One of the things my wife appreciates about me is that I cook dinner about half the time. Actually we both enjoy cooking, and we have had many weekend “dates” when we cook up a special dish together. But of course the real challenge is to make something tasty on those regular nights during the week when time is short. We tend to have our regular dishes that we know are reliable, but we may tweak now and again to try to perfect the recipe. My specialty is jambalaya. It’s really a pretty simple dish with chicken, sausage, onions, tomatoes, peppers, rice, and some spices. But most important jambalaya needs some “heat” in the form of hot peppers, or Tabasco. Sometimes I will use Cajun style andouille sausage which contains its own heat. A couple of weeks ago, though, I used regular sausage but I left out the hot peppers. The result was I suppose as nutritious as ever, but it certainly did not have the pizzaz that it should have had. It was rather disappointing.
Now I am not up here to give cooking lessons during the sermon time, and we can share recipes some other time. What I am trying to do is connect the spiciness of our own lives, of what we bring to the table, to the goodness and vibrancy of our relationships in and out of the church, and to the kingdom of God. We need to bring some of our own “heat” and passion to our Christian living, if it is not to be bland and uninspiring.
Jesus says in Matthew, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste it is thrown out.” Back in those days salt was very valuable, highly desired to make bland food taste palatable. It was used to preserve foods as well, highly important when there was no refrigeration. Salt, sodium chloride, is one of the simplest compounds. It can be changed into something else by various chemical reactions, but then it is no longer salt. Salt, as long as it remains salt, by its very nature, cannot lose its taste.
We are the salt of the earth, says Jesus. We have been created to give enjoyment and taste to our lives and the lives of others. We have been created in the image of God. We have been made to be co-creators with God. We are born salty. And so we bring life, and enjoyment, and taste to our relationships. We are made to help each other, to bring food to the hungry, to clothe the naked, to bring hope to the desperate. Isaiah says “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom by like the noonday.” The saltiness we bring to our world is the foundation of righteousness.
Jesus goes on to say, “You are the light of the world. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket.” Jesus is saying this as he preaches to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, right after the beatitudes. We disciples of Christ have been given something special, a special relationship with God, that perhaps goes beyond our fundamental saltiness. We have been given the Spirit of God; we have been given God’s wisdom, so that we can understand the gifts of God. That is what Paul proclaims to the Corinthians and to us. He says that “those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” We disciples have been given the gifts of God in trust for the whole world, because there are those who are not ready to hear.
So we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Isn’t that utterly amazing? God has given us human beings the dignity of creating us in his own image, to be like God in forming our world, giving us the capacity to love each other and to love God in return, as God loves us. On top of that then, he has given us who are open to it the light of wisdom and gifts of the Spirit in order to build up our community, and to build up the kingdom of God, and to share with those who need our gifts.
But unlike sodium chloride, we sometimes do lose our saltiness. Sometimes we do hide our light under the bushel. We try to run from our innate goodness, try to duck our responsibilities to feed the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted. We try to live in the darkness, rather than embracing our own light. Marianne Williamson has written this: “My deepest fear is not that I am inadequate. My deepest fear is that I am powerful beyond measure. It is my light, not my darkness, that most frightens me. I ask myself, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually who am I not to be? I am a child of God. My playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around me. I am meant to shine, as children do. I was born to make manifest the glory of God that is within me. It is not just in me; it’s in everyone. And as I let my own light shine, I unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As I am liberated from my own fear, my presence automatically liberates others.”
We hide from our own light, place it under the bushel. We are afraid of our own power, our own saltiness. We are afraid to speak out, afraid to tell people about our faith. We retreat behind the church doors, and our religion becomes bland because there is not enough salt. Behind the church doors our light has a hard time shining out. We cannot let the Church building be a bushel basket which hides our light. Our children crave the adventure of a bold, living Christianity, even a dangerous Christianity, and so they seek to satisfy their spirituality in other ways. Too often, we fail to think bigger, and so the church appears to be irrelevant. Why are we so afraid?
