Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
Gracious Father,
whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven
to be the true bread which gives life to the world:
Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and for ever. Amen.
As you listened and prayed today’s collect, what was it you heard in the echoes of its words, the shadows of its images? What pictures were drawn in your mind’s eye, what sounds were made within the ears of your soul? Chances are there was something about Holy Communion, and perhaps some half-remembered passages from scripture – something about Jesus being the bread of heaven and something about life; maybe something came to mind about the feeding of the multitudes, or even words from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer: “…that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.” For me, I will admit, the words “came down from heaven” have always raised images of Christmas and the incarnation. The collect bears all these echoes and more. While a relatively modern composition – it is “a revised version of a collect written by F. B. McNutt” in the mid-20th century – it draws not only on central images of the Christian faith, but also of Christian life and the Church calendar. Some of you may remember when today was popularly known as Refreshment Sunday. In his commentary on the 1979 Prayer Book, Marion Hatchett writes that “when Lent began on the Monday after the First Sunday in Lent (rather than on Ash Wednesday), this day marked the half-way point in the season and was observed with feasting.” The fact the gospel reading on this Sunday was always John’s narrative of the feeding of the multitude only emphasized or perhaps informed this practice. The collect gives rise to those remembrances as well.
What we are talking about here is the power and importance of resonance. Some years ago I heard Mark Oakley, the then vicar of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, speak about the Church’s engaging with the world. He said the Church goes around desperately trying to relevant, when in fact her task ought rather to be resonant – resonant with real human experience, with our collective past, with the things we hold most dear. He is right – undoubtedly. When the Church tries to relevant, it usually ends up pandering to the least common denominator or the spirit of the moment, the demands of immediacy – “groovy”, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend worship songs projected onto nine-foot high screens, come to mind. Only when she is resonant does the Church strike at the deeper chords of who we are, of who we have been, of – dare I say it – truth, as far as we are able to grasp it, at least. Let me unpack this a little. When we talk about something being relevant, we mean that it is somehow closely connected or especially pertinent to a particular matter at hand, and usually in a pretty specific way. The word finds its origin in the Scottish law courts of the 16th century, and, in fact, its meaning then was incredibly precise. It meant that something was “legally pertinent”. Resonance, on the other hand, is something that happens deep within us. As a physical property, to resonate is “to produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound.” At the psychic level, it means to “evoke or suggest images, memories, and[/or] emotions.”
Powerful liturgy, effective God-language, transformational religious language are such on account their resonance. Think about it for a moment, good liturgy and prayers – those we remember as touching us – do in fact fill us with a “deep, full, reverberating sound” that in turn evokes images, memories, emotions. It is one of the reasons that we must be so very careful with liturgical and religious language. If it has no foundation in – no echoes of – the tradition or of genuine, lived human experience it can feel trendy at best, cheap at worst at best, or it can simply just fall flat. Certainly, we must have new language to speak as the Church moves through history or as she encounters new contexts, but such language can never be so detatched from the tradition that its only frame of reference is the new context. As you know our Lent study course this year is centered on the Prayer Book, and inevitably issues surrounding tradition, liturgical language, images and resonance have come up. I was minded to think of the tradition like a relay race, in which the participants of each team run their part and then hand over (the literal meaning of tradition, tradere) the baton to the successor in the race. Perhaps resonance occurs in that moment when both runners are touching the baton – just a thought.
Certainly the issues surrounding resonance find expression in today’s Gospel reading. The passage is only part of a much longer conversation that Jesus is having with Nicodemus. Now, you will remember that Nicodemus was one of the Jewish leaders who was becoming increasingly curious about Jesus, and the writer of John tells us that Jesus visited him at night. We can only assume this was in order to avoid making their relationship conspicuous. Nicodemus knew there was something true, something real about Jesus – indeed he said to Jesus at the start of the meeting, “Rabbi, we now you are a teacher who has come from God”. (John 3:2) But Nicodemus also knew there was something profundly new about Jesus’ message, and he had trouble getting his head around it. Jesus did not offer him relevance – the immediately contextual argument, he offered resonance grounded in the tradition, the communal experience of the Jewish people: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15) Jesus talks about the “new” (for lack of a better word) by making it resonate – filling it with the “deep, full, reverberating sound” of the tradition known so well to Nicodemus. In highlighting the image of the serpent Moses raised in the wilderness, Jesus effects in Nicodemus – and the writer of John in his readers – a resonance with the entirety of the Passover experience, the Hebrews’ wandering in the wilderness, God’s salvation and his forging of a new people.
Resonance is not always easily describable, sometimes we cannot fully give words to its effects. We simply know that something rings true, rings consonant, rings right. Resonance does not carry with it definition, neither may it bring conclusion; but perhaps may be only the resounding of a far-off echo that suddenly makes present and profound sense, or even the gentle suggestion of an only half-remembered story which at this moment brings with it the invitation to see everything afresh. It is the office of good liturgy, of well written prayers, to provide for and effect resonance. Cranmer knew this – so much of what is in first Book of Common Prayer carried with it echoes and reverberations of the Church’s tradition and the people’s communal experience; the collects particularly, but now exclusively. The compilers and editors of subsequent Anglican prayer books have used his skill as a benchmark, and in many cases been faithful imitators. Personally, I believe in the case of our own prayer book the compilers and editors have been exceptional, and current additional material produced continues to be.
We are coming soon to the end of Lent, but perhaps you may want to spend some time in the next two weeks with some of your favorite collects, or with some new to you, and attend to their resonance, allow them to reverberate deeply in the chambers of your heart, the corridors of the your mind, listen to the far-off echoes to which they hint. You may just find something deeper than the immediate, or the merely relevant, you may even find given to you bread come down from heaven.
Gracious Father,
whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven
to be the true bread which gives life to the world:
Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and for ever. Amen.
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