February 10, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Lent 1

We have a new liturgy for Lent. The best liturgies try to hold our understandings of the past with those of the present while pushing us into the unknownness of the future. The words offer not only comfort and reassurance but also challenge and uncertainty.

This liturgy is written for the ‘purple’ periods in our calendar, like Lent. Lenten prayer is different from other prayer. It’s prayer that moves us away from the surety of well-known roads and signs in order to reorientate us into the vastness of God. It is prayer that takes us off-road in order to question deeply the roads we’ve been on. It is prayer that invites us to think deeply about what we are committed to and whether we are prepared to bear the cost of it.

There are some major differences between this liturgy and what you may have experienced in the past. Primarily this liturgy seeks commitment from you. It asks us to metaphorically ‘light a candle of hope’. It challenges us to do something – to act, to change – to plan, petition and protest – to dream, pray and work together to build a world of peace and justice for all.

Most church liturgies involve praising God, asking forgiveness for our sins, creedal recitation, remembrance of the salvific actions of Jesus, and a petite post-Communion mention of service to others. These liturgies are lightweight in demanding too much of us.

This new liturgy begins by acknowledging the reality of suffering and the belief that we can make a difference. God is pictured not as a benevolent supreme being who is hamstrung by our freewill, but as the sparks that ignite our commitment to making a difference.

The Song of Zaccheus by Joy Cowley takes us inside the mind of a persecutor, Zaccheus, he of climbing tree fame, and posits that within his warped murky morality there was a seed of goodness. There is hope for those who are rich, who oppress, and who profit from oppression. But, as we know from his story in Luke, it comes at a cost. Zaccheus gave away half his fortune to the poor and repaid those he defrauded four times over. True repentance, turning to the light, is more costly than any bended knee in Church or court-ordered retribution.

The penitential rite begins with words from Holy Scripture reminding us that we are loved by God no matter who we are and what we’ve done. Nothing we do can change that. Yet accepting that we are loved by God confronts us with the irritating truth that everyone, even our worse enemies, are similarly loved.

The confessional prayer, said by the priest rather than the congregation, does not ask God to forgive us. We know that God has already forgiven us. Rather it asks that we learn the healing skills needed to overcome injustice.

The absolution prayer, said by the congregation rather than the priest, declares that not only are we forgiven but that we need to graciously forgive others. We have to actively spread forgiveness around. Forgiveness kindles the fires of hope.

Those who utter these prayers have been deliberately switched around to provoke us to ask: ‘What do we need to confess to God?’, ‘Why do we need a priest to absolve us when God has already forgiven us?’, and ‘What is the role of a priest when all of us are called by God to minister?’

The Gospel responses have been changed. One of the crimes of biblical literalism has been to call every passage of scripture ‘the Word of God’ and praise God for every dot on the ‘i’ and cross on the ‘t’. ‘The Word of God’ however refers to the divine Spirit that animates life. The literal words of a biblical text are simply words that may or may not offer guidance and wisdom to us. We pray they will, but quite often they reflect the thoughts, theologies, and prejudices of times past – times that we hope will never come again.

The liturgy has no formal creed. Creeds by nature define who is in our club and who isn’t. Rather than count some people out we are willing to join hands with any one or group to work for a just and peaceful world. As we gather around a table, take bread and wine in memory of Jesus, recall the stories of suffering and hope, and commit ourselves to work for change, we invite anyone and everyone to join us. The Eucharist is in effect our creed.

Continuing the theme of we being God’s light in our suffering world, the Great Thanksgiving [as the Eucharistic prayer is traditionally called] brings to mind the struggles of oppressed peoples over the centuries, their despair and pain, and the amazing resilience of hope. This is the context in which we understand Jesus and his death. He was a Palestinian peasant who suffered with his people under the boot of Rome. He was a prophet who spoke up and non-violently confronted the oppressors. For this reason he was tortured and killed.

Jesus however didn’t see himself as a failure. He believed his way of self-giving love was the path of hope. He inaugurated a community that placed loving before winning, doing right before being safe, and encouraging freedom before keeping to the rules. This path of hope is the way we are challenged to follow. By faith we see in Jesus’ way the sparks of hope which we call God.

This part of the Great Thanksgiving prayer, prior to the words of institution, is a major departure from most traditional liturgies. They begin by praising the power and expanse of God, including the creation of human beings. Then human sinfulness is mentioned, and the eradication of such sin through the sacrificial death of Jesus. This supposed trade of Jesus’ life for our sin made us a ‘holy people’. We are then invited to sing praises to God for the success of this deal. Even modern liturgies follow this basic format: God’s power, our creation and sin, Jesus’ saving work, and our resulting inclusion by God.

Instead of starting with God’s power this Lenten liturgy starts with human suffering and the irrepressible flicker of hope. This flicker is an incarnation of God - not the God of power and glory, but the God who resides in the heart of the suffering ones. There is no talk of human sin, as we now know that the word ‘sin’ is a weapon in the hands of the powerful. The poor were told of old that sin prevents them from acting together, purposefully and politically, to save. Instead they must rely on external saviours as construed by mainstream religion and their political masters. They were not to trust the flicker of hope within.

From human suffering and hope’s flicker this Lenten liturgy goes on to recount how Jesus formed his followers into a potent community with a radical message. They are our ancestors and we their offspring. In such community we keep the light of God burning.

The words of institution keep with their traditional form save that the phrase equating Jesus’ blood with forgiving sin is removed. The Eucharistic Prayer then links the commitment, words and actions of Jesus with our vocation to spread his message. Our strength is our solidarity with the living and the dead and the Divine Energy which flows through us. This Energy is resurrection power.

In a traditional Eucharist there is what is called an epiclesis. This is when the Presider prays that God send down the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. In this new liturgy the Presider states that the Spirit is already here, in food and drink, in and among us. The material and mundane is sacred and holy already, and our prayer acknowledges God’s presence.

The liturgy goes on to speak of the Spirit of Resurrection bringing light into the darkness of suffering, guiding us on our journey, and enlightening our saving schemes. Our understanding of God is of one who works not for us or above us or beyond us but mysteriously and wonderfully with and within us.

Following the Communion there are three sentences of hope, all from non-biblical sources. God’s wisdom does not just shine through the Bible. We then join in saying the Lord’s Prayer in Maori, acknowledging that even the oldest prayers are rooted in specific cultures as our faith is embedded in this land.

Finally the Blessing too is controversial. Again the roles of priest and people are mingled and we end up blessing each other as God the source of all blessing and blessedness flows through us.

This new liturgy is not perfect, or authoritative, or necessarily finished. It is simply an attempt to capture something of our experience of faith and the mystery of God among us and to invite each another to commit ourselves to world change. In this liturgy you won’t find a male God sitting in the sky directing traffic, neither a God who makes us acceptable by killing off his child, nor a God who demands nothing of us except prayer and penitence. Instead you will find a God who even in our darkest nights believes in us, trusts in us, and comes to birth within us as we act to bring more love and justice into the world.