One reason, of course is that if we speak out, and stand up, we may jeopardize our relationships. People we care about may not approve. There is an old Japanese saying that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. We don’t want to be hammered down.
Sometimes we simply forget who we are, that we are children of God, that we are powerful beyond measure. That very power may frighten us. We don’t know where it may lead, what might change. We might get hurt.
But I think the biggest reason we hide from our own light is because we too often think we are unworthy. In my experience, one of the hardest things for a Christian to do is to accept our own forgiveness. We wallow in our sins, like pigs in mud, because that becomes a comfortable place to be. Or we get stuck in our victimhood, holding on to the injustices done to us like a badge of honor. To accept our forgiveness, to accept our wholeness, to accept our power and light, means that something is expected of us. We are expected to be righteous.
One of the things I have come to love at St. James is the closing blessing, especially the phrase, “Remember whose you are.” That can be taken merely as a reminder that Christ gives us his comfort and companionship. But it is also a challenge. When we remember who we belong to, then we also must remember that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. When we remember whose we are, we will be the spice that makes the world a tasty place.
Sample sermons from the Rev. David Drebert. Contact me for additional information.
Epiphany 2 2011
The events in Tucson have created quite a national conversation over the last week. We grieve, of course, for the victims and families of those who were killed or injured. We struggle to find some reason for what has happened; we try to create some meaning for it. There are many who say that the coarseness of our political rhetoric is responsible, creating a climate of violence and hatred. They are right. In response there are those who say that it is the work of one deranged individual. They are right as well. These need not be conflicting truths. Individuals must be responsible for their actions, but those actions are always taken within the context of a community. Indeed we do need to raise the level of our discourse, to be more civil to each other. We do need to help identify and help those who are mentally ill in more effectively. But that is not enough to find meaning in what happened. I may be looking in the wrong places, but I have seen very little about where God might be in all of this, what our response as Christians should be. I think that the gospel for today can help us.
I think that today’s gospel gives us a model of the Christian life. It can be summed up in five words or phrases: Behold, Follow, Where are you staying?, Come and See, Go and Tell.
In today’s gospel John is with his own disciples the day after Jesus was baptized. He sees Jesus coming toward him, and tells his disciples, “Behold, here is the Lamb of God.” Here is something special, a surprise. “I did not know him” John says, “but I saw the Spirit descend like a dove.” I am sure that many people walked by Jesus that day, and probably saw nothing special. It took someone like John to give them the clue. Sometimes we need the help of others to see the parts of Jesus that are deep, surprising, and significant.
It all starts with beholding, looking. That suggests more than an accidental glance. It suggests that we are looking for something, that we need to find something, that we are lacking something. Andrew and the other disciple were looking for something from John; that’s why they were following him. But John said he was not the one, he wasn’t the answer, look over there at Jesus.
We ask this week, are we looking in the wrong places? Are we the people we thought we were? Is this violence and hatred part of who we are? The answer is “yes.” Each of us harbors at least a smudge of darkness in the corners where we would rather not look. It is called sin, and we all have it. In a larger sense we are all complicit in what happened in Tucson, by what we have done or by what we have left undone, by our own incivility or by our own neglect of those in trouble. But we are not defined by that smudge, that sin. It has been said that evil rides on the back of goodness, that evil cannot exist without goodness. But our goodness is the greater part of us. It is that goodness that produced the heroes who stopped the killing and helped the injured. It is that goodness that seeks the light which destroys the darkness, it is that goodness which seeks redemption from our sins.
If we are lucky, somebody will point to Jesus, and say, “Behold, here is the Lamb of God.” Who pointed us to Jesus? Who will point others to Jesus, if not us? We look into the face of Jesus, and we wonder, is this the answer? We may still be unsure, but we are intrigued. And so, like Andrew and the other disciple, we start to follow him for a little way, to see where he goes, where he might lead us. Is this the real thing? Perhaps we have all been too distracted by the politics, the winning and losing, to see that there is another way to follow.
