The Canterbury Companion to the Book of Common Prayer Gospels

Raymond Chapman

• Publisher: Canterbury Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781848255685
• eBook ISBN: 9781848255708

An inspring companion for preachers, following the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer. For every BCP service focusing on the Gospel of the day, it offers a devotion, a commentary on the Gospel reading, an appropriate quotation, and a prayer in traditional language to harmonise with the KJV text used in the Prayer Book.

The Prayer Book Gospels

Sundays

The First Sunday in Advent
Matthew 21.1–13

Advent, the beginning of the Church year, may catch us between the lethargy of deepening winter and the pressing demands of coming Christmas. The season indeed leads us towards the glorious Nativity, but we should not start our Christmas activities too soon, as is the growing custom in our society. This is the time to be freshly alert to the wholeness of our faith. As the Epistle for today reminds us, ‘Now it is high time to awake out of sleep.’ Advent has many themes to keep us wakeful. It reminds us of the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, it points us to his incarnation, and it looks towards his second coming in glory. Advent is associated with meditation on the last things: death, judgement, hell and heaven, solemn thoughts which are often neglected today, even in the churches. The Gospel for the day looks towards the end of the earthly life of Jesus, the entry into Jerusalem which we call Palm Sunday. It presents the great truths revealed in him. The majesty of God, the victory over evil, is seen in the triumph with which his arrival is greeted, the shouts of ‘Hosanna’ – ‘Save now’. The humility of his taking our nature upon him is shown in his choice of a humble donkey, not the warhorse of an earthly conqueror. The welcoming crowd does not know of the suffering that lies ahead for the one they greet with such joy. They do not know that not many years in the future their city will be destroyed and its people scattered. They do not know that the man on a donkey is the divine Judge who will return at the end of the age. We too cannot discern the future, but we have assurance that we are redeemed and our lives are in the hand of God. Now are the days for serious reflection, extra prayer, the calling to mind of sin and resolve for amendment. The cleansing of the Temple which ends this reading warns us of how easily we can fail in reverence towards sacred things and places. As the Church begins a new year, let us embrace again the new life which is for ever open to God’s people.

Blessed Lord, entering thy holy city in humble triumph, enter into my heart and give me grace to keep this time with joy for thy coming, sorrow for my sins, and hope for new life in thee when my life here shall end.

This Gospel has been chosen for today because Advent time brings before us two truths, not one. If we were only thinking of the first coming of the Divine Saviour into the world, or only of his coming to judgement, passages of Scripture describ­ing either of those momentous events would have been obviously appropriate. But, to do justice to the solemn time on which we enter today, we want to keep the two truths clearly before the eye of the soul. And, therefore, here we have a history in which they meet; a repetition; as it were, of our Lord’s first coming to his own, when his own received him not; an anticipation of his coming to judgement, ‘when every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him’. For his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was certainly an act of grace. It was a last opportunity of embracing the Gospel, of learning who and what he was, and what he had to teach, and what he, and he alone, could do for those who would listen to him to any real purpose.

H. P. Liddon (1829–1890) Advent in St Paul’s

The Second Sunday in Advent
Luke 21.25–33

At this time of new beginning, we are called to consider the end of all things. The Gospel warns us of the second coming of Christ in judgement, which we affirm at every Eucharist when we say the Nicene Creed. The ultimate fulfilment of God’s purpose for this world of his creation is one of the continuing themes of the Bible, culminating in the strange and powerful imagery of the book of Revelation. In all our pleasures, all our troubles, we are never to forget that the things of this world are transitory, to be fully encountered but never to draw our hope away from the greater life to come. Scientists tell us that eventually life on our planet will become extinct; we know that our own individual lives in the body will end, whether the years of our presence here are long or short. Often we would rather not think of these things, and in this season we may be particularly distracted by thoughts of Christmas. The saying that the end was near has puzzled many commentators, and may have been drawn into Christ’s prophecy of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. The first Christians believed that they were living in the last days. We do not know the unfolding of the years, but we might well pick up some of the urgency to repent and turn to God which is declared by Paul and other New Testament writers. Each day is new and unique, with its opportunities and temptations, its blessings and its trials. As our prayers and meditation at this time draw us towards the unknown future, the value of the present moment becomes even greater. All that happens here and now can be seen as a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of God’s purpose working in us and in the whole world. There is heavenly peace to be found in our frenetic society, torn as it is by anxiety and uncertainty. The message of the Gospel is sombre, but yet uplifting. When the end comes, we know that our redemption is near, the righting of all wrongs, the final seal on the atonement already made for us upon the cross. The central image is not of death but of resurrection, of trees in springtime leaf, promising new life.

