In the 1960s something beautiful happened in the Roman Catholic Church. It was called the Second Vatican Council In it they suddenly decided to do almost all the things we Anglicans had been begging them to do for 500 years.
I talked to you last week about the Anglo-Catholic revival in the Church of England the 19th Century and how in the poorest of poor parishes priests would go in and give people a beauty that was the taste of heaven. How Anglo-Catholic clergy looked back at what the Holy Spirit had done in the lives of Christians in the middle ages and to learn from that for what the Spirit might be saying for their day.
Now in 1890 – if you turned the sound off [mime turning a sound switch on an old fashioned TV] and you walked into a Roman Catholic and an Anglo-Catholic Church you would not be able to tell the difference between them. They looked almost identical.
But if you turned the sound back [mime it] on you would be. Because in the Anglo-catholic church, the worship was in English. Everyone knew what was going on and everyone could join in. But in Roman Catholic churches the service was in latin. Few people understood. And apart from the servers no one joined in.
For 500 years Anglicans, Lutherans and Reformed Christians have been begging the Roman Catholics to have mass in a language people understood. Indeed if the Pope had agreed to this when Martin Luther first asked, the horrible split of Christians that was the reformation might never have happened. But for 500 years the Roman Catholic Church absolutely refused.
Then over night – at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s they changed their mind. We shall see in a moment how this relates to our Gospel reading.
But first let us look at our reading from Revelation
"I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, 12singing,
‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;
for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’ " [Revelation 7:9-17]
Robed in white. Palm branches in their hands. Sing and bowing and falling on their faces. Did you know that the Greek word for worship, "Proskuneo" literally means to “fall on your face”?
Robed in white. Palm branches in their hands. Sing and bowing and falling on their faces. – this is biblical worship.
As we worship the Lamb who is our shepherd – we use robes and rituals, signs and symbols, colour and drama and music and enthusiasm.
On Wedenesday I was talking to over sixty year four children who had come on a school visit to Holy Cross Church to describe how the mass is like a party to celebrate what Jesus has done for us on the cross and I was using all the robes and symbols to give the message about much God loves us.
And afterwards I turned to the church wardens and said I was jolly glad they were an Anglo-Catholic church, because if they had been a low church, a more protestant church I wouldn’t have had any of my props.
Because our more protestant sisters and brothers would say “well – the first generation of Christians didn’t have any robes so why should we?”
And they are right. And they are also wrong.
The earliest Christians didn’t have robes and things – because they could not afford them. They were poor and persecuted. Many of the early Christians were slaves and women. They met in catacombs or in people’s houses because they didn’t have a choice.
But here in Revelation we see a vision. And John’s vision of what worship is like in heaven is of "Robed in white. Palm branches in their hands. Sing and bowing and falling on their faces". Ie – if they could have done this – this is how they would have worshiped.
And as soon as they could – when they had finally converted not just the Empire but the Emperor and when Christianity was legal – this was the style of worship Christians adopted.
Which is why as Anglo-Catholics we worship like this – to get a taste of heaven here on earth.
Now here we come to a second difference between Roman Catholics and us Anglo-Catholics. We both wear exactly the same sort of robes but perhaps we are little bit more chilled about it.
We are quite happy being part of an Anglican family with other Christians who worship in different ways. You know if a priest wears Jeans and a T shirt to celebrate mass Jesus will still be just as present in the bread and wine. Our Roman Catholic friends would probably get very upset if a priest celebrated mass without the proper robes. We would just shrug our shoulders and say “Horses for courses”. [do a shoulder shrug]
But why would you not want to use these robes and rituals that give us a taste of heavenly worship like that we find in Revelation 7?
So lets look at the robes we wear.
[strip down to alb]
So you will see me the priest and all the servers are all wearing this sort of thing.
[ask a server what it is called] Alb
Now Alb is a latin word – does anyone know what it means?
[take lots of wrong answers before giving the right answer]
“white thingy”
We Christians – when we want to make something sound important we have a tendency to use a foreign word – but all this actually means is “white thingy”
And you will see its not just me wearing it.
All the servers are wearing it too. In some churches when adults are being baptised or when children are making their first communion they will wear one of these.
In some African churches – when people come to worship the whole congregation will put on one of these. We don’t tend to in England because it might scare new comers – but if you want to you are perfectly entitled to.
You see the servers are here aren’t special people - next Sunday Linda who is up here today may be sitting in the congregation and someone else might be up here wearing an alb – a white thingy.
