TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM - A Homily

This homily was delivered on August 25, 2019 at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota.  On this date, the congregation hosted a choral group, "Mirabile," which sang renditions of gospel hymns "There's a Balm in Gilead", "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and Faure's "Tantum Ergo" which was used as pretext for this homily.

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+ In the Name of the God who loves us more than we can comprehend, the God who made us who we are; the God who loves us regardless of what we've done or left undone.  In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. +

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity after hearing “Tantum Ergo” set to the moving music of Gabriel Fauré and beautifully sung by Mirabile to meditate on the subject of this novum ritui, this new ritual known as Holy Communion, Holy Eucharist; the Sacrament of the Altar or the Lord’s Supper, among others.  

I’m not going to spend this morning talking about the various ways this rite has been treated throughout the turbulent history of the Church, how it has been used to divide and separate the followers of Jesus.  Rather I want us to explore what may be a new way of looking at it.   I want us to revisit, to imagine the night in which Jesus takes a loaf of bread and gives thanks for it and then breaks it apart and says, “This is my body which is for you. Do this remembrance of me,” and then taking a cup of wine says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. When you drink this, do so in remembrance of me.”[1] 

What would we have taken away from Jesus’s comments, if heard for the first time, if we only knew Jesus as a man, a teacher, a brother, a friend, and weren’t thinking he was about to be arrested, tried for blasphemy, and killed within the next 24 hours?  At the time he said these words, what do you think Jesus wants us to remember about himself?   Knowing Jesus, the man, the human being, a person just like us is difficult isn’t it? 

We say Jesus is true man and then we add that he is also true God and when you do the theological math we end up with the God part of that equivalency getting all the attention. Of course, we avoid the math, we side-step it all by calling it a mystery. 

Such an interesting word, mystery, because in ecclesial circles, it avoids the need for explanation.  Don’t understand something?  No problem. Its’ a mystery. You don’t have to know.  You just need to believe it.        

When mystery is used in that manner it defeats the whole purpose of scripture, which was written for our understanding, which is not to say there isn’t mystery. The fact that we’re sitting in this church at this time is enough mystery for me

We should be zealous about protecting the identity of Jesus as being purely one of us; because if he isn’t just like us in every way: prone to sin, to temptation, to making mistakes then everything he taught, everything he did has no relevance in our lives.  Perhaps that is why Christianity is struggling today and we are finding ourselves living in a Post-Christian world where the teachings of Jesus seem to have lost their impact and importance.

The Jesus I know - the Jesus I love is the Jesus who knows me, who loves me because he’s just like me, and I’m just like him and there is nothing I need hide from him because there is nothing I can hide from him.  He’s seen it all.  He’s done it all.  He’s been through it all.

The Jesus I know and love had to grow up. 

The Jesus I know and love had to evolve into what he became, the Christ of God. 

From the moment of his baptism in the Jordan, Jesus was prompted to live into being God’s son.  That intense realization sent him into the wilderness of the life we share to deal with his own demons so that he could deal with ours.

Throughout his ministry Jesus was surprised at the depth of what it means to be created in the image of God.  He saw it exhibited by grateful a Samaritan healed of leprosy, by a Roman Centurion who in his deep love for his slave humbly sought  his slave’s healing, and by a Syro-Phonecian woman who had the temerity to stand up to him calling her a dog and turning his ridicule into a demand for justice and healing.  

Oh yes…  There is a Balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole and heals the sin-sick soul.  It’s the healing grace of God and all of us have access to it.   

It was in such moments that Jesus was awakened to the realization that God is that Being in which everyone past, present, and future, lives and moves and has their being.”   That’s the mystery we are living in; the mystery we’re living into.

On the night Jesus broke bread and offered a cup of wine, Jesus was emptying himself, was giving himself away to us.  The body Jesus was symbolically breaking is the same body we have.  The symbolic blood he was pouring out is the same blood that runs through our veins.   

The point of this rite is not about reenacting a past event, but is that we remember to do the same; that we break ourselves open, that we pour ourselves out; that we enter into communion with each other and with the world for its sake and the sake of Christ. Holy Communion is about taking on the very body and blood Jesus to become his risen and his rising presence in this world and this should cause us to do so humbly and with reverence as Aquinas reminds us. To be a communicant is to be a communicator of the love of God in Jesus for the world.

