The Mystery of Christ (1)

It is rather ridiculous to try and write bullet point summaries of Christian faith, as I attempted to do in the previous post (now wisely deleted). They are almost always incomplete, partial, time-bound, and dry. At best, they are appeasements of our heroic, bustling left-brain. Necessary appeasements, lines in the sand, perhaps, that may help us take the next step and plunge.

Christianity, like any great wisdom tradition, can’t be mastered within the compass of a creed, confessional statement, degree, ordination, conversion, peak experience, Alpha course, or baptismal rite.

We need to be exposed to its living tradition over and again, like watering a bed of seeds, or planting and growing a large, fruitful garden. It is the work of a lifetime, a life. 

We need a way of receiving the mystery of Christ, the complex unity of his life and message, and in a manner that appeals to the wholeness of who we are - body, senses, intellect, memory, timeless, embedded in time. This is the purpose and design of “the liturgy”: 

The Liturgical Year was developed in the course of the first four centuries under the influence of the contemplative vision of the Gospel enjoyed by the Fathers of the church. It is a comprehensive programme designed to enable the Christian people to assimilate the special graces attached to the principal events of Jesus’ life... (1)

The core of its message - or way of receiving and perceiving reality - is an experience of God, the source of all being, marked by intimacy, affection, and oneness:

This consciousness is crystallized in Jesus’ remarkable expression “Abba”, translated “Father”… Jesus’ personal experience of God as “Abba” is the heart of the Mystery that is being transmitted through the liturgy. The Liturgical Year provides the maximum communication of this consciousness. Each year it presents, relives, and transmits the entire scope of the Mystery of Christ. As the process continues year after year, like a tree adding new rings to its growth, we grow toward maturity in Christ. (2)

In a profoundly communal setting, individual faith is supported to expand into the New Creation that Paul called “the Body of Christ”:

“The Body of Christ”, or simply “the Christ”, is the symbol for Paul of the unfolding of the human family into Christ-consciousness, that is, into Christ’s experience of the Ultimate Reality as Abba. Each of us, as living cells in the body of Christ, contributes to this cosmic plan through our own growth in faith and love and by supporting the same growth in others. Hence, the immense value of corporate worship and of sharing and celebrating the experience of the Mystery of Christ in a faith community. (3)

Thankfully, the liturgy, in both Roman Catholic and Anglican forms, has progressed over time to become more participatory, comprehensible, and physically close to the people, while retaining its ancient sense of balanced form and vital memory. Thankfully, in many Anglican settings these days, liturgical leadership is no longer the strict preserve of men.

Because I love the liturgy - and this hasn’t yet been suppressed or supplanted by my love of Quaker worship -  I can end up feeling rather critical, watchful, and disappointed at times. I get angry when it becomes too clergy-centred, weighed down by multiple words and forms, lacks a balance of warmth and solemnity, or is too physically separate from the rest of ‘the Body’. 

I once attended a carefully arranged liturgy in a beautiful Cathedral in New Zealand. It had a large, well-trained choir. The whole service went like clockwork, was beautifully composed, and heartily enjoyed by many. But five minutes in, I was furious. It just felt so wrong. 

It had no centre, no heart, no sense of being “held” (the regular dean was notably away). It felt complex without being unified, ‘offered’ without being warm. Above all, as the gathered ‘people of God’, “a holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2: 5), we were so utterly passive and far away. It was as if we were at a grand musical concert or cultural performance. We just watched and admired, or watched and fumed (in my case). In Thomas Keating’s profound words, there was very little transmission of “Christ-consciousness” - of God or Ultimate Reality as Abba, intimate, close, and one.

On the other hand, once on holiday in a provincial town in New Zealand, while my family enjoyed their pancake breakfast (no judgement - the room was warm and the pancakes very good), I drove into the town centre for morning communion. The church I had in mind was most impressive from the outside, slightly raised on a little hill. I had heard it was almost cathedral-like inside, with carved native birds on the choir stalls. When I got there, a sad sign read: “Morning communion in the church hall next door (winter only).” 

