Choral Eucharist

Christ the King

22 / 11/ 20

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

Father Richard Peers SMMS

During the first lockdown I took rather a lot of funerals. Many of the clergy around where we lived were elderly or had health conditions and were shielding. It is always a privilege to be the officiant at a funeral. To seek to pay attention to family and friends, and to the person who died. To weave together a liturgy that reflects that person, that is true to them, that is true to our uncertainties and doubts, our existential questions.

At every funeral that I led in those weeks I was asked to pray one particular text. What interested me was that as I visited the various crematoria where the funerals were held there were a lot of civil celebrants offering not so much humanist or secular funerals but just non-church funerals. the same text that I was using at every funeral, they were using as well. Psalm 23.

When everything else is peeled away this beautiful psalm remains part of our culture, our heritage. It speaks to people. It is a very appropriate psalm for funerals. The image of passing through the valley of the shadow of death speaks profoundly of the need for lament in the face of death and destruction but also offers hope. Death too is a passing over, a journey to something else.

It is also a very suitable psalm for today’s feast of Christ the King when it is set as the psalm for the Eucharist although for Covid reasons we are not having a psalm in our liturgy at the moment. Suitable at the end of this month of November when we have been praying and remembering as we do every year in November, those who have already passed through death’s dark valley. 

It is a psalm that I pray daily as part of my thanksgiving after I have celebrated the Eucharist. It is a deeply sacramental psalm. The Eucharist is itself foretold in the banquet that is laid and the cup that overflows; but other sacraments are also present: the still waters of baptism in which we have been incorporated into Jesus, the anointing of confirmation in which we acknowledge the gifts of the spirit, and the anointing of ordination for those of us ordained to ministerial priesthood.

It is of course, a suitable psalm for the feast of Christ the King because it shows us what sort of King Jesus is. Like his ancestor David he is a shepherd-king.  A king leading his flock.  A shepherd, as Ezekiel tells us in today’s first reading who will rescue his sheep from all the places to which they have been scattered.

And just as the sacramental journey of each Christian rehearses the ministry of Jesus so this psalm shows us Jesus baptised, anointed, gifting us himself in the Eucharist and passing through the dark valley of the shadow of death.

Psalm 23 is a profoundly Jesus psalm. In it we walk the path of redemption, the salvation he has won, the basic doctrines of the christian faith, the thing he has done for us.

As I have prayed this psalm over the years. At funerals, in the daily Office, after Mass there is one line that constantly calls to me. It’s a line that doesn’t normally attract much attention, certainly doesn’t conjure romantic images of fields and ponds and placid sheep idly grazing.

It’s the second line that speak: ‘there is nothing I shall want.’

The hebrew is two simple words: lo ech-sar.

I know how far I am from wanting nothing. My Amazon wish list currently has 62 books on it. I want the house to be warm, good food on the table. I want to be able to go to France again soon. To visit friends in New Zealand. Well, you get the picture. I am a bundle of wants. Like so many prayers I can only pray this line hoping that one day I might be able to mean it just a little bit.

I have been reading the Rule of Saint Augustine over the last few weeks, and I invited you as a cathedral community to join me in doing so. I’ve been commenting on the daily portions on our cathedral blog.

Augustine understands our wanting, our desiring. He might easily be called (dare I suggest in the presence of Canon Harrison) the theologian of desire. Augustine recognises that desire is what leads us to God. Without desire we would not be searchers. But he also understands that we are at our most vulnerable when we follow our desires. God alone can satisfy our desire, our longing. Everything else will leave us desiring more, wanting more needing more. We are like addicts seeking the next fix. 

Even if I were to buy every one of those 62 books, do you, do I, think I would be satisfied …?

Today’s gospel paints the inverse picture. The things we don’t want. We don’t want to be hungry, to thirst, to be strangers, without clothing,  sick or in prison. Being a Christian is always about facing the truth of these things we don’t want, leaning into them and not running away from them.

And this leads me to another way that helps me understand the second line of the psalm: There is nothing I shall want. How do we lean into the nothing. Not to embrace some fatalist nihilism (the Latin version of this line is, after all nihil mihi deerit) but to find the freedom that is the goal of the Christian life. 

