2 The worship of one church

In this chapter we are going to look at the Christian service of worship in one
church. This church is my church, St Mary’s Stoke Newington in London. On
Sunday morning I sit at the back of St Mary’s by the font. In this chapter I tell
what I see and hear and, as far as I can, I explain what is going on in the
service.

1. Gathering – In this Place

On Sunday morning the people of St Mary Stoke Newington gather together.
They are surprised, sometimes embarrassed but also glad to find themselves
brought into this company. Some have been members of this congregation for
years, others for only weeks or are even here for the first time. Some are
Christians with a lifetime’s discipleship, some have been hovering between
faith and religiosity for years.

1. Arrival
You service starts with the first hymn, the Introit. As we sing our first a
procession comes into view at the front of the Church. It is led by a half-dozen
people dressed in white surplices. It comes down the side aisle, turns at the
bottom of the Church, and goes up the central aisle and to the altar, where
each of them takes their place. The rector sits on a seat behind the altar. We
dress them in white to remind ourselves that are all a people given radiant
new garments. The first person in this procession carries a large cross. The
second and third carry large candles, a fourth carries the bible, then comes
the priest, and we follow them. We are the column that stretches behind them,
so the whole congregation is notionally part of this procession. We sing:
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation!
Come ye who hear,
now to his temple draw near;
praise him in glad adoration (Neander)

The Christians are people called together in order to make this journey
together. We form a cavalcade that is on the move. Although at different times
in the service we are sitting or kneeling, we are nevertheless on this journey
right through the service. This community of a hundred people are being led
by these people led by the cross and Word of God. We are singing versions
of the psalms that the people of Israel sang as they journeyed up to
Jerusalem, the city of God. Our first hymn echoes these songs of the journey
and ascent to the house of God, so they are all about coming into the
presence of God.

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All people that on earth do dwell
sing to the Lord with cheerful voice
him serve with fear, his praise forth tell
come ye before him and rejoice

2. Witnesses
We are a people on the way. We have made our way across the borough in
order to be here together in Church. At least a couple of times a year our
service begins outside the church building. We are led by the same little group
that we called the procession, dressed in these white garments, and we follow
the cross and torches that they bear. In this way on Palm Sunday we follow
our Lord up to Jerusalem and into the city for the final week of his passion. On
Palm Sunday morning we meet in the middle of the borough, with Christians
from other churches, we pray and sing with them and then we walk to St
Mary’s singing the whole way. This year we met on the Kingsland High Road
with St Paul’s West Hackney, and Hackney Baptist Church and processed
back along Church Street the mile to St Mary’s. We sang:
All glory, laud and honour
to thee Redeemer King
To whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring

We sang Ride on! Ride on Majesty! and There is a green Hill far away… and
Give me oil in my lamp, keep it burning… We got through the whole lot twice,
in rain, in good voice the whole way. From the shops and cafés of Church
Street heads popped out to see us. The Church is not stuck inside any church
building, but is audible, visible and public.

3. The glory of God

The next thing we sing in the Church service is:
Glory to God in the highest,
and peace to his people on earth.
The Gloria has inspired the most complex musical settings, but in our Church
we all sing it together, to quite a simple tune, and with some gusto. This is our
song, and we don’t know any great joy than to sing this. We worship God. He
is Lord, we are not. This is our faith.
Lord God, heavenly King,
Almighty God and Father,
We worship you, we give you thanks,
We praise you for your glory
The result of giving this glory to God, and not to anyone else, is peace to
God's people on earth, and for this we praise God. We confess that the God
of Jesus Christ is the only God, and that he, and no one else, is ‘most high in
the glory of God the Father’. It is an astonishing thing to us that we are
becoming the bearers of the name of God. We bear his name to the world,
and we bear the world to God. So we sing that the God of Jesus Christ is the
only God.
For thou art holy, Thou only art the Lord,
Thou only O Christ, with the Holy Spirit,
art most high in the glory of God the Father

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When we give glory exclusively to God, we can recognise all creatures for
what they are, the intriguing, marvellous, creatures of God. Worship of God is
the backstop that prevents us from taking too low or too high a view of those
around us, so that we do not idolise them or demonise them, but give them
the proper regard that they are owed.

4. Rivals for our worship

The confession that only God is God takes place in the face of all the many
claimants to divine status. There may be rival gods, alternative authorities and
divinities, but we declare that none of them are what they claim to be, and
none can give us what we want. Other people give themselves away to all
sorts of powers and forces, but the Christians just give themselves to the one
from whom they have received themselves, in order to receive their lives back
from him, renewed.

In its worship the Christian community says that the Father of Jesus Christ is
the only God. This sounds abrupt, of course. There are other ‘gods’ (in
inverted commas) vying for us. Our contemporaries do not claim that there
are other gods, but the things that they say and do represent claims to power.
A claim to power that is never challenged eventually becomes beyond
challenge, and takes on an unlimited authority, which is a claim to divinity.

The world is made up of all the people in it and all the institutions, good and
bad, accumulated through our history. Our social structures that are good
when they help us to come together, but when they get out of kilter, they can
also push us in the wrong direction. Then they have make it difficult to act well
towards one another, and easy to take more credit and power than belongs to
us. When we return all glory to God, it does not linger in the wrong places and
causes harm. When it is not returned to him, it becomes identified with various
nebulous and ambiguous imperatives and authorities that withhold it. We
inherit them from previous generations, and we inflict them on one another,
and leave them like bad debts that the generations that come after us will
have to deal with. There are many ‘more-than-human’ powers and subhuman
powers, and their effect is always to us make less-than-human. The ancient
world called them ‘gods’ and the Church calls them ‘idols’, The Church points
that all power and authority come from God, and so it is all limited and must
be referred back to him so that it does not grow out of control.

5. Why worship God?

God makes a community that acknowledges him and nothing and no one else
as God. This community identifies him as the provider of all things, and credits
him with this and gives him thanks. It receives all things from him as good for
us and so does not seem them as threats that we need to fear. We worship
God so that we are not become corrupted by worshipping anything else. God
is not dependent on our worship. He is the God who really does not want
anything from us, so in this sense he does not have any agenda. We can
relax and take that it he wants the best for us, because he does not have any
reason of his own for this relationship. For this reason God cannot be warped

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or corrupted by our worship, so we remain safe when we refer all solely to
him.

This service is the Church’s public confession that there is only one God. He
is the one true thing, and the ultimate and only anchor. He cannot be drawn
into our conspiracies, and he refuses our attempts to attach our various
projects and partisanship to him. We cannot manipulate him. He is his own
master, and so utterly and impartial, and he is utterly for us. He is good for us
because he is able to resist us.