Soon, I found myself inside a small room filled with a modest half-circle of padded red chairs, a handful of elderly locals, a baby that wouldn’t stop crying (and which everyone else unblinkingly accepted and loved), and a makeshift altar, behind which stood the gowned priest, who had just rushed in from his dry toast breakfast. Oh no, I thought. This is going to be painful.

It wasn’t. It was a delight. We were so close. It was so imperfect. 

The service followed simple Anglican lines, with a composed sense of entrance, shifting into a deeper space, opening and clearing our hearts and minds, joining Christ in his particular journey point (or manifestation to us, as us)  that day, sharing peace with each other, lifting to communion and thanksgiving - we who are many are one body for we all share the one bread (1 Corinthians 10:17) - drinking from the same ‘common cup’, sitting in quietness (even the baby), then parting and leaving - with Christ a little more alive to our consciousness - into the cold South Canterbury morning air. The priest didn’t do it all, though he held it together, mainly by just being-there. 

On paper, or so my ego said, it should have been a disaster - packed into a small room, with a boisterous infant filling the space, and an unused, jewel-like building next door. But it had so much more heart - Abba - than the distant Cathedral thing. And whatever I received there, in that utterly new, flawed, and particular setting, felt mysteriously identical to what I have received so many times before. 

═══✿═══

Because Catholic liturgy is comprehensive - appealing to the whole of us, reliving the Gospel narrative in detail over the course of the year - it also must perpetually live with, and manage, the risk of becoming cluttered, distracted, becoming mere routine, and losing touch with its core purpose and essence (however we define that). This was one of the most important critiques of the Reformation.

Modestly, reformers argued that the Church was guilty of putting numerous obstacles - of language, culture, architecture, etc. - between the people and the worship of God. Thus, the liturgy needed to be decluttered and reformed. In England, amongst other changes, it was simplified and put into the vernacular. But the reformers’ critique was much more far-ranging than this. They argued that the Church, in its approach to salvation and faith, claimed powers for its sacraments (many of which existed without strong Biblical precedent) that were God’s and God’s alone. Paul Tillich called this critique, ‘the protestant principle’: 

…in relation to God, God alone can act and that no human claim, especially no religious claim, no intellectual or moral or devotional ‘work’, can reunite us with him. (4)

There are many ways of receiving the fullness of God. We don’t of course, by any means, need to get God or Christ ‘all at once’ and in one service, place, or even community. Such an idea, if we were to adopt it, even unconsciously, is highly dubious for the reasons stated above. God, as Christianity dares to understand and speak of, is beyond all words, thoughts, religious systems, and finite forms. God is sheer subjectivity and freedom - I am who I am, or I will become who I choose to become,  or I am the Existing One (Exodus 3:14) - whose initiative and action always precedes our own.

In his dialogue with the woman at the well, Jesus spoke of a future in which we would worship God neither “on the mountain” nor “in Jerusalem”, but “in spirit and truth”, for “God is spirit” (John 4: 20-24).  In Revelation, there is still the image of a city (and a mountain), but its “church” has become the direct presence of God: 

And in the spirit, he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. (Revelation 21: 10, 22)

Such a vision - of the old, intermediary things passing away, and a new, direct, purified relationship with God being established - had been anticipated at least as far back as Jeremiah:  

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest… (Jeremiah 31: 3, 32-34). 

Christianity is never static, including its worship forms. There are theological and spiritual reasons for this, as well as the usual historical and cultural ones. Christianity is a progressive faith, not in the sense of things necessarily getting better and better, but in moving towards a horizon in which God is more directly known, perceived, and, indeed, worshipped. Surely this movement maps - or is it direct harmony with - a common movement in our own lives and spiritual journeys, from more outward to more inward experiences and expressions of faith. 

References:

(1) Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience (1987), in Thomas Keating, Foundations for Centering Prayer and the Christian Contemplative Life (2002), p.259.

(2) As above.

(3) As above.

(4) Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology: Volume Three (1963), p.224.

Image at top of page: Episcopal Liturgical calendar, retrieved from https://thewell.intervarsity.org/blog/how-liturgical-calendar-keeps-me-sane.