John of the Cross the sixteenth century Spanish master of prayer drew a picture of a mountain to illustrate the spiritual life. At the top he repeats the Spanish nada, nothing, over and over again:

“Nada, nada, nada, nada, nada, nada, and even on the mountain, nada.”

The spiritual life has nothing, nada, as its goal.

John writes:

“To reach satisfaction in everything, 

desire satisfaction in nothing.

To come to possession of everything, 

desire the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all, 

desire to be nothing.

To come to the knowledge of everything, 

desire the knowledge of nothing.”

Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book One, Chapter 13

This is what Jesus shows us on the cross. Giving up his God-ness, his divinity, was not enough, becoming human was not enough, even death was not enough, it had to be a shameful death, ‘even death on a cross’.

And in his dying he too discovered that God is nada: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.”

All my desires, all my wants are for some-thing. But God is not a thing, he is literally no-thing.

Quite often when people speak to me about prayer they say how hard it is, how they struggle with prayer. 

As long as we continue our wanting in our prayer, our desiring this or that spiritual experience, we are wanting a thing. When we let go, when we stop struggling, when we embrace the no-thing we will have found nada. God. And that nothing is to be totally free, it is as Augustine knew total grace, total gift.

In your praying today, in your praying this week my prayer for each of us is that we find the true freedom of nada, we find no-thing, we find God.

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford 1st November, 2020 Eucharist

Fr Richard Peers SMMS

Revelation 7:14: 

These are they who have come through the great ordeal.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

How is the new job going?

The question I have been asked most often in the last 8 weeks.

So how is the new job going?

Well, there are a lot of rules, I say. 

There is the Blue Book, that is the lengthy document that sets out the rules for those of who live in here at Christ Church. 

Then there are the rules for our worship in the Cathedral.

As Sub Dean I read the second lesson at Matins when the Dean is not present, unless I am Canon in Residence in which case I read the first lesson, and the second only if the Dean is not present but I can give away the first lesson to someone else, which is usual, and when I am also Officiant I give away both lessons.

Well, you can see what I mean: there are a lot of rules.

Rules can seem stifling, imprisoning, trapping. It  can fee like they asphyxiate the Spirit, the very breath in us, the very breath of God.

I haven’t even mentioned the rules that the Pandemic has caused. Rules which we have struggled to keep up with. How many people are allowed in any house? How many in a bubble? How long should I wash my hands for? Where  and when do I need to wear a mask.

We can feel trapped, stifled. We are almost literally asphyxiated, our breathing hampered by these horrible bits of material on our faces. I yearn to tear mine off in church, to speak clearly, to hear clearly.

Rules, can, of course, be oppressive, tyrannical. They can be motivated by a desire to control, to dominate.

But I like rules. We need them, we can’t live without them. We need the rules of the game, of sports and board games to be fair, to enable the game to be played. To keep us safe. We needed the rules of Rugby yesterday when England won, but needed them just as much if we had lost. We need the rules of the American election to ensure a safe transfer of power if Biden wins.

We need rules.

I suppose, it will be no surprise to you that as a former Headteacher I like rules,  I enjoy the rules of this House, of this Cathedral. 

I am glad to be part of a team of wonderful people who are teaching me the rules.

I love receiving Mother Philippa’s Rubric copies of our worship booklets with the rules in Red. 

I loved being able to text her yesterday to remind me if I was doing the intercessions at Evensong and I loved getting her one word answer: Yes.

Rules keep us safe. They keep the chaos at bay. Sitting in the comforting stillness of my stall before Matins begins as my colleagues arrive and take their places I am not panicking, wondering what’s going to come, whether I need to read this lesson or that. Like a smooth, well-oiled mechanism the prayer flows and the Spirit is present.

It is that daily unfolding of prayer that is the real answer when I am asked how the new job is going. 

It has been the greatest of joy for me. 

The most exquisite experience of rightness, the joy of tumbling into this bubbling stream that has bubbled in this place since Frideswide lived here and which bubbles still. 

These eight weeks have been among the most prayerful of my life. This is the easiest building I have ever known to pray in. Kneeling in the Latin chapel I physically feel Frideswide’s presence tangibly next to me. 

