Please turn to your Prayer Books again, to the beginning of our Prayer Book Eucharistic liturgy on p 404. You’ll see there an innocuous-looking heading, ‘The Gathering of the Community’ referring to the first 5 pages.  Well, what community? And how does it gather? And around what?

I want to do three things this morning:
o Give some sort of answer to those questions
o Give some sort of guidance about how therefore we might best gather as a community
o Explore that actual section in the Prayer Book
And we’ll find that the three readings for this morning give us a lot of help in the process.

For example, the Gospel reading about the road to Emmaus has four crucial elements for community:

First (and absolutely central to Christian community) - the presence of the Risen Christ in our midst, whether we recognise Him or not. It took a while for Cleopas and his companion to recognise that presence. In Eastertide, the paschal candle is a marvellous symbol of the Risen Christ in our midst. And whether that symbol is there or not, we gather in His Name and claim the promise of his words – ‘where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.’ The Christian community is the community indwelt by Jesus.
Second – the Scriptures. Jesus opened the scriptures with His two followers. He is the heart of the Bible, the key to the Bible. And there is no other Jesus than the one the Bible bears witness to. The Christian community is the community which knows its Bible and gathers around it to find Jesus the Word as it explores the words of Scripture together.
Third – the Eucharist. Jesus broke bread with His two followers, after blessing it. And ‘their eyes were opened and they recognized him’.  The Holy Table in our midst is a privileged place of encounter with Jesus. The Christian community is the community which gathers to break bread together and renew their union with the Jesus who is Himself the life they share together.
Fourth – the journey. Christian community is not a static thing. We journey into it, and Jesus walks with us as we journey, just as He walked with the His two followers. In one way, Christian community is a gift from God; in another way, it’s something we have to work at. We journey into its fullness, and sometimes away from it.  We have to consciously gather and work at our relationship to Christ, and also at our relationships with one another in Christ.

So. No Jesus, no authentic gathering of the community. When we walk in that door to come together, it’s to come together around Him, in a rich array of ways. This is not the Eastbourne Bowling Club (with or without women) or the Eastbourne Community Board or the Muritai School assembly. Which have their valid place in the hierarchy of human communities, of course, but they gather in their own name, not Christ’s.

C.S. Lewis writes ‘Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way [as in the sacrament], for in him also Christ – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself - is truly hidden.’  That’s the sermon in which Lewis says we never meet an ‘ordinary’ human being.

‘When we walk in that door to come together…’ I turn now to this morning’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. On the day of Pentecost Peter proclaimed the Good News of Christ, and said to the crowds wanting to know what to do in response: ‘Repent and be baptised…for the forgiveness of your sins…save yourselves from this crooked age/this corrupt generation’. Christian community is built on repentance, forgiveness and baptism. Not on ordinary human good will. Christian community presumes there is such a thing as sin in human beings, both individually and collectively. It’s totally realistic about the human condition. The Christian community gathers as a community of sinners who know they have needed forgiveness, and have sought that forgiveness, and know they need to continue to seek it. By the way, there was a real debate in the Early Church – and it surfaces in the Epistle to the Hebrews – about whether forgiveness was possible if one sinned after one was baptised. Fortunately for you and me the Church decided it was possible. Nevertheless, as we walk in that door to gather as a Christian community we should be acutely aware of the baptismal font as we pass it. Perhaps there should be a smoke alarm in the font, set off by any smell of sin as people enter. (I would certainly set it off.) The font symbolises the boundary between forgiveness and new life in Christ on the one hand and the unrepented corruption of the world on the other. The holy water stoups at the door of Roman Catholic churches are good reminders of that, and I wish we had them in Anglican churches generally. So remember, unrepented sin dilutes and destroys Christian community, however much we smile and shake hands – which is why we don’t exchange the Peace until after the confession and absolution.

‘When we walk in that door to come together…’ I turn thirdly to this morning’s Epistle. Peter again. He writes, ‘Now that by obedience to the truth you have purified your souls until you feel sincere affection towards your brother Christians, love one another whole-heartedly with all your strength. You have been born anew, not of mortal parentage but of immortal…’ This is where the rubber hits the road. Christian community is not a matter of giving warm fuzzies, of superficial and temporary cordiality towards one another. There is a costly journey into Christian community. Obedience to God and inner purification comes before the feeling of genuine affection to our brothers and sisters in Christ. And then after the feeling of genuine love we have to go on and actually love, actually ‘do’ love.  Those of you who’ve heard me tell this story before will I hope forgive me if I tell it again. In the 1980’s there was an Argentinian Pentecostal pastor who preached an eloquent sermon on the text ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. Everybody thought it was a great sermon and congratulated him afterwards, and went home. The next Sunday he preached exactly the same sermon, and the people raised their eyebrows but said to themselves ‘he must have had a tough week, and anyway it wasn’t a bad sermon to hear again’. Then the third Sunday the pastor preached it yet again. There were now some audible grumbles, and the elders took him aside and asked him what was going on. He replied, ‘when you all put that sermon into practice, I’ll move on to something else.’ Well, the word got round, and the following Sunday he preached the sermon for the fourth time to his remarkably faithful congregation. And what followed was a great outpouring of practical love among them there and then. People reconciled with one another; others offered jobs to the unemployed in their midst; money was sensitively given to the poor among them; the lonely were genuinely greeted and included; offers of help with the sick and disabled were made and arranged; and a whole host of needs in their midst were acknowledged and met. It was a memorable day. Community happened. By the way, it’s not recorded what the pastor preached on the following Sunday. And I’m not preaching next Sunday either.