When we worship the Lord only, we cease to defer to these other uncontrolled
authorities. The community that worships Christ is taken out of the orbit of
other lords and gods. We are the highest creatures in God's creation, we
bear the image of God. We may not give what we have been given away. It is
only confession of God that prevents us from making our own claim to divinity
over other people. The Church itself is made a public witness to the world that
this is so. This community is put here by God to stand in the way of all others
claims and form of partisanship, and to stand against all half-truths that are
promoted into all totalitarian claims. He alone is God – and he is God for us,
and happy for us to know this. So we sing:
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
My God and King
The Church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out (Herbert)

6. Fellowship
The collection of people that is St Mary’s church turns up and sings this
worship together. These people are not secondary, but central. They are
God's public act for the world because they are the product and evidence of
God's love. We confess that We are the body of Christ. In the one Spirit we
were baptised…

God has created a distinction between the people of God and the rest of the
world. We have been called out of the world, and gathered together to make a
new, distinct and holy people. God selects some from us to be his
worshipping community. This unilateral act of God creates this distinct
gathering, which displays the character of God to the world, and to show the
world what God’s hopes for it are. So we sing:
Praise to the Lord, O let all that is in me adore him!
All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before him.
Let the amen
sound from his people again,
gladly for all we adore him (Neander)

The love of God is this specific entity, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the
fellowship of those being made holy by God. We are brought into this entity of
love that is this gathering. The service is not only an event of worship. It is
also Christian ministry and service to the world. This is also a service in the
sense of a work being done and of a public service being provided. The
service of worship which brings us together is not just the surface or the

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prelude to a more real private process. We are being built into a holy people.
We are being assembled and built together, like living stones, into one temple.
We are baptised into one body, and this body is for this particular part of this
city of London, and for anyone else who is ready to hear us.

2 Hearing – Witnesses of God

By listening to the word of the Lord in Scripture the people of St Mary’s may
become his witnesses and a holy people.

1. The Word of the Lord

God is present to the Church as his Word. God is heard by us in the words of
Scripture read out in the Church service. The Lord speaks to us, now, live.
These words of this particular reading is his Word to us now, in our unique
present circumstances.

In the Sunday morning service the bible is carried down from the altar into the
middle of the church. It is held up high so everyone can see it, and as the
Gospel is read out, we greet it as Christ himself, here with us. We all get to
our feet and the deacon says:
This is the Word of the Lord We reply: Thanks be to God
Then the Gospel is read and the Lord is heard.

But even before that, we have received the word, for the bible is part of the
procession that enters the Church as the service begins. In that procession,
the bible follows the cross, and is accompanied by the two candles (‘torches’),
which are the lights of the Old and the New Testaments. These two
testaments are ‘two witnesses who agree’. We visualise them as the two
cherubim who wait on the Lord and his people, day and night singing ‘Holy,
Holy, Holy’. Behind the deacon who carries the book of Scripture comes the
minister who is going to open it for us.

When it is time for the gospel to be read, the bible is brought down from the
altar into the middle of the Church, so everyone can see and hear. The
deacon turns about so that the open bible faces the minister. The minister
swings the censor over it making puffs of incense rise over the pages of the
bible. In our idiom, incense is holiness made visible. It tells us that all the
holiness of God is concealed in this testimony, and that the glory of God is
about to become audible to us. What will the Lord God say? What glory will be
revealed? The Gospel sentence is spoken:
Speak, Lord. You have the words of eternal life

2. The words of Christ

Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark.
Glory to you, O Lord.
When the Scripture is read, we hear the words of Christ, and we are in
Christ’s presence. Because we read from three parts of the bible we hear
from three groups of witnesses. We are reminded of them by the two light-
bearers, one for the Old Testament and one for the New. Christ speaks to us.

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We hear the Old Testament, and we reply with a psalm. Then we hear from an
epistle, and we reply with a hymn. Then the gospel is carried down from the
altar while we sing Alleluia, and we hear the Gospel. I am the first and the
last, the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1.17). From the Lord we receive
instruction, encouragement and warning. Whatever you did for the least of
these brothers of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25.40). At the end of the
reading we say:
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.

The bible leads the procession back up to the altar, while the priest makes his
way to the pulpit. Perhaps nothing as deliberate and formal as this is done in
your church. The preacher simply goes to the lectern or to the microphone.
But the same elements are there, whether we are aware of them or not. In the
deep memory of the Church all the movements of the gathered congregation,
led by the Word and the cross, trace out the path of Christ into the world, and
the path that we take as we follow him.

3. The sermon
When the Gospel has been read, our priest clambers up into pulpit. Perhaps
he says something like ‘May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our
heart be now and always acceptable….’ He knows the awesome responsibility
of speaking at this time. The reading of Scripture and the sermon are one and
the same act. The Word of the Lord is opened for us. The scroll is rolled open
and what is written there is explained to us. Isaiah says: One of the seraphs
flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of
tongs, the seraph touched my mouth. Ezekiel heard the instruction Mortal
man, eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. He gave me the
scroll and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.

The purpose of the sermon is to tell us what we have heard in these three
readings. But the reading and hearing of the Word of scripture takes place in
the service of worship, and the purpose of the sermon is to show us this so
that we can more fully participate in this worship. The sermon draws our
attention to the whole action of God for us as it is laid out not only in Scripture
but in all the psalms hymns songs and prayers that make up this service. The
sermon shows us how all these relate to each other and so how the whole
service of Christ and people forms a unity. The sermon is not an interlude in
the worship, but gathers together the Scripture, the worship and service of the
Church to show their unity.

The sermon opens Scripture. The sermon is expansion on the lessons. It links
the readings together, and links them to previous and future lessons. The
sermon spells out the relationships between the readings, and so indicates
where the Church presently is and what it must now seek in its prayers.

We not only hear the bible but respond to it by singing and praying. Our
worship, hymns and prayers have accumulated as the response of the Church
to Scripture. So second to the bible, and in support of it, we follow ‘Common
Worship’, which is the whole collection of worship services set out by the

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Church of England, along with and our hymn book or worship song collection.
These books give us the minimum; they do not stop us doing anything, but
they allow us to amplify and extend our worship.

4. The Word of God leads the Church

The Word of God we hear week by week gives us the Gospel through the
year. St Mary’s follows the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the
lectionary of the Church of England, along with many other churches. It sets
out which passages of Scripture are read each week.

The bible is not only one book, but it is also many books, made up of many
statements from many witnesses, a ‘great cloud of witnesses’, as the Book of
Hebrews (12.1) puts it. The Lord has gathered this company of witnesses so
that they can speak to us, each of them in his or her own voice. It is for our
sake that they went through their trials and their experience was written and
passed down to us. That these many voices give us this single testimony is
demonstration of its truth. The bible is a single canon and indivisible
testament of God. So we sing:
I bind unto myself the power
the service of the seraphim;
confessors' faith, apostles' word,
the patriarchs' prayers, the prophets' scrolls (St Patrick – Alexander)

Scripture gives us the testimony of these witnesses of the action of God, so it

is the foundational document of the Church. The Lectionary establishes the
passages from Scripture that we are going to read over the course of the year,
and indeed of three years. The lectionary ensures that we read the whole
bible: it establishes the minimum that we are going to read, but it does not
prevent us from reading more or in other ways. This week’s readings follow
from last week’s, so that week by week we are following a trail through
Scripture, that takes us through every book of the bible. In this way we are not
only able to celebrate Christmas and Easter at the same time as every other
Christian church, but also Advent, and Epiphany and the Ascension. The
significance of each of these festivals becomes clear through their relationship
with each other. For much of the year Roman Catholic and Protestant
churches are following the same sets of readings. We have very similar
lectionaries so we are often the same page, and this is another witness to the
unity of the Church. The Church together is on pilgrimage, his word is ‘a
lantern to our feet and a light on our path’ as we follow the course described
for us by the readings set out through the Church year. Our Lord is at our
head. God may teach us his ways, and we may walk in his paths. Our great
redeemer leads and we follow, pilgrims in this barren land. So we sing:
Lord thy Word abideth
And our footsteps guideth
Who its truth believeth
Light and joy receiveth (515)

5. Unworthiness and reconciliation

The Lord God knows us. He has spoken to us and has given us his name, so
that we may speak to him. As we call him and come into his presence we

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become aware of our deficiency and need and so come to know who we are.
We ask God to have mercy on us. It is always right to confess our need of him
and to identify the sin that our neediness has forced us to. We confess that
we have taken praise that we should have passed on to God and by default
we attempted to establish ourselves without God, without care for his
creatures, and so have held out against him. We have to make this statement
publicly, to him and to his creatures. As we come into the assembly of the
Lord we ask God for his mercy and pray for purity.
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit

We ask whether we may enter his presence and hear his voice. We confess
our sins to God and to one another publicly, ask God for his forgiveness, and
we ask one another for forgiveness too. Then we can hope that we may
‘worthily magnify your holy name.’

