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.
[1] A
paraphrase of the earliest account of this event in 1 Corinthians 11:25 &
26
[2]
Isaiah 1:11
[3]
Psalm 51:17
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