Easter III
8 May 2011
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
+ Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread. Amen.
The Sunday after Passover in the year 26 found a married couple hurrying away from the city of Jerusalem. Perhaps they knew where they were going, perhaps they only intended to get as far away from Jerusalem as they possibly could. The turmoil of the previous week and the execution of their teacher, Yeshua ben Yosef, had transformed his followers, in the eyes of the Jewish and Roman authorities, from a small group of disciples into the nucleus of a subversive movement intent on overthrowing the government. The time had come, so the saying goes, to make tracks and lie low.
But as we know, looking back from the perspective of two thousand years and with the benefit of Luke’s account of the events, this couple could not escape the consequences of their association with Yeshua ben Yosef. Their encounter on the road to Emmaus led them back to Jerusalem and to whatever fate awaited those who had become witnesses of his resurrection.
For Luke and the earlier Christian movement the consequences of being associated with this resurrected Jesus rabbi could not be confined to the environs of Jerusalem nor to the first small community of believers. Every time the bread was broken and the wine was poured, those who shared in this action proclaimed their commitment to the movement begun by Yeshua and their willingness to accept the consequences that this commitment might bring.
The apostle Paul would write some years after the fact, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11.26) So what are we doing today?
1) First and foremost, we have gathered.
Early in the third century a group of Christians in Asia Minor were arrested and brought before the local Roman magistrate. They were charged with violating the imperial edict forbidding the gathering of illegal religious sects. The magistrate asked them to recant their faith and to obey the imperial edict. Their answer was simple, “Without the Sunday gathering, we cannot exist.” Their execution followed immediately.
We can lose sight of the power of gathering together in one assembly. All of us fear the anonymity which can happen when we participate in a large gathering of any sort. Yet, the most important thing we may do as Christians is to continue to gather together for worship throughout the world, to hear the Word proclaimed, to offer prayer for all of creation, to share in the bread and the wine, and to be sent forth strengthened and renewed.
To be the church means to be the assembly of those who are called out for a special purpose. When Christians were first asked to describe their gatherings, they used the word ‘ekklesia’, a Greek word used to describe the assembly of free men gathered to make decisions for the common good of the city state. The earliest Christians understand themselves to be an ‘ekklesia’, summoned by God to serve the common good of all creation. When we come together for worship, the dispersed people of God are given an opportunity to ‘collect their wits’ and to remember who we are and what we are to do.
When asked what was the glue that held the Anglican Communion together, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said this, “We gather.” Despite all the forces that conspire to prevent our gathering, we gather. Despite all the temptations to do something else with our time, we gather. We gather because we know what our sisters and brothers knew in the first centuries of the church’s mission and ministry, “Without the Sunday gathering, we cannot exist.”
2) We tell the story --- again and again and again.
At an early point in his public ministry Jesus travelled to Nazareth, the town in which he had been raised. He entered the synagogue and was invited to read the appointed reading from the prophets. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus read, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” After sitting down, Jesus said to the assembly, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4.16-21)
Most of the people in the synagogue that day were amazed, not necessarily because they believed him, but because he was a local boy. How often had they heard him read the appointed lesson while he was growing up? For that matter, how often had they heard that same text? Perhaps they had grown deaf and no longer expected the prophetic text to be fulfilled. It was, after all, the lectionary text for the day, nothing more.
When the readers and preacher proclaims the texts appointed for the day, it is tempting to forget that they are speaking God’s Word to us. Like the people in the synagogue in Nazareth, we have heard all of this before; the words roll off the surface of our minds and hearts like rain rolling off the roof of a building. Yet, we never know when there is someone sitting next to us, in front of us, behind us --- dare I say, in us --- who need to hear the Word of God again --- for the first time.
To read the words of the scriptures is to release the power of the Word of God into our midst. The readers and preacher stand before us, small in stature, a known quantity, familiar figures. Within their grasp lies the power to free the Word from the texts that sometimes imprison it, so that the heart of some one sitting near to us may be “strangely warmed” and God’s new creation begins again to work its transformation of our loneliness, our despair, our fear.
There is a collect well-known to many in the Anglican tradition. It bears remembering today. “Eternal God, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever. Amen.”
3) We lift up our prayers to God --- for ourselves and for all of creation.
When I was first ordained, it was my responsibility to travel with the Bishop and the Suffragan Bishop of Colorado on their parish visits. On one such occasion, I accompanied the Bishop, Bill Frey, to a parish in which there was considerable dissension. I joined him as he listened to three representatives of the congregation give their interpretations of the situation. After each one had spoken, the first asked the Bishop, “Well, what are you going to do about this?” “The first thing I am going to do is pray,” responded the Bishop. At this the second person turned to the other two and said loudly, “See, I told you he wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it!”