6. Judgment and self-judgment

We are released from our burdens. We come in with this huge sense of relief.
We can stop and put down our load. We can set down that vast bundle of
obligations that we are unable to fulfil. But strangely, the load has to be taken
away from us. We who are so used to this load of expectations we threatened
by the prospect of its removal and we resist. The masters are taken off the
backs of the poor and so the poor are released. The masters are judged, and
we are identified as amongst these masters.

The Church service is a public place in which all questions are heard and
anyone may bring an accusation against anyone else. No one is too powerful
to be challenged, no one too lowly or inexperienced to speak. All that is secret
elsewhere is revealed here, so our past will be visible to all. But our past is not
the whole truth of who we are, for we are formed by hearing the voice that
comes to us out of the future, the voice of God.

The Church service is a public court in session. In it all accusations are heard.
In it anyone may speak and bring an accusation against anyone else. No one
is too powerful to be challenged and no one is too lowly or inexperience to
make a charge. All that is secret is revealed. Our past catches up with us. We
have to admit what we have taken, do so in this public act, in which we are
humbled.

Everything here is said to the Christian people: all this Scripture is for the
Church, and only through the Church is it for the world. The Church hears and
fails to hear his voice and to pass on the Word of God, will suffer. The Church
is given to the world so that the world can watch the Church hearing this
voice, or and failing to hear it, and suffering the consequences of hearing or
not hearing it.

7. The name of God

God has spoken to us. He has given his name to mankind. If this is all that
happened in a church service, it would still mean that everything has already

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happened. For God has spoken to man and in Christ, man has heard. Now, in
Christ all men may speak and be heard by all men. The grace of God is the
possibility that we may be human together. This is the effect of this name.
That is why we sing:
I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three (St Patrick – Alexander)

We are heard. We are known. We are judged and forgiven and reconciled.
We are recognised and affirmed, and the forgiveness of Christ is announced
to us, here by this little gathering of people. With this forgiveness he has
brought man to peace, and brought us to peace with one another. This is why
we say:
The peace of the Lord be always with you
Peace be with you

3 Singing – With One Accord

Christians sing. They sing simply because they may, in gladness for what they
have received. As they sing they come out of isolation and into fellowship with
God and with all his creation. In each worship service we are brought into
communion with the whole worldwide church; in the Spirit we are present to
them and they to us.

1. Singing
Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee.
We sing. We become of one voice and one mind. Without ceasing to be
ourselves, we are transported out of ourselves.
O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our
salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving and be glad in him
with psalms (Psalm 95)

God speaks to us in Scripture and we reply with songs and hymns. The
service is conversational – The Lord sings, and we sing back. The hymns are
our own songs sung in response. Gathered together in worship we are in the
Spirit, and so in the presence of the Lord.

The whole company of heaven speaks and sings. Their service started long
before we arrived. They sing the praises of God, that is, they say simply and
unfeignedly how things are and they look forward to how things will be. This
crowd in heaven already worships God and celebrates the communion of all
things. Their celebration spills over to us and make up the service of worship
in which we participate each time we meet. We sing
Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
This call is the pulse of every church service. You would like it in Greek? –
Kyrie eleison. In Latin? – Domine, misere. In English, Lord, help us! The
Christian worship service always consists of saying in bewildered delight that
we have received mercy, and then of asking for more kindness and more

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help. In all our worship we sing ‘Lord, have mercy’ and so we ask God to give
us what is good, and show us how it is good, and how we may receive it with
thanks, until we can receive everything as good.

The Lord is here for us. We sing out of a sense of relief. We acknowledge
that, though there are many forces and pressures on us, none of them
deserves our worship. By worshipping God, only, we are freed of all other
forms of worship. Our release has been announced, and our worship is our
response to this news of our release. The Lord is here to arbitrate between
us. He promotes the neglected, and demotes the arrogant and uncaring. So
we sing:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty…
This is the song Mary sang as she declared herself willing to receive the
Saviour for us. At St Mary’s, we sing it as the Magnificat at Morning Prayer
and sing the hymn version of it at the eucharist.
Tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord,
Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice

2. We sing
Either we love and adore God and give ourselves to him, which is to say give
ourselves back to him, or we direct all that love and adoration to other objects.
If we do this, we give them more adoration than they can manage, and
thereby we make idols of them. I give myself to the darlings and delights of
the media, but so grudgingly give myself to the people of the church. All our
whole consumer culture is a vast displacement activity that tries to take the
place of this true love.

Every Christian worship service is the worship and service of Christ. It is not
primarily our work, but his. What we take to be the words of the Church, and
so our words, are first the speech of Christ. This worship is made by Christ’s
worship of God: these psalms are his songs, and these songs and hymns are
the ways we are able to join him in those psalms. We sing:
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest

Christ directs his worship to God and to no other master. Christ prays and
speaks on our behalf. He is in conversation with God and he opens his side of
this relationship to us. Christ is doing the worshipping and we are simply
travelling behind him, even piggy-backing on him, so as he worships in his
person we are also able to say ‘Our Father’, and what he says is received by
the Father. Christ is man in conversation with God and the Christian service of
worship is Christ’s service to God.

The crowd in heaven already looks forward to our coming. This singing
precedes the church, and their acclamations are what we hear in the liturgy

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every Sunday. If we did not sing the very stones would cry out – and indeed
we are dumb things now made able to cry out and praise him.

Christ prays and speaks on our behalf. He is in conversation with God and he
opens his side of this relationship to us. Christ is doing the worshipping and
we are simply travelling behind him. He worships in his person we are also
able to say ‘Our Father…’. What Christ says is received by the Father. He is
God in conversation with God, but now for our sake he is also man in
conversation with God. He is man-with-God. So the Christian service of
worship is Christ’s service to God, since Christ directs himself to God and to
no other master. So we sing:
Breathe on me Breath of God,
fill me with life anew
that I may do what thou dost love
and do what thou wouldst do. (NEH 342 Hatch)

3. We sing in response to what we have heard

Our worship is our response to the Scripture that has been read, so we sing
out of a sense of relief. God speaks to us in Scripture and we reply with songs
and hymns. The Lord sings, and we sing back, so every service is a call and
response. The psalm is our first response to Scripture, and our hymns are our
response to the psalm, so we have a pattern of these three elements of
Scripture, psalm and hymn. Just as there are different readings from the
different communities of witness of the Old Testament and New Testament,
we respond to them with different sorts of song – the psalms from Israel, the
hymns from the Church, and the briefer worship songs from the contemporary
Church. So together we all ‘sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’ and make
music in our hearts to the Lord’ (Ephesians 5.19). The hymns are our own
songs sung in response.

