Genesis 15: 1-7, 17-18 & Luke 13: 31-end.
The Litany, which we heard sung in procession at the beginning of this service, is one of the defining liturgical expressions of the English Reformation. The form we heard this morning began life in 1544. Authored, at the request of Henry VIII, by Thomas Cranmer it was the first English language service to be authorised for use in the newly established Church of England.
In this way is carries with it all the radicalism and compromise which characterises the English Reformation. It is radical in that it is in English rather than the Latin of the pre-Reformation Church. It is also radical for what it omits, not least the long lists of saints whose prayer would have been asked for in a pre-Reformation prayer of the same type.
It is, however, also a compromise. Like much of Thomas Cranmer’s prayers and liturgies it relies on, what one historian has called, his “scissors and paste” approach to composition. In forming it Cranmer borrows from sources deep within the tradition of the whole church – most notably St John Chrysostom and the Sarum Rite – and then moulds them to the reformed patterns of theology which were inching their way into the newly independent Church of England. This compromise was also found not only in the content of The Litany, but also its form. It began life as a free-standing service to be sung in processions mirroring the popular open-air processions of the pre-Reformation Church. Then in a later iteration the procession was moved inside the church building. Then the procession was replaced with rubrics for the minister and choir to sing The Litany from the body of the church with the Minister leading it kneeling from a faldstool or litany desk.
What is of more interest to us though is the way in which The Litany expresses one of the more thorny and complex aspects of the English Reformation – the relationship between the life of faith to the world around us. This complexity is woven into form of The Litany. Its original commission from Henry VIII came not, as you might imagine, from the King’s desire to increase the piety of his people and his new Church. Rather the motivation came from the rather more earthly desire for the prayers and petitions of his people as he sought to renew his war with France.
We should though not be surprised to find these patterns of public prayer running across the distinctions we might see between the church and the world. The word litany is derived from a Greek word for prayer, but very quickly within the life of the early Church a litany became linked to a particular form and pattern of visibly, communal and public prayer. They would often be invoked and used at times of calamity. For instance, in the fifth century the Bishop of Vienne in the south of France called from the recitation of litanies on several days during a time of volcanic activity and earthquakes in the Auvergne. Later in the middle-ages litanies and processions we central to the marking and celebration of the cycle of the year with saints invoked to pray-away the spirits that might blight the land and harvest. These processional prayers were known also as "rogations" – a word which has found its way into our pattern of prayer for creation at Rogationtide.
Although we live in a society which can all too easily make a sharp distinction between the concerns of the life of faith the work of the world, the pattern of The Litany is a reminder that this is a very modern and, in many ways, artificial distinction.
In both of our readings today we see the way in which the concerns of religious experience and worldly life have always been more intertwined than we might recognise today. In our first reading from Genesis, we hear of God’s first covenant with Abraham. This is not a private or inward-looking religious act, but the establishment of God’s concern for his people through Abraham and his descendants who will be more numerous than the stars of the heavens. This is as much a political as it is a religious act, and one which is sealed and inaugurated through ancient cultic ceremonies of animal sacrifice.
In our Gospel reading we find this interweaving of the religious and the worldly in even sharper relief. Pharisees, who we might see primarily as religious leaders, come to Jesus to tell him of the danger he faces from his political overlord King Herod. To this warning Jesus does not seek to make a sharp distinction between his religious teaching and various political concerns. Rather he argues that Herod’s political opposition could not hinder his ministry which was still to achieve its intended end and goal.
In both readings, as with the form and tradition of The Litany, these religious acts exist within and for the redemption of the political landscape within which they are placed. So what use is this to use today?
Well, someone would have had to be looking in a very different direction not to notice and recognise that we are living in a political landscape which is more challenging and troubling than it has been for a generation. Seeming certainties within the political order of the west are being tried to breaking point. Malign forces and greedy nations seem to be looking to assert the will and the cost of the lives of the innocent, and against hard won and deeply held norms and rules. And beyond this, and too often hidden from our headlines, there is the growing persecution of religious and other minorities as national and racial identities are used to cleanse difference from so many places.
In face of this uncertainty there is a power and eloquence to The Litany, and the tradition of prayer within which it stands, that we would be wise to listen and return to. I am not advocating the return to full blown processions of sung litanies through the streets of our towns and villages – although I’ve heard stranger ideas suggested in the life of the Church of England. Rather there is a wisdom inherent in the tradition of The Litany that we would be wise to listen to. The genius of The Litany is that, for a pattern of prayer born out of the capricious contingencies of the reign of Henry VIII, it speaks beyond them because at its heart are three key and recurring prayers which we can and should return to again and again.
The first is that so many of the trials and tribulations of this world come from our failure to recognise our, and humanities collective weakness and fallibility. That we are all, as The Litany says, in a form which is perhaps a little unfashionable but no less true for that, “miserable sinners”.
The second is that in our weakness our only true hope comes in through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. The pattern and power of God’s love and grace through which we can call for our “good Lord" to "deliver us.”
And between these two points of recognition there is no place or form or pattern of our shared life through the whole history of the world and the Church, from its earliest moments to our current needs and challenges, into which we should not and cannot call again and again for God, in Jesus Christ, to “hear us good Lord”.
For all its strangeness and deep history we live in a world and time that needs the wisdom of The Litany more and more. Whether this is through public processions or regular recitation doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we find the words again to admit publicly and regularly our shared fallibility and faults. That we should place ourselves and our world into the redeeming power of God’s love in Jesus. And that through that we would know more deeply that it is only, and can only, be through the “Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world” that we will ever truly be granted peace.
