On our journey through
Holy Week, we are exploring some of the great hymns of the Passion of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Tonight we come to one of the oldest and greatest of them all, The Royal Banners
Forward Go, or in the majestic Latin of the original, Vexilla Regis
Prodeunt.
I remember we sang it on my
first Good Friday after ordination. I was arrested by those first few words,
powerful, evocative, strong. They struck me so forcibly because they seemed to
cut through the traditional sombreness of the day as suggested by the devout
Victorian hymn, not much sung nowadays, “O come and mourn with me a while”. By
contrast, the spirit of this hymn felt vigorous and bracing.
“The royal banners”: what on
earth are they? A vexillum
is a military standard or ensign that rallies the troops and sets off
before them. Think of the “eagles” that led the Roman legions and the lengths
to which they would go to safeguard the standard or recover it, as n Rosemary
Sutcliffe’s great children’s novel The Eagle of the
Ninth. On a commander’s tent, the red vexillum would be
flown to muster the troops and prepare for battle. So the “banners of the king”
are a sign of engagement in conflict. And afterwards, the standards would be
raised in a victory celebrated by a triumph with a great procession into the
city led by the banners, and the scattering of bounty as the people cried out kyrie eleison and
begged to be thrown the spoils of war.
This hymn comes out of the era immediately
following the fall of the Roman Empire. Venantius Fortunatus was born in the
Veneto in around 530 AD, a few years before the death of another great Italian,
St Benedict. It breathes the spirit of Latin antiquity at precisely the time it
was transmuting into the early middle ages. The memory of Roman triumphs was
recent enough to be given poignancy by the physical signs of a great
civilisation falling into ruin all around him. Like Benedict, Fortunatus saw
the church as a bastion against the chaos he saw taking control in lands that
had once enjoyed the pax Romana with
its civic institutions, legal system, market place, temples and academy whose
noble buildings, now falling into decay, stirred proud memories in the hearts
of those who loved Rome.
He had trained as a poet and
orator. Even in translation, his hymns demonstrate his flair for words.
However, his sight began to fail until one day he went into a church in Ravenna
and washed his eyes with oil burning in a lamp at an altar of St Martin of Tours.
He was healed at once, and in gratitude went on pilgrimage to St Martin’s
shrine in France. He settled in Poitiers, the city where Hilary had been bishop
centuries before. There he was ordained, becoming Bishop of in 599. He died the
following year. Our hymn comes out of Poitiers. Fortunatus wrote it in 569 in
honour of the relics of the Holy Cross that were brought in a magnificent
procession to a royal monastery there, “with much singing and gleaming of
tapers and fragrance of incense” says the report. The cross shines
forth in mystic glow.
This hymn is rich in theology
as well as piety. The opening stanza cuts to the theological chase: “Where he
in flesh, our flesh who made, / Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.” In the
Latin, the emphasis is not so much on any theory of the atonement, but on the
mystery of who it is who is hanging on the cross. Literally, the words speak
about the One who made us flesh and blood is himself fastened to a criminal’s
stake as that self-same flesh and blood. Mysterium is a
big word for this hymn writer, and the profound insight of the cross is the
“glow of mystery” that proclaims the identity of this Saving Victim, none other
than the Son and Word of the Eternal God himself.
What this means is explored in
a later verse. Upon
its arms, like balance true, / He weighed the price for sinners due, / The
price which none but he could pay, / And spoiled the spoiler of his prey. This
stanza is dense with symbolism. The key is the “price for sinners due”. Jesus
is hanging on the tree because there is a great work for him to do there. It is
to pay that price once and for all, the price of redeeming humanity. In the
middle ages, the idea of the ransom to be paid became the dominant way of
understanding the cross. Put briefly, the sin of Adam had handed the human race
over into the power of Satan. Our freedom needed to be bought back by the
payment of a ransom, the perfect victim who was not himself compromised by the
fall. That offering put the scales back into equilibrium and made release
possible. If you’ve read C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch
and The Wardrobe you’ll understand how the deep magic of an innocent victim
has power over evil.
The image of the Incarnate Word
on the cross, triumphing harrowing hell, releasing its captives and triumphing
over the powers of death runs through many of these ancient Passiontide and
Easter hymns. “Sing my tongue the glorious battle” is another of them by this
same hymn writer, very close in spirit to “The Royal Banners”. On Easter Eve we
shall sing “Ye choirs of new Jerusalem”, another medieval hymn from France that
picks up where “The Royal Banners” left off. In their different ways, all the
hymns we are exploring in these addresses owe a great deal to this one writer
who teaches us what it means not only to commemorate but also to celebrate in Holy
Week, and why we call the Friday of the crucifixion Good Friday.
