Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

Have you ever had a moment where you thought, “Where is God in this?”
Not because you stopped believing — but because you couldn’t see how He could possibly be at work in whatever you were going through.
Maybe you thought you were following His plan, and the things you believed you were called to simply didn’t work out. Or maybe there have been moments of deep pain or grief, where you cried out to God and He didn’t take the pain away.

When I left my last parish, I was an associate vicar of an inner city church plant, and felt strongly called to senior leadership in a church in London. I left my last role as a step of faith, and had four job opportunities in different parishes, all of which the Lord asked me to turn down.
Which was quite challenging to do, and very embarrassing in front of my Bishop. I couldn’t see how God was working at all, or where He was as He seemed to be closing every door and not opening any new ones.

In our Gospel reading today, we see a couple in deep distress, frantically searching for God.
Have you ever lost track of one of your children like this?
Have you experienced the shock, the horror, all the things that go through your mind?
The flood of relief when you find them?

They search, and find Him after 3 days! Can you imagine! When they finally find Him Mary says: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” (v48)
And instead of being defensive, or blaming them (after all, they were the ones who left Him in Jerusalem), He responds with gentle surprise: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” (v49)

This is probably a very familiar story to you. But as I was reading about this passage something struck me for the first time. I was reading N.T. Wright, an Anglican Bishop and well-respected biblical scholar in the UK, who notices that there are some strong PARALLELS with this passage and another story in Luke’s Gospel. 
Both involve a journey away from Jerusalem
Two people who think they have lost Christ
And they find Him after three days.
And Christ is surprised, they didn’t know where He was (going about His Father’s work)

Do you know what it is? (The Road to Emmaus in Luke 24)
     - Disciples journeying away form Jerusalem
     - They think Christ is dead (they saw Him crucified)
     - Christ starts walking with them – and their ‘eyes are shut’ they don’t realize
     - Christ explains the scriptures and what had to happen to Him
     - Its not until they get to a place to rest, and sit down for their meal, that Christ lifts up the bread and they finally realize it was Him! Christ vanishes in that moment

Luke 2 Mary and Joseph Luke 24 Emmaus
Travelling away from Jerusalem (to Galilee) Travelling away from Jerusalem (to Emmaus)
They think they’ve lost Him (literally) They think they’ve lost Him (death)
Find Him after three days (Temple) Find Him after three days (Risen)
Christ responds with a question - Christ responds with a question

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” (v49)

“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (v25,26)

By framing the Gospel with these stories we wonder what God, through Luke, is trying to tell us.
N.T. Wright suggests that we should call these pair of stories: ‘On Finding the Jesus You Thought You’d lost’

In both stories, Christ seems surprised that they didn’t know where to find Him. But He was there all along, exactly where he should be, and promised He would be.

Perhaps like Mary and Joseph you are searching frantically for God. Not understanding where He is or why He is allowing these things to happen to you. ‘God, why did you let this happen?’ Or perhaps, just like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, you are just plodding along in life, getting on with things, and are in danger of missing His presence even when He’s standing right
next to you.

Christ is not always where we expect Him to be — but He is always where He has promised to be.

We cannot predict Him, He is, like Aslan, “not a tame lion.”
But when we do find Him, when He makes His presence known, it is MORE WONDERFUL THAN WE COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED.

Christ is not always where we expect Him to be — but He is always where He has promised to be.

When we suffer, and go through true grief and pain our brains usually react in one of two ways:
- We cry out to God (even atheists) ‘How could you let this happen I don’t understand!’
- We blame ourselves, ‘If only I’d done X then this wouldn’t have happened.’
In clinical, psychological research, it has been posited that one of the reasons for this is that when the brain reacts to these deeply painful experiences, it desperately seeks to construct a safety plan to avoid the same thing happening in the future. It desperately searches for a causal link to what has happened so that we have some hope of preventing it from happening again. If we can find a way to blame ourselves, then we have found a way to stop this thing happening again. It is rarely the case that true tragedy was really your fault. Understanding this doesn’t remove the pain — but it can free us from false guilt.

So where is HE, when we go through these incredibly difficult seasons?
Probably not where we expect, doing what WE think He should be doing. But working His Father’s will in your life in ways MORE WONDERFUL THAN YOU COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED.

For Mary and Joseph, they were ASTONISHED at finding Him with the teachers, and everyone AMAZED at what he was saying.
The Disciples at Emmaus, see Him not in the grave, but RISEN from the dead! Everything He said and promised was true, and their hearts burned within them.