Approximately seven hundred years before Jesus appeared, God through the prophets like Isaiah said, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? … I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.[2]

Jesus’ death on the cross was not a blood sacrifice meant to appease God.  God did not delight in sacrifices; much less, human sacrifices, and certainly not that of a son.  It is clear that God did not care for the literal and metaphorical bull being offered as appeasement; that God was through with sin being atoned for in that manner; because it meant nothing to those who were doing it as a payoff and then going about as they pleased.

That is not what Jesus’s death was about; to give us license to go about doing whatever we please and then coming to church and putting it on Jesus’ tab. The sacrifice Jesus offered at his death was the sacrifice described by the psalmist in a Psalm frequently read on Good Friday: “The sacrifices of God are broken Spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”[3] 

It was at his death that Jesus fully lived into being what it means to be a true human, a true child of God.

It was at his death that Jesus lived out to the last drop of life everything he taught.

It was at his death, that Jesus came into the fullness of his being the Son God proclaimed him to be as he asked his Father with his dying breath, “Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing;” a saving indictment for all ages on this planet.

Yes – this novum ritui brings us into a sacramental relationship with God and with the world through Jesus, the Christ. 

The third century Christian apologist, Tertullian said that when a Roman made a sacramentum to join a Roman legion, he made an oath to change one’s life, as if starting a new life.

When we come to the table of the Lord’s Supper, we enter into this sacramental relationship with Jesus, taking an oath to persevere in keeping the covenant Jesus established, to be grounded in the work of Jesus, to remember what he taught, to act as he acted; to evolve into the daughters and sons God intends us to be until that day when we come full circle with Jesus in that being in which we live, move, and have our being.    

Amen.

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[1] A paraphrase of the earliest account of this event in 1 Corinthians 11:25 & 26

[2] Isaiah 1:11

[3] Psalm 51:17

LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI - The Lord's Prayer - A Homily

This is a recollection of an impromptu homily I delivered at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota on July 28, 2019

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In the name of our ever-loving, life giving God, who loves us more than we can imagine, who loves us for who we are, in spite what we have done, what we have left undone, and what we will or will not do, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, our redeemer.  Amen.

When we first entered this interim period of having no priest; a period that is likely to continue for some time, I began a series of homilies entitled, "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi."  Lex orandi, lex credendi is a term that was coined by the 5th century disciple of St. Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine.  This rather enigmatic phrase literally means the law of prayer , the law of belief.  I tend to define it as how we pray is shaped by what we hold dearest in our hearts and, conversely what we pray about shapes what we hold in our hearts.  

It is unfortunate that Prosper wasn't invited to the Council of Nicea, where our creeds were formulated because the truest creed is one that was given to us by Jesus, the "Our Father" or the "Lord's Prayer."  We don't often think of prayers as creeds, but this prayer, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples reveals something about God and reveals something about ourselves.  It gives us something to believe that has pragmatic relevance in how we live.

There are two versions of the Lord's Prayer in the Gospels, the one we heard this morning from the Gospel of Luke and  another in the Gospel of Matthew, which is the more familiar version. This morning I would to take a few moments to look at this prayer, not so much as prayer, but rather as a creed, that says something about what we are to hold dear in our hearts and reveals what it is that we, as Christians are to do.  

The most important two words of this prayer/creed that we are familiar with are right at the beginning,  "Our Father" or as Luke's version simply states, "Father."  This is what we are claiming God to be, our Father, the creator of everything and a father/ mother/ the creative parent to everything  that exists.  Jesus said those words.  Jesus says those words with us every time we say them.  Jesus is not God's only child, not God's only creation, we all are and Jesus is our brother.

"Who is in heaven"  are words that meant something in Jesus day as a place, that dome that covered the Earth from horizon to horizon.  But we, today, have a much broader, much more expansive understanding of heaven as something that totally surrounds us, no matter where we look.  Heaven is all around.  "The kingdom of heaven," Jesus said, "is at hand."  God is as close to us as our next breath.  St. Paul put it this way to the Athenians in Acts 17, "God is that being in which we live and move and have our being."  That's how close God is to us at every moment.  

