This morning I am leading a Quiet Day at All Saints Church in Worcester. For those who don't know what a Quiet Day is, the basic format is usually to gather and pray together and then in the context of the morning offer two or three brief meditations, and then give people some space to reflect in quiet, before coming back together again. At the conclusion of the morning, at least today, we will gather for a simple table Eucharist and a shared meal, and then be on our way.
I share these meditations here for those who might be interested, yet unable to join us at All Saints. Obviously you are free to use them as you wish but if you want to share in the experience of the day, I encourage you to take it slowly. My intention was to invite people to more deeply enter into the poetry of the three hymns around which these meditations are structured. Take them slowly and take each mediation one at a time, if you are able to do that - even if you don't have three hours to devote to this post.
First Meditation - Forgiveness
We – by which I don’t just mean Episcopalians but all
the Baptized – we are called to be an Easter people. That’s what Lent is for: to prepare us for that
vocation, that calling, so that we are freed to live the Paschal Mystery in our
daily lives. This day is about teasing out what that might look l like.
Easter is all about Baptism: in
the early Church Baptisms happened at the Easter Vigil. We are buried with
Christ in the waters of Baptism and also raised with him to a new life of
grace. The early Church understood this explicitly when it comes to the meaning
of Lent, which was a season to prepare catechumens for Holy Baptism and for all
Christians to remember their Baptism. It’s what your priest reminded you of on
Ash Wednesday with that invitation to a Holy Lent. Remember it?
Dear people of God: The first Christians observed with
great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection and it became
the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and
fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith
were prepared for Holy Baptism…
This is the vision toward
which we aspire—to live our lives in response to that truth, that seal, with
which God has marked and claimed us. But how do we move toward that vision? Not
by sheer will. Not by pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Only by God’s
grace. Here may be where the Gospel is most counter-cultural and hard for us.
It’s not about us! It’s about God’s love.
Every time we break bread and
share the cup we remember our Baptism. The bread breaking and the cup sharing
were then reminders of God’s claim on us – on our being sealed and marked and
claimed by the Holy Spirit. Forever. So, living the Eucharistic life and
remembering our Baptism are basically the same thing.
In any case - I want to focus
on three movements in the Eucharistic liturgy today with three brief
meditations, as we near the end of this Lenten season and prepare ourselves for
Holy Week:
(1)
God’s forgiveness;
(2)
Our response to God through our oblations;
(3) Communion
with God and one another in this act of being fed.
At the beginning and end of
each meditation we’ll pray a hymn text that I think fits the theme of each
meditation. It is said that when one sings one “prays twice” but sometimes when
we are singing we are focused on the tune more than the text, so I want to give
us a chance to see these hymns today as prayers by praying them. The first
time, I’ll offer them on our behalf and at the conclusion of each meditation we
will pray the same hymn in unison.
So, let us pray.
Wilt thou
forgive that sin, where I begun
which
is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt
thou forgive those sins through which I run,
and
do run still, though still I do deplore?
When
thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more.
Wilt
thou forgive that sin, by which I won
others
to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt
thou forgive that sin which I did shun
a
year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When
thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more.
I
have a sin of fear that when I’ve spun
my
last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
swear
by thyself, that at my death thy Son
shall
shine as he shines now, and heretofore.
And having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.
John Donne (1573-1631), Hymnal 140
I have long been fascinated
by Orthodox Christian preparations for Easter, which are different from what we
do in the west. This year I’ll be in the Holy Land for Orthodox Easter, which
will fall one week after we celebrate here. One Orthodox Lenten practice has
really captured my imagination. On the last week before Lent begins, on the
Sunday we would call “Last Epiphany/Transfiguration,” they celebrate what they
call “Forgiveness Sunday.” It functions a little bit like the passing of the
peace does except that every person
turns and faces every other person in
the church—not just those in the same pew. You turn to each person and say,
“Forgive me.” And the person responds: “God forgives.” Over and over again,
until it begins to sink in.
It is a profoundly
theological act. Sometimes for all kinds of reasons we cannot forgive yet. I
have been in congregations with people whom I know I’m not yet ready to share
the peace. And maybe some of you have been, too. I don’t want to feel like a
hypocrite so I just try to move in the other direction. Because if someone
turns to me who has hurt me and says, “forgive me” I may not be ready to
respond, “I forgive you.”
But we can all remember
together that God is in the forgiveness business and that God is always more
ready to forgive us than we are to forgive ourselves. Forgive me. God forgives. That sets the whole tone
for Lent, it seems to me. I think it’s a practice worth stealing, or borrowing.