At some point we not only follow Jesus, we encounter him. He turned and asked the disciples, “What are you looking for?” I suspect they were probably a little surprised and embarrassed, to be found following him, trying to be discreet. They could have said any number of things – Are you the one, the Messiah? Are you sent by God? Why do bad things happen to good people? What is your theology? But instead they ask, “Uh, Rabbi, where are you staying?” It sounds like one of those questions made up on the spot. But it is a good question. Perhaps they feel lost, homeless, at a loss for words.
This week we too feel a little confused and lost. We too might hem and haw if we are asked “What are you looking for?” Perhaps we are looking for answers: how could this happen? What does it mean? Perhaps we want a place to rest, a place to be comforted. Perhaps we most want a place to be safe, a place where we don’t need to be afraid. We don’t know what we expect from Jesus. But deep down we have a need that must be filled, a need for acceptance and love, a need for meaning, a need for hope. When we encounter Jesus, we must accept our own need for a place to stay.
Jesus doesn’t answer the disciples. He just says, “Come and See.” They call him rabbi, teacher, but he doesn’t say, “come and learn.” He offers them an invitation to discover him, to begin a relationship with him. It has been said that faith is something that must be discovered, not something that can be disclosed. And so the disciples went and discovered Jesus that afternoon. I wonder what that afternoon must have been like. I would love to have been a fly on the wall. What did they talk about, what did they do? We will never know. But I suspect that Jesus must have given them a new vision, a new way of looking at their lives, the possibility of new meaning and purpose. They must have sensed his charisma, his reservoir of love and acceptance and compassion. He gave them a place to stay.
We often say that one of the best things about being an Episcopalian is that we don’t have to leave our brains at the door, and that is true. But we also do not have to leave our hearts at the door, either. It is here, in the presence of Jesus and each other, where we can find love and acceptance, where we can find joy, and where we can find meaning and hope. That is what I think the disciples found that afternoon. I think that they heard stories of hope, that God had not abandoned them, that poverty and Roman oppression were not the final word. Here in church we hear the stories of hope too: God has not abandoned us, violence and hatred do not have the last word.
Whatever happened that afternoon, it changed Andrew. The first thing he did was to rush out to find his brother Simon. “Simon, Simon, we have found the Messiah!” No longer was Jesus a Rabbi, now he was the Messiah. How remarkable. The Jews had been waiting for the Messiah for centuries, and now he was here? Andrew was absolutely convinced. He could not contain himself, he had to rush out, to go and tell his brother Simon.
So there you have it. That’s our story. Behold, Follow, Where are you staying, Come and See, Go and Tell. It is the story we repeat every week in the Eucharist. We come to behold him in the bread and wine. We follow him into the mystery of God, letting our hearts be filled with his presence. That is where he stays with us, as we take him into our own bodies, where we are united with him in a deep relationship of love. We come and see and discover our own best selves that we are made for joy and hope. And then, we go and tell because we cannot contain that joy and love within ourselves, but must share it with our brothers and sisters. It is that love, God with us, that strengthens us and sustains us, even in such hard times.
Until the Kingdom of God comes in all its fullness, such tragedies as we had last week will happen. But we do not despair. Our Christian story continues, bringing us meaning and hope. Every week we repeat the cycle – behold, follow, where are you staying, come and see, go and tell – and every week we draw closer and closer in deeper relationship to the one who gives us life.
Behold, here is the Lamb of God.
I think that today’s gospel gives us a model of the Christian life. It can be summed up in five words or phrases: Behold, Follow, Where are you staying?, Come and See, Go and Tell.
In today’s gospel John is with his own disciples the day after Jesus was baptized. He sees Jesus coming toward him, and tells his disciples, “Behold, here is the Lamb of God.” Here is something special, a surprise. “I did not know him” John says, “but I saw the Spirit descend like a dove.” I am sure that many people walked by Jesus that day, and probably saw nothing special. It took someone like John to give them the clue. Sometimes we need the help of others to see the parts of Jesus that are deep, surprising, and significant.
