Sermon by: Fr. Bob Wickizer
Liturgical Readings: Exodus 34:29-35, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a], Psalm 99
Below is 16th century Italian missal. The music notation is transitional from the more ancient “Clef music” to the full staff. Note there are no measures or time signature. That was up to the performers. My guess is this piece is in D major (2 sharps)
Here is a modern English chant of Alexandrian Rite (Coptic) Gloria – a form of Byzantine Chant 4-7th cent.
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2024/07/the-gloria-in-excelsis-part-1.html
This is a modern setting from John Blakesly
And back to our Episcopal Church Scottish roots, here is the Gloria as “The Old Scottish Chant” – a form of Anglican chant used by the Scots. Remember the non-juring bishops consecrated our first American bishop, Samuel Seabury, but in exchange they asked him to include some of the Scottish versions of the liturgy in our Book of Common Prayer. The little Scottish books of Holy Eucharist were called “Wee Bookies” 😊
By 1549, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer translated the Latin Roman services into English as Henry VIII declared himself “sovereign of the Church of England.” By this time the Gloria was said every Sunday in Roman and English churches. This is the text from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer – the very first prayer book in English. (English bible translations arose about 30 years earlier)
Then the Prieste standyng at Goddes borde shall begin,
Glory be to God on high.
The Clerkes. And in yearth peace, good will towardes men.
We praise thee, we blesse thee, we worship thee, we glorifie thee, wee geve thankes to thee for thy greate glory, O Lorde GOD, heavenly kyng, God the father almightie.
O Lorde the onely begotten sonne Jesu Christe, O Lorde GOD, Lambe of GOD, sonne of the father, that takest awaye the synnes of the worlde, have mercie upon us: thou that takest awaye the synnes of the worlde, receive our praier.
Thou that sittest at the right hande of God the father, have mercie upon us: For thou onely art holy, thou onely art the Lorde. Thou onely (O Christ) with the holy Ghoste, are moste high in the glory of God the father. Amen.
The church has always adapted and adopted current technologies, albeit grudgingly and glacially slow, but eventually it comes around. As with Darwinian evolution, not all adaptations are good. Consider the platypus.
- The use of windows in places of worship
- Greek monotone music replaced by harmony
- The printing press
- The organ rendered thousands of court and church musicians obsolete
- The bible and the mass in the vernacular
- Electricity, heat, air conditioning
- Vatican II, evangelicals, crazy stuff
- Modern music, kum bay a, and all that
- Video screens in church – the good, the bad, and the truly ugly
- Computers, and now, “Artificial Intelligence”
We begin our Sunday mass by blessing God, a rather bold move for little bitty mortals on a tiny planet with an average sun in a dusty corner of the cosmos. Bold indeed. Next, the priest says or chants the “Collect for Purity” (Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid…), and then we move immediately into the Gloria. Today, this hymn seems kind of hum drum. What’s the fuss? But in its day, this was radical, countercultural and could divide friends and family.
The text for this comes from the second century, which makes it really old. It was probably set to music from the beginning. The piece describes God in terms of the trinity. But in the second and third centuries, whether you believed Christ was only human and not divine, or he was fully divine, would determine which church you attended and who you friends were. The purpose of the Council of Nicea in 385 was to hammer out this question once and for all. And they did. The answer was the Nicene Creed stating that Christ is BOTH fully human and fully divine. Emperor Constantine who convened the council, was Arian, he did not believe Christ was fully divine. But he just wanted the issue settled to promote peace in the empire. The creed was as much a political compromise as a theological settlement. Wars were fought and people were killed over the issue.
What core beliefs do you have that you are willing to fight for?
Today, we don’t hammer out doctrinal issues in the church, we just get mad and start another denomination. But there is one more important thing about the Gloria we need to address, and that is the word itself.
Often, we find that words and ideas change as they are translated into different languages and history marches on. Sometimes the change of meaning or the new language translation is shaped by political and cultural ideas. Our word “gloria” is one of those. Here’s a brief summary.
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew term we see as “glory” meant the impression a heavy rock makes when it falls on the ground. We might think of the sound of the Hebrew glory as “thud.” The Greek term takes this idea from a physical impression to the formation of the image of something. That original “Gloria” written in the second century was not in Latin, it was in Greek. The term was “doxa” from which we get the word “doxology.” It had more to do with image forming in our mind than putting an image on paper. For example if I say the word “cow,” you immediately form the image of a cow in your mind.
But when Latin became the official language of the church two centuries later, doxa in Greek was translated into the Latin, Gloria. Gloria has to do with a person’s reputation, fame, or honor. It is my theory that Constantine’s political ideology and personal belief in the non-divinity of Christ shaped that translation so we have completely obscured the original idea that one aspect of God is imagination.
And when God created the first man and the first woman, God endowed them with the godlike ability to imagine things – to imagine things that are not real, things that might be, things that never were, good things, and bad things. We can imagine too.
When I was in physics grad school a hundred years ago, a friend of mine was getting her Ph.D. in English. Even in the 1970s, advanced computer programs were analyzing texts and writing new texts. She moaned that after getting her doctorate, a computer program would probably replace her. I tried to console her by saying, “yes, computers will do all sorts of things with text, but a computer will never be able to throw a surprise party.”
I have more concern today about the potential misuse of Artificial Intelligence than the worst things we see in politics. If we are seeing the shadow of Constantine’s politics sixteen centuries later in a hymn we sing every Sunday, then AI could potentially rob us of our God-given gift of imagination. Why write a sermon when Alexa can do it? How will we know what is of human origin and what is not? What happens when all the news is totally fabricated?
We are approaching the penitential season of Lent when the Gloria and Alleluia will disappear for a while. We are also marching unwittingly towards a fake society of Huxley’s 1984 happy thoughts and happy people all trained to serve the emperor.
The only thing that separates us from other animals is our God-like gift of imagination. The only thing that humans can do that Artificial Intelligence cannot now or will never be able to do is imagine. I am appealing to you as a modern doxology to use your gift of imagination. Don’t squander it. Don’t let computers or governments take it away. Do your own imagining. Do it with God in prayer.
Imagine what could be if instead of the “personal liberties” that the owner of a big city newspaper now wants his opinion page to promote, we emphasize social responsibilities.
Imagine what could be if instead of the “free markets” that same newspaper wants to plaster on its editorial pages, we emphasize a level playing field.
Imagine a world where there is no job for my daughter who runs Kids’ Space caring for children between the time the police take the parents away and foster care.
Imagine a world where creative energies are devoted to happiness and caring for others instead of fear, greed, and destruction.
Imagine a church that promotes the good instead of the status quo.
Just imagine it all.
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