LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Pentecost XV, Proper 19B + 9/17/06 + St. Paul's, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In the middle of the last century, a well-known Anglican priest in England posed a question to his parishioners - a question I'd like to put to you this morning. The question is: What would you do if, as you were leaving the church, you were approached by someone you had never seen before, someone who told you that he or she had come to the service out of curiosity and, not being a Christian, (in fact, being totally ignorant about the Christian religion) asked if you would please explain the meaning of what had just taken place in the liturgy. Think of that for a moment - how would you explain the meaning of the Eucharist to a non-Christian stranger? How would you explain it so that it would make sense?

The only way it would be intelligible, I suspect, would be if you went back to the beginning, starting with the Incarnation. You would have to tell how, over 2,000 years ago, God, out of love for humanity, sent His Son to become truly human. That Jesus went about teaching, curing the sick, performing miracles, astounding many, but also angering others who saw in Him a threat to the established culture and religion. You'd tell about how this itinerant rabbi gathered a small group of followers, a group who would form the nucleus of a society which would carry on His work after His death. Somehow, you'd need to talk about how the brief three year ministry of Jesus ended with a trial and execution. Perhaps you'd also mention the suffering of His loving mother and the dejection of His followers when their leader was so brutally crucified. Certainly you'd tell about the Resurrection and Ascension.

Your questioner might reply in a number of ways, such as "That's an incredible story! Do you really believe all that stuff?" or "That sounds wonderful, but I think it's just wishful thinking and too good to be true." Maybe he or she might say, "That's thrilling! I want to learn more!" But one response would not be expected. That would be for the inquirer to say, "I can accept everything you told me, except for the last part. I can believe that God became human, was born of a Virgin, died, rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. But it just seems impossible to me that Jesus would or could come to be truly present in bread and wine! Now, if you care to say that it's just symbolic, maybe I could buy that, too." That wouldn't really make much sense, would it? The fact is that the Mystery of the Incarnation and the Mystery of the Eucharist stand or fall together. They are inseparably linked: equally miraculous, equally mysterious, equally outside the range of scientific proof.

In his classic book book on the Eucharist called "The Shape of the Liturgy," The late Dom Gregory Dix, Anglican Benedictine monk, priest, and world-renowned scholar, wrote these thrilling words about the Eucharist: "Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it, to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuges of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. People have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church & for a sick old woman afraid to die; & for the soul of a dead over; for a village headman much tempted to return to the worship of idols because the crop of yams had failed; tremulously, by an old monk on the 50th anniversary of his vows; by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp & one could fill many pages with the types of occasions in which Christians have done this and still not tell even a hundredth part of them. Best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, that is what Christians have done, and do.

What is in the aumbry, what will come to be present on that altar, and what we receive into our very bodies, is not merely a symbol or reminder of Jesus, but the true Body and Blood of the Son of God, crucified, risen, ascended, and sacramentally present. To an unbeliever: superstition, lunacy, cracker worship, but to the Christian, joy strength, and most gloriously of all, experienced reality!

For the first 1,600 years of Christianity, there was a general agreement about the reality of Christ's Presence in the Eucharist. In the 13th century, with its growing passion for precise definitions, the medieval Church through Saint Thomas Aquinas evolved an explanation of just how and when that Presence came about. Using the concepts of Aristotelian metaphysics, the doctrine of Transubstantiation was produced. 300 years later, Martin Luther, rejecting that explanation, came up with his own, called consubstantiation, which, just like the Roman teaching, was based on Aristotle's philosophical constructs. Since the Holy Scripture is silent on the matter, from the earliest days of th e 16th century English Reformation, the Anglican branch of the Church has refused to define just how Christ comes to be present, being content to affirm the actual, sacramental Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as contrasted with a merely figurative or symbolic presence.

What difference does it make?

A writer once wrote that, if William Shakespeare came into the room, we would all stand up, but if Jesus Christ came in, we would all kneel down. Well, maybe we would, but what about so many others? Would they know who Jesus is, or even care? John Bickersteth, retired Bishop of the English Diocese of Bath and Wells, once wrote an article for his diocesan newspaper telling about his experience of telephoning a nearby religious goods shop to order a gift necklace with a crucifix. The clerk replied, "We have two crosses here like that, one has some little man on it and one hasn't. Which one do you fancy?"

How unusual do you think that honest ignorance is? A reading of Church history shows that, whenever the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has been neglected or denied, there has also been a steady drift away from belief in the divinity of our Lord and in the validity of the Christian religion. That's one reason it's so important that the Church teaches that it is Jesus, God the Son, who comes to be truly and objectively present in the Holy Eucharist.

Again, let me ask, what difference does it make?

Many people who do not know that Jesus is present in the Holy Sacrament certainly can and do love God and live Christian lives, but how much richer those lives could be if there was also an awareness of and awed delight in the wonderful way Jesus chooses to come among us and feed us with Divine Grace in Holy Communion! Why does God do that? What use are we supposed to make of that grace?

Belief that Jesus is truly the Son of God and Second Person of the Holy Trinity is important. Belief in the Real Presence of that same Jesus in Holy Communion is important. Both are at the heart of the Christian faith as understood and taught in our Anglican Branch of the Church. But for Christians, belief is not enough. It has to be expressed in the way we live, not only in what we say but in what we do, the very point Saint James is making in today's Epistle when he says, "...by deeds I will prove to you my faith."

In the words of the late Frank Weston, sometime Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Zanzibar, "You are Christians, then your Lord is one and the same with Jesus on the throne of his glory, with Jesus in His Blessed Sacrament, with Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, with Jesus who is mystically with you as you pray and with Jesus enshrined in the hearts and bodies of His brothers and sisters up and down the world. Now, go into the highways and hedges and look for Jesus in the ragged and naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope and in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them; and when you find Him, gird yourselves with his towel of fellowship, and wash His feet in the person of His brethren." Or, as Jesus Himself said of such care for others, "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done it to Me."

What a privilege it is, as Anglicans, to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, to give thanks for Christ's Presence in the Blessed Sacrament and to adore Him in It; what a privilege it is to be fed and strengthened by Christ in the Eucharist. But also, what a privilege it is to use that grace in our daily lives by serving others in His Holy Name. Thanks be to God!

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

This page last modified on Friday, April 11, 2008 09:39 PM