In all this hearing Scripture and singing the replies to it, the Lord is singing to
us. He is not only speaking to us in Scripture, but he is singing to us in the
replies to the Scripture. He is not only singing to us, but he is doing so in the
voices of the congregation that we hear all around us, and even in the words
that come out of us in our own voice.

We sing, together, and from that, we are able to conclude that we have been
brought together to do so. The Spirit has set us in Christ, and in effect that
means that the whole company of heaven which is animated by the Spirit, and
which pre-exists us, this whole company has welcomed us and made us
members. We are many voices, many different minds and personalities, but
now we also we have one voice, and are of one mind. Before we were many
voices, but all our individual attempts to make us ourselves distinct, and to
establish ourselves on our own terms, made us all alike, an undifferentiated
lump. But now our unity, given to us by this heavenly company, maximises our
diversity, so we are diverse and we are able to recognise one another as
diverse and to let one another be so. Our new unity does not lessen our
diversity: it establishes it at last. Because we sing with one voice, each of us
truly gains his or her own voice for the first time.
Let us join our cheerful songs

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with angels round the throne
ten thousand, thousand are their tongues
but all their joys are one (Isaac Watts 349)

4. With one accord

Our reception into the communion of God through forgiveness and
reconciliation, makes us burst into thanksgiving and song. This thanksgiving
has a basic pattern. Each service at St Mary’s follows the same basic pattern.
This is laid out in the form of service set out by the Church of England in
‘Common Worship’. We call it ‘Common Worship’ because it enables us to
worship in common, that is together. We do not all sing and pray individually
but in unison and harmony, and the result is that we and anyone who hears
us, can understand what we are singing about and giving thanks for.

Our worship must be intelligible, Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14. We

sing and speak intelligibly, so that people can understand what we are saying.
Though we worship God, and we also lead and teach those worshipping with
us how to worship, what to say. That is to say, it gives us its reasons and so
explains itself as it goes along. Our worship consists both of short phrases,
like ‘Lord, have mercy’, and such as worship songs are made up of. And it
consists of long sentences with complicated syntax of the sort hymns are
made of. We need the full account and the acclamations that sum it up. The
sermon points out how our songs reply to the Scripture we have heard, so we
notice what we are singing, and sing with our minds, so that what we sing
becomes truly ours.

‘Common Worship’ contains a vast amount of Scripture. It is a long chain of

passages from Scripture adopted by the Church from its earliest days for its
worship. With all its prayers, sentences and responses, it gives puts the
words of God in the mouth of the whole congregation, where it can dwell
richly. Psalms give us our response to each passage of Scripture, and hymns
give us our response to the psalm. We these three elements of Scripture,
psalm and hymn. We need the sermon to point out to us the connection
between Scripture, psalm and hymn, and we need someone who understands
the Scripture and the psalm to choose the right hymn, that picks up the theme
that appears in Scripture and psalm. Just as there are several readings from
these various communities of witness of the Old Testament and New
Testament, we respond to them with different sorts of song, the psalms from
Israel, the hymns from the Church, and the briefer more ecstatic form of
worship songs. So together we all ‘sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’
(Ephesians 5.19).

5. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit brings us into his fellowship, the communion of God. This
communion is the love of God, here for us. This communion is love,
embodied as these persons, and so as the Church. It opens us up to love and
to mutual subordination to one another. We sing:
Love is kind and suffers long,
love is meek and thinks no wrong,

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love than death itself more strong;
therefore, give us love.

The Holy Spirit brings us into the Body of Christ, which is the love of God
given to the world. The Holy Spirit is the Lord at work serving and securing his
people. He is the fierce glory of God, visible as the fire of Sinai, now ‘tongues
of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them’ (Acts 2), now
glorifying Jesus Christ by uniting his people to him. The Spirit has been sent
to us to act as our servant. He is the paraclete, literally on call. We have only
to ask, to pray and he will teach us to speak with the Lord. He will not give us
what we cannot cope with, so no absolute power is put into our irresponsible
hands. But he will enable us to ask for what we need.

The Spirit is known by the gifts he gives. All his gifts build up the whole body
of Christ. The gifts given to you are to be exercised by you in service of the
rest of us, so you exercise your gifts for us, on our behalf. They are our gifts
because they are yours. As the canticle from Isaiah puts it:
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding.
The spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord

We live on the words of the Son carried by the breath of the Spirit. Their
speech and life animates us and is all the speech and life we have got. The
Holy Spirit brings us here before all these other people and holds this
community together, making it one body. So we sing:
Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost,
taught by thee we covet most,
of thy gifts at Pentecost,
holy heavenly, love.

6. Freedom and discipleship

The Lord brings freedom. The service of the Lord is to makes us free from
every other master and from every kind of compulsion. To confess Christ is to
renounce other masters and all forms of captivity. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is freedom.’ (2 Corinthians 3.17) Having identified the Lord, the right
lord, we are not taken in by any other master and can be fearless in the face
of them.

Within the fellowship that the Lord gives us, we are able to recognise one
another as distinct and unique. Because we sing with one voice, each of us
truly gains his or her own voice for the first time. The unity, given to us by this
heavenly company, maximises our diversity, so we are able to recognise one
another as different from ourselves and let one another be so.

The freedom of the Spirit has to be learned, which involves guidance,

direction and control. So this freedom does not mean that we are abandoned
to our own devices; freedom comes together with this fellowship, which
means with the helpers, and with all the practices and conceptual tools of
discipleship. The guidelines, practices and exercises of which this discipleship

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consists are the gifts of the Spirit. We learn to serve, to exercise restraint and
to judge ourselves, and to serve one another and wait for one another. We
serve one another not simply by conceding whatever we ask one another for,
but by whatever is good for us. We exercise judgment on one another’s behalf
and we ask them to judge and correct us and so to exercise their judgment on
our behalf.

The Spirit gives all these other Christians, sanctified, experienced Christian,
all of whom are dedicated to us for the purpose of our sanctification. So
Christians are taught this more rigorous lifestyle that involves learning to turn
away from some of the apparently urgent things presented to us. We cease to
raise some people to far more prominence than is good for us or for them,
and which render other people invisible. We are no longer as easily pushed
about as everyone else and we gain a mind of our own. So we say:
Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
It is right to give him thanks and praise

4. Praying – Asking for Forgiveness

Worship of God makes an articulate people, who can speak back to God,
speak up for one another and give thanks for one another. The Church hears,
sings and prays together because God has spoken and hears his people
respond. Each church prays with the many other congregations that make up
the whole Church. As all the Christians around the world offer their prayers to
God, we pray with them.

1. Praying people
We have come to pray to the Lord. We have come apart from the world and
have come together in order to do this. Each church service is a withdrawal
from the world to pray for a while. Prayer does not require that we withdraw
from other Christians, but that we meet and say our prayers together. We say
them without worrying about whether we do so with all our minds; sometimes
our prayers are more heart-felt, said with more involvement, concentration or
even desperation. When we find nothing to say, we pray that God hears the
prayers of those around us; we learn to pray our own prayers unconcernedly
with them together.

