RSCM Report, Part Seven: a Sermon

A Sermon by Castanea dentata, visiting Chorister, for the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis on the Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: July 11, 2010 AD

This is, obviously, imaginary. But it is what I wish I could have said to the people that day. I probably would have offended everyone in the room.

Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Psalm 69:1-4
Colossians 1:15-20
St. Luke 10:25-37 [the Good Samaritan]
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"But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?"

We sit before you, your neighbors. For the most part, we choristers are Episcopalians and Methodists. We are baptized. We have been sealed as Christ's own forever. And you bar us from the Table of the Lord. Even the dogs gather up the crumbs under the table. Dogs, yes; Protestants, no.

I warn you: by doing this thing, you eat and drink unworthily, eating and drinking damnation to yourselves, for you fail to discern the Lord's body [I Cor. 11:29] of which we are part.

We forgive you, and seek your forgiveness. We pray that the Divine Judge may have mercy on us all, for all our manifold and grievous offenses toward one another, from the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, the Inquisition, and the Thirty Years' War, to the widespread prejudice against Roman Catholics in this country through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a prejudice that has not even now altogether disappeared. With all our hearts we pray for mercy, joining our hearts and voices to the prayer of Holy Mother Church throughout all the world; you will hear it shortly:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

We will not eat from the Table, but we are here nonetheless; it is granted us to be servants at this heavenly Banquet. We are in the divine Presence, witnessing the Mysteries, and assisting in their due celebration in accordance with our office as Choristers. And that is enough: "For one day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness." [Psalm 84:10-11, traditional BCP text]

Because we are barred from this Table, we celebrated the Eucharist at camp yesterday, according to the usage of the Episcopal Church. Our Lectionary differs in many of the Old Testament lessons from yours, so instead of Deuteronomy, we heard from the Prophet Amos:

"And the LORD said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the LORD, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more. . . ." [Amos 7:8]

We, your neighbors, are that plumbline, as the Samaritans were for the Jews. What will you do about us?

You are our plumbline as well. The dignity and splendor with which the Divine Liturgy is conducted in this place, with liturgical texts and ceremonial in faithful continuity with Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition, stand in judgment on modern Episcopal liturgy. There was a time not so long ago when our liturgy was good too, often better than yours in these respects; it is less often so, these days. Instead of dignity, we embrace casual informality. Instead of stable liturgical texts firmly rooted in the Tradition, we offer a cafeteria of options, celebrating our own creativity and increasingly distant from both Scripture and Tradition.

This morning, we sang the Gloria from the Messe Solennelle of Louis Vierne in its proper place in the liturgy. We will shortly sing the Agnus Dei very nearly in its proper place. Such music invites the actual and complete participation of the faithful with their ears, minds, and hearts. This, too, is a plumbline. Do we have such music in the liturgy, or do we sing settings of the Ordinary of the Mass that, in their banal predictability, invite us to go through the motions without any genuine connection to the liturgical action? Simply moving our lips and making vocal sounds does not mean that we, in our hearts, are participating in the spiritual realities; bad music makes it almost impossible to do so. There is some music of this sort even here in today's liturgy. I will not name it, but I can describe it, a description that applies to vast quantities of music published for the "Catholic market":

-- Rising five-note scale at the beginning? Check.
-- Two-bar phrases, so as to demand no physical effort from the singers? Check.
-- Hint of modality, but not enough to be uncomfortable? Check.
-- Descending figure at the end? Check.
-- Copyright notice included and licensing fees paid? Check.

I know and respect musicians who write music of this sort, including two of the musicians represented in today's service booklet. They are devout Catholic musicians of high calibre, doing the best they can in the circumstances in which they find themselves. They are writing what the Church appears to want and is willing to sing. They can do no better until you ask it of them, and should you do so, they will.

In your tradition, you have Palestrina, Byrd, and Victoria; Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert; Bruckner, Duruflé, and many others, to say nothing of the Gregorian Chant that lies behind much of their work. You and we should sing their music in the liturgy, where it belongs. We Protestants have great composers in our tradition as well, from Orlando Gibbons and Henry Purcell and Heinrich Schütz to J. S. Bach, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells and Hugo Distler. We rarely sing them in our liturgies. Every time we offer some inane pseudo-religious pop song to the Lord, they are a plumbline, reminding us that we could do better.

I could say more. I could speak of my profound respect for your Catechism and its clear ethical teaching, something lacking in Episcopal circles. On the other hand, I could ask why, in direct contradiction to the plain teaching of Scripture, you do not permit your priests to marry [I Tim. 3:2, 8-11, 12]. Or I could ask why there are no women at your Altar. And you could ask why we are so casual about divorce. And then there are the issues which inflame passions so much that civil discussion becomes difficult; issues such as abortion and homosexuality. In these matters, we are again plumblines to one another. So long as we differ, we ought to keep listening, in case we might prove to be mistaken. "Be not highminded, but fear" (Rom. 11:20).

But I will finish by expressing my affection and esteem for your Holy Father, Benedict XVI. Papal authority has long been an obstacle in attempts at reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. It is a thorny issue, and I have little to add to what has been said many times by both sides. But I believe that the Successor of Peter has at the least a moral leadership in the Western Church, both Catholic and Protestant, and that all of us should listen carefully to what he says. I consider him the leading contemporary voice in Christianity. We Anglicans have no one comparable, as much as I like our Archbishop of Canterbury, unless it is someone like the Archbishop of the Sudan, the Most Rev'd Daniel Deng Bul.

He, along with his four million fellow Anglicans in that war-torn country -- and your Roman Catholic bishops, priest, deacons, religious, and lay people alongside them, and Methodists, and many other Christians of all sorts -- regularly face danger, poverty, hardships of every sort, and the possibility of martyrdom. They do not back down from any of these things.

Their unity in witness is a reminder that there is much more that unites us than those few things that divide us. I do not know when it will happen, but there will come a day when our descendants will share the one bread, the one cup, at this Table. If nothing else, it will be on that Day when all things are made new [Rev. 21:1-6].

St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Colossians:

"For it pleased the Father that in [Christ] should all fullness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight." (Col. 1:19-22)

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"Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." (St. Jude, v. 24-25)

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As if in answer to my thoughts, Judith and I spoke with a devout Roman Catholic gentleman in the parking lot after the Mass. We spoke of our mutual love for the Body and Blood of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. We spoke of our unity in Christ, and we parted with handshakes and goodwill.