The Liturgy of the Word

Sermon preached at 11am Eucharist at St Alphege, Solihull
Sunday 12th July 2009, Trinity 5 (Proper 10) Year B
Special Theme – The Liturgy of the Word

Readings: Amos 7: 7-15 Ephesians 1: 3-14 Mark 6: 1-13


As you hopefully already know, we are now making preparations for Back to Church Sunday on 27th September. Back to Church Sunday is a national initiative, particularly supported by Birmingham Diocese, whereby each of us who come to church is encouraged to invite back to church someone who used to attend church, but who, for one reason or another, has not attended for a while. The idea is that for that particular Sunday we make it as easy as we possibility can for people to come back. We invite them personally, we offer to travel with them, or meet them outside church, we sit with them and do our best to make them feel welcomed and at home. Hopefully each of us have already began to think about who we might invite back. Hopefully we have already begun to pray for them, and perhaps even tipped them off that we will be inviting them in September. And this is something that we can all take part in. Even if we are not in a position to invite anyone back, we can still support the initiative through our prayers and through our efforts to welcome back comers when we meet them in church.
There will be more practical preparation for back to church Sunday later in the summer, for example with invitation cards. But in the meantime, across the whole parish, we want to make a good spiritual preparation by reflecting on the question “Why go to church?” The more profoundly we feel and understand the reasons for coming to church, the more naturally and authentically we shall be able to encourage others to come back to church. We are tackling this question of “Why come to church?” by looking at the four main parts of the Eucharistic service, seeking to grow our understanding of their significance and relevance. The 9.15am congregation are approaching this through monthly Teaching Eucharists, but at this 11am Eucharist we are covering this theme in the month of July, with four separate sermons; one for each of the four main parts of the Eucharist. Last week Fr Andrew spoke about the Gathering Rite. This week I shall be talking about the liturgy of the Word. The sermon will be slightly longer than usual, and there will be a summary of the main points available on a handout as you leave church.
So let’s think about the Liturgy of the Word. Have a look at your service booklet. You can see on page n the Gathering Rite ends and the Liturgy of the Word begins. We start with scripture readings, then we have a hymn, a gospel reading, a sermon, we say the creed, and conclude with the intercessions on page m.
When we come to church we hope to have some kind of encounter with God through our worship. God is present to us in several different ways in our worship, but the two most important of these are in the sacrament, when we receive it, and also in the Word of God, when it is proclaimed to us. This second one is what the liturgy of the word is primarily about. It is about listening to the scriptures read to us in worship and through them encountering God, understanding him better, drawing closer to him and wanting to live our lives more in accordance with his teaching.
So we say that God is present to us in the reading of the scriptures in Church. At the end of the reading we say, “This is the Word of the Lord” because we are hearing God speak to us through the scriptures. Now I just want to clarify that a little. As Christians we don’t, for example, make the same claims about the bible as Muslim’s make about the Koran. The Muslims say that the Koran is literally the words of God, dictated to the prophet Mohammad. For the most part the bible is not like that. There are some parts of the Old Testament where a prophet says, “Thus says the Lord our God…” to introduce some direct message from God. We also know that Jesus is divine, so the words of Jesus do come directly to us from God. But most of the bible is written by frail and fallible human beings who are recording some aspect of God’s relationship with humanity. And it is that relationship between God and humanity, between God and ourselves which becomes enlightened for us when we listen to the scriptures in worship.
Now typically we have three readings; one from the Old Testament, one from the epistles and a Gospel reading. So first of all we have an Old Testament reading. The Old Testament makes up about three quarters of our current day bibles. It is the old Jewish scriptures, written in Hebrew that Jesus himself would have been familiar with. It is sometimes called the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament is littered with themes and ideas that recur and are further developed in the New Testament. For example, this morning we heard about the prophet Amos and his plumb line to keep the people of Israel upright and true. Amos caused tension with his prophecies against the king, Jeroboam. This same theme is repeated with John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading. John the Baptist comes proclaiming a message “make your paths straight”, and he too gets into trouble (indeed loses his life) for criticising the king. We might say that Amos is in some sense a precursor of John the Baptist, or to use the technical theological language, a “type”.
Our Old Testament readings are therefore important because they set out understandings about Jesus and the Church in the context of our salvation history; in the context of God’s relationship with the Jews. When I was studying at theological college I bought a big bible that shows cross references between different parts of the bible. I have to say that I was shocked to see how heavily the New Testament draws on the Old Testament. There are references to it everywhere.
