Psalm 121, or 68.11-18, 32-35
OT Reading: Genesis 32.22-31
NT Reading: 2 Timothy 3.14 – 4.5
Gospel : Luke 18.1-8
Text: The Lord gave the word. Great was the company of the preachers (Psalm 68.11)
To-day we are celebrating 150 years of Reader Ministry in the Church of England, and in my case 25 years since I was first licensed. It is a special delight to me that Canon Geoffrey White, who encouraged my vocation and oversaw my training, is with us this morning.
The lectionary was not drawn up with Reader ministry in mind, but two of our three readings are remarkably appropriate. Timothy was steeped in the scriptures from a child, and led into faith by Paul himself, who now urges him to proclaim the gospel message in season and out of season, to convince, to admonish if need be, and above all to encourage. That is pretty much what Readers try to do. Jacob was no priest or prophet. He wasn’t even a good man, cheating his brother out of his inheritance, but for all his faults he had a profound and life-changing encounter with the living God, and in some measure I believe that is an essential requirement, perhaps indeed the only essential requirement, for anyone – lay or ordained – who is called to preach the word of God.
But my text is from Psalm 68 as it appears in the Book of Common Prayer – the Lord gave the word; great was the company of the preachers. As many of you will know, Handel uses this text towards the end of his great oratorio ‘Messiah’ to introduce his celebration of the spread of the gospel throughout the world. A thrilling call to action – the Lord gave the word – proclaimed by unaccompanied tenors and basses in unison, leads immediately into a busy, joyful chorus which conjures up the infectious enthusiasm of the great company of preachers. When their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world, the sequence concludes triumphantly with the famous Hallelujah chorus. Sadly, some of Handel’s most memorable arias and choruses, including this one, are based on translations which are no longer considered reliable. If you turn to Psalm 68 in a reputable modern translation, you will find no mention of the great company of the preachers. NRSV has the Lord giving not the word which might be preached but rather a call to battle, to be carried, not by preachers but by heralds, to the troops on the front line.
I always pay close attention to sound Biblical criticism, but this morning I’m not going to allow a new translation to blow my text out of the water. I comfort myself with the thought that perhaps the authors of our Book of Common Prayer were just as open to the promptings of the Spirit as the scholarly modern translators on whom we normally rely. So I have no real hesitation in inviting you to accept as my text Coverdale’s flawed translation, given wings by the musical genius of Handel, himself a man of deep faith. Whatever the psalmist may have meant to say: The Lord gave the word; great was the company of the preachers.
And great the company is. Although the Order of Readers in its modern form goes back only 150 years, from the earliest times lay men and women, sometimes known as Readers, sometimes as Deacons, have made a significant contribution to the worship of the church, the proclamation of the gospel, and the pastoral care of congregations. In Elizabethan times Archbishop Parker directed incumbents to depute in every Parish ‘some honest, sober, and grave Lay-man to … read the Order of Service appointed … in the absence of the principal Pastor.’ Few Readers were licensed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fewer still would have ventured to preach. But the case for lay participation in ministry grew as a consequence of the industrial revolution. After debating the matter for some 30 years, the Church of England finally decided to respond by establishing the modern Order of Readers, whose members might be better equipped to minister to this new urban world than a rather elite band of Oxbridge-educated rural clergy. The Order was launched on Ascension Day 1866. Today the number of Readers has grown to some 10,000, which is much the same as the number of ordained priests. Half of us are women, and although our most visible role is that of preacher, Readers are also active behind the scenes, particularly in pastoral work not only within parishes but also with hospital and prison chaplaincies.
But that’s enough Reader history. Let’s get back to the text, because the first five words have something important to say to all of us, preachers and listeners alike. The Lord gave the word. Sunday by Sunday, when you settle down to listen to the sermon, you allow yourself to be led into the world of the gospel, led, I hope, to see our everyday world through the lens of Scripture and the mind of the Spirit. Like any preacher I know from what you say at the door of the church that you sometimes receive a different message from the one I thought I was trying to express. That doesn’t matter. The Lord gave the word. If you have given that time to God, if you have heard God’s word and received it, then I have done my job, and much more important, you have allowed God to do his work in your heart.
One more thing. Those of you who teach, in whatever capacity, will know that there is no better way to learn. I learn every time I have to prepare a sermon. But so do you when you prepare to tell the truth about God to a Sunday School class, or even to your own children. The Lord gives the word. Putting what we believe into plain words which we can speak with conviction requires us all to dig deep into our perception of the truth, both as we find it in the Bible, and as we have come to know it in our lives. It is the Reader’s daily experience of ordinary life both at home and at work, often in an environment where Christian faith and practice cannot be taken for granted, which allows us to make a distinctive contribution to the understanding and preaching of the gospel. Many of you also have that experience, and the ability to put it into words. To-day, as we celebrate Reader Ministry, I believe we should give thanks for the way so many lay people express the gospel in their lives. We should all pray for the grace to do it better, and some of you, almost certainly, should be thinking about taking the next step, to follow Alan Goodison, Andrew Penny and myself into Reader ministry.
The Lord gave the word. Great was the company of the preachers.
[1] Archbishop Parker, cited by Francis Young in The Reader, Summer 2016.