It all starts with beholding, looking. That suggests more than an accidental glance. It suggests that we are looking for something, that we need to find something, that we are lacking something. Andrew and the other disciple were looking for something from John; that’s why they were following him. But John said he was not the one, he wasn’t the answer, look over there at Jesus.
We ask this week, are we looking in the wrong places? Are we the people we thought we were? Is this violence and hatred part of who we are? The answer is “yes.” Each of us harbors at least a smudge of darkness in the corners where we would rather not look. It is called sin, and we all have it. In a larger sense we are all complicit in what happened in Tucson, by what we have done or by what we have left undone, by our own incivility or by our own neglect of those in trouble. But we are not defined by that smudge, that sin. It has been said that evil rides on the back of goodness, that evil cannot exist without goodness. But our goodness is the greater part of us. It is that goodness that produced the heroes who stopped the killing and helped the injured. It is that goodness that seeks the light which destroys the darkness, it is that goodness which seeks redemption from our sins.
If we are lucky, somebody will point to Jesus, and say, “Behold, here is the Lamb of God.” Who pointed us to Jesus? Who will point others to Jesus, if not us? We look into the face of Jesus, and we wonder, is this the answer? We may still be unsure, but we are intrigued. And so, like Andrew and the other disciple, we start to follow him for a little way, to see where he goes, where he might lead us. Is this the real thing? Perhaps we have all been too distracted by the politics, the winning and losing, to see that there is another way to follow.
At some point we not only follow Jesus, we encounter him. He turned and asked the disciples, “What are you looking for?” I suspect they were probably a little surprised and embarrassed, to be found following him, trying to be discreet. They could have said any number of things – Are you the one, the Messiah? Are you sent by God? Why do bad things happen to good people? What is your theology? But instead they ask, “Uh, Rabbi, where are you staying?” It sounds like one of those questions made up on the spot. But it is a good question. Perhaps they feel lost, homeless, at a loss for words.
This week we too feel a little confused and lost. We too might hem and haw if we are asked “What are you looking for?” Perhaps we are looking for answers: how could this happen? What does it mean? Perhaps we want a place to rest, a place to be comforted. Perhaps we most want a place to be safe, a place where we don’t need to be afraid. We don’t know what we expect from Jesus. But deep down we have a need that must be filled, a need for acceptance and love, a need for meaning, a need for hope. When we encounter Jesus, we must accept our own need for a place to stay.
Jesus doesn’t answer the disciples. He just says, “Come and See.” They call him rabbi, teacher, but he doesn’t say, “come and learn.” He offers them an invitation to discover him, to begin a relationship with him. It has been said that faith is something that must be discovered, not something that can be disclosed. And so the disciples went and discovered Jesus that afternoon. I wonder what that afternoon must have been like. I would love to have been a fly on the wall. What did they talk about, what did they do? We will never know. But I suspect that Jesus must have given them a new vision, a new way of looking at their lives, the possibility of new meaning and purpose. They must have sensed his charisma, his reservoir of love and acceptance and compassion. He gave them a place to stay.
We often say that one of the best things about being an Episcopalian is that we don’t have to leave our brains at the door, and that is true. But we also do not have to leave our hearts at the door, either. It is here, in the presence of Jesus and each other, where we can find love and acceptance, where we can find joy, and where we can find meaning and hope. That is what I think the disciples found that afternoon. I think that they heard stories of hope, that God had not abandoned them, that poverty and Roman oppression were not the final word. Here in church we hear the stories of hope too: God has not abandoned us, violence and hatred do not have the last word.
Whatever happened that afternoon, it changed Andrew. The first thing he did was to rush out to find his brother Simon. “Simon, Simon, we have found the Messiah!” No longer was Jesus a Rabbi, now he was the Messiah. How remarkable. The Jews had been waiting for the Messiah for centuries, and now he was here? Andrew was absolutely convinced. He could not contain himself, he had to rush out, to go and tell his brother Simon.