Places like this are sometimes called thin places, Places where the barrier between the natural and the more than natural is barely there. Thin places is a good phrase. But this is also a place that is thick with the prayers of the centuries, thick with the memories of goodness, thick with the known and unknown, thick with those who will come after us, the centuries ahead when the pandemics of 2020 will be carved into monuments and stones and you and I are long gone.

Rules are important. After Frideswide’s community it was Augustinian canons who lived and prayed in this place; built our oldest buildings; the buildings that are the heart, the core of this place, this cathedral, the Chapter House and the Prior’s House. Preparing to move here and since I have been here I have been praying the Rule of Saint Augustine that was the rule of life of those canons who lived here. It is a beautiful document. Very short, I’ve arranged it so a short paragraph can be read each day over a month. Barely 3000 words in English. Just a hundred or so words a day.

Today we face new rules for the month ahead and perhaps even longer. Rules that are devastating to those of us who love to gather for worship. Rules the like of which we would never have imagined when this year began. Rules designed to keep us safe, to protect us.

Whatever those rules turn out to be in the next few days as bishops and lawyers send us, no doubt, many pages of guidance. Whatever those rules, the stream of prayer in this place will continue. Whether we can gather together in this building, or whether the saints will have to murmur the prayers in here for us while we pray in our homes. Whether it is online daily or weekly. Please in your own homes know that we, you, I, all of us, are praying together. The communion of all the saints is the water we swim in, the air we breathe.

When I meet with my sister and brother Chapter colleagues (on Zoom) in the next few days I am going to suggest to them that we commit to praying two texts in the weeks ahead.

Firstly the Rule of St Augustine. It is a document of its time, it has some wonderfully quirky sections. But it is very beautiful and simple. Please watch out on our website and elsewhere for posts about our praying this or some other text (they may not agree!) 

The other text I would like us to pray together is the key section of today’s Gospel, the Beatitudes.

It is one of the most profound and complex texts in the gospels, yet deceptively simple.

Most scholars believe that there were originally just the central eight invocations of the blessed, omitting the final one. It is these eight which form a perfect poem, a canticle to blessedness.

I’ve been praying the Beatitudes at mid-prayer each day for all my adult life.  I learnt the habit from the prayer book of the Taizé community in France which I first visited as a 17 year old.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, 

for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, 

for they shall be comforted!

Blessed are the meek, 

for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, 

for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, 

for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, 

for they shall be called children of God. 

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, 

for theirs is the kingdom of heav’n.

The Beatitudes are a wonderful rule of life. As we pray them together or at home as we dwell in them, we will be formed and shaped by them. They are a complex rule, they don’t tell us who is to read the second lesson, or how often to sanitise our hands. But they are a rule nevertheless. 

A rule can be a tool for measuring. They help us to judge our lives and ourselves.

 A rule keeps us accountable to each other and to God.

To what extent am I poor in spirit and meek? Am I really hungering, yearning or justice? Am I always merciful? Am I known as a peace-maker?

Is the kingdom of heaven the start and end of my life, of my day, as it is the start and end of this poem that is the Beatitudes?

Brother Roger who founded the Taizé Community distilled the Beatitudes into a simple statement:

‘Every day let your work and rest be quickened by the Word of God; keep inner silence in all things and you will dwell in Christ; be filled with the spirit of the beatitudes: joy, simplicity and mercy.’

So, this is my suggestion, that as the Christ Church community in the lockdown ahead we think about our common life by praying these texts every day. Whether you are a long standing member of the congregation, one of our wonderful sidespeople, guides, choristers, organists, employees or a member of Chapter. Whether you have just dropped in on YouTube or Twitter, whether you have been here for thirty years or like me just arrived

Dwelling in these words and allowing them to dwell in us.

The limpid simplicity of the Beatitudes, their complex depth, will help us bear the grief of these times, we will be those who mourn the many losses of lockdown and plague. Enduring this we will be those who have come through the great ordeal for Jesus is at the centre of the throne, he is our shepherd and he “leads us to springs of the water of life.”

In this pandemic may Jesus keep us all in the spirit of the Beatitudes, joyful, simple, merciful.

‘Amen! 

Blessing and glory and wisdom 

and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’