After our Old Testament reading we have a New Testament reading, typically from the epistles. The epistles were letters written by the apostles to different churches or church leaders in the first century. They therefore provide essential teaching about how we are to think and behave in the church. For example, today we read a wonderful hymn of praise from Ephesians, which sets out for us the many blessings we have received and will receive through Christ.
Have a look at the lectern from which the scriptures are read. There is an eagle perched on a ball. The ball represents the world, and the eagle represents the word of God. The eagle is a symbol of strength and renewal (Is 40:31) and it spreads itself over the world, like the word of God. An eagle is also the symbol of St John the Evangelist, responsible for 5 of the 27 books in the New Testament.
But the climax of the Liturgy of the Word is the reading of the gospel, and when we read the gospel we use a completely different symbolism. First of all we highlight this part of the liturgy with as much ceremony as possible. We have music for Alleluias or a gradual hymn and many people are involved and sometimes we even have incense. Above all we have a procession which re-enacts certain aspects of the incarnation. In the incarnation God comes down from high heaven to dwell with us mortals on earth, and to bring the good news (the gospel) to us. In the gospel procession the book of the gospels is carried down from its elevated place at the front of church, or on the altar, into the body of the church. We try to read the gospel from the very middle of the church, from the midst of all the people. We are acting out, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1: 14).
As the gospel is announced we are all invited to sign ourselves with a cross three times, once on the forehead, once on the lips and once on the heart. This indicates that we want the gospel (the good news) to be forever on our minds, on our lips and on our hearts. Now I have to admit that, until recently, I never used to make hand signals like this, or make the sign of the cross during worship. Since I have started making them however I have been impressed by how they help me to connect with what is going on. Previously I was participating with my ears and my mind as I listened and my voice, as I said the responses. Now I also participate with my body as I make the signs, and this is a fuller participation. I am more drawn into what is happening as the gospel is read, so I commend these signs to you.
The high point of the Liturgy of the Word comes at the end of the gospel reading, when the proclaimer lifts the book up high and says, “This is the gospel of the Lord.” The moment is analogous to the elevation of the sacrament and great amen at the end of the Eucharistic prayer.
This high point is followed by the sermon, and we all know has the potential to be a real low point! But the purpose of the sermon is to help us to understand the scripture readings, to help us to welcome them into our hearts and transform us. A good sermon will help us to see the relevance of the scriptures and to live out the gospel message in our daily lives. Obviously the success of a sermon depends the skill of the preacher, but it is all too easy to underestimate the role of the congregation in the delivery of a good sermon. If the congregation listen with hope and love to the preacher, rejoicing with the preacher in what is good, and suffering with the preacher in what is bad, then Jesus can be present (c.f. Matt 18:20) and can communicate, despite the preacher’s inadequacies.
After the sermon we have the creed, which is a simple reminder of the fundamental points of the Christian faith into which we were baptised. The creeds give us a solid rock on which all our Christianity can be built. If our Christianity is consistent with the creeds then we can’t go too far wrong. If we start to forget the creeds or to ignore them then the risk of building our lives on unsure foundations starts to increase. One day a crisis will come, and everything that is not built on the solid rock of the teaching of Jesus will fall away. It is good to remind ourselves of the creeds each week.
The final part of the Liturgy of the Word is the intercessions; the prayers. These prayers are in part a response to the encounter with the word of God. Hopefully the encounter has encouraged us and moved us forward and we want to rededicate ourselves to God in prayer. But the prayers are also a preparation for the Liturgy of the Sacrament, which is about to begin. We lay before the Lord our prayers confident that by the great sacrifice of Jesus that the Eucharist recalls, they may be purified and made acceptable and desirable to God. The word “intercede” means to plead to someone on behalf of someone else. Most of the time, in intercessions, we are praying for other people. Most noticeably we pray for people who are sick or who have died, or those who have asked for our prayers. Of course we can and should pray for ourselves, but we must recognise that our prayers for others are more generous and more purified and therefore more beneficial in front of God.
So that, in a nutshell, is the Liturgy of the Word. Hopefully as we understanding the liturgy better we will find it easier to engage with what is happening and be drawn more fully into the encounter with God. I am sure that worshiping well ourselves will prove to be the best possible preparation as we come to invite others to worship with us on Back to Church Sunday. Amen.