question really is, How far is it from God's throne to Calvary's hill? A distance more vast and exhausting than we can imagine. And this word “form” is not just outward show, but inner reality. He possessed the very nature of God but took the role of a servant in the most realistic sense of the word.

From the moment when God commanded Adam in the garden “to till it and keep it,” and to give names to every beast of the field, God had been seeking a perfectly obedient and cooperative servant, to bear His image in His creation. Beginning with Adam, such a servant had never been found-- until Christ Jesus appeared. His task had been a far greater burden than that of Adam; his garden is not Eden but Gethsemane. His perfect obedience is submission to the Cross itself.

But if Paul is quoting a hymn in this passage, the opening line is his very own. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” The attitude of Christ Jesus, in His self-denial, His perfect obedience, and His willingness to suffer, is to be our attitude as well. Those who are “in Christ Jesus” are called to be like Him, marked with the humility of slaves. Here is the point that Paul was striving to make as he quoted this hymn. Christ was not only our substitute but also, as today's Collect puts it, our example. And as St Peter wrote (I Peter 5:6), “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you.”

Reaffirmation

To Reaffirm suggests renewing the same Affirmation. I am puzzled by the opening paragraphs. It seems that an Archbishop named Collins, and a man named Allan Singleton-Wood (I know that name) were quoted respectively. Inasmuch as the speakers include the Archbishops of the Concordat Churches, we can be sure that there will be no sympathy for the pro-ordinariate position. - Fr. Hart

From Virtue Online
VICTORIA, BC: Traditional Anglicans Will Host Congress in Reaffirmation of St. Louis

By David W. Virtue
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=14250April 14, 2011

A Congress of Traditional Anglicans will bring together traditional Anglican church leaders from around the world, working towards renewing the "spirit of St Louis," encouraging unity and greater solidarity through the celebration of the historic Anglican tradition and heritage. 

The Congress will meet June 1-4 in Victoria, BC, at historic St. Anne's Chapel and be hosted by St. Mark's Traditional Anglican Church.

This conference grew out of the urgency brought about by the Pope's offer of an Ordinariate (Anglicanum Coetibus) that galvanized Anglo-Catholics both in and out of the Anglican Communion to seek unity with Rome. Not all Anglo-Catholics favor this and a major split has occurred in the North American branches of the Traditional Anglican Communion. 

"I believe that by far the great majority of Anglo Catholics are indeed in favour of unity ('being in Communion') with Rome. This is what Archbishop Hepworth insisted we would be getting. The great majority of Anglo Catholics (myself included) have been horrified to find that this is totally untrue. This is not just "Unity", nor "in Communion with", it is TOTAL ABSORPTION by the Roman Catholic Church. Archbishop Collins is a very straight "shooter". 

"In his speech in Mississauga he pulled no punches "The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus moves beyond the Pastoral Provision by establishing a structure similar to dioceses, run by an Ordinary who may be a married Catholic priest. But the Anglican Use parishes are forerunners of how Anglican patrimony can flourish within the Roman Catholic Church", said Singleton-Wood. 

"The time has arrived when we believe that a plan needs to be developed to deal with the problems that have taken hold in God's churches. Man's pre‐disposition to change 'for the sake of change' has created confusion and demoralization, resulting in shrinking congregations and closure of churches, leaving many without "spiritual homes" in which to worship", commented Allan Singleton-Wood, chairman of the event. 

"It is imperative that we Anglicans get back to our "roots" that grew to provide us with a "spiritual oasis" for countless numbers of souls. We believe the Holy Spirit expects us to take action to restore it," he told VOL. 

Speakers include Archbishop Mark Haverland, Primate of the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), and Archbishop James Provence, Primate of the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK). Other speakers include Bishop Robert D. Redmile of the Christian Episcopal Church, Bishop Peter D. Robinson, the Presiding Bishop of the United Episcopal Church, and Canon Gunn-‐Walberg, a member of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen. High Masses will be conducted by Haverland and Provence.

Traditional Anglicans from a wide spectrum of Jurisdictions will take part in study groups and discussions covering some of the key areas of the Affirmation of St. Louis, the founding document of the Traditional Church. 