But in the meantime we still
have the Confession of Sin and the Absolution which takes on even more gravity
during Lent. We confess our sins against God and our neighbor. And at the end,
the priest stands and says, “God forgives.” We also have an option in those
years when we need it for the reconciliation of a penitent which some
Episcopalians are surprised to learn is an option in The Episcopal Church.
This liturgical act of
confessing and of receiving absolution does at least two things. First of all
it tells us who God is. Both Testaments insist that God is merciful and slow to
anger and abounding in steadfast love. The absolution is structured around
those ancient truths:
- Almighty God have mercy on you.
- Forgive you all your sins.
- Strengthen you in all goodness
- Keep you in eternal life.
But second, it invites us as
the Baptized community trying to live the Easter life to forgive others as God has forgiven us. By the time we get to
Easter evening, in the Upper Room, we all remember good old “doubting” Thomas.
But what you may not recall is what happens the first time around when Jesus
comes to be with the disciples who are gathered beyond locked doors because
they are afraid. As John tells the story there is no need to wait fifty days
for the Spirit to come like tongues of fire. Jesus breathes the Spirit into the
disciples right then and there. And the work of the Spirit, he says, is that if
they forgive sins they are “loosed,” and if they retain sins, then they are
retained.
We have the choice, don’t
we? To let go, or to hold on. But at
what cost do we hold onto sins—our own or others? At what cost do we retain a
list of grievances? Retaining sins keeps us bound up, keeps us locked in the
past. In contrast, forgiveness unleashes the power of God, the Holy Spirit,
calling us to new and abundant life in Christ. It is a key movement in the
Eucharistic life, the first turn toward becoming an Easter people.
Let us pray.
Wilt thou
forgive that sin, where I begun
which
is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt
thou forgive those sins through which I run,
and
do run still, though still I do deplore?
When
thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more.
Wilt
thou forgive that sin, by which I won
others
to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt
thou forgive that sin which I did shun
a
year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When
thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more.
I
have a sin of fear that when I’ve spun
my
last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
swear
by thyself, that at my death thy Son
shall
shine as he shines now, and heretofore.
And
having done that, thou hast done, I fear no more.
John Donne (1573-1631), Hymnal 140
Second Meditation –
Oblation
Let us pray:
Take my life
and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee;
take
my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take
my hands, and let them move at the impulse of thy love;
take
my heart, it is thine own, it shall by thy royal throne.
Take
my voice, and let me sing, always, only, for my King;
Take
my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose.
Take
my will, and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take
myself, and I will be, ever, only, all for thee.
Francis
Ridley Havergal (1836-1879), Hymnal 707
Several years ago I learned
that Bishop Bud Cederholm, who is a retired Suffragan Bishop in the eastern
diocese, was a Christian clown before becoming a priest and ultimately a
Bishop. My favorite part of the story was that his wife said as far as she was
concerned he was still sometimes a Christian clown. (I think every bishop and
priest needs a partner like that to keep him or her grounded!)
Anyway, Bishop Cederholm was
writing about Stewardship and talking about the offertory and he said they had
this routine when he was a literal Christian clown (and not just a bishop) where
at the time of the offertory one of the clowns would push another of the clowns
in a wheelbarrow down the center aisle of the church and up to the altar.
Hold that image, and imagine
yourself approaching the altar each week in a wheelbarrow. The point is
theologically important: at the Eucharist, we offer ourselves. In the older
language of the Church, as we offer some portion of our financial resources at
the altar, we sometimes say: “All things
come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”
Deep down I suspect every one
of us here today knows this is true; I don’t need to convince you that this is
so. We are not our own. And yet at
another level these words are always jarring and profoundly countercultural
because most of us live – I admit that I tend to live – as if all things come
from my hard work, my ingenuity, my labor. I worked hard for all of this! And
then, of my own I share, sometimes begrudgingly and sometimes generously.
But the invitation each week
in the Eucharist is to bring ourselves to that altar: all of us, our whole
selves—the good, the bad, the ugly. Not only our Sunday best.
It used to come up for me as
a parish priest when I was doing funerals and often the family would look over
the bulletin and then sheepishly ask me why the bulletin included the word “offertory.”
And they would say, “do we really have to pass the plates at a funeral?” I
assured them that we would not be doing that. But we would still present the
bread and the wine. We would offer these gifts from God’s good earth to be
broken and shared. In fact, I’d tell them,
I hope that you will literally do that and take that job from the ushers today:
you present these gifts as we celebrate your loved one’s life. Offer
up these gifts to God and in so doing bring all of your confusion and grief and
befuddlement to the Table with you. God can handle it.