Almighty God, Lord of all things past, present and to come, give me grace to order my life according to thy will, while I move in hope towards the greater life that is to come when thou shalt call me from this world.

Before the mountains were brought forth, before

Earth and the world were made, then God was God:

And God will still be God when flames shall roar

Round earth and heaven dissolving at His nod:

And this God is our God, even while His rod

Of righteous wrath falls on us smiting sore:

And this God is our God for evermore,

Through life, through death, while clod returns to clod.

For though He slay us we will trust in Him;

We will flock home to Him by divers ways:

Yea, though He slay us we will vaunt His praise,

Serving and loving with the Cherubim,

Watching and loving with the Seraphim,

Our very selves His praise through endless days.

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) ‘Before the mountains were brought forth’, Poems

The Third Sunday in Advent
Matthew 11.2–10

John the Baptist is an important figure in our Advent devotions, although, after the account of his birth, he does not appear in the record until Jesus is a grown man, beginning his own ministry. John is a link between the Old Testament and the New, the last of the prophets proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, and the first to recognize the full divinity of Jesus. This passage finds him in prison, consigned there by Herod, the puppet ruler of Galilee under the Romans. John is soon to suffer a martyr’s death like many of God’s messengers in the past and in the future. In his solitude he begins to have doubts – is this man really the Messiah, or is there still another to come? Jesus responds not with words of doctrine but by evidence which all can see. The healing and life-giving miracles prophesied of the Messiah are being fulfilled. Lives are being changed, a new power has come into the world. Then he has a challenge for the questioners, then and in time to come. Did they go to see John out of mere curiosity, or with genuine hope? Do we spend too much time trying to satisfy our intellectual questions about the Bible and its teaching, taking time away from prayer and meditation? Are we like the Athenians whom Paul encountered, who cared for nothing ‘but either to tell, or to hear some new thing’ (Acts 17.21)? We are to be ever open to God’s new revelation, without succumbing to the passion for novelty which is so widespread today. The desire to be better informed about our faith so that it may grow is wholly good, but it is the means and not the end in our walk with God. Jesus quotes from the prophet Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, to confirm John’s role as his herald to the world. We too shall give thanks for wonderful gifts received, and embrace the future hope which Advent brings.

Blessed Lord, thou hast given me so many signs of thy healing power and the strength that comes from thee alone. Give me a grateful heart to be worthy of thy love, and a tongue to make it known to others.

The Holy Baptist was separated from the world. He was a Nazarite. He went out from the world, and placed himself over against it, and spoke to it from his vantage ground, and called it to repentance. Then went out all Jerusalem to him into the desert, and he confronted it face to face. But in his teaching he spoke of One who should come to them and speak to them in a far different way. He should not separate Himself from them. He should not display Himself as some higher being, but as their brother, as of their flesh and of their bones, as one among many brethren, as one of the multitude and amidst them; nay, He was among them already.

J. H. Newman (1801–1890) Meditations and Devotions

The Fourth Sunday in Advent
John 1.19–28

The Jewish people were still waiting for the coming of the Messiah, foretold by the prophets, who would establish the reign of God on earth. Living under Roman rule, they were eager for liberation. When a new prophet came out of the wilderness, they were full of questions: could this be the Messiah, or his immediate forerunner? John answered them with honesty and wisdom. He would not claim even the role of a prophet, only to be a voice, speaking the words set down by Isaiah. When his own authority to baptize is challenged, he simply proclaims the authority of his cousin after the flesh, whom he knows to be his heavenly Lord, before whom he, and all his questioners, are unworthy. He knew his calling, and the inexpressible majesty of the One who had come. Perhaps we are sometimes more inclined to enquire about people’s credentials than to listen to their words. We ask: Who are you? What training did you receive? Show us your authority. The message of God does not come only from those who seem to have special authority to speak. Holy wisdom may be given to the plain and simple ones of this world, put into the mouths of little children, especially dear to their heavenly Father. John the Baptist was a wild-looking figure, not respectably dressed, but he had the inestimable privilege of recognizing and baptizing the Lamb of God. On behalf of all the human race, he declared his unworthiness even to bend and untie the shoes of the Master. The timescale of the Advent Gospels may seem strange: from the triumphal entry to the second coming, then to the Baptist near the end of his life, then back to his first preaching. Perhaps it reminds us that what we call past, present and future are all one in the purpose of God. Those who came to meet the Baptist did not know that the time of waiting was nearly over, and few of them ever recognized the great signs that were to come. For us, Christmas is very near, our little waiting is almost over. But he who shall co...

Table of contents

• The Canterbury Companion to the Book of Common Prayer Gospels
• Contents
• Structure and Purpose of this Companion
• The Prayer Book Gospels