The aim of the Congress, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is to initiate a plan to help take "the next step" in reaffirmation, said Singleton-Wood. 

VOL has been invited to cover this event.

Interested persons can contact: Allan Singleton-Wood at (250) 383‐8562.

Complete information can be found at their website: www.traditionalanglicancanada.com

Soteriology in Anglican Liturgy

Soteriology is the study of salvation, coming from the Greek word σωτηρία (sōtēria). As such the very word implies the name of our Lord himself, inasmuch as Jesus 1 (Ἰησοῦς) comes from the Hebrew word for salvation, (yĕshuw`ah). The name Joshua, or Jesus, is a form of the very word itself. In fact, if you meet someone named Salvatore, his name means the same thing. In short, this matters because human salvation is only through Jesus Christ, and without him there is no hope. Salvation is not available through a process, and cannot be manufactured from below. It had to come from above. 2 Although some religious teachers may say that life on this earth is a test, the fact is that life on this earth is not a test. If this life were a test, we would all receive an F, and go to Hell. This life is a shipwreck, and we are all in need of the Rescuer, without whom we would be lost to sin and death.

A while back, I heard an Episcopal priest who is better known for talk radio in Maryland (where I used to live) than for ministry, staunchly defending his disbelief in the Virgin Birth (and using the Bible with all the deft precision of a bull- a raving bull at that- in a china shop). And yet this same man openly professes his faith in the resurrection of Christ, having no problem with miracles. Yet, on two very important doctrines concerning our salvation in Christ he is completely without understanding. He does not believe that Christ died for our sins, and he does not believe in the Virgin Birth. What these two doctrines have in common is that they require our humility as well as our faith. Man could not create or even beget his own salvation, but needed God to intervene by sending his Son through the miracle of the Incarnation, as the Seed of the woman, 3 having no earthly father, coming as God of God the only and eternally begotten Son, and also being sent into the world (two very different facts). This forever teaches our impotence in this matter; we cannot keep ourselves alive. We had no strength from within ourselves to produce our own salvation. The fact that we needed to have our sins taken away by this same Savior, himself free from the defects of sin and death in every way, by giving his life, giving up his spirit in order to die, is equally humbling to an honest mind. Both doctrines, the Virgin Birth and the Atonement, put us in our place. It is only by the gift from the Father, and not by our own power.

It is quite impossible to understand, however, how a man who was ordained in the Episcopal Church back in the 1950s, as this priest was, could have stood at God's altar, and have said the words of our Mass, the Holy Communion service in the Book of Common Prayer, defend the older version many times for its beauty (as he has done), and yet reject the Gospel that is so very clearly set forth every time it is celebrated. This blindness is a double tragedy for him and for all who fail to believe; for not only is the service of Holy Communion powerful in its proclamation of the Gospel, but quite effective for all who enter into it fully, as the means whereby the Savior pulls them out of sin and death. Not only does it give the message of salvation; it imparts salvation to those who pray, hear, confess and receive. Our Holy Communion service powerfully draws us out of the depths of sin and death, and brings us face to face with the Lord our Salvation. 4

Liturgical history of salvation

The liturgy of Anglicans comes from the Tradition common to the whole Church, even though obvious differences of expression are to found in the Divine Liturgy of the East, the Latin Mass of Rome and the Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer. The differences are less significant than the things these Eucharistic liturgies have in common. They fit the pattern I mentioned in my book review of The Spirit of the Liturgy by (then) Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. In that review, summarizing points made in detail by the author of the book, I said:

The Liturgy itself, and the whole life that it envelops, is connected to the Incarnation of God in Christ, the ultimate revelation. Our words and actions should be faithful to the intention of doing everything the right way, but not as an end in itself; rather, for the sake of the truth and of the presence of God. The Liturgy is written in words larger than any printed page can hold. It is written in history, the redemption history of Israel leading to the salvation history of the New Covenant.

In the Book of Common Prayer this reaches its most important point right at the beginning of the Canon of Consecration:

"All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious the death and sacrifice, until his coming again..."

This follows a recitation of salvation history that includes readings from scripture and reciting of the Nicene/ Constantinopolitan Creed; and it is followed by the Words of Institution and more of the Eucharistic prayer. This includes these words:

"...having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same."