So WHERE CAN WE LOOK?:
Here is often where we look for Christ in distress:
     - We look for Him to take our suffering away (Who hasn’t longed for this?)
     - We look for Him to act immediately, in the ways we think He should
     - If we don’t find Him in these places, we give up (despair), or we look for other things to help (we sin)
But Christ never promised that he would be in those places, or do those things. In fact, He tells us the opposite: We will suffer “In this world you will have trouble.” John 16:33 (NIV)

“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” 1 Peter 4:12 (NIV)

Promises His presence: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” Psalm 23:4 (NIV)

That suffering will end: “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Romans 8:18 (NIV)
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”
Revelation 21:4 (NIV)

God does not promise that we will not suffer — but He promises that we will never suffer alone,
never suffer without purpose, and that one day all our suffering will cease.

Christ is not always where we expect Him to be — but He is always where He has promised to be.

So when we are in these seasons of struggling to see God at work, Where has HE promised us He will be?: In His Word: “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” Psalm 119:105 (NIV)

“Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4 (NIV)

In Prayer: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 (NIV)
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)

In the Sacraments: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” John 6:56 (NIV)

In the Church: “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20 (NIV)
“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26 (NIV)

His Promise to remain with us: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20 (NIV)

NT Wright puts it this way:
“But if and when we sense the lack of His presence, we must be prepared to hunt for Him, to search for Him in prayer, in the scriptures, in the sacraments, and not to give up until we find Him again. We must expect, too, that when we do meet Him again, He will not say or do what we expect. He must be busy with His Father’s work. So must we.”

When I left ministry in London, I had no idea what God was doing with my life. I knew I was called to give my whole life to Him — I had known that since I was young. But suddenly the path I thought I was on closed.  At the time, I could not see how Christ was working at all. And yet, looking back now, I can see that He was doing His Father’s work — preparing me for something I could not yet imagine.
​
And He was preparing me for coming to you. Leading me to you, and placing in my hands such great trust and responsibility over His people (I feel the weight of that terribly). Making things better than I could have possibly imagine them by bringing me and my family to a community:
Of deeply loving people
With a deep love for Christ and each other
With a desire for historic, liturgical worship, and a reverence for the sacraments.
– more wonderful than I could have ever imagined!

Christ is not always where we expect Him to be — but He is always where He has promised to be.

One day, because of what Christ has done for us on the cross, we will look back and see clearly what we can now see only “through a glass darkly.” But until that day —when you find yourself asking, “Where is God?”
hear again His answer to Mary and Joseph:
“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Christ is not absent.
He is here.
Here in His Word.
Here among His people.
And here, now, as we are about to receive His real presence at the Altar.

​​The First Sunday of Epiphany
Matthew 3:13-17 

Have you ever felt like you had failed God? Chosen the wrong thing? Fallen into sin again and again? Missed opportunities in life? If that describes you, then you are in good company my friends, because that describes us all.

Let's turn to the Gospel reading today. The Baptism of Christ is probably a familiar story to you. But imagine for a second what it would be like if you were hearing this story for the first time. In biblical studies in seminaries, professors often encourage their students to imagine what it would be like to be a ‘first-time reader’ of these texts, and look at what has gone before, and what is yet to be revealed.

The first three chapters of Matthew, tell this amazing story of a miraculous birth, angels speaking, political intrigue and escape from danger. John the Baptist, this wild and esoteric prophet has appeared on the scene, given the religious leaders a public telling off, and promised that someone powerful, mighty, and utterly amazing is on His way.

When we get to verse 13, this powerful figure we’ve been waiting for arrives, and it turns out to be Jesus Christ! The child we have heard so many miraculous things about, has grown up! Reading this for the first time, we would be incredibly EXCITED! We might respond with ‘Wow! It's Him! It's Jesus! I knew it would be Him!.’

This is the CULMINATION of the introductory chapters in Matthew’s Gospel. This special human being, who has been through so much wonder and danger to get here, is now about to start His ministry. But things, of course, as we looked at last week, Christ does not behave in the way we might expect. Things with John the Baptist don’t go the way we might have thought they should:

     1.  Christ arrives with no absolutely no fanfare at all.

All the Gospel says here is ‘Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.’ (v13)
Where are the angels singing? Where are the wise men who read the stars and knew He would be there? Where is the celebration, the pomp, the circumstance, the processions, for this heroic ruler who is going to baptize with fire, and cast judgment over Israel (v11-12)?

