Our Rich Liturgical Heritage
The Gloria
The Rt Revd Dr Peter Brain
I have many memories of the 7.15pm service at our parish church during my youth group days in the early 1960s. One was our minister announcing ‘The Collect, Epistle and Gospel for today...’ and another, ‘we stand to say the Gloria’ at the end of the service. In the BCP they stood as marker points announcing the ministry of the Word, and the opportunity to express our gratitude in unison to God for his kindness to us through Jesus.
As we work our way through the Communion Service this year I will take the Gloria first, since this is where we usually experience this majestic hymn of praise in our AAPB and APBA second order services. Next month, God willing, I will reflect on the Collect, Epistle and Gospel.
I have been wondering why I was so taken with the Gloria because those five years of high school were before I became a Christian in 1964. No doubt there is retrospective gratitude, but I think there was a genuine joy in being directed upwards that appealed to me as a teenager. I had not embraced the Saviour as my very own, but I am sure God was using this corporate worship experience to keep me from thinking that life on earth, with its many pleasures, joys and challenges was all there was. Three Sundays of each month we shared Evening Prayer, with its own unique and rich source of Biblical truth constantly reshaping and reforming our minds, capturing our hearts, whilst giving us glimpses into the ‘real reality’ of those life shaping words ‘your will be done on earth as in heaven’. The Gloria had the effect of importance as we stood, and of vitality as our words echoed around reminding us that the Saviour, whose death we had remembered, was the Lord who could be trusted into the week ahead. Saying them made this more accessible than if we had tried to sing, especially for us young men whose singing ability was neither well-formed or attuned!
With the opening phrase Glory to God in the highest we were reminded that God is worthy of our praise and attention, more so than our legitimate pursuits of study, work, scouts, sport and the like. They would keep these in perspective, paradoxically enabling us to enjoy them more, because they were not the main game. This, as I have since learnt, would be the source of peace to his people on earth, as the transcendent alone has the power to drive out our peace destroyers of envy, covetousness and pride. The four-fold ascriptions, Lord God, heavenly king, almighty God and Father compel us to worship… give thanks and praise you for your glory. Sixty years later, it is this worldview and mindset that can keep me from the personal pride and flattery of others, too easily sought for my own ends and glory. Sadly, our culture promotes and even demands this from us, leading inevitably to narcissism, hopelessness and lack of cohesion.
The gloria moves us from banal diagnoses and by bidding us to look up in worship, rather than inward into our own goodness or ability, leads us to the well proven prescription of trust in Christ. The refrain Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father reverberates in the remainder of this ancient hymn echoing the worship of heaven itself (Revelation chapters 4 and 5). Here is the unique only Son of the Father, the host of the Table we have just shared, the lamb of God, who in fulfilling all the Old Testament sacrifices, priesthood and ceremonial offerings, is acclaimed in the words you take away the sins of the world. New and long-term believers alike will always do well to pray have mercy upon us. We never doubt our salvation if we are reliant upon Jesus because we know that the one seated at the right hand of the Father delights to receive our prayer. Having prayed we will not presume to come to your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies we want the Holy Spirit to correct, convict, chasten and counsel us away from every sin. All so that God might be glorified as our Father’s likeness, our Saviour’s character and the Spirit’s fruits might grow and be manifest in and through us.
The Gloria, as with our Services, reminds us that God must be allowed to be God. Not any god, but the one who has uniquely, fully and finally been revealed to us in the Divine and fully human person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The systematic teaching from the lectern and pulpit, complemented from the Prayer desk and Table, combined to work into me a reverential love of God that assured me of His existence and presence. A presence mediated by those who led our services, taught us in youth group and served us in our local church. I believed all the essentials of the Creed and the Christian life because I saw them in action and experienced them in such a way that convinced me that there was no better way. When the Holy Spirit opened my heart to embrace the Lord Jesus as my Saviour and Lord I rejoiced, because I can assure you, I was on the way to destruction as a proud teenager who so easily sought self-glory in sport, work and achievement. The down to earth reality of the transcendent Gloria, a hymn without music, mercifully rang in my ears long enough till by embracing the Saviour, I was given a new script, a new song and a new heart-beat. God is good.