The fancy theological word,
of course, is “oblation” which comes from the old English; the root means to
offer. The Prayerbook puts it this
way:
Oblation is an offering of ourselves,
our lives and labors, in union with Christ, for the purposes of God.
The Book of Common
Prayer, “The Catechism,” page 857
Some days it comes naturally,
but other days it is hard for us to recognize and offer our gifts to God. I
find that much of the time people are truly humble about their own gifts, blind
even to what makes them such a beloved child of God. When I was in the parish,
I might tell someone, “you are a really good listener” and we need that gift on
our Pastoral Care Committee. And the person will be self-deprecating, maybe
even embarrassed. They might say, “listening isn’t hard.”
And I’d find myself saying,
“no…maybe not for you. Which is why we are having this conversation! But it is
a rare commodity as far as I can tell, and it truly is a gift you possess.” Or,
similarly, we need someone to serve on the Finance Committee which means we
need someone who is able not only to balance their own checkbook but read a
financial statement. No biggie, says the accountant. But that’s the person I
want doing that work – not the philosophy professor! And it’s holy work – in
spite of the fact that in too many parishes, too many clergy minimize that
calling as if being chair of the outreach committee is the real ministry and
dealing with money is just a necessity. It’s ALL ministry and all of it can be
given to the glory of God.
We need all the gifts to be the Church. Paul was smart enough but it’s not rocket science; one
body, many members. Even without Paul most leaders of congregations,
both ordained and lay, eventually figure this out. We need people who know that
all things come of God and our work is to offer it back so that God can use it,
to build up the Body of Christ. God gives us all of the gifts we need – in my
work across this diocese I have come to absolutely believe this not as a pious
platitude but as my lived experience. Even our smallest congregations have what
they need, even if it feels like just a few loaves and a couple of fish. But it
is still our work to figure out how to share those gifts.
But I think there is even more
than that to “oblation.” I think we bring not only our gifts but also our hurts
and our fears and our pain. Because that, too, is a part of what makes us who
we are. Sometimes it is our vulnerabilities, rather than our strengths, that
can become the means by which others are healed and maybe even we, too, are
healed in that process. I don’t pretend to fully comprehend that. But it seems
to me that at least part of the mystery of the Cross is that what is weak and
shameful can also be transformed and used by God, too.
So I invite you to imagine
some clown pushing you down the aisle toward the altar today. And maybe you are
laughing all the way. Or maybe you are crying all the way. Or maybe it’s a
little of both. But know that the destination is a place where you can bring
your whole self and offer who you are in body, mind, and spirit. Know that it
is a place where you are welcome, where you are needed, where you are loved.
Let us pray:
Take my life
and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee;
take
my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take
my hands, and let them move at the impulse of thy love;
take
my heart, it is thine own, it shall by thy royal throne.
Take
my voice, and let me sing, always, only, for my King;
Take
my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose.
Take
my will, and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take
myself, and I will be, ever, only, all for thee.
Francis Ridley Havergal (1836-1879), Hymnal 707
Third Meditation –
Communion
Let us pray.
O
food to pilgrims given, O bread of life from heaven,
O manna from
on high! We hunger; Lord supply us,
nor thy
delights deny us, whose hearts to thee draw nigh.
O stream of
love past telling, O purest fountain,
wellspring from the Savior’s side! We
faint with thirst; revive us,
of thine abundance give us, and all we
need provide.
O Jesus, by
thee bidden, we here adore thee,
hidden in
forms of bread and wine. Grant when the veil is riven,
we may
behold, in heaven, thy countenance divine.
Latin, 1661, trans. John Athelstan Laurie Riley,
Hymnal 309
There is an old story about
heaven and hell that perhaps some of you have heard before. The one where both
places have the same banquet table filled with the same good things to eat. A
table filled with meats and roasted veggies and cheeses and well-aged wines and
tasty desserts.
But apparently there is a
glitch with resurrected bodies: in both places there are no elbows. There is no
way to bend your arms. So the only difference, so it goes in this story,
between heaven and hell, is that in hell the food goes uneaten because the
inhabitants there cannot figure out how to feed themselves.
In heaven they feed each
other.
Eucharist isn’t a
“self-serve” meal. We put out our hands—empty—and we are fed by God and by others.