So there you have it. That’s our story. Behold, Follow, Where are you staying, Come and See, Go and Tell. It is the story we repeat every week in the Eucharist. We come to behold him in the bread and wine. We follow him into the mystery of God, letting our hearts be filled with his presence. That is where he stays with us, as we take him into our own bodies, where we are united with him in a deep relationship of love. We come and see and discover our own best selves that we are made for joy and hope. And then, we go and tell because we cannot contain that joy and love within ourselves, but must share it with our brothers and sisters. It is that love, God with us, that strengthens us and sustains us, even in such hard times.
Until the Kingdom of God comes in all its fullness, such tragedies as we had last week will happen. But we do not despair. Our Christian story continues, bringing us meaning and hope. Every week we repeat the cycle – behold, follow, where are you staying, come and see, go and tell – and every week we draw closer and closer in deeper relationship to the one who gives us life.
Behold, here is the Lamb of God.
Sermon Epiphany 1, 2011
Okay, I finally have to admit it. Christmas is over. Of course, judging by the number of Christmas trees at the curb on December 26, Christmas has been over for some time for most of our culture. That’s why I like to remind folks that Christmas lasts until Epiphany on January 6. The 12 days of Christmas can give us time to savor the incarnation mystery without all the hoopla around shopping and presents and Santa Claus.
But now we are definitely in the season of Epiphany. In the Eastern Orthodox churches where it originated, Epiphany is a three-fold event celebrating first the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem, thus indicating the revelation of Jesus Christ to all the world, including the Gentiles. But the church also marks in Epiphany Jesus’ baptism, and his first act of ministry in the changing of water to wine at Cana. In some places it is marked by the blessing of water for baptism, of gold, frankincense, and chalk. The chalk is used to mark the initials of the names of the magi over the door CMB, for Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Before we had liturgical calendars, the priest would also announce the date of Easter this year (April 24). But the first Sunday in the season of Epiphany is always about the baptism of Jesus.
Why did Jesus come to John to be baptized? As the son of God, I’m not sure he really needed to be baptized; he was already God’s own forever. John certainly did not think he needed it, in fact he thought he should be baptized by Jesus instead. But baptism was something important to him, and I think he wanted it known that baptism should be important to us as well. His insistence on it showed us a way to touch the spiritual world and to tap into its power. Some scholars have said that it was at his baptism that Jesus’ divinity was conferred, or at least when it was claimed. It seems to have been a prerequisite for beginning his ministry. What is it that makes baptism so important to us Christians? What makes it a sacrament? In fact how do we deal with the reality of any of our sacraments? These are heady questions that have filled volumes of books. But I don’t think it hurts us from time to time look at what the sacraments, especially baptism and Eucharist, means to us, and this first Sunday in Epiphany is a good time to do that. Of course most of us know the prayer book catechism formula for what a sacrament is – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as a sure and certain means of that grace.
If we are going to talk about spiritual graces, perhaps we had best know what we mean by spiritual. For many of us, our spirituality is something very private and intimate, some principle or animating force at the core of who we are that needs to be protected and is ours alone to do with as we wish. There are some who deny the existence of anything spiritual, who deny that anything but reason and sensory evidence have any reality. For them, to talk about spirit is to talk about enthusiasm or passion, part of a person’s personality.
You have heard people tell you that they are very spiritual, but not very religious. I would agree with them that our spirits are very real and exist in relation with the spirits of the entire communion of saints, but that the power of the spirit is only developed through the hard work and discipline and humility of leading a religious life, whatever form that might take. Just as we have to exercise to develop our body, and read and study to train our minds, we also have to work at developing our spirits. To us an essential part of developing the spirit through religious life is participating in the sacraments.
Let’s make one thing clear. We can have all the theories and reasoning we want to talk about sacraments, but we will never be able to fully grasp them with just our minds. They are a mystery that speaks to our hearts, an ancient formula in which Christ promises to be with us. If we are going to feel the power of sacrament, we will first have to admit that we are connected to God and each other through the spirit.