There are, no doubt, many people who share this view. To some of them, prayer seems more like shouting into the wind rather than entering into conversation with the Holy One of Israel who caused all things to come into existence and who has entrusted us with the stewardship of these gifts. To others, prayer has more in common with sending to heaven a shopping list of wants rather than the more difficult task of discerning the presence and activity of God in us and around us.
I confess that I do not know if prayer changes the eternal purposes of God. I do know that prayer changes the one who prays. Prayer orients us to God’s purposes and opens us to God’s grace working through us. God responds to our new-found awareness of the needs and concerns of the world by offering us the means to use the gifts we have. We discover new avenues and ways that seemed obstructed are re-opened. This is God’s work, not ours, but we are the agents of God’s purposes.
In other words, liturgy is for the people more than it is of the people. When we confess our sins, we ask God to take from us all that prevents us from being agents of God’s purposes, to clear our spiritual arteries of the clots which prevent the blood of the Spirit from reaching our muscles. And lest we believe that these prayers and this cleansing are meant only for ourselves as individuals, as personal possession, the liturgy brings us to our feet and face to face with the other members of Christ’s body.
To exchange the peace is (a) to acknowledge our fellowship in Christ, (b) to put our bodies where our mouths (or thoughts) are, and (c) to commit ourselves, one to another. Unless we choose liturgical perjury, then the exchange of the peace requires us to consider how we, in keeping with our stations in life and our personal abilities, will work for Christ’s peace in our congregations, our homes, our communities, and our world.
4) We break the bread and share the cup.
When I was a child, Holy Communion was reserved for those who had been confirmed. On top of this, it did not seem to be a particularly joyful event. Those who went forward came back with such solemn faces that, for many years, I believed that the bread and wine of the eucharist must taste horrible. When my confirmation day arrived, I steeled myself for the experience. When the bread was given to me, I placed it in my mouth and was surprised by its pleasing “wheaty-ness”. When the wine was given to me, I could not believe that this was the same taste which generations of adults before me had experienced. It was warm and it filled my whole body with such a sense of well-being. I am told that as I returned to my pew, I had a most un-Anglican smile on my face. My more knowledgeable twelve-year-old friends simply dismissed my quiet smile as the first signs of inebriation. But they were right. I was inebriated and I have remained inebriated to this day --- inebriated with the God who through the power of the Spirit makes bread and wine the agents of my incorporation into Jesus Christ.
One of the central passages of the New Testament for the history of the Holy Communion is found in chapters 10 and 11 of 1 Corinthians. In these chapters Paul describes his understanding of the eucharist and gives instructions about how the eucharist is to be celebrated. At one point Paul writes, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Corinthians 10.16-17) To the Corinthians Paul is saying that the person who would rightly participate in the eucharistic meal must be prepared for communion with more than Jesus Christ. Those who truly discern the presence of the body of Christ know that the body of Christ is not only on the altar: it is in the pew in the person who is next to us.
While buildings and places of worship are important as shelters for the work of the church, they should not be confused with “church”. “Church” means people not buildings; “Church” means a people who, through the power of the risen Christ, have been given a share in the mission of God in the world. That people needs to be sustained, fed, and strengthened in its mission. The eucharist is food for the journey not a reward for regular attendance.
We share a loaf and a cup. There are few places left in the world today in which strangers will share a cup together. Despite the fears of some, Anglicans have continued to resist the temptation to diminish this visible sign of our communion by using other means. We should take comfort in the fact that after four hundred and fifty years there are still more than seventy million of us in the world!
The Great Thanksgiving and the Lord’s Prayer constantly hold before us that this meal is intended to create and sustain a holy people for God. There can be no true reception of the body of Christ in the bread wine if we are not prepared to receive it in our children, our parents, our spouses, our neighbours, the stranger in our midst, and those whose views differ from our own.
5) We commit ourselves to God’s mission.
In the Acts of the Apostles the account of Jesus’ ascension is told in some detail. Among my favourite dimensions of the story occurs at the very end. After Jesus has ascended into heaven, the apostles and those with them stand around looking up into the sky. Two angels appear and, in some many words, say, “Why are standing around gaping? Go home. You have a mission to perform and you will soon receive what you need to perform it.”
When we are sent forth from this place, we are reminded that the eucharistic meal is not to be praised but to be used. This meal forms a missionary people and sends them out into a missionary field.
Our liturgical assembly has gathered, heard the Word of God proclaimed, opened itself in prayer to discern the will of God, and has shared in the meal which renews Christian fellowship and community. But the liturgical assembly does not exist for itself: the Christian faith is not lived safely within the walls of this place and insulated from the world. As William Temple, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, said, “The church is the one human institution which exists primarily for its non-members.”
Go home. Go to school. Go to work. Go on vacation. We have a mission to perform and we have received the gifts we need to perform it. And should we find that mission difficult and should we find our strength flagging, there is always another Sunday, either next week or the great Sunday of the promised reign of God. Go home. The assembly is over. Our mission continues. Thanks be to God!
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