Blessing of Oils and Act of Commitment to Ministry

St Albans Cathedral: Maundy Thursday 2008

I am very aware, in these last few months of being your diocesan bishop, that I am in danger of developing what is known in the trade as 'Lot's wife syndrome' but I'm going to indulge that syndrome, just for a few moments.

I have had an amazing number of privileges since becoming your bishop. Now is not the time to enumerate each one of them, but I do want to focus on a particular privilege about which I am reminded every time I celebrate the Eucharist using Common Worship. For what felt like a couple of years, I was the chairman of the General Synod (GS) Revision Committee, which had the task of going, line by line, through the proposals of the Liturgical Commission's eucharistic prayers. Let me help you picture the scene: a rectangular-shaped table layout, with me at the top; on my right, a clerk of the Committee and on my left, a liturgical expert. Down one side of the rectangle sat other liturgical experts and, opposite them, appointed members of GS representing all the shades of theological opinion that flourish so abundantly in the Church of England. At the far end of the rectangle, opposite me, was a table and that table was the place to which anyone on GS, and others who had a view about liturgical texts, could come and make their case - and they did, in their happy droves.

As a Committee we were trying to achieve historical accuracy, theological depth and ecumenical convergence, and we were also aware of how important it was to get the English style right, in both written and spoken forms. Slightly to my surprise, I loved the process - partly because I was learning so much and partly because I was conscious, as everyone on the Committee was, that we were involved not just in creating liturgy but, through our liturgical work, we were expressing Anglican theological doctrine. As you are aware, that complex mix of 'doctrine-in-liturgy' is one of the defining characteristics of our Church.

Well, not only did the liturgical material have to go through that very careful and detailed scrutiny, because of its doctrinal content, it also had to be brought to every meeting of the House of Bishops for further scrutiny and debate. There was a classic moment when we were in careful and scrupulous discussion of the word ek in the Nicene Creed - should we translate ek in the phrase 'was incarnate ek the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary' as 'of' or 'from'? Either would have been accurate. The Bishop of St Germans in Truro diocese had had a miserably delayed journey up from Cornwall, which had taken hours, and he entered the room only to hear the chairman say, 'All those in favour of 'of', please show'! And then, of course, once the Revision Committee and the House of Bishops had had their turns, I had to present the resulting text to General Synod for its approval.

Common Worship and the Book of Common Prayer, I believe, are books of which we should all be proud. They were each hammered out with enormous care and each had to take account of the range, complexity and importance of theological beliefs in a Church which is both catholic and reformed.

Now, why on this day have I provided you with a potted history of the prayers for Holy Communion in Common Worship? It is because a few weeks ago, in a book I had been lent entitled Heresies and How to Avoid Them, subtitled Why it Matters What Christians Believe, I came across some words which I found immensely stimulating. They were in the foreword written by Professor Stanley Hauerwas - an American theologian who in 2001 was named America's best theologian by Time magazine, to which he is said to have responded, 'Best is not a theological category' - and in that foreword he wrote this:

It is extremely important to note that this book originated in a sermon series. For the testing of Christian speech is prayer. The decisive form of prayer is the liturgy in which the sermon is one of the central acts of praise. The Church's doctrinal debates are rightly about how we are to pray so that our words do not betray the one to whom we pray.

To which I want to respond 'Amen' and also 'Lord, have mercy.'

Let me just take a look at that phrase

... the testing of Christian speech is prayer.

I cannot know exactly what Stanley Hauerwas meant by that, but if he meant that in prayer we are bound to be absolutely honest, then he is completely correct. When I am on my knees in my chapel and you are on your knees before God in your churches or your homes, we are at our most honest, stripped bare of all status, of all pretension, of all masks and camouflage; we are spiritually naked before God. That is how prayer is - you and I, fallible, vulnerable, funny human beings, revealing our very selves to God whom we know to be love, whom we know to be our Father and who we know knows us better than we can ever know ourselves. It is, of course, deeply humbling to enter that sphere of knowledge, and so it should be and must be. Which is why for us, clergy and Readers, ministers of the Word, prayer has to be always, always central - 'the testing of Christian speech is prayer'. If you do not pray, you must not dare to preach.

Hauerwas goes on to say:

The decisive form of prayer is the liturgy in which the sermon is one of the central acts of praise.

The liturgy, too, is a place of humility; we place ourselves within the language and the doctrines of the Church and of those countless faithful people, scholars, clergy, lay people, saints, who have contributed to the shaping of liturgy over the years; we use not our words, but theirs - because the liturgy is a communal offering. And it is a place of profound humility because through those words, relished and honed and loved over the centuries, and through the gift of bread and wine, our Lord, with the sweetest courtesy, comes amongst us. Liturgy is encounter and the encounter is of the risen, wounded Christ with us, his people, his flock. In the presence of the Word, it is right that at times we should be speech-less in adoration and in gratitude.

And what about Hauerwas' lovely phrase, let me repeat it: 'The decisive form of prayer is the liturgy in which the sermon is one of the central acts of praise'? Are our sermons, in all honesty, 'acts of praise'? I have been preaching now for over forty years, and whilst I have laboured long, and often with much pleasure, over each sermon, can I truly categorise those sermons as acts of praise? I pray that they have been because in them I have tried to make myself available to God, but I am very conscious that my sense of failure as a preacher does not diminish. I offer what I can, and pray that by God's grace and mercy it will be for His glory and for His kingdom - and if a sense of failure can be an act of praise, then may it be so.

You and I, as preachers, do well to ask whether the privilege and the burden, the joy and the failure, of our sermons are offered to God as acts of praise. I leave the question in the air ...

Theology [says Hauerwas, in the same foreword] is first and foremost commentary on scripture ... Christian reading of the Bible is a delicate task at once as beautiful and complex as a spider's web.

It's a gorgeous description of the sensitivity you and I, as Readers and clergy, need to bring to our teaching and preaching ministry. Those filament threads of the scripture, freighted with early-morning dew, are fragile, it's true, but also immensely strong; they are to be approached with open minds and open eyes and open hearts, with the kind of joy seen on a child's face when it sees a spider's web for the first time.

So, here we are, on this special holy day when we are rededicating ourselves as Ministers, as Readers, as Deacons, as Priests - people who are called to preach and teach, to lead worship, to discern and rejoice in the very presence of God in our midst, On this day, I urge you to remain faithful in prayer ('the testing of Christian speech is prayer'), be humble in your leading of the liturgy, be God directed in your preaching ('the sermon is one of the central acts of praise') and then be open hearted, open minded and open eyed, so that your theology and your lives may be filled with the truth and the beauty of God, revealed to us through our Lord and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

© Christopher William Herbert, 2007