Now in the light of all this let’s go back to the Prayer Book section ‘The gathering of the community’. One preliminary point.  This section is a bit of a liturgical ragbag. There are a number of prayers in it which were scattered through the old Book of Common Prayer service and which the NZ Liturgical Commission couldn’t bear to throw out completely – and they crammed them in here. And so a very important word is the ‘may’ in the rubrics – the instructions in italics. Sometimes I go to parishes where this word has escaped the notice of the person up front, and he or she solemnly and unnecessarily goes through all the material between pp404 and 408. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of it, we just don’t need all of it at once!

Now if we strip the ‘mays’ away (there are ten of them) we end up with something much simpler
? A formal greeting from the presiding priest (p 404)
? The invitation to repentance (p407)
? The confession (p407)
? The absolution (p 408)
? The collect of the day (p408)

In other words, these are the ‘musts’ which must not be obscured, whatever else is said or done up front.
? The formal greeting of the presiding priest reminds us of whose name it is we are gathering in, of who is the true host and president, of who it is who is calling us together – the Lord.
?  The response of Christians to the presence of our Lord must include acknowledgement of our sins and seeking His forgiveness
? The collect announces the particular focus for the service of Word and Sacrament which follows.

Everything else is secondary. And so we have to take particular care to do two things:  effectively acknowledge the presence of the Lord, and come before Him in genuine penitence.

Effectively acknowledging the presence of the Lord can be done in several ways. One way for individuals is to kneel and pray immediately we enter the church rather than looking round for someone to chat with. Some Christian communities keep a collective silence in the church until the service begins, so people coming in enter a community of silence – but that, powerful as it can be, is not easy with kids, and probably impossible (though the Quakers must do it somehow). Another collective way of acknowledging God’s presence is praise, genuine God-centred praise and adoration. Which is what the optional Collect for Purity and the Gloria are pointing to, however perfunctorily they are sometimes said or sung.

Coming before God in genuine penitence in worship is something which requires two stages. One is a measure of self-examination beforehand – otherwise the words of confession we say in the service are empty, hanging in the air, and we are absolved of everything in general but nothing in particular. And the second stage is to use the opportunity provided by the ‘silence’ mandated before the general confession in order to recall what’s actually on our conscience. That single word ‘Silence’ is one of the most important words in the first five pages. Incidentally in a Roman Catholic Mass there is no equivalent to our general confession followed by authoritative priestly absolution. That authoritative priestly absolution is reserved for actual confession of particular sin. We Anglicans are in danger of just going through the motions of penitence and mouthing cheap grace.

As St Paul says, ‘A man must test himself before eating his share of the bread and drinking from the cup’. For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgement on himself if he does not discern the Body’ (1 Corinthians 11:28-29). That phrase ‘discerning the Body’ is capable of two interpretations, and probably both are correct. They certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. The phrase can mean ‘recognise that in the elements of bread and wine we encounter the sacramental Body of Christ - Christ in our midst’. And it can also mean ‘recognise that in the gathered Christian community we encounter the continuing Body of Christ of which we are members - Christ in our midst’. Paul after all had just been sounding off against the selfishness and insensitivity of the rich members of the Corinthian church in the face of their poorer fellow Christians. The Argentinian pastor in our earlier story was making the same point in a different way. So sometimes, perhaps often, we have to include our failure to live as a Christian community of authentic love, in our opening prayer of confession.

‘See how these Christians love another’ was not a scornful jibe which pagan Romans threw at the Church, but a wondering tribute. And vibrant Christian community has often been and is still the most effective way of proclaiming the Gospel; it spills over naturally into a needy and splintered world.

And so I finish with the rest of the chapter in Acts following this morning’s reading, describing the life of the Jerusalem Church which gathered around Peter’s proclamation of the good news of the Risen Christ. ‘They met constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, to break bread, and to pray. A sense of awe was everywhere, and many marvels and signs were brought about through the apostles. All whose faith had drawn them together held everything in common: they would sell their property and possessions and make a general distribution as the need of each required. With one mind they kept up their daily attendance at the temple, and. Breaking bread in private houses, shared their meals with unaffected joy, as they praised God and enjoyed the favour of the whole people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those whom he was saving.’ 

So – shall we go on and ‘gather as community’, again?
A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 6 April 2008, by the Revd Canon Peter Stuart. (Texts:  Acts 2:40-41; 1 Peter 1: 22-23; Luke 24:29-31A)

 

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