This prayer continues outside church, in our ‘home communions’. There are
usually at least a couple of people who are too infirm to get out to Church. At
the eucharist a couple of us receive the eucharistic bread in a little container
and go round to the flat of those who are housebound and celebrate
communion with them. The communion service of the whole Church
continues in miniature in their front room, with a shorter version of the same
prayers. All communion is getting out and joining the saints in the freedom of
the Spirit – and this is particularly obvious at these housebound communions.
You bring with you all the news, prayers and good wishes of the congregation

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so that that this elderly person can continue to share in the life of the
congregation, and we can share in their experience, which is often a matter of
facing illness and death.

2. Intercessions
Scripture, sermon and the creed are followed by the intercessions. Our
intercessions are led by members of the congregation. They are lead by a
different person each week, and the character of the individual intercessor
shows through their prayers. The whole Church depends on the example of
these few who know how to pray, probably because they have been taught
prayers in earliest childhood and know them off by heart. Whoever is leading
the prayers begins with:
Let us pray for the Church and for the world, and let us thank God for his
goodness
They give us long enough pauses which each of us fills with our own prayers.
At the end of each set of prayers there is a response:
Lord hear us
Lord mercifully hear us

We pray for our children, and then for all the children they mix with. We know
that there are plenty of children and teenagers without fathers to model
themselves on; we know how angry some of the young in this borough feel,
so we pray for them and for their baffled or absent families, and for the
reconciliation of generations. We pray for those facing age, ill-health and the
vanishing prospect of recovery, and so we pray for the provision of care for
the elderly and for the staff in hospitals. This leads us to pray for those
working in education and the social services, and so we pray for our borough
and city.

We pray for the world, usually starting with whatever part of the world is in
conflict and in the news. We are also linked by friendships and relationships to
the Church in different parts of the world, and so we pray for those Christians
who we know are under pressure. And we know that they pray for us, so that
we may be faithful witnesses here too. Finally we end:
Merciful Father, Accept these prayers for the sake of thy Son, our Saviour
Jesus Christ. Amen.

Prayer continues in other forms after the service and before it. By the font at
the back of St Mary’s there is a prayer corner with a notice-board and a stand
for votive candles. After receiving communion some of us come to this corner
in order to continue praying. We light a candle and pray for our families.
Praying and lighting the candle is the same act in two forms: that candle is our
prayers, and lighting it and leaving to burn belongs to the prayer just as being
still and bowing our heads does. On the notice-board people pin the names of
family members who are ill or in trouble; we keep a book with these names,
and these people are then prayed for by name in the intercessions.

3. Repentance and reconciliation

After the intercessions, comes a general confession of sins, in penitence and
faith and the proclamation of our forgiveness, the absolution. First we confess:

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against
our neighbour in thought and word and deed… through negligence, through
weakness, through our own deliberate fault

To confess our sins is the first breakthrough. To confess them is to give up

pretending. It is good to be able to call things by their names, and not to deny
that they are what they are. At the very least, sins are misfortunes. Sin are
those misfortunes that having once happened to us, we now repeat. Even
before we get to issue of guilt and blame, it is something to be able to say that
we are able to regret what we have done or not done. And we are able to
admit this, because the congregation, in the person of the priest, invites us to
do so.
We are truly sorry
and repent of all our sins.

We are one body, so none of us carries our whole life by ourselves. If you
leave me alone with my sin, I am done for. However great the load and
however long I can carry it for and keep it a secret for, it will wear away inside
me, hollow me out and finally it will bring me to an end.

We can repent. It is a privilege and relief to do so. This means that we are the
people who can let go off our mistakes, and allow them to be taken away from
us. If our sins are taken away from us, we are freed for new relationships with
others. So put down your burdens, for they do not belong to you anymore.
This task is long. It requires repeated and lifelong effort. Each time we pray
together:
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
who died for us,
forgive us all that is past
and grant that we may serve you in newness of life

When we ask God to forgive us all that is past we are asking him to put it in
the past and so to put it out of reach and out of the reach of everyone else
affected by it. It is not in the past until God puts it there, but hangs around to
sour our relationships and hinder all our attempts to try again.

4. Forgiveness and peace

Without forgiveness, each of us is like a computer that it has slowed to a crawl
because of the junk on its hard-drive. Without this release each of us is held
down by the weight of unfinished business, encounters in which someone got
the better of us, and we are tempted to nurse our wounds, so that they give us
our motive, which is always to get even. But when God commands, we have
to own up to this sin, to this rage, and let it go. In the name of the Lord the
priest prays:
Almighty God who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon
and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all
goodness, and keep you in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord

This is the absolution. We are absolved: the ties that bound me are untied and
I am released. Many people have been sinned against by me, but God has

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authority to act for them all, and to release me from them and them from me.
This is possible because the Lord has the authority and the power to act on
behalf of all creation and so on behalf of each creature in it. It is his exercise
of this authority that keeps creation open, so that it is not crushed by the
weight of its past.

We have been at war with the world, and we have been in denial about this
war. Though we may not have offended these people in church, our
reconciliation with those we have injured starts here. They receive this
repentance and announce this reconciliation and peace. They forgive you,
and they do so for those who really need to do so, but who are not here to do
so. The sign of the peace, in which we exchange a handshake or embrace, is
our reconciliation with those we have sinned against. We turn and we shake
the hand of those standing next to us and say:
The peace of the Lord be always with you
Peace be with you

With this declaration of forgiveness we may approach the Lord in the

eucharist. The eucharistic prayers repeat this confession and forgiveness. At
the eucharist the whole congregation of St Mary accompanies me up to the
throne. They know that I have to be rid of that unfinished business that I no
longer know how to cope with and that poisons everything around me. When I
hesitate at the back of the Church, the servers beckon me down; they know
that I cannot carry any more than I am already carrying. They encourage me
down that aisle and up to the altar, to dump that sin. I arrive loaded down with
a sack full of rocks. All my hurt and fury is in there. At the altar, at the feet of
the Lord, I heave that weight off my shoulder and it disappears as though
down a chute and is gone. I can stand up straight again and turn away from
that sin. The Church pray the prayer that announces that all that was
outstanding against me has been cancelled and that I am forgiven. By this
absolution they publicly authorise and empower me to go free.

5. How to pray
We pray with others, and we learn from them how to pray. Prayer has
regularity. We begin formal prayers with a one-line summary of what God has
done and what he has promised that tells us who we are talking to and what
we may hope for from him. We constantly have to be reminded to raise our
sights and to ask for more. We call these ‘Collects’ since they gather up and
summarise the prayers of the whole congregation, and they refer to what God
has done. There is alternation between prayer leader and people that allows
us all to join in and to speak in unity as one people. We learn to pray with our
whole body, so for example when to kneel and to stand and we come to know
all the prayers of the service off by heart.

We are the people who may address God as Father. We say ‘Our Father’.
Since this is how the Lord Jesus addresses God, and it has become the way
in which we may address God. The Church is the event in which God hears
man and God is heard by man. It is the community brought into being by this
conversation. The Church is a foretaste of the life and freedom that God
intends for the world as whole. The Church engages the world in

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conversation, to tell the world that it is loved, and addressed and heard by
God.