"Holy is your Name."   Have you noticed in our Episcopal liturgies and in our hymnal that the word  "Name" in reference to God is always capitalized.  We really can't name God, because God is so other - so holy.  In fact, we really can't describe God as a noun, a solid construct, because God is always active, always defies description in a concrete manner.  People who say Jesus is the face of God, get it part right.  But think about that for a moment - the face of Jesus is our face.  You want to see God - look in a mirror or look at the person next to you wherever you are  - you're seeing God in part.  God is a pronomial verb, something so real, so intimate and imminent that God is more felt than something  or a someone that can be adequately described by language.  Yet we know God to be!

"Your will be done on Earth as it is heaven."  This is a revelatory statement.  It is telling us something  about the workings of God.  Let me put it this way.  God's will is done, in spite of what we do or don't do.  The bottom line is God's will is done, is being done, is taking place.  The sad fact is most don't see it, most don't understand that God works through what we do, with what we do, and around what we do.  God's will seeps through us.  The only part we have to play in this is how we see it carried out in our lives.  God is creative.  God loves to play in the dirt to create things out of the messiness that is - the question is how do we want God's will to take shape in our lives?  What are we offering God to work with when it comes to us? 

"Give us this day our daily bread."  Remember, a few Sunday's back I said God was a minimalist.  How minimal is our daily bread - the simplest form of sustenance.  We're not just saying, give me my daily bread - we're talking us.  The totality of us - the people that have and the people that don't have.  We're talking about the migrants, the people with out food and shelter, the imprisoned, the persecuted, those who seem to be without.  We need to think about that, because they are a part of us. And Jesus is not only talking about food; he's talking about the Word that sustains us and the words we use to sustain each other.  The Gospels remind us that we are fed by the Word of God and I might add by the words we use.  Do we like the menu we're serving up?

"Forgive us our sins, as we forgive the sins of others"  or as Luke records, "Forgive us our sins because we forgive the sins of other."  How are we doing with that?  How well are we forgiving the sins of others.  I have often felt that after saying the Confession of Sins during our services instead of priest standing to pronounce the absolution,  we just turn to everyone present in this church and say, "I forgive you."  I might not have done anything wrong in my eye or might not feel you've done me wrong, but I'm going to forgive you - just in case and I'm going to mean it.  Christianity has not fully lived into the promise of God's forgiveness in it's two thousand year history.  It hasn't even come close.  [I think we would be living in a much different world if it had.]

"And do not put us to the test."  This is another revelatory statement.  God does not test us.  We test God.  We test each other all the time.  What we sometimes perceive as a test from God is perhaps God telling us something rather than testing us about something.  If we feel tested, what is the nature of the test - What am I lacking in?  What am I not getting?  Better yet, what are we not getting?   What is God strengthening me in?  God doesn't need to test us. God knows us, better than we know ourselves.  So what is it that we need to know about ourselves, about myself?  

The Lord's prayer is the best creed of the church because it touches the heart.   I have sat at the bedside of those who are dying, of those who are sick and in deep need.  People in those positions don't ask for the creeds, they ask for prayer and they know and want this prayer - no matter what state they're in or whether they are very communicative, I've watched people mouth these words [who have stopped speaking for some time] because they matter.

Let me say one final word about prayer in general.  The measure of one's faith is revealed in the context of one's prayers.  Scripture, Jesus, and the apostles all advised us to pray without ceasing - to submit everything to God in prayer.    It may be that some of us don't want to bother God with our trivial problems, the attitudes that we acquire, the feelings we entertain that bother us because we feel we should be able to deal with it, but those are the things we frequently need to let go of in order to let God work through them.

May we find in our prayers the depth of faith to let God be God, the liberation  of hope as God works through us, and the immensity of  God's love that encompasses all.

Amen.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

FAITH AND INTUITION

In this post, I consider faith and intuition.  In my previous post, I observed, "that there is interplay between (belief, faith, intellect, and intuition) as in intuition informing intellect and faith informing what we believe."  This seems accurate because all knowledge is derived from what we learn as experience, and faith and intuition are experiential activities. As a result, this avenue of information is largely a one way street; in that, belief does not cause one to have faith and intellect does cause one to have intuition, neither does belief produce intuition, nor does intellect result in acts of faith.

It can be said that one's beliefs and intellect  gives definition to one's acts of faith. The same could be said regarding intuition.   Nevertheless, one's beliefs and intellect do not produce faith or intuition.  Faith and intuition are not a product of one's ideologies or dependent on a certain level of intellect in order to occur.  Faith and intuition are, strictly speaking, experiential events.  A common reaction to such experiences is that the person engaged in an act of faith or intuition rarely recognizes it as such and generally is unable to indicate a direct reason or motive for what compelled one's actions or experience at the time. 

