The challenge to prophesy
Third Sunday in Advent, 12th December, 2004
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Last week we talked a little about repentance, about turning around, about change, and about how this was one way we could prepare ourselves for the coming of the Messiah.
Change is all very well and good, but what sort of change? What do we do once we have looked at the fundamentals in our lives, done our best to get our house in order, and moved beyond the excitement and struggle of the time of upheaval and back to the routine of everyday life?
John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness, is often portrayed as the last of the Old Testament prophets. Jesus himself asks, "What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet." A prophet is not someone who can tell the future, but someone who can read the signs of the times and diagnose what society needs. John was absolutely that, but he was more. He was also the messenger, the one who prepared the way. In Greek the word for messenger is angelos – angel. John was then a prophet and an angel of God. Like Gabriel at the annunciation he was announcing the one who is to come. His prophetic ministry also had about it an apostolic air. He was one sent, called to proclaim the Good News of the coming of the salvation of our God. His followers were to repent, to change, to get their house in order, and then, like John, they were called to become disciples, prophets and apostles of the Most High and of his Son, the one who is to come.
And so this week we move from the challenge of repentance to the challenge of prophesy; the challenge to diagnose and speak to the signs of our times, and to live and preach lives which point others to the one who is to come.
In our Anglo-Catholic tradition, evangelism has often been most effectively done by what we do in the liturgy. Centred on worship, Catholic evangelism sheets home the importance of demonstrating love for God through, in particular, the grace of the mass. This is something that has been taught in this parish for over a century, and much of that teaching has been radical, propelled by prophetic reinvention of liturgy which has served as an example for others to follow. I invite you to look around this building; this old, Victorian pile of bricks, stone, mortar and wood is newer on the inside than you might think. Imagine, if you would, what it might all have looked like in 1925. I would venture to guess that you couldn't. Why? Because it was completely different. The pews on which you are seated, the high altar, the candlesticks, the side chapels, the wood paneling, the stations of the cross and other artwork, the great stained glass windows in the transcepts – none of them was here. In fact, by my reckoning the only things that were here were the font, the pulpit, the lecturn and the mosaic of the last supper – and all of these have been moved since 1925!
The great agent of all that change was, of course, Fr Farnham Edward Maynard, vicar of this parish from 1926 until 1964. Against considerable opposition – you should see some of his notes from the early 1930s! – Maynard instigated root-and-branch change here at St Peter's during his first decade, radically altering not only the building but the liturgy itself. By the time he retired, all seemed to have been in place forever, but it was not always so, and Maynard himself was adamant that the prophetic ministry of a place like St Peter's must never be high-jacked by unthinking conservatism.
Allow me to quote at lengths from his Annual Report to the parish in 1957. His text is marked up for reading, so I shall use his emphases so far as I am able:
[Maynard] I have already called attention to what I conceive to be our particular vocation in relation to the restoration of elements of value in the life of the Church through the Catholic Revival. I would like to say a word or two about mistakes which have sometimes been made in attempting to achieve this. I draw your attention to four such mistakes, because, although I do not want to be unnecessarily critical, I am sure we need to be on our guard against them; for in some places the unwisdom of committing them has set back the cause.
The first concerns the clergy, and consists in carelessness of preaching. In their perfectly right stress on the carefulness with which the sacraments should be administered, some have fallen into the opposite error of supposing that preaching might be thought of as saying a "few words". A great preacher who moved many to devotion and serving of Our Lord, used to speak of preaching as a form of the "Elevation of the Host". It is not always this, but it mßy be a way in which Christ is evidently set forth; and if so with what care, and even trepidation, should the task be approached. No true Catholic, in the succession of the Apostles, could think little of the responsibility or the dignity of preaching. To exalt the Altar there is no need to depress the pulpit. . . .
[Me: How much in our Church we need still to hear this!]
The second mistake comes easily to those who have become accustomed to looking to the past to recover things lost. it is quite all right to bend over the dish, in which you wash the gold ore, in order to pounce upon the pure bright metal. But you should avoid getting a permanent crick in the back. I mean you must not get into the habit of looking to the past, supposing that all that is good must be ancient & all that is ancient must be good. The Catholic tends to be a backward-looking person. Unless he counter-balances that tendency he will get out of the contemporary stream of thought. The world is changing fast, and "God fulfils Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world." The perfect illustration of this mistake is the way in which the English Paper the "Church Times" has become almost useless except in reference to things past. Our wisdom must be to hold on with tenancy to that which, out of the past, has value for us to-day, and to be alert to see what God would have us do, which has not been done before, because the circumstances which require it have not formerly arisen. "The scribe," said Our Lord, "who is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven, must bring out of his treasures things new and old." We are living in days when much that is new is needed, the risk is that we may lay aside that which is indispensable of the ancient treasures. The Catholic is not likely to do this, for he has highly evaluated the old. He did not throw the baby away with the bath water as protestant sects so frequently did. He values the traditions of the Apostolic Church. He looks back to the past for guidance in innumerable matters, in the matter of Church Order and Vestments, forms of procedure. He is content to walk in the old ways. That is to the good. But if at any point judgment and reason are replaced by sheer conservatism, hardened into prejudice. he will be a menace to progress. He will not be able to see what God would have us do here and now, in our new situation. So we are posed with a problem. God is always giving us problems, and with them, if we will have it, the guidance of His Spirit. I have in mind specially the Ecumenical Movement and the drawing together of the larger denominations of Christendom. I do not want to discuss this at the moment, but I want to encourage conservation of good and necessary things, but to discourage dispositional conservatism, otherwise what passes for tenacity may be inflexibility, what passes for strength may be petrification; what passes for faithfulness may be nothing but an inability to weigh and consider values. The Catholic Christian should be alive, well-grounded in the Faith, always ready to consider new applications of the Truth of the Gospel.
This brings me to the third mistake; which is relate to the last one. I refer here to the tendency in some to exult to undue importance the trivialities that tend to cluster round catholic devotion. It is important, as I have said, that we should recover for use all that is of value for the devotional life of the Christian. But if you ask why were so many thing lost to our English Church life, such as the custom of pilgrimages, use of images, medals and pictures and the other gadgets you can see in Pellegrini's, the answer is in part that they did become a nuisance. Excessive bowing and genuflections and the rest, did become a nuisance. We must find place for these things, because they are found helpful, but we must keep them in the right and subordinate place. . . .
The last mistake I want to to say a word about is the quite uncritical leaning towards things Roman because they are Roman. That is as bad as a prejudice against things Roman, because they are Roman. . . .
[Me: Absolutely classic Maynard.]
Fr Maynard was not John the Baptist, but there is certainly an element of the prophetic, or the reading of the signs of he times, in much of his writing. Here, then, is a challenge for us today. How may we return to the core values of that time which many look upon as the "glory days" of St Peter's Eastern Hill? Surely we could do a lot worse that to pick up Maynard's challenge, and to discern what new things God is calling us to do in today's church and society. As we prepare for the incarnation of the Christ, let us examine ourselves, repent of that which keeps us from God, and ask what God is calling us to do to be prophets of the one who is to come.
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