Christians listen to and intercede for the world, passing the complaints and
requests they hear on to God, bringing to the attention of rulers to the
situation of their people. With patience God will overcome our resistance to
one another, enable us to hear one another and come into a clearer
conversation. The very act of our praying is the outworking of God’s act in
releasing us. Our tongues are set free. We learn how to be thankful and how
to be remorseful: we do not pursue these particular emotions, but they come
as we learn our place in the worshipping people, and begin to comprehend
the dimensions of what we have been given in Christ. So we sing:
Jesus! the Name that charms our fears
and bids our sorrows cease
He speaks, and listening to his voice,
new life the dead receive (Charles Wesley)
And we pray:
For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory
Forever and forever
Amen

5 Eucharist – Offering and Passover

Every Church service combines the ministry of the Word and of Sacrament.

1. Word and Sacrament

Every service in which Christians gather and worship God, is part of the one
eucharist of God. The first half of any eucharistic service is known as the
service of the Word and the second as the Eucharist, or ministry of word and
sacrament, respectively. The minister of these two ‘ministries’ is the Lord
himself: He is your living Word. Through him you have created all things from
the beginning, and formed us in your own image. The Word of God that is
heard when Scripture is read is the knowledge of himself that God gives,
while the sacrament is the power that brings us into communion within which
this knowledge is found. Every Christian service is eucharistic from beginning
to end, even when we do not get as far as the bread and cup. When a service
does not take the explicit form of a eucharist, it may be described as a
‘worship service’, ‘family service’, ‘healing service’ or in terms of some other
ministry.

In the eucharist, we brought together and we give thanks. We are gathered

into communion with God, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The eucharist is
the thanksgiving that results from our being gathered together. This is the
communion to which the whole Church is witness and in which all mankind
and all creation are bound together. Christ provides for us, and the world is
that provision. He brings us in and feeds and waits on us. The food and all the
material support that we have, comes from the creation that he has set out for
us. He offers it to us, we have begun to receive it, and are able to give thanks.

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2. Offering
The eucharist is the offering of Christ. In my church of St Mary’s the servers
bring the cup and paten up to the minister at the altar. The minister takes
them, lifts them up and gives thanks for them. So we lift creation up to God,
and so lift up our fellow human beings to God. We are able to do this, and the
minister is able to do this, simply because this is what Christ does for us and
what he enables us to do. The eucharist is the meeting and this provision that
brings us into fellowship with the Lord. This fellowship meal is the Passover
that liberates us from death.

The whole service from beginning to end is this eucharist. We are drawn out
of all corners of the world into the presence of God. The service starts with the
procession in which we drawn out of work and homes, drawn through the
streets and into church, the same movement continues until we are drawn up
the aisle to the altar. At the altar, the priest holds up this single loaf, and we
are that loaf. Christ has drawn us together and now holds us together, forever:
at this moment in the eucharist the priest is Christ, and we are one bread that
he holds and lift up before the whole watching world. We are the harvest that
Christ has gathered and worked, and which he now presents to the Father
and which the Father receives from him.

We also have to put this the other way around. Christ is that bread, which we
now take. Christ has given himself and we have taken him. Man truly took
hold of Christ in the passion, laid hands on him, scourged and crucified him.
That we have taken Christ in this way now determines the future of mankind.

3. Passover supper
We are witnesses of the Last Supper. In this event the Lord handed himself
over to us, and we took hold of him and handed him over to die. But there are
two distinct acts of ‘handing over’ here. Christ is handing the kingdom to us.
And in the passion mankind hands Christ over to death. Christ gives us all
things. And we refuse them, and hand him as away as though he were of no
value to us. Yet we are not able to get rid of him, for this passion is not his
alone, but also ours.

The Eucharist is the Last Supper and the Last Supper is the Passover. We
are not only gathered at the table in the upper room in Jerusalem, but we are
with Israel in Egypt, at the climax of the great struggle with Pharaoh and all
the divinities of Egypt. The eucharist therefore places us in the events of the
Book of Exodus: chapter twelve sets us in the meal that the people of Israel
were instructed to eat before the Passover itself began. Just as the people of
Israel were confronted by Pharaoh, so now Christ is about to confront all the
forces of death that are arrayed against him and all mankind. He is going to
take on and overcome the principalities and powers, and lead his people out
of captivity and away from the power of death. Through him you have freed
us from the slavery of sin.

With Christ and with all Israel, we break out and escape. The eucharist is our
Passover in which we make our passage out of Egypt, the House of Death,

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and break through into the Promised Land. We are in captivity: before our
break-out we eat together for one last time in order to gather the strength for
the escape, and as an anticipation of the feast we will enjoy once we reach
our freedom in the new country. But first Christ has to overcome great
resistance of Pharaoh and lead his people out of their captivity to all powers,
tyrannies and forces of evil. The cross is the break-out. Christ tears open a
hole in the small and vicious place to which we have been confined. A hole
appears in the side of the world we know, and we are led out into a vastly
bigger world that we had no previous knowledge of. Christ tears open the
world that has been captive to death; when the bread is torn the wall that held
us in is torn down. Christ is the passage through the two halves of this bread.
He is our way out and we escape as through his body.

Secondly, Christ carries out. He can carry us out because he himself is

entirely unhampered. He has no sin and no needs of his own. This is why we
call Christ the Lamb, and that he is the Lamb who ‘takes away the sins of the
world’. It should be a beast of burden such as an ox or a donkey that carries
us or carries our pile of ordure away from us; a lamb is no beast of burden.
But this beast of burden has this eradicable characteristic of being
conspicuously innocent. He has no violence whatsoever within him, no guilt,
no taint of other people’s blood, and thus like a lamb. He is completely without
burdens of his own to carry, so there are no constraints on him and no limits
on his power to act for us and to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
That is why we sing:
Paschal Lamb by God appointed
All our sins on thee were laid
By almighty love anointed
Thus hast full atonement made.
All thy people are forgiven
Through the virtue of thy blood;
Opened is the gate of heaven;
Reconciled are we with God (Common Praise 168)

4. Christ offers all things

Christ has set himself to serve us. We need him to do so because we are
unable to serve ourselves. He now serves us by bearing us to God. He
supplies us with what we need and takes us to the Father. Christ frees us
from all the other masters to whom we give ourselves away and makes us
complete and perfect. We are the offering, and we are presented by him to
God. Christ is the giver, it is us who are being given, and God is whom we are
being given to.

Now while we sing a hymn, the servers bring the collection up in a basket and
take it up to the altar. In St Mary’s there is no passing a collection bowl
around. You can drop whatever you want into a box that stands in the aisle,
but equally you are free not to notice that it is there. You do not pay for us: we
pay for you. The minister receives the collection bowl. He prays that the Lord
will take whatever we bring, and so take us in whatever condition he finds us.
Then he receives the bread, wine and water which have been up to the altar.
The whole offering is compromised of the eucharistic bread and wine, and the

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money given in the collection. This is what earth has given and human hands
have made. This offering is presented here.

Two things are happening at once. One is that Christ carries us to God and
presents us to God as though we were his own, indeed as though we were his
very own body. And God accepts us and receives us from him and in God's
view, we are his. The second is that Christ is being presented to us. We can
decide whether we will accept him and receive him, and whether we will
accept and receive his work, and receive each other and all creation from him
as his people and his creation, altogether as his body. If we receive this
eucharist from him we receive the forgiveness and salvation that he holds out
to us. So in these two ways God us gives himself and in Christ he takes us
and holds on to us forever.

