RCL Proper 17B
29 July 2012
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Focus
texts: Ephesians 3.14-21 and John 6.1-21
For the audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 eucharist, please click here.
For the audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 eucharist, please click here.
A Public Work for the Common Good
Recently
the House of Bishops published a statement reaffirming our church’s practice of
welcoming all baptized Christians to share in holy communion in Anglican
congregations. But the question of who is
welcome at the table has become a matter of public discussion and dispute these
days. Our Primate, Archbishop Fred
Hiltz, has set up a task force to explore this question and has asked me to one
of the members of this task force.
Given
the debate within our church, it is serendipitous that we now come to a series
of Sundays when our lectionary focuses on the sixth chapter of the gospel
according to John. In this section of the
gospel John has Jesus engage in a lengthy discussion and, at times, debate with
his followers and others about the meaning of ‘the bread of life’.
So I
thought that I would begin this series of Sundays with my own reflection on the
five ‘movements’ of our eucharist.
(1) We gather as
people whom God has called to share in the divine mission of creation,
redemption and renewal.
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 illicit 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
confession of faith was seen as a confession of guilt and 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 ekklēsia means to be the assembly
of those who are called out for a special purpose. Originally used to describe the assembly of
free men gathered to make decisions for the common good of the polis, ekklēsia now describes the Christian assembly, 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 gather to proclaim the Word of God not
just to read the words.
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.”[1]
When
the reader proclaims the texts appointed for the day, it is tempting to forget
that he or she is speaking God’s Word to us.
Like the people in the synagogue in Nazareth, we have heard all of this
before; sometimes 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.
When
the preacher interprets the words we have heard, he or she seeks to release the
power of the Word of God into our midst.
Within her or his grasp lies the power to free the Word from the texts
that sometimes imprisons 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 into solidarity, hope
and commitment.
For
this reason Anglicans have been loathe to omit a sermon or a homily or some
reflection on the text or texts read on a given occasion. There are many Christians in the world today
who know what the Bible says.
There are fewer who have reflected upon and be trained to comment on
what the Bible means. All of us
intuitively recognize the importance of context in human communication. Often we will respond to a statement or
questions by asking, “What do you mean by that?” Likewise, the Scriptures have a theological,
historical, social, cultural, and literary context that influences what is
meant by what is said. It is to the
preacher that the responsibility falls to help us move from the surface of the
text into the depths of its meaning.
(3) We gather to offer our intercessions,
petitions and thanksgivings.
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 how prayer participates in the eternal purposes of
God. But 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.
Our
confession of sin is a prayer that all that prevents this grace from working in
us may be lifted from us, a prayer that our spiritual arteries may be cleared
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.
We are
lifted from our prayers into an embodied expression of those intercessions, petitions,
and thanksgivings. We are bidden to
exchange the peace with one another.
From the earliest generations of the Christian people it has been
understood that Christian faith requires concrete expressions. 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 gather to share in the bread broken and the
wine poured for us.
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.”[2] 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.
Christians
in the early days of the church had a saying, “The temple of God is the people
of God.”. 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.
Perhaps
the oldest and most constant part of the liturgy is the Lord’s Prayer. For two thousand years, whenever and wherever
we have gathered, we have joined in this prayer. Perhaps, however, the most difficult petition
ever spoken is contained within it: “Forgive
us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” We impose a risky condition on God’s activity
in our lives. For those who cannot forgive,
forgiveness is unlikely. What we cannot
give, we cannot truly receive.
Then
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 gather so that we can be sent forth to participate
in 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.”
The
shortest section of the eucharistic liturgy is its ending. The presider may offer a brief prayer. We join in an act of faith. We may even sing a hymn and clear the
sanctuary of its personnel. The presider
or an assisting minister says, in some many words, “Why are you standing
around? Go home. You have a mission to perform and you have
received the gifts you need to perform it.”
The
prayer after communion sets our action into its context. We are reminded that the eucharistic meal is
not to be praised but to be used. This
meal forms us into a missionary people and sends us out into a missionary
field.
So
when the eucharist ends, let us go home or go to school or go to work or 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. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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