When I was a parish priest I tried to train kids about this with moderate
success, although to be honest sometimes the adults were harder. I tried to
teach them not to grasp after the bread from the plate but to simply put out
their empty hands, and they would receive.
In our most vulnerable state,
as newborns, we rely on our mother’s milk for sustenance and nourishment. Dame
Julian of Norwich, in the fourteenth century, wrote these words in her divine
revelation:
The
mother can give her child her milk to suck, but our dear mother Jesus can feed
us with himself, and he does so most generously and most tenderly with the holy
sacrament which is the precious food of life itself… He sustains us most
mercifully and most graciously…
Her image of Christ as Mother
freaks some people out since the historical Jesus of Nazareth was a man. But Dame
Julian understood that the risen Christ who feeds us is bigger than the
historical Jesus. And the mystical Christ who gives us of his own body and
blood is beyond gender. So I think the image works, or at least it can work.
Christ is our mother, and the Eucharist is like “mother’s milk” that sustains
us for the journey.
Bread is a staple of life and
in the Bible it conveys rich meanings long before you even begin to talk about
Christ’s body. In fact sometimes I think we get ourselves stuck on Reformation
arguments about how Christ is present when we could spend a lot more time just
thinking about the miracle of bread. In the Garden of Eden, even before
disobedience, human beings are called to tend the garden. Think of a field of
wheat and what got it to that point: the preparation of the soil, the planting
of seeds, the sunshine, the weeding. It is not God alone, nor is it humans
alone. It is a wonderful, shared mystery that requires covenantal partnership.
I’ve been preaching the
Psalms in Lent and tomorrow I’ll be at the Southwick Community Episcopal
Church. They and all of you, wherever you worship tomorrow, will pray Psalm 126
which includes these lines:
Those who go out weeping, carrying the
seed,
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.
Most of us can go for months
without thinking of sheaves but it’s such a great word. Bundles of wheat, given
from this good earth. Our food – all of it – comes from the earth, also our
mother. And it has much wisdom to teach us.
Think also about the matzo
that is eaten hurriedly as the Hebrews prepare to flee from Pharaoh’s
oppressive regime; and about the manna from heaven in the wilderness, the
lessons of learning one day at a time what it means to depend upon God for
bread. Think about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes and the bread that
feeds five thousand, with leftovers. Think of how on the night before he died
for us, Jesus took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it.
We are what we eat. St. Augustine said: “behold who
you are; become what you receive.” We are fed and we are nourished for the
journey and then we are called to go into the world to be the Bread of Life, to
be the Body of Christ for others. We, too, are blessed and broken and shared
because that is God’s call to us in Baptism—a call renewed each week at the
Table. Jesus is “the Bread of Life” who sustains us for the journey. Strangers
become friends, as Brian Wren’s hymn puts it, because we become companions through Christ when we
bread-with one another: com-panis.
This communion makes
community possible. I mean real, authentic community – the kind we long for.
Not the fake kind we make in gated communities or in closed Facebook groups
where everyone has the same beliefs. But community that allows us to see God in
the face of our neighbor. The kind of community that breaks down walls and
makes bridges. Yes, I said that. It’s not a political statement. It’s a faith
statement that has political implications. We are commissioned to be in the
wall-breaking-down business, in the bridge-construction business. No matter
what kind of fear the politicians are sowing in any given chapter of our
political history.
We are called to be moving
toward the kind of community which the seer on Patmos glimpsed when he saw people
from many languages and peoples and nations gathered around the throne of the
Lamb. To receive Christ, to become what
we eat, is to be changed. We cannot return from the altar, having been fed,
without becoming a new creation, called to share in the work of ministry –
called to share what we have received and what we are becoming with the world.
I pray that this Lent has
been a time for you to remember who you are, and whose you are, by God’s grace.
And that as we come again to Holy Week that you will allow yourself to be fed
and strengthened by the One who gives us Herself, Christ our Mother. To be more
fully in communion with God and in community with your neighbor.
Let us pray.
O manna from
on high! We hunger; Lord supply us,
nor thy
delights deny us, whose hearts to thee draw nigh.
O stream of
love past telling, O purest fountain,
wellspring from the Savior’s side! We
faint with thirst; revive us,
of thine abundance give us, and all we
need provide.
O Jesus, by
thee bidden, we here adore thee,
hidden in
forms of bread and wine. Grant when the veil is riven,
we may
behold, in heaven, thy countenance divine.
Latin, 1661, trans. John Athelstan Laurie Riley,
Hymnal 309
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