Fourth Sunday in Lent

Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Vocation. We’ve been pondering vocation during this Lenten season. So far, Fr Neil has spoken about vocation in relation to Baptism, the beginning of our vocation; I’ve spoken about vocation in relation to Eucharist, our vocation as covenantal faithfulness with others; Fr Nick has spoken about vocation in relation to discipleship, our vocation as a path of learning and cost; and today we’re thinking about vocation in relation to both liturgy and Mothering Sunday - can we find a unifying theme?!

The word, liturgy, or in Greek, λειτουργία, comes from two Greek words: λαός, which means people, and ἔργον, which means work. So the word, liturgy, or λειτουργία, means something like, the work of the people, our work, or our public duty perhaps.

Does it feel like this is our work? This is a public duty which we carry out together? What might it mean that this is our work?

In ancient Israel, the tabernacle was a really important place. In the tabernacle, there was an outer courtyard, an entry room into the tent itself, and the holy of holies, God’s personal throne room in the centre of the tent. And the holy of holies was guarded by heavenly hybrid creatures called cherubim.

This structure and the imagery within the tabernacle was meant to be a pattern of the garden of Eden. In the creation account in Genesis, there was a larger region called Eden, within which God plants a garden. In the centre of this garden is the tree of life. And, after the fall, the way to the tree of life, the holy of holies, was guarded by two cherubim.

In this creation story, God puts humans in the garden to be an image of God. Just as, in antiquity, one would put a statue of the god a temple was dedicated to within that temple. God puts humanity in the garden and tells them to work (avad) and to keep (shama) the garden. These are the same words which are used later in Israel’s scriptures to describe what priests do in the tabernacle - they work and they keep. And perhaps you won’t be suprised to know that, in the Greek translation of Israel’s writings, it is the word λειτουργία, or liturgy, which describes the work that the priests do in the tabernacle, the place which is meant to be a mini garden of Eden, in which God had placed humanity to work and keep the garden. In the tabernacle, in that Eden-type place, the priests do their work, their liturgy, and this is meant to be a miniture of what the whole of humanity has always been called to do within creation, to do liturgy.

When the Israelites came to the tabernacle, they were reminded and shaped by the pattern of their hope for the world. The tabernacle, that little space, was meant to serve as a miniture of the whole of creation. The work, the liturgy, of the priests in the tabenacle, was a pattern for Israel who were called to be a kingdom of priests, to be a blessing to the nations. The world is itself a temple of God in which we are called to do the work of priests, to enact a cosmic liturgy.

So, liturgy means work or public duty, and it is the sort of work which humanity has been called to do in order to be a kingdom of priests, the image of God in the temple of the world. And liturgy is the work which the priests in the tabernacle carried out as a miniture of the work we should be doing on a cosmic scale.

In what sense then is liturgy work? In what sense is it a public duty?

Liturgy is a language, it’s a story which tells us who we are. In the language of the liturgy, we hear our mother, the church, in the image of Mary, singing to us. Like a mother, in the ministry of that vocation which grounds all other vocations, like a mother communicating with their new-born through sing-song sounds, so our Marian mother, the church, tells us through sounds, song, images, and gestures, who we are. What our story is. That we are loved. That there is hope. It is here that we glean that experience which comes before words, that there is an other who gives of themself for our nurishment, and it is here we learn the content and the grammar of our language, what it is our lives will speak off.

If God put human beings into that Edenic garden to carry out the work of cultivating, caring, growing, bringing to fulfilment, the creation which God sees as good, then the work of humanity, its liturgy, is in a sense to be a mother to creation. Just as we come to our mother church to work together, to create together in the liturgy a moment of that garden in which we are fed from that tree at its centre (point), so we go out into the world to live and work and speak with a language shaped by the liturgy, to be priests for the world. It is not the case, however, that we have the truth here in church, in contrast to the poor world out there which just needs us as its priests. No. It is as much our own lives, the bits of our own lives which need mothering, which need the priestly work of our Lady, as much as it is any other part of the world.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.