John has been preparing everyone for a mighty, powerful, figure of judgment. But what steps in front of him is a normal man, his cousin, dressed like everyone else.

     2.  Then something even more bizarre happens! Jesus asks to be baptized by John.

Now why is this odd?
It’s odd because the message John has been preaching is about repentance. John specifically says that baptism is for repentance (v11). This is not just odd…it’s almost horrifying.  
Why does Christ need to be baptized – He has no need to repent!
     Can you imagine, if Christ walked into our service right this second,
     Looked at you in your seat, and invited you to come to the front of the church.
     Then knelt in front of you, placed your hands on His head, and asked you to pray for Him?
Wouldn’t you be horrified?
Wouldn’t you say: ‘NO! No, Lord, this isn’t right, you are the one who should be praying for me!”
And yet, that is exactly the position Jesus puts himself in front of John at his baptism. John the Baptist felt exactly the same way you might of, and tries to put Him off. This is not how it’s supposed to work – we should be serving Him, not the other way round. But the kingdom of God repeatedly overturns what we think is proper, normal, or expected. Jesus reverses the worldly order of things again and again.

The Gospels are full of these moments which we call ‘reversal motifs’ or sometimes ‘the upside down Kingdom.’ Where things get turned on their head, and Christ acts in the opposite way than we expect Him to.

1. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first (Matt 20:16)
2. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant (Mark 10:43–45)
3. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. (John 13:14–15)
4. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3)
5. This widow’s two coins are worth more than all the rest (Mark 12:43–44)

He, our king, our redeemer, our savior and creator, but He submits himself to be our servant, to wash our feet, and to be humiliated on a Cross out of love for us.
Jesus does not argue theology with John.
He does not explain everything to John’s satisfaction.
He simply says:  “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.”(v15)
In other words: “Trust me. This is the right thing to do.”
And John consents.
He obeys — not because it finally makes sense to Him, but because he trusts the person in front of him.
And then, after that trust is given, something extraordinary happens:
(v16)  As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  (v.17) And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Everything in Matthew’s Gospel has been building up to this moment.
            We knew Jesus was special, human, miraculous, and glorified, but now His true nature is revealed:
            Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
(That’s the moment in the cinema where people would get up and start cheering!)
Wow! This is amazing! I knew it was gonna be Him! Hooray!
John eventually consented to God’s will and obeyed. And look at how wonderful things can be when we finally give in to what He asks of us.

So what do we learn from John the Baptist here?
John knows exactly who Jesus is. He has been preaching about him for months. And yet, when Jesus gives him a command, John resists. Why? Because Jesus’ command does not make sense to him.
John’s reaction to Christ, I need to be baptized by you (v14) is understandable, but, ultimately, disobedient.
There is a logical flaw in John’s reasoning: He knows who Christ is, has been preaching about Him up till this point, but even John the Baptist questions Christ's commands when He arrives.
“Lord this isn’t how you should be doing this- I know better!”
How many of us have been in that EXACT same position, said those very words? (all of us!)
     In times of defiance, in times of pain and grief, in times of pride.
There are parts of our, hearts, minds, souls, and strength that easily slip into sin.   

There are two ways we usually fail at following God’s word:
     1.  Disobedience:  
For many of us, we know what scripture has to say about:

• Sexual ethics
• Forgiveness
• Truthfulness

• Generosity
• Prayer

But:

• Forgiveness feels unsafe.
• Truthfulness feels risky.
• Humility feels like weakness.

Sometimes, very simply, we know what we must do and we still choose not to do it.
Perhaps out of fear, out of selfishness, out of temptation.

The other way we fail at following God’s word is more subtle:
     2.  Mistrust
This is what John initially experienced when Christ asked him to baptize Him. He thought He knew better "It can’t possibly be this way" even after Christ has spoken clearly. This happens to us when we don’t really believe in His promises. We become angry at God for not acting in our lives the way we think He should.
(‘Why God aren’t you changing things the way I wanted you to! Why did you let this happen!’) We doubt that His way of life is really going to help us. (‘Faith is all well and good but we have to be realistic about things’)
We convince ourselves we are unworthy, and He meant these good things for other people and not for us
(How could He forgive me, after all I’ve done. / I’m not like these other people in Church). We forget how highly He has exalted us, and how dearly it cost Him to do so.