Because salvation history is not merely recorded, but revealed, this is the only history that includes the future, which we find in those words, "until his coming again," that speak of the resurrection to immortality that is the hope and faith of all believers.

Liturgical provisions of grace

The power to absolve is so important that it is specifically mentioned in the Ordinal (in The Form and Manner of Ordering Priests) during the laying on of the bishop's hands:

"Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments; In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."5

The Anglican Holy Communion service offers one additional aid to the worshiper, and that is the opportunity to confess sins and receive at least the General Absolution. The General Confession may not be sufficient to relieve the conscience of all known guilt; and every Anglican priest is obligated to hear confessions and give, when appropriate (as we hope and pray it may be in every case), the sacrament of Absolution. Nonetheless, it is very obvious that the General Confession and Absolution is no mere ritual, but a provision for the sacrament that is based on the revelation of scripture, 6 and that makes use of Right Reason in establishing a form in which the Church may rightly appropriate and make available the grace of God through this sacrament. Jesus gave this power to the men in Apostolic ministry without directing the details of how they may hear confessions and absolve sins. Although one form of this sacrament has been most commonly understood since the early Middle Ages, we must remember that it evolved long after the Church was established and had been administering this sacrament with other forms for centuries.

Therefore, and also inasmuch as the Absolution is spoken only by the priest, the General Confession and Absolution is sacramental, not merely ceremonial as Francis Hall had taught. Yes, we want to make the private Confessional available for many good reasons; but we do not exclude from the altar rail those who have made use of the General Confession with proper self-examination before coming to Church. The purpose of self examination is so that the believer may, with good conscience, come forward and receive the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, as St. Paul wrote: "But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup." 7

Since the very first Book of Common Prayer (1549) this provision has been a means by which the individual may receive the sacrament, even if he has not been able to make private confession. Can it be abused? Yes; but so can the private confession. The issue is one of sincerity, and for this reason the conditions for actually receiving the grace of Absolution are stated in the Invitation and in the form for the General Absolution itself. The Invitation is the real Altar Call of Catholic Christian faith, with a real altar, unlike the "altar call" of revivalists. This Invitation clearly appeals to the heart and conscience as it commands genuine repentance in the clearest of terms:

"Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling."

What could be more clearly and directly stated than this call for a true conversion? After the General Confession, the words of the Absolution are conditional, so that the priest does not presume some magic power to absolve just anyone, but rather truly Absolves the sincerely penitent:

"Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him; Have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins; confirm and strengthen you in all goodness; and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

The appeal is to the heart and conscience of each person who plans to come forward and receive the Holy Communion. One of the very unfortunate problems of the American revision of 1979, which Episcopalians wrongly call a Book of Common Prayer, is that all of the conditions were removed from both their Invitation and Absolution (in their Rite II), suggesting nothing more than a magical power of priestcraft. But, the genuine Book of Common Prayer tradition is entirely conditional, requiring "hearty repentance and true faith." That is, it calls the worshiper to true reconciliation with God, requiring this necessary part of experiencing and receiving salvation itself. This is not a mere ritual or ceremony, but a call for true conversion and repentance, with actual forgiveness of sin offered and given. It is a form in which the sacrament of Absolution, with the full grace of that sacrament, can be given and received.

Eating and drinking salvation

As we have seen many times, the Anglican emphasis on receiving the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood was about the need of each believer to feed on the Bread of Life. Very little needs to be added to the posts that I have already written on this very blog, drawing from the connection I have made between John 6:54 and the recently deleted clause of our Prayer of Humble Access (deleted, that is, by the Revisionists of 1979). The soteriology of Scripture establishes clearly that our catechism is right to teach that two of the sacraments, baptism and communion, are "generally necessary to salvation." These two are set apart from the other five sacraments as "sacraments of the Gospel" because Jesus established them in his Church for every believer, and because they are established in the Gospel itself, in fact in the Four Gospels; but the other five were sacraments established in the Old Testament, now modified and given new meaning in the fuller revelation of the New Testament.

