Today I want to deal with not with the miracles of
healing described in Mark’s gospel, but with a modern miracle, the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer, whose 350th anniversary of the 1662 edition is
celebrated this year. The celebration this year
follows upon another, equally important celebration last year, the 400th
anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible (the KJV or so-called
Authorized Version) in 1611/2011. These two works, and not the almost forgotten
documents such as the Thirty-Nine Articles to which priests are still required
to subscribe, are the defining texts of the historic Church of England and the
basis of the world-wide Anglican communion.
I came upon how we might
celebrate the 350th anniversary in this church on the anniversary website:
‘Why not stage a
Prayer Book-reading marathon, or just a selected portion (the Psalms; or the
Epistles, Gospels and Collects)? This could be sponsored to raise funds for a
church project, and is bound to attract the interest of the local media.’
And there is a logical
date on which we might attempt this marathon. The 1662 version of the BCP was
authorized for public use with effect from St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August. This
is a Friday this year. We hold a communion service every Thursday morning in
this church at 9.30 am. On Thursday 23 August there could be a special BCP
communion service which would commence our ‘Big Read’ or ‘prayerfest’. We would
then proceed to read all the Psalms from the BCP on Thursday until say 5pm,
carrying over to the Friday morning commencing at 9.30 and concluding at 5 pm.
Once we have completed all the Psalms, we would commence reading the Collects, Epistles
and Gospels until the conclusion.
And a further touch of
some importance: to keep up with the present, we would download the materials
for reading from the Book of Common Prayer section of the Church of England’s
website and preserve the document and the names of the readers as one of our
achievements in the Centenary Year of this Church. If we succeed in widening
the range of sponsored readers to include readers from the younger generation,
we would also make some progress in the task of making the BCP loved and used
by a wider range of churchgoers than present. And, yes, we would seek to
attract sponsorship for the endeavour from those around us in the community who
have a love of the language and the tradition but are not currently
worshippers.
This could be an important contribution not just to the
350th anniversary of the BCP but to our own St Guthlac 100
celebrations.