Because as it says in Romans 7:14 “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
Or as it says in Isaiah 1:18
“though your sins are as red as scarlet they shall be as white as snow”.
The blood of the lamb.
When I have got kids from a school trip in here I always ask “who here has never ever ever ever done anything wrong”
And usually some brave fool puts their hand up – and then I ask their teacher who respond “no they are pretty good, but….”
Because if we search our hearts we all know that we have thought things, said things and done things that are mean and hurtful to other people.
[get a volunteer out]
Lift up your left hand – this is you
[place big lectionary on it] – and this is things you have done wrong – see how they weigh you down…
See how they create a barrier between you and God, you and other people
[lift up their right hand]
And this is Jesus – God become a human being – the only human being to have never sinned.
On the cross – Jesus takes our sins upon himself [take big book onto that hand] so when he dies all those sins died with him [place hand on ground to let go of book]
And when he comes back to life on Easter Day – all those sins stayed dead
Now look at you [point to their left hand] All that bad stuff that was weighing you down is taken away from you.
And that’s why we wear white things to remind us that we have washed white in the blood of the lamb!
Some faiths teach that you have to earn your weigh to heaven.
Islam for example teaches that there are two angels sitting on your shoulders – one counting up all your good deeds and one counting up all your bad deeds – and on the day of judgement they put them on a scale and only if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds can you get to heaven.
That sort of thought scares me!
But luckily Jesus tells us something different.
As he says in our Gospel “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” [John 10:28]
“I give” – our forgiveness, our eternal life – isn’t something we have to earn. It’s a gift – free to us, because he has paid the price on the cross.
On top of the white thingy, the priest wears this.
[pick up stole]
Does anyone know what this is?
It’s a towel.
To remind us how on the night before he died Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. That was a task that yucky and horrible. They walked either bare foot or in open toed sandals so their feet would have been foul.
Only a slave or your wife would wash your feet. And yet Jesus washes his disciples feet - "‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet." [John 13:12-14]
For all of us as Christians – but particularly for those who are Christian leaders – we need to serve others – even when that involves unpleasant tasks like washing smelly feet.
And on top of this we put this [put on chasuble].
Some think this symbolises the seamless robe that Christ was wearing on the way to cross that the Roman Soldiers diced for rather than tearing. [Psalm 22:18 John 19:23-24]
But what we do know – is that this is the equivalent of a suit and tie in 312 AD. When Christianity first became legal- everyone would have worn something like this as their posh clothes to church.
Now obviously todays congregations don’t wear anything like this – but our priests still wear it – to link us with the generations of Christians who have gone before. The Holy Spirit has been doing something in every generation – and by wearing these clothes we link ourselves with those who have worn these in the past.
Which brings us to our Psalm, Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd…..
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures ??
and leads me beside still waters.
3 He shall refresh my soul ??
….
5 You spread a table before me
in the presence of those who trouble me; ??
you have anointed my head with oil
and my cup shall be full.
6 Surely goodness and loving mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life, ??
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
This beautiful picture of an intimate God – like the shepherd in the ancient middle east – who instead of getting dogs to chase his sheep where he wants them to go, knows his sheep by name and calls and they follow him.
As Cardinal Basil Hume put it – “Holiness involves friendship with God – there comes a time in our relationship with God where we need to move from being Sunday Acquaintances to being weekday friends”
[repeat] “Holiness involves friendship with God – there comes a time in our relationship with God where we need to move from being Sunday Acquaintances to being weekday friends”
“You spread a table before me – and my cup shall be full”
Heaven is pictured as a party, as a feast – and we get a foretaste of that feast here in the mass now.
Which brings me to another one of those beautiful things that happened at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s – finally – the laity, ordinary Christians, were allowed to receive the Blood of Christ in the mass.
We Anglo-Catholics have always offered the Sacred Blood to everyone. If you only offer the Blood of Christ to priests you seem to be saying that there are two classes of Christians – that only Priests get full access to God.
That’s not the picture we get from Psalm 23 – of the Intimate shepherd who leads you on – not just clergy – but you – and calls you into a personal friendship with him – where your cup shall overflow.
One of my personal bug bears as a priest – and this happens in lots of churches where I have helped – after communion we will come back to the altar [act this out]. I will come and put the Body of Christ down on the centre of the altar – and then sometimes the people who have been helping with the chalice [act this out] will come and lean over from as far as possible as if they were not really worthy to come close to holy place.
Christ has made you worthy.
