St Marks Anglican Church - The Gap

They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink;
for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

In 1957, when I was in my early twenties, I received this book as a gift. The inscription was written by my long time close friend from primary school days. The gift was in appreciation of my work as leader of our church youth fellowship. So it is of special significance to me, reminding me not only of my closest friend but also of many others with whom I shared the experience of following Jesus during our student years.

However, this book is of even greater significance to us as members of the Anglican Church of Australia. A couple of years ago I spoke to you about William Tyndale, the translator of the English Bible, and then exactly a year ago about Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, martyr and liturgist. Today I want to tell you about Cranmer's immortal bequest to us –– the Book of Common Prayer.

For those of you who did not hear the stories of Tyndale's and Cranmer's lives, there are copies of my previous addresses on the ushers' table. Please take one –– if they run out there will be some more next week. Hopefully, the text of today's address also will be available in due course.

History is regarded by many people as boring, as it so often seems to be all about politics and economics as seen from the perspective of Kings and prime ministers or, in the case of church history, bishops and priests. However, many people change their attitude to history when, instead of reading of events and dates in a dry old book, they start to research their own family history and learn about the life of John, the great-great-grandfather who came from California to the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s, or about Betty, the housemaid ancestor, who stole a dress from her mistress and was transported to Australia as a convict with a life sentence.

This morning I want us to imagine that we have been transported back almost 500 years in time and that we are worshipping in a village church in southeast England somewhere between London and the English Channel. Our community is a long established one and most members are conservative by nature but our location is such that we are well aware of any new ideas or changes coming from both London and Europe.

So let us now look at those same events through the eyes of the people of the imaginary parish of Durford.

We begin by attending worship in Durford Parish Church during 1509, the year King Henry VIIIth became King of England.

As we enter the church we are amazed to see that it is richly and colourfully decorated. Every stone and wood surface is painted. The windows are all coloured glass, depicting in vivid detail the lives and legends of the saints, the terrors of Hell, and stories from the Bible. The frescos on the walls have similar themes. Around the walls wax tapers and tallow candles are lit before images and altars to various saints and the Holy Family

The sanctuary part of the church is separated from the main part by a carved oak screen with a large crucifix above it. Through the opening in the screen the High Altar can be seen in the distance.

Sunday morning Mass is in Latin which few people in Durford can understand. While the parish priest, Father Peter, conducts the service at the High Altar, the people stand or kneel in the body of the church – pews had not yet been invented. Some may be quietly gossiping or discussing business matters, while the more devout will be saying the Paternoster (Our Father) and Ave Maria (Hail Mary) or other prayers.

The chants of the priest and his assistants, the odours of incense and burning candles drift around the people as they await the ringing of the Sanctus bell to announce that the consecration is completed and the wafer and the wine are now truly the Body and Blood of Christ. The people only receive the communion wafer once a year at Easter and never the wine.

Essentially, the Mass is something done for the people by the priests –– a spectacle to watch but only a few actually participate.

On special festivals such as Palm Sunday there are more elaborate ceremonies. The Sacred wafer is carried around the church and churchyard to be worshipped by the onlookers. More than half the ceremonies depend on belief that the consecrated wafer is actually Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If this were indeed true, then all these ceremonies would be meaningful and appropriate.

However, there are some among the people at Durford who have doubts and increasingly the old beliefs were being questioned as men and women read the Scriptures, the writings of Martin Luther and other reformers, and were finding new ways of understanding and experiencing Christ's gospel. The English church rejected the authority of the Pope in 1533 following King Henry VIIIth's divorce of Catherine of Aragon. A few years later the many monasteries throughout the country, no longer centres of higher religious life but now often scandalously corrupt, were destroyed. Their monks and nuns were dispersed and their wealth appropriated by the King. However, it was still heresy to question the beliefs and practices of the Church –– unrepentant heretics were burnt.

On entering their church one morning in 1540 Durford's parishioners found a new wooden desk with an enormous book on it. Moreover, this book, for which the churchwardens had paid a very large sum of money, was fixed to one of the church pillars by an iron chain.

Three years after the King had agreed to it, Cranmer at last had been able to implement his first and fundamental reform –– a copy of the English Bible was now available in all parish churches for every one either to read or listen to it being read. Two years later Father Peter received an order to read aloud a chapter from this English Bible in the middle of the Latin service.

Next year was a terrible one. The harvest failed all over the land and there were threats of war with Scotland and France. Calls for the people to pray were unsuccessful, since no one could remember the Latin responses for the traditional prayers as the people walked through the fields. The liturgical disaster, if not the natural and political ones, was soon overcome as Father Peter and the people of Durford walked through the fields singing the prayers and responses of Cranmer's new English litany.