So how do we deal with ourselves?
People who know who Christ really is yet we still disobey Him, and don’t trust Him.

I think the antidote is this…
It’s not trying harder – that rarely works. If you could do that by sheer willpower, you would have done so already.

It’s by reminding yourself of the truth of who you are. 

You are someone who, like John the Baptist, has been given a place of high honor. Undeserving, almost embarrassingly so!
You are someone who has had your feet washed by the King and Creator of all things.
You are someone Christ has washed, purified, and declared clean from sin.

Here are some verses of encouragement:
1 John 3:1
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”

Ephesians 1:4–5
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”

Romans 8:1
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

Galatians 3:27
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

Isaiah 61:10
“I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness.”

1 Corinthians 6:11
“And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Ephesians 5:1–2
“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love.”

Colossians 3:12
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

When we remember who we are before God, trust grows, and disobedience begins to fade. So how do we keep focused on who we are in His eyes?

1. The entire structure of our service is designed to remind us of this.

We journey through praise, confession, repentance, the creed, prayer, celebration, and ultimately, receiving communion.

You are here this morning, in the right place, being formed and reminded of who you are, and who God is, by every word that is spoken here.

This liturgy FORMS us, and as we repeat these words, week after week, they become a part of us. A beautiful reminder of the truth.

The reason we love our traditional services here at Grace is because it does so much more for us than contemporary services often do.   
​
     2.  The Eucharist
At the table we are about to approach we remember how much Christ has done for us, and that all He did was to bring us back to God.
So today, if you feel distant from God, if obedience feels hard, if trust feels fragile -- do not begin by trying harder.
Begin by remembering.
Remember who Christ is.
Remember what Christ has done.
Remember who you are in Christ.
Through the words of our service, and as you come to the Altar.
Amen.

Both of our Scripture readings for this evening focus on observances of Passover, the first during the reign of King Josiah of Judah (II Chronicles 35:1-6,10-18) and the second during Jesus’ last days on earth (Luke 22:7-20). By the time of Jesus, eight or nine Jewish festivals were being observed, depending on how they’re counted. Seven of them are listed in Leviticus 23. The first is the one that Christians typically leave out, even though it’s the most important feast in all of Judaism. It’s the Feast of Shabbat, or the Sabbath, the only festival that occurs every week, all year long. The next three: Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Firstfruits, often are lumped together under the name of Passover, Pesach, as they come within a 9-day span during the Jewish month of Nissan (14-22).

The final days of our Holy Week all correspond to these three Jewish festivals, this year on the very same days. As the Lamb of God, Jesus was crucified on Passover; as the Bread of Life, He was crucified, died, was buried, and was raised from the dead all during the Feast of Unleavened Bread; and as the Firstfruits of those who sleep, He was raised on the Feast of Firstfruits. Of these three, one, Passover, has continued to stand out for the Jews as the most important of all, the one commemorating the pivotal event in the history of Israel when God dramatically delivered the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt and led them to the land that had been promised to them long before.

We as Christians remember the feast of Passover with special reverence, as well we should, because just as the blood of the unblemished lambs delivered the Israelites from the Angel of Death in Egypt, so the blood of the perfect Lamb of God delivers us from bondage to sin and death. But the spreading of the blood on the lintels and the doorposts in Egypt was only a first step for deliverance from the Angel of Death; eating the lamb in its entirety was necessary to complete the requirement, as we read in Exodus 12.

This is precisely what Jesus meant when He clearly said, “Unless you eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). And this is why, in His institution of the Last Supper, Jesus said unreservedly and unmistakably, “This is My Body” and “This is My blood” (see especially Matthew and Mark, but also Luke; also see I Corinthians 11). As we’re taught in the book of Hebrews, the sacrifice of Jesus was once-for-all and all-sufficient. But our participation in His completed work comes through our eating His Body and drinking His Blood in the Eucharist, as He commanded us to do.

When we realize that Passover was just the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, then we see more fully and vividly the true meaning of the unleavened bread in our Holy Eucharist. While only unleavened bread, matzah, was to be eaten throughout Passover, on the first Seder it was to be eaten with the Passover lamb. It was to be made only from one of 5 specified grains, typically wheat.
 