However, we must add this consideration. For too long Anglicans have allowed outsiders to explain to us the contents of our doctrines, even to the point of allowing them to replace Anglican catechesis with their own misinformation. So it is that the very good and necessary emphasis on receiving Christ in the sacrament of his Body and Blood, which emphasis is everywhere to be found in our liturgy, has been twisted into a thing called Receptionism. Because the English Reformers knew that the people needed to come and receivethe sacrament, and because they taught frequent communion (which was first taught by Archbishop Cranmer, after centuries of abuse had caused reception to be seldom, or never, a part of normal Christian experience), modern writers and critics of Anglicanism have mistaken this, as they have mistaken the Articles and other statements about transubstantiation as understood in the 16th century, to mean that they rejected belief in an objective Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament. But this is, as I have said, misinformation.

A close examination of the prayers does not reveal any notion of eating mere bread and drinking mere wine that upon being received is, somehow, thereby transformed. Rather, a close examination of the Eucharistic prayers, whether from the Canon of Consecration or the Prayer of Humble Access, reveals (however out of fashion such knowledge may be) that Cranmer and any others who worked on the liturgy were quite sure that the bread and wine was so transformed, in some mysterious and spiritual way, that it had become the Body and Blood of Christ. However, to be received in such a manner that each communicant receives Christ in the salvatory (soteriol) manner of John 6:54, so that receiving imparts grace instead of judgment, the prayers in our liturgy speak very clearly of our need to so eat and so drink, that we are saved by taking the sacrament. To twist this into Receptionism, and create a distinction without a difference between what they believed about Christ's Real Presence in the sacrament, and what the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church has always known by revelation, is an unfortunate practice on the part of both some Roman Catholics and some modern Anglican Evangelicals who seem unable to pay close attention to the actual words of the primary sources (such as the actual service itself). 8

A major Reason to come to church

We need to forget the critics and religious squabbles when we prepare to come to his altar, and simply be glad for the gift that God has given to us. We need to appreciate the words and actions of the Holy Communion service, above all our action of receiving Christ in his Body and his Blood. We need to pay attention to its message, and believe that Jesus Christ will meet us there with his mercy and grace as we seek nothing less than him.

.

This is what needs to be taken seriously when we plan to attend church, and when we encourage each other to stay faithful in attendance. 9 Our liturgy is beautiful, perhaps in some ways too beautiful if it draws our attention to poetic majesty and away from what it says and means. We need to attend the Holy Communion, and each time we attend, attend as well to ourselves, first by self-examination, and then by entering in fully, so that we receive grace as He enters into us. Our liturgy contains not simply the message of salvation, but the means of grace for that salvation. It teaches and imparts, because the sacraments signify what they effect, and effect what they signifiy.

(Originally posted on Dec. 8, 2008)


1. See Matthew 1:21

2. John 8:23

3. Genesis 3: 15 "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." this is why Jesus called his mother "woman" twice in the Gospel of John (2:4, and 19:26). He identified himself thereby, and affirmed his miraculous conception.

4. Isaiah 33:22 

5. Drawn from John 20:22,23

6. ibid

7. I Corinthians 11:28.

Now, as for the sacramental intention of the General Confession and Absolution, it is quite clear that the purpose of this form was meant to be equal to private Confession and Absolution. This is obvious from the Exhortation in the Holy Communion Service from 1549:

"And yf there bee any of you, whose conscience is troubled and greved in any thing, lackyng comforte or counsaill, let him come to me, or to some other dyscrete and learned priest, taught in the law of God, and confesse and open his synne and griefe secretly, that he may receive suche ghostly counsaill, advyse, and comfort, that his conscience maye be releved, and that of us (as of the ministers of GOD and of the churche) he may receive comfort and absolucion, to the satisfaccion of his mynde, and avoyding of all scruple and doubtfulnes: requiryng suche as shalbe satisfied with a generall confession, not to be offended with them that doe use, to their further satisfiyng, the auriculer and secret confession to the Priest: nor those also whiche thinke nedefull or convenient, for the quietnes of their awne consciences, particuliarly to open their sinnes to the Priest: to bee offended with them that are satisfied, with their humble confession to GOD, and the generall confession to the churche. But in all thinges to folowe and kepe the rule of charitie, and every man to be satisfied with his owne conscience, not judgyng other mennes myndes or consciences; where as he hath no warrant of Goddes word to the same."