The best illustration is the person who does a random heroic deed carried out in the split moment.  Heroes of the immediate-take-action kind are not known to take action because of an ideological belief or intellect that is capable of weighing all the contingencies that one's actions can result in. Such individuals simply act, without a sense of self-regard to what could have, might have, or should have happened. Whether they admit it or even realize what they experienced at the time of their heroism, there is detected in such actions a level of faith and intuition that surpasses what they and others would do if solely based one what they believe and know. 

Something far more powerful and swift came into play and that something I would identify as faith and intuition.  People who act from faith often credit God with such occurrences, and I won't argue that assessment because that too proceeds from a person's experience with faith and intuition.

What is observed in such instances is what I described in earlier posts as the Impulse of Religion that evolved from seeing a need for the other as seeing in the need of the other one's own need.  I believe that the Impulse of Religion is a primal response that has evolved in the human psyche before the dawn of human history.  Faith and intuition proceed from an untraceable, deeper sense of being than one's intellect and ideologies.

There are, of course, other types of heroes; people who are highly intellectual and possess strong ideological beliefs, whose heroism is not of the immediate-take-action type.  Such individuals represent a heroism that is of the deliberate-steady-action type who demonstrate faith in what they are doing and possess a sense of intuition beyond knowing, who feel that what they are engaging is the right thing to do without the aid of knowing for sure, who are willing to risk an investment in hope.   Such heroes can go unrecognized in their life-times, but who have changed the course of human history, who may have averted disasters, found cures, prevented wars or gave rise to new ideas and broadened our sense of knowledge at the risk of losing life - people like Galileo, Thomas Payne, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, Madame Curie, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. to name a few. 

Such heroic individuals were frequently dealing with the dangerous occupation of speaking truth to power or who had to overcome their personal inclination for playing it safe.  Again, such faith and intuitive activities I would posit as being motivated by the primal Impulse of Religion.

Faith and intuition are more operative in a person's life than most think or would credit.  The simplest, most mundane expression of faith is getting out of bed each morning.  It takes faith to face each new day as a human.  Possessing beliefs derived from negative experience and a reasoning ability based on both one's negatives experience and beliefs derived from it can possess one to the point of immobility.  Apart from clinical depression, that is frequently the result of brain chemistry, depression as mood is frequently connected to intellectual perception and processing, occasionally associated with ideologically induced dissatisfaction.  Getting out of bed and moving on with one's day, in spite of them is an act of faith. 

Intuition is perhaps harder to detect, but at its simplest level it come as that gut reaction, that quick feeling one gets to do or to refrain from doing something at a moment's notice. Intuition is that sense which defies rational explanation because it does not require it, but seems rational after we acted on it; particularly, if the intuition is correct.  One can also experience intuition as a persistent sense of alertness to undefined events that are taking place and are beyond one's control; that cause one to be vigilant about events that resonate or give definition to this intuitive feeling.

Faith and intuition are largely processed intellectually after the fact of an identifiable occurrence.  It is only after the fact that one's ideological beliefs come into play as way to define and identify such occurrences.  There is, as I have posited, interplay between these functions.  Faith and intuition are more likely to occur at a subliminal level than at a fully conscious level.

My reason for bringing this and my last post to light is because we are not functioning, as a whole, in a faithful and intuitive way.  We are prone to being numb to intuitive sensations regarding nature and human relationships.  Many are choosing to turn a blind eye to the earth and to the moral responsibilities we humans have towards it; that such responsibilities transcend our mere ideological viewpoints and subjective values. 

We are not acting in faith to address problems, to fix what is wrong  nor are we listening to the inner impulses that connect us to the pulse of the natural earth and humus of our nature; to the primal Impulse of Religion that I believe resides at the core of the human psyche.

Our intellectual abilities can override intuition.  Our ideological beliefs can become a substitute for faith; that when combined can lead one to ignore the inner impulses that alert us to what our intellectual faculties fail to register.   If there was ever a time in which to take a giant step back and examine one's beliefs and embrace the limits of our collective intellect and be alert to our intuitive senses that proceed from a primal need for the other as meeting our own needs and to act from faith as an investment in hope, now is that time.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm