The readings are Isaiah 1:1. 10-20, Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16, Luke 12:32-40

This is the third sermon about our Sunday worship. The prophet Isaiah was disgusted with the worship he saw in the Temple. “Hear the word of the Lord,” he says, “I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.” True worship is honest, thoughtful and life changing. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that people should worship the Father in spirit and in truth. These sermons will, I hope, help us all to understand what we are doing on Sunday, and, if we understand what we are doing, then our prayers and our liturgy won’t just stay in our ears and on our lips, but will change our heart as well.

Last week I quoted the old Latin saying, “Lex orandi, lex credendi.” The rule of our prayers is the rule of our belief. Someone later added the words “lex vivendi” which means the rule of life. So the full saying would read, “The rule of our prayer becomes the rule of our belief and what we believe shapes our lives.” Isaiah was telling the people of Judah and Jerusalem to worship the God of justice and mercy. Then they would come to believe in justice and mercy and this would show in the way they treated each other. They would “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

We need to bear this in mind when we come together for worship. We have come to give glory to God, to open our lives to God, to become more Godly and to use that godliness in our lives for the benefit of all God’s people.

Our worship begins as we gather together in church, ready to pray, to give praises and to listen to what God may say to us. The ministers come in, carrying the symbols of our faith: the cross of Christ, the light of Christ, the books of the scriptures and the vestments, which are the special clothes which identify the servants of the community.

After greeting each other, we say a prayer together. This is the one which begins, “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open…” This is a very old prayer, probably written in Latin at least a thousand years ago. When it was first written, it was used by the priest and other ministers before they cam into church. It was a prayer for purity, so that the priest and ministers would do their work rightly and properly. In England, five hundred years ago, it was translated into English and brought into the service for everyone to say. The liturgy of worship is the work of all the people, so it is right that we should all ask God’s help with our worship.

The prayer is called the Collect for Purity. A collect is a prayer which gathers our thoughts together and collects them into one prayer. We know that God knows us better than we know ourselves, and that we are always distracted by thoughts of other things, even in the middle of worship. The word “inspiration’ means “breathing in” so we pray that we may breathe in God’s Holy Spirit, and that God’s breath will be our breath so that our worship will be good and true, with no distractions.

Next comes what we call the Kyries. Now, this prayer is old, many people think it is older than Christianity and that it comes from the royal courts of Greece. The Greek words are Kyrie eleison, which means Lord, have mercy. All the people would stand waiting from the king, and when he came out they would shout, Kyrie eleison! in the same way that we might shout, God save the King! So Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy, is a shout of welcome. The church shouts Lord, have mercy! to welcome God into our hearts. Later, the words Christe eleison, Christ have mercy were added, and the Kyrie eleison repeated, to make it quite clear that we were welcoming God with his Christ and God’s Holy Spirit into our lives and into our hearts.

It is a great prayer and I like to use it during the day to remind myself that I am living in the kingdom of God and of his Christ.

This shout of welcome is followed by an ancient hymn. It is called the Gloria because it begins with the words the angels sang to the shepherds in Bethlehem – “Glory to God in the highest and peace to God’s people on earth.” This hymn has been around since the early second century, and was often called, the Angels’ Hymn.

It is a bit like a National Anthem of the church, so it follows quite naturally after the Kyrie. It is as if we shout our greetings to God and then sing the national anthem of the church.

This is what Thomas Cranmer thought in 1549 when he translated the old Latin prayer book into English.

However, there is another way to read the Kyries. We can read them as a prayer for forgiveness. Imagine a sinner in a court of law, with God as the presiding judge. Well might the poor sinner say, “Lord, have mercy!” asking forgiveness of sins. If the Kyries are a plea for forgiveness, then the confession and absolution should follow.

We have done this when there is a baptism in the service. We sing Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, and then one of the ministers calls us to confess our sins in penitence and faith. Then the priest announces God’s forgiveness and we sing the Gloria together. We sing the Gloria as a hymn of praise to God who has forgiven us our sins. Now we can worship God in true innocence of heart.

I have listened to what people have said to me, in the Liturgy Committee and in Parish Council and in private conversation. I know that we have not used the Kyries except in Advent and Lent for a number of years.

However, the Kyries are the oldest prayer in our liturgy, they have been used in churches since the time of the apostles, they are a joyful shout to the Lord and every musical mass setting includes them. Because of this I would like to continue to use them, with or without the confession for a trial period. We could have a forum on liturgy when we celebrate St Michael and All Angels. At that forum we could raise this and any other questions we may have.

In the meantime, let us praise God with joy and gladness. Let us pray that we may worship God in spirit and in truth.

Lord our God, grant that what we speak with our lips we may believe in our hearts and show forth in our lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen