As Anglicans, our focus on the importance and centrality of the Eucharist can often distract us from remembering that for Thomas Cranmer and the other key architects of Anglicanism, Scripture was paramount. The Eucharist is only salvific if it is received by faith in the heart of a believer whose faith is rooted in Scripture. In Cranmer’s understanding, without feeding on Christ in the word, one cannot beneficially feed on Him in the Eucharist.

Anglican ministers must remember that they are ministers of the Word before they are ministers of the Sacrament and that their first duty is to feed their flock with the words of Scripture before feeding them with the Eucharist, because without the faith enlivened by the former the latter will have no salvific effect. It is of great significance that in the Ordinal a Priest is given a Bible, not a paten, upon his ordination.

This is where the Morning and Evening Prayer (Matins and Evensong) services come in. Cranmer envisioned a Church where every morning and evening the parish would meet together to hear the word proclaimed and taught. If a parish followed the Lectionary Cranmer compiled for the Book of Common Prayer, they would hear roughly 4 chapters and 6 Psalms of Scripture every day and go through the whole Bible once a year. It is within this context that the Eucharistic liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer is to be found. It is nestled within a parish life that is soaked in Scripture. For Martin Bucer especially, it was an absolutely essential goal of the minister to take his parish through the Bible each year.

While the Eucharist may be the most important single service in the Church it was not supposed to be the bread and butter, so to speak, of the parish life. It is only within the regular parish rhythm of hearing Scripture every day that the Eucharist service makes any sense in Cranmer’s mind.

The problem with the Eucharistic service as we have it, is that it is far too sparse for the people to be truly fed if it is the only service a parish provides. The Bible readings from the service are admittedly short and unsubstantial. They do not provide enough content or breadth for the congregation to be as immersed in the Biblical story as they ought to be. The service can often lead to a devotional laziness in the parish, and does almost nothing to combat nominal faith (which should always be a top priority for Anglican ministers). A little Old Testament reading, a little Epistle and then a tiny excerpt from the Gospel, with the rest of the liturgy being unchanged each week, is simply not enough on its own. The Bible quickly gets reduced from the grand narrative that gives meaning to our lives to something that merely provides little episodes to sprinkle on our worship.

It would be enough if parishes still had Matins and Evensong every day but this simply isn’t the case anymore. Now, you might rightly say that there’s nothing to stop the parishioners doing these Prayers at home each day with the readings. However, just as the Good Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to save the one lost sheep, we cannot expect our congregations to all be meeting this standard when we conduct our Sunday services. If we assume, perhaps pessimistically or perhaps realistically, that most congregants aren’t soaking themselves in Scripture in their own time, then can Anglican ministers continue to let them starve?

In Cranmer’s Defense of the Lord’s Supper  he espouses the Augustinian notion that the believer in Christ is perpetually eating His flesh and drinking His blood through faith, with or without the Eucharist, and that this feeding is enabled by the daily reading of Scripture. Indeed, Christ Himself says “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4). The services of Matins and Evensong thus cause the parish to eat Christ’s flesh and drink His blood just as the Eucharist service does, albeit not sacramentally. This concept can be seen in a rubric in the Book of Common Prayer’s service for the Communion of the Sick:

But if a man, either by reason of extremity of sickness… or by any other just impediment, do not receive the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood: the Curate shall instruct him that if he do truly repent him of his sins, and stedfastly believe that Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the Cross for him, and shed his Blood for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving him hearty thanks therefore; he doth eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul’s health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his mouth.

However, without the daily reading of Scripture, Cranmer would argue that one’s faith in Jesus would falter and without that faith there can be no feeding on Christ in the Eucharist.

Therefore as many as be desirous to enter into the right and perfect way unto God, must applie their mindes to know holy Scripture, without the which, they can neither sufficiently know God and his will, neither their office and duty….
Therefore… Let us night and day muse, and have meditation and contemplation in them. Let us ruminate, and (as it were) chew the cudde, that we may have the sweet juice, spiritual effect, marrow, hony, kirnell, taste, comfort and consolation of them (Homily on the Reading of Holy Scripture).

What God wants, ultimately, is for the hearts of His people to be changed. Cranmer and his influencers believed that the main way hearts were changed was through hearing the word. But if the word is seldom taught or proclaimed by Anglican ministers (and it certainly is in the mind of Cranmer) then they are not doing enough to feed Christ’s lambs and save their souls.

So what’s the solution? For most parishes having Matins and Evensong every day is simply not possible, but I do wish that this was not so. The first solution that most parishes have is to provide homegroups and Bible-studies. These are fantastic ways for ministers to teach their flock the word and ideally every parish should have them. However, reminded again of the parable of the lost sheep, can we expect all our sheep to attend these services? Also, homegroups don’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) necessarily go through the Bible each week but often study topics of systematic theology together or current affairs. There is also something particularly powerful about the word being proclaimed in the midst of a liturgy from the pulpit that homegroups cannot fully replace. Moreover, in my experience, most congregants are Sunday-attendees only (if this isn’t the case for your parish then well done!), and can we really keep feeding them only with the Scriptural snacks of the Eucharistic service? The Bible only becomes salvific once one enters into its story and models their life on it. But if all that people hear from the Bible are the short excerpts in the Eucharist service then how can they see its wider narrative?

So what do I propose? More Scripture, simply. How that can be done would be dependent on the situation of each parish. If it means abandoning the RCL readings for the Eucharist in favour of more substantial ones, or having in addition to the Eucharist every Sunday a Matins service, or (more drastically replace it fortnightly), that’s up to each parish to decide. All I intend to argue in this article is that however one chooses to do it, ministers need to take more seriously their role as expositors of Scripture and the spiritual need that all of Christ’s sheep have to be immersed in the Biblical story.

To be truly faithful to the Book of Common Prayer, that great masterpiece of the catholic Church, we need to see its liturgies in the context of the other services and its lectionary. In an age when nominal faith is common and the authority and importance of Scripture is diminished (especially among Anglicans) what can we do to ensure that our siblings in Christ are being fed with the word?