Sunday 2 March 2008, 4 of Lent: One Church

We believe one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church…

What the worshipper experiences as the climactic point of the Eucharist varies. When consciousness of sin is acute the words of absolution resonate; when loneliness is all-consuming the human contact of The Peace reassures; when stress and fatigue predominate the glass of Merlot on the portico brings comfort and release. But for the outsider, viewing our worship with an untutored eye, the climactic point is obvious. It is at the heart of the Eucharistic Prayer, when the presiding priest utters the words of Christ at the Last Supper: ‘this is my body’; ‘this is my blood’.

This is a moment that we surround with ritual. The priest elevates the elements and holds them before the people, who kneel in reverence. Incense is offered and two bells sound, one within the sanctuary and one in the tower. All of Belgravia is told that this is the supreme moment, that something profound is happening.


Yet there is another strand in the Christian tradition which would consider this emphasis misplaced. Eastern Christianity understands the climactic point as the words calling upon the Holy Spirit to descend upon the bread and wine and to transform them, the words that we call the epiklesis. In the Eucharistic Prayer of the Orthodox Church this epiklesis always follows Christ’s words, and is the Prayer’s culmination, whereas in the Anglican rite the epiklesis always preceded the words of Christ and was overshadowed by them until the publication of Common Worship as recently as eight years ago.

This is not the introspective preoccupation of liturgical scholars or the unnecessary obsession of over-fussy priests. Something profound is at stake. Allow me to caricature the two traditions. In the first, the Eucharistic miracle is achieved by the careful recitation of the recorded words of Jesus by someone who has been ordained for that purpose. In the second, the miracle is achieved by the action of God the Holy Spirit, for which the people pray with confidence. One is institutional, relying on precedent, authority and guarantee; the other is dynamic, relying on faith and trust in that which cannot be seen.

Those are caricatures, of course: far more unites the two traditions than divides them, but the caricatures shed light on two very different ways of understanding the Church. That outsider, who looks on the Church with an untutored eye, will see an institution that positively glories in being an institution. It seems to define itself first and foremost by its plethora of huge and hugely expensive buildings; it boasts a hierarchy whose complexity, silly titles and frankly ridiculous outfits puts the Byzantine court to shame; and it regularly ties itself up in knots of ecclesiastical law and process that make Jarndyce vs Jarndyce look like a model of transparency. The Church is Gormenghast.

And allow yourself to become obsessed by the buildings, absorbed by the structures or bedazzled by the ceremonies and you are missing the point. ‘What is the Church?’ asks Rowan Williams. ‘It is simply those who have been immersed in, soaked in the life of Jesus, and who have been invited to eat with him and pray to the Father with him’. The Church is the work of God; it is created when the Holy Spirit is sent upon those whom Jesus calls. When the Holy Spirit is sent upon an offering of bread and wine they are transformed into a holy meal and give those who receive them new access to God; when the Holy Spirit is sent upon a disparate group of human beings they are transformed into the Church and offer to all who seek it new access to God. In both the action of God has priority; in both the Spirit is at work.

And what the Spirit creates is not a structure but a body, the Body, the Body of Christ, the Body which embodies Christ in the world and bears Christ to the world. What the Spirit animates is not ecclesial offices but the members of the Body, upon whom the Spirit bestows gifts: not our different temperaments and preferences, but rather our different relationships with God and different perspectives upon God, our different ways of making God’s work real for one another. It sounds very warm and inclusive, exactly the sort of thing that we at St Peter’s believe we’re good at. But the check upon our collective self-confidence is (or ought to be) that the Sprit’s gifts are for every baptized member, every baptized member, and that the frustration of any one member, the trampling or squashing or ignoring of any one member’s gift, is the frustration and trampling and squashing of the whole, and thus of God’s purposes for the whole. And these are real. We may kid ourselves that we’re here for the music or the company or the preaching (unlikely, that). But God has a different agenda for each of us and for all of us. Together we will realize what it is; together we will realize it; and only together.

Well, if I’ve achieved nothing else this morning I hope I’ve explained why when we use Eucharistic Prayers G and F, which are Eastern Orthodox in origin, I do not elevate the elements at the words of Christ. I instead use a gesture that indicates the equivalence of those words with the words of the epiklesis, to the intense consternation of the servers, I imagine. But I don’t believe you appointed me first and foremost to be the MD of St Peter’s Eaton Square plc. I think you appointed me to nurture and build up the common life of a people who have been called by Christ and are being transformed by the Spirit. That is what I believe you are; what we are. And that’s why, although I’ve praised the Church’s new liturgies, I shall depart from them when I distribute Holy Communion to you this morning, and use instead the formula devised by Augustine of Hippo: ‘Receive what you are: the body of Christ’ Amen.