5. One loaf
Christ gives us the Church. He gives each of us this fellowship and
indestructible communion and makes each of us a part of it. The priest who
holds aloft the large round disc shows what is happening here. Where we see
this priest and this loaf, there is Christ, making himself locatable for us. He is
here, in this way, for us. As we process up towards that bread, we become
integrated into this single loaf that he holds up to us, and opens for us. We are
the many fragments, whom brought together, are made into this one bread,
pure and indivisible. All opposites are united, the different divisions of the
world are brought together, and the divided become indivisible. So, following
a theme of the very earliest eucharistic teaching of the Church, the ‘Didache’,
we sing:
As grain once scattered on the hillsides
Was in this broken bread made one
So from all lands thy Church be gathered
Into the kingdom of thy Son (Common Praise 298: Bland Tucker)

The Christian community is a single indivisible loaf. ‘There is one loaf’, the
Apostle Paul says. ‘We who are many, are a single body, because we share
this one loaf’ (1 Corinthians 10.17). We are being made that pure and
indivisible entity which nothing can pull it apart and which we will therefore
never be separated from. The bread that the priest lifts up is an image of this
unity. Just as we grasp that bread, we are grasped and held by the whole
Body of Christ. We eat and internalise this wafer and just so the Body
receives us. The Gospel of John makes this just as palpable as it can: ‘chew
on my body’, Jesus says in John 6. Christ has grasped you and he will never
let you go; now we can be a little image of him, so let us grasp Christ and
never let go. The hard masters and economic forces of this world want to get
their teeth into us, to chew us up and spit us out. But in Christ we are not
chomped and swallowed; we are not absorbed or assimilated. We are part of
that indivisible loaf in which our integrity is established for ever. Nothing will
ever break down that unity or divide you from it.

The loaf is the Church, which is to say, it is all other Christians. We must
grasp and hold on to them. Joined to them, and clinging to each other, we are
being made this one loaf. This loaf identifies the place at which the body of

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Christ is starting to come into existence. Perhaps it would be better to say that
the centre of the eucharist is not the breaking of bread but the coming-into-
existence of this bread, the whole and indivisible loaf that is Christ and his
people. Through him you have made us a people for your own possession

6. Holy gifts
Christ dispenses himself to us gently. He is always able to give us more and
to do so slowly and gently. He patiently waits until we are ready to receive
more from him. He gives himself to us piecemeal, through time, and we call
these pieces, ‘sacraments’. Sacraments are instalments of holiness. One
instalment after another enters us. Each sacrament invites us to further
holiness, and if this is what we want, each is integrated within us and we are
further integrated in this holy body of Christ. Altogether the sacraments allow
us to become holy. In this bread and cup is all the holiness of Christ, gently
portioned out so that, given time, each of us becomes able to recognise Christ
– and recognise him as Christ glorified, and as a result we are able to
recognise one another as holy and as belonging to him.

Christ not only supplies us with what we need but also frees us from all that
we cannot cope with. He takes our misdirected worship, our half-truths and all
our unfinished business and he sends it all to God for its redemption and
renewal. He is able to pick up our sins, and take them away from us. He is the
beast of burden who is able to carry away whatever we cannot cope with and
the refuse that is making us ill. He carries it away so that it disappears over
the horizon with him, where we cannot reclaim it, and it cannot bother us
again. Christ keeps us in good order. He gives us gifts and he takes our
deficiencies away: this is the wonderful exchange.

The whole service is eucharistic, for where Christ is, his people and all
elements of creation are assembled and give their thanks. Where he is, the
fragments of this world are united, the opposites are united, the divided
become indivisible, and there is the indissoluble unity created by his love. We
hold up for the world the one bread that is us with him. This indissoluble unity,
this holy communion that is eternal, gives itself to us in these instalments of
holiness. Each of them is a little packet of resurrection, and each enables us
to look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The
eucharist is the whole Christian worship service with nothing left out.
May the tongues which ‘Holy’ sang
keep free from all deceiving
the eyes which saw thy love be bright
thy blessed hope perceiving (Ephraim the Syrian, Common Praise 323)

6 Whole People – The Church in the week

When we are gathered together in worship Christ reveals himself to us. He
reveals himself and he also reveals us to one another. He reveals that we are
his and that he is ours and so he reveals himself as our king. His kingdom is
made up of these people, and we find ourselves members of this people. So

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when we call him ‘Lord’ and ‘Christ’ we mean that he is our king, lord for our
sake.

In the Church we meet one Christian after another. As we receive them, we

learn who Christ is, and learn that it is Christ who gives each of them to us.
He comes to us first in the form of these Christians whom we meet here in the
Church service. He is really giving us himself, but they are the form in which,
for now, he does so. By the long slow process of sanctification, week by week,
we change from in-turned creatures who defend ourselves against the world,
to persons who are able to receive every other human creature as the
kindness of God to us, and so to take them for our own.

1. Dismissal and commission

Almighty God has given us grace ‘with one accord to make our common
supplications’. He has promised that where two or three are gathered together
in his name he will grant their requests. Now he sends us out into the world, to
live and work to his praise and glory At the end of the eucharistic service the
priest says:
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord

The one loaf divides and disperses into the world. We who have been
gathered together are now sent out. We have seen that at the climax of the
eucharist the minister holds up the loaf, as Christ unites and lifts up his
people. Now Christ sends his people outwards from that gathered unity. We
see this Spirit-filled people flow out from this loaf into the world. They come
appear from that loaf, descend from the altar, come down the aisle, and out of
the church and into the world. We see them led by Christ, identified by the
cross, the candles, the deacon carrying the Scripture, followed by the minister
and the congregation. From this loaf the procession of God's people streams
away in all directions, into every corner of the world, bearing witness to God to
every part of it. They journey around the world, penetrating every part of it.
These people are the form in which the communion of God comes to the
world.

Now we must look at the relationship between the service that is just ending
and the week to come. After the service we are sent back out into the world,
reinvigorated and renewed to continue this work of carrying the world. When
the service at St Mary’s ends, we gather around the back of the Church. The
banns of marriage are read out and notices given. At the back of the Church
and over coffee we organise ourselves for the various forms of ministry
through the week. There are the Sunday school and youth groups to run.
There is the Fair Trade stall. Some go off to take communion to those who are
housebound. There is a world of mid-week activity.

2. Uninterrupted Procession
This congregation does not usually gather again in the week, so for the next
six days the Church is much less visible. We are all in our various homes and
workplaces, though we are nonetheless single indivisible body. Each Christian
is in their particular place like a seed dropped into the ground. We are in
different places, but we are not ultimately separated by space and time for

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they are not finally able to divide what the Holy Spirit holds together in the
indivisible presence of Christ.

This people are already a people, so they already have a certain presence
here in the Church in the world. And yet this people is also still on the way,
and must continue down that long path of discipleship, for it is only now
becoming the people of God. The unholiness of this people is still obvious:
this body is not yet glorious and complete.

We are being led by Christ. He leads his people through the whole world, and
by this process they are becoming holy, and in the course of this long journey
they are being made holy. The whole world can watch can watch this process.
It is up each onlooker to decide whether they see simply an unholy and
unattractive people, which they want no part of, or they see this as the journey
of the people being made holy by God, and desire to be part of this people.