The other stanzas of this great
hymn adorn the “mystery” that shines out of the cross by weaving evocative
poetry around the suffering of the man who hangs there. For one verse,
Fortunatus lingers on the soldier’s spear and the precious flood of
water mingled with the blood that flow out of the side of the crucified
Christ as St John is careful to emphasise: precious because “the life is in the
blood” as the Hebrew law says, and this life is given in the healing,
life-giving sacraments that for all time will nourish the church as his new
humanity.
But then the hymn writer
launches into a passionate hymn of praise for the Holy Cross. O Tree of glory, Tree
most fair, / Ordained those holy limbs to bear, / How bright in purple robe it
stood, / The purple of a Saviour’s blood! By a brilliant figure of speech,
gratitude for the ransom that has been won is transferred to the very object
that is the source of the Saviour’s pain and agony. Far from being commemorated
as an instrument of suffering, the cross has become an emblem of glory in its
own right. This becomes even more extravagant in the poet’s other hymn “Sing my
Tongue” in the stanza we know as Crux Fidelis: Faithful cross above
all other, / One and only noble Tree, / None in foliage, none in blossom, /
None in fruit thy peer may be; / Sweet the wood and sweet the iron, / And thy
load, most sweet is he.
Devotion to the Holy Cross is a
very ancient liturgical practice. In the liturgy of Good Friday we shall
acclaim as the great Cross is brought into the Cathedral, “Behold the wood of
the cross, on which the Saviour of the world is hung”. Soon afterwards, when it
has been set up in full view of us all, we shall be invited to make our own
personal devotion to it by touching it, embracing it, kissing it – in whatever
way we want to pay our homage to the crucified Lord. I always find this intensely
moving. So many emotions are gathered up for me at this symbolic Golgotha
moment: sorrow, lament, repentance, pity, gratitude, rescue, and above all,
love. How could the sacred cross not touch us and transform us for ever? How
could it not draw out of us all the love we have to give in this most solemn
Week?
You may wonder where the good
bishop Venantius Fortunatus got his theology from. After all, this extravagant
poem in praise of the Tree of glory, Tree most fair is a thousand miles away
from the agony and darkness of St Matthew and Mark with their desolate cry from
the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The answer is, he learned it
from St John. We’ve already seen on Palm Sunday how “Ride on, ride on in
majesty” culminates in a great acclamation of victory, “Then take, O God, thy
power, and reign!” It’s in the same spirit as Fortunatus seeing into the heart
of the passion and glimpsing How God the heathen’s
king should be, for God is reigning from the Tree. In St John, Jesus often
speaks about being “lifted up” and vindicated in “the “hour” that is coming,
the hour of his death. He links the cross with exaltation and glory. “Now my
soul is troubled” he says. “And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this
hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father glorify
your name!” And again, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all
people to myself”. And at the end, when the agony is over, he cries out a
single word in Greek, tetelestai: “it
is accomplished”. The work is done. Redemption is achieved. On his throne of
glory, the King is crowned.
This is why we pay homage, in
this Week when we recognise once again who our King of glory is, and what he
has made us: subjects, citizens who are a people of the cross and an Easter
people, for whom Christ has died and ransomed us from the hells that threaten
to devour us, for whom he has triumphed as the heavenly Victor who is forever
our Champion and Advocate at the throne of grace. No wonder the hymn ends in a
doxology of praise to God the Holy Trinity. For all that needed to be done has
been finished. He has done all things well. There is nothing left for us to do
but to worship the King all glorious above, and offer him all that we are as
our act of wonder, love and praise.
Wakefield Cathedral,
Tuesday in Holy Week 2017
********
Vexilla Regis Prodeunt
The royal banners forward go;
The cross shines forth in mystic glow
Where He in flesh, our flesh who made,
our sentence bore, our ransom paid;
Where deep for us the spear was
dyed,
Life's torrent rushing from His side.
To wash us in that precious flood
Of water mingled with the blood.
Fulfilled is all that David
told
In true prophetic song of old;
How God the heathens' king should be,
For God is reigning from the Tree.
O Tree of glory, Tree most
fair,
Ordained those holy limbs to bear,
How bright in purple robe it stood,
The purple of a Saviour's blood.
Upon its arms, like balance
true,
He weighed the price for sinners due,
The price which none but he could pay,
And spoiled the spoiler of his prey.
O Cross, our one reliance,
hail!
So may thy power with us avail
To give new virtue to the saint
And pardon to the penitent.
To Thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done
Whom by the cross Thou dost restore,
Preserve, and govern evermore.
Venantius Fortunatus,
c530-600
Translated by John Mason Neale
Tonight is the climax of Holy Week and the climax of the whole year. This is the night we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the night that heralds a dawn for all creation, when sin, death and hell, everything that would destroy us is defeated for ever. As the hymn puts it so powerfully, For Judah’s Lion bursts his chains, crushing the serpent’s head; and cries aloud through death’s domains to wake the imprisoned dead. 