A friend of mine, a lawyer, recently had a death in the family. He was very rational, a skeptic, an agnostic. Normally a sound sleeper, something woke him up at exactly 4:40 in the morning with a feeling that something was wrong. He couldn’t quite tie it down, though. But he soon got a call from his mother to say that his nephew had died on the east coast at 5:40 in the morning, precisely the time he had wakened. When he got together with the rest of the family, he found that several other members of the family had also been awakened at the very same time. He could not account for this coincidence in a rational way, and suddenly he was rethinking his skeptical approach to things supernatural. I told him that I believe that we have a connection to the realm of the spirit, some sort of parallel spiritual existence, which connects us in a loving relationship to God and to others. It is a world that we never see clearly, but which breaks through and gives us intimations of its reality from time to time.
The sacraments connect us to the spirit in a way that we cannot understand with our minds. We believe that connecting to that world and to our God who rules it is healthy for us, that it gives us a spiritual strength that we would not know otherwise. What is the power of the spirit? It’s hard to define, but I think we know it when we see it. People like Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, or your favorite monk if you know any, come to mind. They have a transparency to them, an ability to see who they are, to see God shining through them. I envy that. I think we also sense the lack of the power of spirit when we have divorced ourselves from it. We experience a restlessness, an anger, a distraction that often manifests itself in addictions or rebellion, or hatreds.
In baptism we are given the basic orientation to Christ, and the first measure of spiritual power that will continue to grow if nurtured. I believe that is what Jesus is pointing to when he insists on his baptism by John. And what about our other great sacrament, Eucharist? When we make Eucharist together, we call on God and all the powers of the universe to come and be with us. Akma Adam, one of my professors at Seabury, expressed it something like this: “When I break the bread at the fraction, I am always amazed that I can have survived, because all the powers of the universe come together at that point, and at that time.” Since I heard that, I have thought of it almost every time I have done Eucharist. At the Eucharist we enter into the world of spirit, and it enters into us. And in that connection, which the prayer book calls, “the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life,” we are strengthened and given spiritual power.
It may be hard for us to recognize this spiritual power as real power. We have been conditioned to think of power as coercive and manipulative, which usually employs violence or the threat of violence. Power to us is a tool to use to get what we want, and to get it now because we want it now. But the power of the spirit is a patient power, it is the power of love working over a long period of time, like the way the constant flow of water in a stream can wear down the rocks in it. It is a power that must be renewed and refilled in us, because it is a power that does not originate with us, but comes from God. But it is a power that can change nations, and it is a power that can change lives, drawing us away from addictions and obsessive reliance on our selves. It is a power that allows us to become the human beings God has called us to be.
As we prepare for the renewing of our spirits in the Eucharist, let us first remind ourselves of the beginning of our spiritual lives in the church by renewing our baptismal vows as found on page 292 in the BCP.
But now we are definitely in the season of Epiphany. In the Eastern Orthodox churches where it originated, Epiphany is a three-fold event celebrating first the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem, thus indicating the revelation of Jesus Christ to all the world, including the Gentiles. But the church also marks in Epiphany Jesus’ baptism, and his first act of ministry in the changing of water to wine at Cana. In some places it is marked by the blessing of water for baptism, of gold, frankincense, and chalk. The chalk is used to mark the initials of the names of the magi over the door CMB, for Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Before we had liturgical calendars, the priest would also announce the date of Easter this year (April 24). But the first Sunday in the season of Epiphany is always about the baptism of Jesus.
Why did Jesus come to John to be baptized? As the son of God, I’m not sure he really needed to be baptized; he was already God’s own forever. John certainly did not think he needed it, in fact he thought he should be baptized by Jesus instead. But baptism was something important to him, and I think he wanted it known that baptism should be important to us as well. His insistence on it showed us a way to touch the spiritual world and to tap into its power. Some scholars have said that it was at his baptism that Jesus’ divinity was conferred, or at least when it was claimed. It seems to have been a prerequisite for beginning his ministry. What is it that makes baptism so important to us Christians? What makes it a sacrament? In fact how do we deal with the reality of any of our sacraments? These are heady questions that have filled volumes of books. But I don’t think it hurts us from time to time look at what the sacraments, especially baptism and Eucharist, means to us, and this first Sunday in Epiphany is a good time to do that. Of course most of us know the prayer book catechism formula for what a sacrament is – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as a sure and certain means of that grace.