Matthew 27:51 tells as that at the moment of Jesus’s death “And [at once] the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” – the curtain that kept ordinary people out of the Holy of Holies so that only the High Priest could get in there. As Jesus died that curtain miraculously tore in two – from top to bottom so it wasn’t a human doing it – and now we all have access to the presence of God.
So if you are helping with the chalice – you are worthy – so [act it out] come right up to the centre of the altar and put the chalice back there.
As I said – one of the beautiful things about the second Vatican council was finally they allowed lay Roman Catholics to receive the chalice. But my sadness is they were allowed a get out clause. Because most churches would not have a big enough chalice, they were allowed to keep giving just the bread until they had got round to buying bigger chalices. Sadly, seventy years later, many Roman Catholic parishes still have not got round to buying those chalices.
But in the Anglo-Catholic tradition we have always given the wine to everyone – because Jesus the Good Shepherd calls each one of us, each of you – into an intimate friendship with him.
Which brings me back to wear a started.
I said that a hundred years ago, if you turned the sound off [mime doing so] you would not be able to tell the difference between an Anglo-Catholic service and a Roman Catholic one. But if you turned the sound on the Roman Catholic Service used to be in Latin but the Anglo Catholic one has always been in English.
Which brings us back to the Gospel.
John 10:27 “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me”
Jesus wants us to hear him in our own language!
Our Muslim Sisters and Brothers (God bless them) teach that if you want to guarantee God will hear you, you have to learn Arabic – because that is apparently God’s language. The Quran is only properly the Word of God in Arabic – because that was the language God spoke it in. So you better learn Arabic if you want to read it. And if you want him to hear your prayers, you better say them in Arabic or he might not listen.
Our Muslim Brothers and Sisters are delightful kind people – but on this matter they are wrong.
God wants you to hear him speaking in your own language. God didn’t want there to be chasms or barriers between us. That’s why he dealt with the chasm and barrier of sin.
God didn’t want there to be chasms or barriers between us. That’s why he came down as a human being – speaking our language so we could hear him.
How many languages do we have here? [find out how many first languages there are]
Do you have a bible in your own language? The bible is the most translated book in the world. Currently the full bible has been translated in 771 languages (that’s twenty up on last year) with parts of it translated in 3387 languages, and work going on to translate it into over 4000 languages.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” – God wants you to hear him speak in your own language.
That’s why we Anglo-Catholics have always had our worship in a language everyone understand. Some churches nowadays – because they have congregation members of many different languages – have songs where maybe one verse is in English and one verse is in Swahili and one verse is in Lithuanian – so that everyone can worship God in their own language.
“there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’" [Revelation 7:9-10]
Note it doesn’t say they all cried out in the same language – in fact it hints the opposite – people of all languages cried out this song of praise.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me”
You’ll notice when we sing Psalm 23 during this service we have sung it to different tunes – with slightly different words. Because that is what Good translation is about.
We Anglicans have been doing since at least 1641:
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green: he leadeth me
the quiet waters by.
Francis Routh poetically translated it – to fit a very singable tune – and we Anglicans have been doing so ever since. In many different new tunes and translations.
As I said – it was really beautiful in the Second Vatican Council allowed Roman Catholics to worship in their own language. I love what they did then. I love all the ways Pope Francis led them forward, I look forward to the news ways Pope Leo will lead them forward.
But it hasn’t always been plain sailing. When Pope Benedict became their Pope he suddenly that anything that was sung had to use the official words.
You know the clappy Gloria that we sing? [demonstrate it] That was written by Roman Catholics after the Second Vatican Council. But it was banned by Benedict because it doesn’t use the official translation words – it’s author re-translated the words slightly to fit the tune.
And in the mass – Benedict decided that the English translation wasn’t good enough because it wasn’t close enough to the Latin. So he changed it for example so it doesn’t talk about lifting up a cup – it talks about Jesus lifting up a chalice.
{stage whisper} Don’t tell Benedict this – but Jesus didn’t speak in latin. He spoke in Aramaic. And it was written down not in Latin but in Greek. And the Greek word “Potirion” translates as cup.
I really give thanks for the way Roman Catholics have moved closer to us over the last 50 years. And I really pray that under Pope Leo we continue to grow closer. But if they chose to go backwards like they did under Benedict – that is their choice. They can worship how they want.
But we Anglo-Catholics believe God is an intimate God. We love the beauty and the symbols – dressing up like you might dress up to go on a date. But above all we believe God is an intimate God. He is the Good Shepherd calling us into relationship with him where your cup shall be full – and where you shall be offered the blood of Christ. And where you shall hear his voice, and speak to him in your own language.
Amen