Its descriptive appellation in Deuteronomy as the “bread of affliction,” the lechem oni, reminds us of Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb Who endured affliction for us (Deut. 16:3), just as it reminds the Jews of their affliction in Egypt. It also reminds Jewish people of their hasty deliverance from Egypt, and it reminds us of our deliverance through the Body of our Savior on the Cross. Jesus told His disciples that this holy supper was to be continued in remembrance of Him, and so it has been from the earliest days of the Church. This is our Passover Seder, our spiritual meal, not something to be done once a year or even once a month, but, as Jesus Himself said, as often as we are gathered together to worship and remember Him.

Here the symbol and the reality mystically become one and the same. This is what Paul meant when He wrote in I Corinthians 10:16, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ?” Just as Jewish people see Passover as their true participation in the deliverance from Egypt, so Paul sees the Eucharist as our true participation in the deliverance Jesus offers in His broken Body and His shed Blood.

This extraordinary Passover Seder that Jesus shared with His disciples was truly a one-off, a one-of-a-kind. That’s another important part of why we perpetuate its observance and celebrate its significance in every Eucharist. But there are still two more things we need to notice about it, both found only in Luke’s Gospel.
First there are these words of Jesus to His disciples: “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:15, 16). Sharing this Seder was not just something Jesus did with His disciples as a pro forma thing that they were required to do as Jews. It was of special importance to Jesus because of its symbolic and spiritual connection with His immediately forthcoming suffering and death, His affliction and His sacrifice for us and for our salvation. 

But, importantly, it also served as a foreshadowing of things to come when the Lord’s Supper will become the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in His Kingdom, the Seder of the Lamb that was slain, of the Lamb Whose worthiness will be our eternal anthem of praise: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing" (Revelation 5:12). That may be all the eschatology we really need to know: Jesus Himself is eagerly awaiting the moment when we will share with Him in the greatest Seder of all time and eternity. That is now His “earnest desire,” the time when He eats the Passover with us in “the Kingdom of God.”

The second thing we find only in Luke is that there’s more than one cup that Jesus shares with His disciples at the Last Supper. This would come as no surprise at all to a Jewish person, as there are actually four cups of wine at every Seder, two before the meal and two after. In what I saw as truly a God-thing, a God-moment, a Jewish friend began sending me emails last evening about the Orthodox Jewish observance of Pesach. She forwarded a copy of a 100+ page “Passover Guide,” detailing everything from “Koshering the Kitchen” to “Pesach food for your pets.”
​
The cover page shows a wine glass next to some matzah, unleavened bread. Another page, an ad for a Jewish senior living facility, shows a similar image. This is our Eucharist! A later ad for “Shalom Memorial Funeral Home” shows the 4 wine glasses necessary to complete a Seder meal. But for the Christian, the most compelling image of all comes on a page titled, “Passover: what it’s all about.” There we see a large wafer of unleavened bread, something looking very like the “Host” wafer at a Eucharist, with three wine cups on one side of it and the fourth cup on the opposite side (see photo above). We will see that this corresponds precisely both to what happened at the Seder in the Upper Room and, even more significantly, what did not happen at that holy meal.

Each cup at the Seder has a name, and with each cup a blessing is said, drawn from the 4 promises of God in Exodus 6:6 & 7:

1)The first cup is the “Cup of Sanctification” (the Kiddush cup), and this promise is read: “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”
2)The second cup is the “Cup of Proclamation” (the Haggadah cup), and this promise is read: “I will deliver you from their bondage.”
3)The third cup is the “Cup of Blessing” (the Berakah cup), and this promise is read: “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.”
 
It’s very important to note that Paul specifically names this third cup in the verse we previously read from I Corinthians 10: “The ‘Cup of Blessing’ that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ?” No first-century Jewish Christian, much less Paul himself, could have missed this important and obvious connection to the third wine cup of the Passover Seder, the one that’s called the “Cup of Blessing!”

Most Jewish Christian scholars are in agreement that the two cups mentioned in Luke correspond to the first and third of the four. God’s promise that’s read with the third cup, to redeem His people with an outstretched arm, foreshadows Jesus’ outstretched arms on the Cross and His statement, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in My Blood.” That’s truly a “Cup of Blessing.” But there’s one more cup at a Seder:

1. The fourth and last cup is the “Cup of Praise” (the Hallel cup), and this promise is read: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.”

This cup is prefaced by the singing of one or more of the Hallel psalms (113-118 and sometimes also Psalm 136, called “the Great Hallel”). These psalms are replete with Messianic references. Among the most striking is in Psalm 116:13, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.” Those words become our words.