The Christian people come from Christ and they return from him. He sends
them out to take his service into the world, and he calls them back to be
refreshed by him, so they are always on the way out and on the way back.
Their service and witness is only good as long as they regularly come back to
be renewed.

Each Christian is the whole worshipping assembly and the uninterrupted

service of God in miniature. In the person of each Christian the service is sent
out into the world. The assembly can divide into as many little assemblies as
there are Christians, each of whom takes the whole service of Christ with
them wherever they go. Each is a lamp that burns with the fire of the Spirit.
Each Christian is given a candle at baptism and at the Christmas and Easter
services to remind us that each of us is the flame of the glory of God. You
cannot detach a single Christian from this company of saints, because the
Holy Spirit binds each one of us to all the rest of us. Each is the whole
procession in that place, making Christ’s people visible there for all who
watch, both for those who turn away and for those who are drawn in.

3. The people in Church

Jesus sends us these people whom we find here in Church. They are his first
gift to us. We have to receive them from him. We even have to receive them
as Christ himself. This is not to say that we should try to see through them or
past them to Jesus, or to imagine them as Jesus and so to look past their own
particularity. Rather their very individuality and awkwardness is the gift of
Christ to us. There is no way to him except through life lived with them.

The Holy Spirit brings Christ to us by bringing the people of his communion to
us. He does so in instalments so that Christ comes to us first in the form of
these Christians whom we encounter here in the Church service. They are all
that Christ yet is giving us of himself. He is really giving us himself, but they
are the form in which, for now, he does so. So we sing:
For all the saints who from their labours rest
Who thee by faith before the world confessed
Thy name O Jesus be for ever blessed

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Alleluia, alleluia (Common Praise 232)

You see all sorts of people in Church. They are the first gift of God to us. We
see these people in the pews around us, but behind them, presently beyond
our vision, are many other rows of Christians. We are with the whole company
of heaven.

In many churches you see an array of people portrayed on the walls and in
the windows. There are the images above the altar, and in the carvings above
the choir stalls, and in the glass of the windows, in paint, fresco and mosaic all
around the Church. In the windows of my Church, St Mary’s Stoke Newington,
you can see Christ in glory, and below, Jesus carrying a lamb, his signature
as it were, framed by Mary on one side and John on the other. In other
windows there are other figures from the Old Testament and all the apostles
from the New Testament, and from the subsequent history of the church. All of
them look to Christ and point us to him. These pictures give us a preview of
the many encounters with the people of God who are ahead of us. That is why
we sing:
For all thy saints, O Lord
who strove in thee to live
who followed thee, obeyed, adored,
our grateful hymn receive

Many church buildings are covered with images of the patriarchs and
prophets of the Old Testament. But when the patriarchs are not portrayed in
full they are represented by the single figure of John Baptist, and the people
of Israel are represented by the single figure of Mary. The saints gathered
around Christ. He ministers to them and they radiate his holiness. They have
been made holy, and they have been made your servants. They are there for
you and they are urging you on.
For all thy saints, O Lord,
who strove in thee to die
who counted thee their great reward
accept our thankful cry Richard Mant (NEH224)

4. Man with God

God is faithful to us. His concern for us is unfeigned. He has decided to risk
his reputation on us, to share our fortunes and not to let us go under. The
unbroken and undying life which the Father and Son have together is the life
that they have opened to us, so that now it may be our life too.

Jesus Christ took what we gave him. He took our hard knocks and underwent
the apprenticeship we put him through, and treated it all as the apprenticeship
of God. He was tested by us and he graduated from our rough and dismissive
handling of him. He came through the long trial that we inflicted on him. We
rejected him, and tried to make him reject us. We did everything we could to
oblige him to let us go, but we were unable to make him do so. Despite
knowing the worst we can do, the Lord loves us with an unwavering love. He
is resolute in regarding humanity as good and as his, and we are unable to
break his resolve.

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The heavenly hosts, world without end
shall be my company above
and thou my best and surest friend
who shall divide me from thy love? (Richard Baxter, NEH 371)

5. Man is raised in Christ

When we say that ‘Christ has risen’, we mean that Christ is man with God.
One of us has grown up and decided that all human beings are indeed as
good as God insists, and he has committed himself to them without limit. One
of us has learned to love. In doing so he has upped the definition of
humankind. To be properly human means to be in a free relationship of love
with every member of humankind. It is others that complete our status as
humans. We can continue to test him and we will see that he continues to
hold good. He knows who we are, and is neither appalled, nor afraid, nor
disengaged, but rather he is ready. He knows us and he regards us with faith
and hope and love.

Since Jesus Christ is the full definition of the love of God, he safeguards the
mystery of human life. Because of him, I may not presume that I already know
you, or manage and control you. The gospel prevents us from putting
ourselves above judgment. In the communion of Christ we may learn to judge
ourselves with the judgment of God and so we may find one another’s proper
uniqueness. We may decide to become disciples, and so to take the
correction and discipline of Christ, which form us in the love of God. Only the
Christian who has accepted much correction and who has been chastened by
them, is able to offer correction.

Man is with God. In Christ, this is the truth of man. Jesus is man with God,
and God with man. Man is made for the society of God, that is, to be as free
for God has God is free for him. All attempts to give away his freedom will be
unsuccessful, for God has determined that man will be free. He is made for
life with God, and with all the other creatures of God, and freedom is an
aspect of life with God. Man may not extinguish his freedom. Man may wish
for something less than life with God, but there is nothing less for him to have.

Christ has been raised. He is the head of this body, and what is true of the
head will be true of the body. The whole people will be raised. This community
is the pledge of the resurrection. The Church is the anticipation of the
resurrection. It mediates this resurrection to us, slowly, so that it may be
internalized within us. The unity of Son and Spirit, demonstrated by the
resurrection, holds all these otherwise incompatible persons together in the
love and communion that is the Church.

The Spirit keeps us joined to Christ, and he keeps Christ distinct from us. He
holds Jesus out of our grasp, beyond the powers of our perception. Christ is
here by the Holy Spirit. We are present to Christ, but the Holy Spirit hides
Christ from us, and reveals him to us only in the strangest and least obvious
way. He reveals Christ to us bit by bit, in the strange dark form of the many
persons of whom this community, the body of Christ, is made up. As we are
made holy we may realise that it is indeed Christ who is being revealed to us.

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At the resurrection you and I will finally be fully turned outwards towards one
another. We will not longer be cut off from each other, but I will be raised to
you, and you will be raised to me. The resurrection presently makes its known
to us how, again by faith, in the resurrection of Christ and in the existence of
the Church. The Church is the thin of the wedge that is the kingdom of God,
inserted into the side of the world to open an imperceptibly small crack. What
is visible of this wedge, is the Church, but the Church is the gap through
which the whole communion of God comes serially and gently to us, in time.

God has raised Jesus Christ, one of us, to the full stature of humankind. In
Christ the whole work of creation has been successful, and that success is
opened to all of us. Through the Holy Spirit Christ has attached us to himself,
so that the resurrection of the first man is the beginning of the resurrection of
all humanity. Easter is a preview of the consequences of this for us: Christ’s
resurrection is a rehearsal for ours. So in the resurrection God comes to man
in Christ. For this reason we say:
It is indeed right,
it is our duty and our joy,
at all times and in all places
to give you thanks and praise,
holy Father, heavenly King,
Almighty and eternal God,
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.

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