It was just what was needed and the people of Durford and throughout England felt that here were prayers which they could make their own.

When originally published, Cranmer's litany began with an “Exhortation on the Need for Prayer”. This began with the words:

“Good Christian people we are here at this time gathered together to make our Common Prayer to our heavenly Father. Two things concerning prayer are specially to be learned. The first is, to know for what things we ought to make our request; the second is, in what wise we should make our prayer.”

“Finally, we must beware in our prayer of that common pestilent infection and venomful poison of all good prayer, that is to say, when our mouth prayeth, and our hearts pray not…..”

While the people of Durford may not have realised it at the time, they were learning another fundamental principle that would underlie the yet to be published Book of Common Prayer. That is,

Obviously, for common prayer to be a reality, it must be in the language of the people.

After King Henry died in 1547 the pace of reform quickened and the people of Durford began to see and experience its consequences

Changes also occurred in the appearance of the church. Parishioners arrived one morning to find all the colourful old wall paintings had been covered over with white wash. Not long after the stained glass windows were replaced with clear glass ones. Many ceremonies were discontinued, all images removed, and masses for the dead abolished.

Father Peter and most of his parishioners were very upset with these changes. However, the reality was that superstitious and unscriptural beliefs, such as the worship of the saints, would continue while the visual aids designed to teach these beliefs remained in place.

At Easter in 1549 Father Peter and the people of Durford used the new Book of Common Prayer for the first time. Everything was now in English and the services were much simpler than previously. Many ceremonies and rituals were omitted because they were associated with superstition or “indiscreet devotion” and did not “declare and set forth Christ's benefits for us.”

The whole Bible was to be read over once a year in the daily services of Morning and Evening Prayer. Indeed Father Peter was required to “cause a Bell to be tolled” before reading these services publically so that “the people may come to hear God's Word, and to pray with him.”

The Latin Mass was replaced by a new service in English called “The order for the administration of the Lord's Supper, commonly called the Mass.”

it was still very conservative. Cranmer had used many prayers from the old liturgy, together with new ones from Spanish, German and Swiss sources –– Catholic and Protestant. He borrowed freely from the writings of English colleagues, not being restricted by any copyright laws. All had been tested against Scripture, then translated and rewritten in his beautiful English. Indeed, like William Tyndale's English Bible, Cranmer's Prayer Book in its final form, has been fundamental in shaping the English language and through it our English-speaking culture.

In 1550 the church wardens at Durford, in compliance with an order from higher authority, sent for the local stone mason and carpenter. The former removed the stone altars from the church while the latter constructed “one decent table” for use during the Lord's Supper.

During the next two years, while the people of Durford were grappling with the changes introduced by the first book, Cranmer was working on a new prayer book which reached Durford in October 1552 and was first used on All Saints' Day.

Changes had been made to remove ambiguities and practices which experience showed were inseparable from superstitious abuse. The most significant changes were in the communion service, now called “The Lord's Supper or Holy Communion.”

The thanksgiving prayer was rearranged to remove any possibility of the sacrament being regarded as a sacrifice for sin. The words of administration of the bread and wine were changed to make it clear that Christ is present spiritually in the hearts of his faithful people and not locally present in the bread and wine. The service now began with the ten commandments and ended with the Gloria (or Hymn of Praise). All prayers for the dead were omitted.

While the people of Durford probably did not fully understand the significance of all these changes, other changes were quite obvious. Both the words “Mass” and “Altar” were not used in the new prayer book, the latter being replaced by “table”. Father Peter had to put away the old vestments and wear only a surplice. When the people came to receive the bread and wine they found that the wafers formerly used for communion had been replaced by bread the same as they normally ate with their meals.

The new Prayer Book was in use for only eight months, scarcely time for the people of Durford to become familiar with it, let alone accept it. Indeed the majority almost certainly would have preferred to return to the older services, – only a few would have accepted it wholeheartedly.

In July 1553 the 16-year-old King Edward VIth died and after a brief period of uncertainty, King Henry VIII's elder daughter, Mary, became Queen, much to the relief of most of her subjects, who were fed up both with the shameless greed of the nobles who had ruled on Edward's behalf and with the changes to religion.