If we are going to talk about spiritual graces, perhaps we had best know what we mean by spiritual. For many of us, our spirituality is something very private and intimate, some principle or animating force at the core of who we are that needs to be protected and is ours alone to do with as we wish. There are some who deny the existence of anything spiritual, who deny that anything but reason and sensory evidence have any reality. For them, to talk about spirit is to talk about enthusiasm or passion, part of a person’s personality.
You have heard people tell you that they are very spiritual, but not very religious. I would agree with them that our spirits are very real and exist in relation with the spirits of the entire communion of saints, but that the power of the spirit is only developed through the hard work and discipline and humility of leading a religious life, whatever form that might take. Just as we have to exercise to develop our body, and read and study to train our minds, we also have to work at developing our spirits. To us an essential part of developing the spirit through religious life is participating in the sacraments.
Let’s make one thing clear. We can have all the theories and reasoning we want to talk about sacraments, but we will never be able to fully grasp them with just our minds. They are a mystery that speaks to our hearts, an ancient formula in which Christ promises to be with us. If we are going to feel the power of sacrament, we will first have to admit that we are connected to God and each other through the spirit.
A friend of mine, a lawyer, recently had a death in the family. He was very rational, a skeptic, an agnostic. Normally a sound sleeper, something woke him up at exactly 4:40 in the morning with a feeling that something was wrong. He couldn’t quite tie it down, though. But he soon got a call from his mother to say that his nephew had died on the east coast at 5:40 in the morning, precisely the time he had wakened. When he got together with the rest of the family, he found that several other members of the family had also been awakened at the very same time. He could not account for this coincidence in a rational way, and suddenly he was rethinking his skeptical approach to things supernatural. I told him that I believe that we have a connection to the realm of the spirit, some sort of parallel spiritual existence, which connects us in a loving relationship to God and to others. It is a world that we never see clearly, but which breaks through and gives us intimations of its reality from time to time.
The sacraments connect us to the spirit in a way that we cannot understand with our minds. We believe that connecting to that world and to our God who rules it is healthy for us, that it gives us a spiritual strength that we would not know otherwise. What is the power of the spirit? It’s hard to define, but I think we know it when we see it. People like Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, or your favorite monk if you know any, come to mind. They have a transparency to them, an ability to see who they are, to see God shining through them. I envy that. I think we also sense the lack of the power of spirit when we have divorced ourselves from it. We experience a restlessness, an anger, a distraction that often manifests itself in addictions or rebellion, or hatreds.
In baptism we are given the basic orientation to Christ, and the first measure of spiritual power that will continue to grow if nurtured. I believe that is what Jesus is pointing to when he insists on his baptism by John. And what about our other great sacrament, Eucharist? When we make Eucharist together, we call on God and all the powers of the universe to come and be with us. Akma Adam, one of my professors at Seabury, expressed it something like this: “When I break the bread at the fraction, I am always amazed that I can have survived, because all the powers of the universe come together at that point, and at that time.” Since I heard that, I have thought of it almost every time I have done Eucharist. At the Eucharist we enter into the world of spirit, and it enters into us. And in that connection, which the prayer book calls, “the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life,” we are strengthened and given spiritual power.
It may be hard for us to recognize this spiritual power as real power. We have been conditioned to think of power as coercive and manipulative, which usually employs violence or the threat of violence. Power to us is a tool to use to get what we want, and to get it now because we want it now. But the power of the spirit is a patient power, it is the power of love working over a long period of time, like the way the constant flow of water in a stream can wear down the rocks in it. It is a power that must be renewed and refilled in us, because it is a power that does not originate with us, but comes from God. But it is a power that can change nations, and it is a power that can change lives, drawing us away from addictions and obsessive reliance on our selves. It is a power that allows us to become the human beings God has called us to be.
As we prepare for the renewing of our spirits in the Eucharist, let us first remind ourselves of the beginning of our spiritual lives in the church by renewing our baptismal vows as found on page 292 in the BCP.
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