Five Sermons on the Mass 1: Mystery

Five sermons on the Mass! isn’t that a bit too much of a good thing? you may well be asking what is the point of such a protracted series on such a limited subject; and how on earth I can possibly make five sermons out of it.

Well, in a sermon a few weeks ago I made what may have been a contentious statement, that the Mass is at the heart of our Christian faith. In part, I now want to justify that statement through these sermons: but also, if that statement is true, it will follow that in talking about the Mass I shall also be touching on many other aspects of Christian belief and life. So I hope that the scope of these sermons will not be as narrow as it may sound. Each of them will be based on a different name for the Eucharist, a different way of looking at it.

So today we start with mystery: an old name for the Eucharist, less common now in the west than in the east, is the Holy Mysteries. What is meant by the word “mystery”? I will suggest a false definition, then a true one. The false one is something that we just can’t understand at all, that doesn’t actually make sense: we talk about something illogical or contradictory, then say “oh, but it’s a mystery” and refuse to say anything more about it - which is using the word as a cop-out. The Mass is not that sort of mystery.

A real mystery, on the other hand, is something which means a great deal, but whose meaning can never be exhausted. We can never have the last word on a mystery: there is always more to be said. We can understand a mystery to some extent, but we can never comprehend it. There is always more to be said, to be explored; we can always go deeper. It’s like the end of C. S. Lewis’ last Narnia book, where the children reach what appears to be paradise, the most beautiful place imaginable; but Aslan, the lion, keeps telling them to go “further up and further in”; and the further they go, the more beautiful it all becomes. That is the sense in which the Mass is a mystery; for here we encounter the mystery of the incarnate Christ, the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

At the heart of the Eucharist is the long “Eucharistic prayer”; and integral to this prayer is the Sanctus, when we sing “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty”. This is a quotation from Isaiah chapter 6, where the prophet has an amazing vision of God in the temple, “sitting on a throne, high and lifted up”, with the angels singing God’s praises and the whole place being filled with smoke. Isaiah is bowled over by the sheer beauty and glory and holiness of this God, and at the same time is acutely aware of his own smallness and sinfulness. He can’t bear it, he can’t take it in. Here is a true mystery, and we find it at the heart of the Mass.

And somehow, either by a stroke of genius or by a happy accident, this Sanctus has come to be followed by what we call the Benedictus: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest”. This, of course, has nothing to do with Isaiah: it is the cry of the children on Palm Sunday, as they threw down their branches and cried out in welcome to Jesus as he entered Jerusalem: “here comes Jesus! he comes in the name of the Lord!”.

There is a terrible idea around that, because Jesus came to reveal God, therefore God is no longer a mystery - through Jesus we now know everything there is to be known about God. In fact, the opposite is true: because God is a mystery, Jesus came to take us deeper into the heart of God’s mystery, to reveal more and more of the unsearchable wonder and glory and beauty of God. So, in the Eucharist, we move from the Sanctus, Isaiah’s vision of God’s mystery, through the Benedictus, anticipating Christ’s revelation of that mystery, towards the very presence of Christ, who comes in the name of the Lord, to take us deeper and deeper into the beauty and glory of God.

And so it is with the attitude of Isaiah that we need to come to the Eucharist. Confronted with this vision, Isaiah didn’t say “now what’s happening here? is this all being done with mirrors? or could it be some chemical imbalance in my brain? and those angels: surely that arrangement of wings isn’t anatomically possible?” Instead, he made the only possible response: he fell down and adored. So with us at the Eucharist: it’s futile to say “well, Jesus said this, but Paul said that, and the Pope has said a, but then Luther said b and Calvin c, and then again my reason tells me d… so I can just about believe x, but certainly not y or z…..” No, we have to approach the mystery of the Eucharist as we approach God’s very self - for it is indeed God we are approaching here - not with a grudging scepticism, but “with awe and wonder, and with bated breath”; like Isaiah, falling down and crying with the angels “Holy, Holy, Holy!”.

And the “catholic” ritual with which we celebrate Mass here is a perhaps faltering attempt to express something of this attitude of adoration and wonder, to express the presence, the beauty and holiness and mystery of God. In Isaiah’s vision, the temple was filled with smoke, for it is ultimately impossible for mortals to see God clearly and in fine detail, only “through a glass darkly”. So we use incense as a sign of God’s mystery, and as an invitation to worship God not only with the mind but with all the senses, with one’s whole being. And as Isaiah fell on his face in the presence of the living God, so we are invited to genuflect: which does not at all mean “I hereby sign up to the doctrine of transubstantiation” or to some party line or other; but rather “I desire to worship God with everything that I am, with my heart and soul and mind and body, with a wonder that cannot be contained in words.” We use music, which, like the song of Isaiah’s angels, lifts us into realms which the spoken word finds it hard to attain; while the use of silence often expresses what cannot be put into words at all.

The French have a saying about the Mass: je vois, je recois, j’adore, mais je ne comprends pas: I see, I receive, I adore, but I do not… not “I don’t understand, it’s all basically meaningless”; but “I can’t comprehend it” - it is all so wonderful that it cannot be encompassed. All our statements about God - and about the Eucharist - are tentative and provisional: only our adoration is absolute.

So let me end by offering you a vision of the Holy Mysteries here at Horfield. A vision of a liturgy which is not stilted, or formal, or complicated, or downright obscure: but rich, and beautiful, and constantly inviting us further into the mystery of God’s own being. I don’t want people to come away saying “I understood that” or “wasn’t that impressive!” but “blimey!”; not to be left cold, or bewildered, or bored, but astonished and set alight with the wonder of it all. I don’t want children to find it all too simple, to come away knowing what it all meant, to encounter the whole thing at some easy level (and anyway, why should we assume that the easiest level is the right one for children?); but to be captivated, to dance in the aisles. I want the liturgy to be fun, and wonderful, and profound, and awe-inspiring; to echo our deepest feelings and desires, but also to take us beyond them; constantly to be opening new windows into the mystery of the heart of God.