Mary bitterly hated the Reformation and all associated with it. Everyone who disliked the innovations in religion now supported the Queen. Parliament repealed every reforming Act of the previous 25 years. In Durford, Father Peter, (now quite elderly) while not unhappy with the return to the old beliefs and practices, was having difficulty keeping up with the orders from the government and the new Bishop:

On a dark November afternoon in 1554 the Houses of Parliament knelt before the Pope's representative and declared themselves “very sorry and repentant” for their schism and sin.

The reformers in Durford kept a low profile but were encouraged as the last words of Bishop Hugh Latimer to his colleague Nicholas Ridley before they died in the flames at Oxford were passed around quietly.

“Be of good cheer Master Ridley, we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace, as I trust shall never be put out.”

The conservatives rejoiced when they heard of Cranmer's recantations; those in favour of reform were relieved and reassured when they heard that he had repudiated those recantations and died a martyr's death.

In over three and a half years more than 300 men and women died because they would not renounce their Protestant beliefs. On 10 November 1558 five more martyrs died at Canterbury. One of them, a girl named Alice Snoth, sent for her godparents so that they could see how true she was to her baptismal vows. These five were the last to die.

Six days later Mary was dead and there was almost universal rejoicing throughout the country.

“All the churches did ring, and at night men did make bonfires and set tables in the street, and did eat and drink and make merry.”

Five years earlier, when Mary became Queen, the English Protestants were a small and unpopular minority. When she died, it was clear that they had won the sympathy, if not the hearts, of the whole nation.

On midsummer day 1559 Cranmer's second prayer book was restored. There were a few minor changes. The people of Durford, deeply influenced by the steadfastness of those who had given their lives rather than deny their Lord and encouraged by their new minister, John England, heard the gospel message as the Scriptures again were read in the English language.

They shared in common prayer together through the services of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Litany;

Some persons were unable or unwilling to adapt to new ways, others were indifferent to the changes, not having understood the fundamental significance of the reforms Cranmer and his colleagues had implemented. But increasingly many, as they participated in the services of Cranmer's unique evangelistic liturgy, began to understand the nature of “Christ's benefits for us” and that his “Gospel is not a ceremonial law (…..) but a religion to serve God …… in the freedom of the Spirit.”

At least four times a year and possibly monthly the communion table was placed in the body of the church and the people, having been warned beforehand to prepare themselves for this significant occasion, stood around it.

Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer was evangelising the people of Durford and indeed all England with its simple, scriptural and spiritual presentation of the gospel.

So, is Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer still relevant to the Anglican Church today or should we simply regard it as part of the past which is no longer relevant to the 21^st century church?

One response is to continue to use it without any change or adaptation to today's needs and circumstances. This is what actually happened in most Anglican churches for at least 200 and as much as 300 years in some churches after its last revision in 1662.

Another response is to continue to use it but with changes and additions, derived from the unscriptural beliefs and unreformed practices which Cranmer carefully eliminated. This is what actually has happened in many parts of the Anglican Church during the last 150 years.

A third response is to follow Cranmer's example by developing new forms for worship which proclaim the gospel in ways which communicate with people today:

To my mind this last response is the most appropriate way of passing on the liturgical riches of the Book of Common Prayer

Balleine, G.R. , The Layman's History of the Church of England.Church Book Room Press, London, 1948

Hague, D., The Story of the English Prayer Book.Church Book Room Press, London, 1949

Hague, D.Through the Prayer Book – an exposition. Church Book Room Press, London, 1948

Neil, C. and Willoughby, J. M.,The Tutorial Prayer Book . Church Book Room Press, London, 1963

The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, Concerning the Service of the Church. Concerning Ceremonies, ……………

The concept of using the imaginary parish of Durford in south-east England as a vehicle for presenting the impact of the reformation and the Book of Common Prayer upon the people of a local community during the 16^th century comes from G. R. Balleine (see source above).

The title of the address has been adapted from:
Leuenberger, S.,Archbishop Cranmer's Immortal Bequest .The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England:An Evangelistic LiturgyEardmans, Grand Rapids, 1990.
(Unfortunately, a copy of this book was not available to the author when preparing this address.)

The author thanks the Rev'd Ron Bundy for the opportunity to speak to the congregation of St Mark's, The Gap about the Book of Common Prayer. He has been encouraged by the positive response of many members of that congregation to this address and he is grateful to one of them, Averell Robins, for her work in preparing the text for a wider audience.
The assistance of Rev'd Dr Mark Thompson in suggesting and Rev'd Hugh Begbie in lending some of the source material is much appreciated.

Archbishop Cranmer's Immortal Bequest: The Book of Common Prayer

Archbishop Cranmer's Immortal Bequest:
The Book of Common Prayer