8. Many of the posts in the "Sacraments" of this blog section explain the teaching in detail.

9. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching." Hebrews 10:25

A tale of two eras

For the last few years I have made it clear that Anglicans cannot use the words "Catholic" and "Protestant" to mean two opposite and irreconcilable positions, or even to mean mutually exclusive  positions. For us a good Protestant (in the Anglican sense) has to be a good Catholic, and vice versa. I was raised knowing that this set us apart from other western Christians, to whom "Catholic" meant Roman, and to whom "Protestant" meant anything but. Our Prayer Book title page said "Protestant Episcopal Church," and the creeds called the larger Church to which we belonged "Catholic." To us there was no contradiction.

What I find in my experience is that schools exist within the larger umbrella of "Anglicanism" who have completely lost sight of this basic Anglican position. They allow outsiders to define all the terms. So it is that we see a new school of people who call themselves "Reformed" or "Evangelical" who think they can dispense with the substance of sacramental validity and still be Anglican. We will call them "School X." They think they can remove the Apostolic Succession of Bishops from our beliefs and history, and still be true to the English Reformers. They demonstrate by their arguments a very serious vacuum in their knowledge of what those English Reformers actually practiced and taught, picking and choosing the parts they like.

What also I find is a new school that call themselves "Anglo-Catholic," and yet agree wholeheartedly with the people in "School X" about what the English Reformers practiced and taught (unlike the real Anglo-Catholics of the Oxford Movement). We will call them "School Y." The members of this school demonstrate the same vacuum of knowledge as the other school. They can quote only enough Cranmer, Jewell or Hooker (etc.) to misrepresent what such men believed and wrote. In the end, both schools present an argument against remaining Anglican at all, and play into the hands of those who want to take our people away either to Geneva or Rome.

I have addressed the question of Anglican Identity in a paper I wrote two years ago for a conference of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, in which I said: "The English Church established a carefully maintained balance between Rome, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Zwinglianism, criticizing and rejecting various ideas in each of these systems. This in turn kept the Anglicans in a state of at least some amount of opposition to everybody all the time. Each of these camps saw the Church of England as accepting error by adopting or maintaining some of the ideas and practices of Rome, or some of those belonging to Calvin, or some of those belonging to Luther, but never to the satisfaction of loyalists in any of those parties."

 I have been asked recently, by Dr. Tighe (in comments on another thread), "why has so much attention to [the Thirty-Nine Articles] been given on this blog? Ought you not, rather, to be expounding and propounding the wholesome doctrine set forth in the King's Book of 1543?" I would like to give a longer answer than I did in that comment thread. 

The King's Book has never been an Anglican Formulary, it is not in the Book of Common Prayer, and it presents no problems or questions to the average person in any of our churches. The Thirty-Nine Articles, on the other hand, are in plain view of everybody, appear to command the loyalty of everybody (or, if only perceived, the doctrine in them does so in fact), and suffer constant mishandling from both Schools, X and Y. As a result, they have the potential to be highly instructive or highly dangerous. This is why Fr. Wells and I have undertaken the task of explaining their meaning, and why we plan to finish the project over the next several months. We can thus use them to present the sound doctrine intended, and at the same remove danger caused by misunderstanding.

In the hands of the new "Schoolmen" they are dangerous. The fellows in "School X" twist the Articles to mean all kinds of nonsense that any good student of history ought to dismiss, if only because it cannot be reconciled to actual Canon Law and church practice in the history of the Church of England, particularly the relevant period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fellows in "School Y" twist the Articles to mean the exact same things, and therefore wring their hands, hang their heads in shame, and eventually flee to Rome or forever threaten to do so. Both schools need to go back to a proper school.

What really separates English Reformation theology and the Oxford Movement is simply time. It is not a matter of disagreement. Time created its own emergencies, needing doctrinal clarification. Let us look at the real problems of these two widely separated eras.

