The Good Shepherd's Wine Series

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.