A Gospel Liturgy (1)

At the heart of conventional worldly religion, God is conceived of as a metaphor or symbol of spirituality, a projection of human hopes and aspirations, a dream of what might or should be. But if God is just the other end of human willing, then any accomplishment of these hopes depends upon human efforts and human goodness. Since human goodness and accomplishments are fundamentally flawed, this is a recipe for failure, futility, and despair. However high the arrow is shot, it must fall again to the earth; and the higher it soars, the more calamitous its fall.

That’s conventional religion (including some versions of Christianity, including conventional Episcopalianism): but the Gospel is fundamentally different. The Gospel does not call man to a religion of meritorious works, but proclaims instead God’s gracious and unmerited work for us – a work that is as good and efficacious as ours is flawed and futile; for it is the work whereby God himself has met our highest aspirations, by taking our nature to himself, redeeming it from futility and failure, and bringing it to perfection by communion with himself. This redemption and elevation of our nature is altogether the work of God accomplished for us by Christ and accomplished in us by his Spirit; it is entirely the work of his free and unmerited grace, and therefore it is ours to receive by faith alone, with the result that even our works are works of faith, works that are motivated, directed, and empowered by grace. The default motivational structure of the human being seeking salvation through his flawed and futile works is necessarily one of guilt and fear, but the grace proclaimed in the gospel to faith delivers us from guilt to gratitude, and turns fear into love, thus transforming our motivational structures from the inside out. The classical Prayer Book liturgy (the one devised by Thomas Cranmer in 1549 and 1552, and adapted to
American usage in 1928) is a liturgy deeply rooted in the Christian tradition of worship but reformed with extraordinary craft to be the vehicle of this transformation by the Gospel. Its very structure corresponds to the movement of the soul by the gospel, in a triad that may be dubbed “guilt-grace-gratitude” or “repentance-faith-works”. In Morning (and Evening) Prayer, this triadic spiritual movement is apparent in the three parts of the liturgy (“Penitence, Praise, and Prayer”).

Thus, the first part (“Penitence”) of Morning Prayer begins with a general Confession of sin – bringing before us an awareness of our flaws and failures, our deep need of God’s grace – that’s the moment of guilt acknowledged in repentance. The second part (“Praise”) consists of the reading of Psalms, Lesson from Scripture, and Canticles of praise. This corresponds to the second moment of grace and faith. The third part (“Prayer”) consists of the Creed and Prayers of supplication and intercession. It corresponds to the third moment, of gratitude expressed in works; for prayer is the work of grateful faith. In gratitude for the gracious promises of God, made known to us in the word of God and fulfilled for us by Christ, we are bold to confess (i.e. acknowledge openly as our own) the faith they teach and to claim the fulfilment of those promises in us and in the church.

Thus, the overall structure of the service reflects this triad of the soul’s movement from guilt to gratitude by means of grace: but the marvel of Cranmer’s liturgical craft is this triadic movement is also found within each of the three major parts. In the first part (“penitence”) the Confession corresponds to repentance, but the Absolution proclaims grace to faith, and exhorts us to the work of prayer to please God now by what we do and to obtain eternal joy hereafter. In the second part (“praise”), the triadic movement is more complex, because so much of it is found in (varying) passages from Scripture. But the trajectory from guilt to gratitude by means of grace is precisely the trajectory traced by the Scriptures themselves. It is found within the psalms (which as a whole move from lament to praise, but also often in particular). It is found in the movement from Old Testament law and prophets (stirring us up to repentance and hope of grace) to the New Testament testimonies of gracious promises fulfilled for us and in us by Christ. Moreover, because each psalm and lesson ends in a doxology or canticle (an act of praise), the movement of the soul from guilt by grace is completed in gratitude. In the third part (“prayer”), the Creed supplies a transition, summing up the faith taught in the Scriptures, and laying the foundation for the prayers which follow; but the Prayers themselves follow this same triadic structure: the lesser litany (“Lord have mercy”) corresponds to guilt acknowledged in repentance, the Lord’s Prayer (Jesus’ own teaching on prayer given by him to his disciples) corresponds to grace received in faith, and in Collects (pithy prayers for grace) that follow the versicles and responses we gratefully claim the fulfilment of that grace in ourselves. Thus both in the service as a whole, and in each of its parts, the worshipper who is attentive and responsive to the promptings of the Spirit will be continually guided and led in that mighty transformation that God is working in the faithful by means of the Gospel, delivering us by his grace from guilt and fear to gratitude and love, from the alienation of sin and death into the joy of sharing in his own life.