By the sixteenth century, the average European and English Christian had inherited a largely corrupted religion. They had no knowledge of Scripture because it was not translated for them. They could not even understand the Mass that most of them attended. Their perception of Christianity was based on a series of false doctrines. Their understanding of salvation was all about getting "time off" from the fairytale land called Purgatory (which has never been a doctrine of the Universal Church), based on the merits of gods called "saints" who had earned those merits by supererogation. Thus God owed man a balance, and sinners could apply the saintly merits to their balance when granted by ecclesiastical authority in the form of "indulgences." 

Also, every time a Mass was offered, a certain amount of expiation was weighed against the sins of the world. The sacrament of Holy Communion was unnecessary and mostly unavailable; but one could gaze upon it when it was elevated, and thus receive all the grace that was possible anyway. And, besides, they had the priest to consume it for them. And, what did he consume? Not bread and wine, but a transubstantiated "mystery" (not the genuine mystery that is consistent with the nature of a sacrament) that no longer had honest substance, but only an appearance, the substance taken away to become, in the literal and most carnal sense, the Body and Blood of Christ.

Now, the people in "School Y" refuse to accept the recorded facts of history. That the average illiterate person had no better understanding of Christianity than what I have described above is simply the only conclusion we may draw from the overwhelming evidence. Do we blame these doctrinal errors on Rome? The problem is, even though much of this constituted a corrupted notion of what Rome taught, the needs of the people for true doctrine were largely neglected. The people in "School X" however, can at least acknowledge the facts concerning how bad the situation was. The problem with them is, as it was with their forefathers, they confuse substance with shadow. They condemn as "popish" the sacramental practices inherited from the ancient Church because they cannot distinguish between valid Tradition and man-made traditions. The Puritans made this mistake in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and so it was that Richard Hooker took pen in hand to correct them.

When one considers the needs of the sixteenth century, the fact that Anglicans used the words "oblation," "priest" or "sacrifice" only when it was necessary, begins to make sense. That they felt the need to stress, for example, that "The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them," has everything to do with the times they had lived through. The immediate need of the sixteenth century dictated that they use with caution commonly misunderstood language.

Meanwhile, even the most abbreviated version of Holy Communion placed the service in the context of "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world." The need to emphasize that this was offered once by Christ, and for all, and that His offering cannot be repeated nor does it need to be, was perfectly in keeping with the Catholic Tradition (for those who know it). The Eucharistic Sacrifice (or as it can be translated with equal accuracy, "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving") was thus retained in practice and doctrine without the danger of turning it into the double plural "sacrifices of masses" as separate expiations. The sacrificial nature of the Eucharist was stated as the mysterious and supernatural context of the service.

The need of that era dictated that they use the language of sacrifice, including the word "priest," carefully and sparingly. They retained the doctrine and practice of the ancient Church without creating confusion that would throw the people back into the darkness from which they had only recently emerged.

By the middle of the nineteenth century another need had arisen. The Church of England, and also the Episcopal Church in America, and other "Anglican" churches (as some were calling them), needed a restoration of respect for the sacraments in general. They needed to be reminded that the Tradition of the Universal Church was necessary to everything Anglican. They needed to be freed from constraints of Puritanism that had been allowed to creep in and take the dignity out of worship for Almighty God. Those who genuinely know the mind of the English Reformers well understand why even Newman (when he was still able to speak for the others as an Anglican) affirmed in Tract 90 that the Anglo-Catholics held firmly to the Book of Common Prayer and to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The tragedy with Newman was that, even having written a sound and powerful argument in that tract, he lacked the conviction that his fellows retained all their lives long. He could not even drive home the force of his work. His conversion to Rome was not at all consistent with Anglo-Catholicism, but was, rather, to the consternation of Dr. Pussey and the others. They all finished their lives as Anglicans.

In their time, it became necessary to use the words of sacrifice, including "priest," much more often and less sparingly. For, the times had changed and the needs were different. Some of them even endured prosecution and jailing, just as their forefathers in the sixteenth century endured the stake and fire. 

The strength of Anglicanism today is that we have the restoration of Evangelical truth in our foundation, and we have the fullness of Catholic faith, worship and sacramental practice. We did not obtain this great inheritance by excluding any portion of the Faith of the Universal Church, but by possessing it all. One need of our era is to correct the mis-perceptions of Schools X and Y, and refuse to be pressured into losing part of our wealth by taking unnecessary losses through false choices.