The phrase "drinking of the cup" metaphorically symbolizes sharing the consequences of whatever is in that cup. You will recall the incident when the mother of James and John asked Jesus to seat her sons on His right and left when He came into His Kingdom. His response was a question addressed directly to James and John: “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" When they naïvely answered, “We are,” Jesus assured them that they would, though each in a quite different way. 

None of the Gospels suggests that Jesus and His disciples actually drank the fourth cup. Quite the contrary, both Matthew and Mark record that after they sang a hymn, doubtless the chanting of the Hallel, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Matthew, Mark and Luke all record Jesus as saying after the third cup, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the Kingdom of God comes.” 

This is an incredibly important statement for us. It means that Jesus chose to defer the 4th cup, the “Cup of Praise,” until He can drink it with all of us at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. That will be the most amazing cup of wine any of us will ever taste. And that great feast will be our celebrating with Him that all things have been completed and His “earnest desire” is fulfilled for all eternity.

There’s one other connection between Passover and our Eucharistic feast that I want you to notice. On the same page of the Orthodox “Passover Guide” as the image of the four wine cups is this important statement, one that in its way addresses the famous question asked at every Seder, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Mah nishtanah ha'lilah ha'zeh mikol ha'leilot?

מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת  Why is this night different from all other nights?  And this is the answer:
Unlike other Jewish holidays, where we commemorate a particular miracle or event, on Passover it’s our duty to transport ourselves to over 3,300 years ago, as slaves to the mighty Pharaoh in the land of Egypt. In the words of the great Rambam of Egypt, “one must show himself as though he actually has left Egypt.” In fact, in many communities, the exodus of Egypt is re-enacted at the Passover Seder. Yes, make a spectacle about your great escape from the powerful Egypt superpower! From slavery to freedom!

That’s what we do at this table, at every Eucharist: we transport ourselves to 2,000 years ago when Jesus was crucified, when His body was given for us and His blood was shed for us. We, too, make a spectacle of ourselves about our great escape from slavery to freedom, from slavery to sin to the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus, Mashiach Yeshua. We’re here together in this building, but we’re standing at the foot of the Cross, saying our prayers, offering our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

That covers our connection to Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But there’s one thing more! There’s our generally forgotten yet vitally important connection to the “Feast of the Firstfruits.” Few Christians are aware that Firstfruits, a feast that falls on the two days immediately after the day of the Passover, corresponds directly to our Easter celebration, both chronologically and spiritually.

This explains why Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:20-23, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ.” Paul, as a “Hebrew of the Hebrews, from the tribe of Benjamin” (Philippians 3:5), saw that his “Feast of the Firstfruits” had become his Easter!

It also may surprise you to know that just as the Jewish Festival of Firstfruits is a two-day event, so in over 100 countries of the world, Easter is also observed as a two-day event, with Easter Monday as a national holiday. In some places, as in Austria, Easter Monday also commemorates the experience of the two unnamed disciples who met Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. He made Himself known to them in the breaking of the bread, just as He continues to make Himself known to us in the Eucharist. Even further, the Church from its early days has celebrated Easter not as one or two days but as 50 days, “Eastertide,” taking us all the way from the Resurrection to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, another Jewish festival that we share.

Easter is all about firstfruits, the earliest appearing of crops that give a promise of all that’s yet to come. It’s the very moment when the first planting emerges from the ground. It’s a time of renewal, a time of hope, a time of resurrection. It’s Easter! And while we still have two more weeks of Lent before we can fully celebrate Easter, our first Evensong collect reminds us all year that every Sunday, every Lord’s Day, even in Lent, is an occasion to give thanks for the Resurrection.

And so, this Lord’s Day, as we come to meet Him at this His table, may we do three important things:
1)May we remember with Paul that “the cup of blessing that we bless, is [indeed] a participation in the Blood of Christ, [and] the bread that we break, is [indeed] a participation in the Body of Christ.”
2)May we come with our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, rejoicing that He Who died is risen and is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us.
3)May we leave in the assurance that all these symbols of things to come will be realized when we’re seated with Him in His Kingdom at His heavenly table. There we’ll know an abundance that, for now, exceeds our imagination. Then the promise that comes with the fourth cup of the Seder will be fulfilled for us, Jews and Gentiles alike:
“I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God.”

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

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
 
Did you catch the theme that’s common to all our readings except the Gospel this morning? Each one of them has something important to say about the poor.

In Proverbs 22, we heard, “The rich and the poor have a common bond: the Lord is the maker of them all.” What a countercultural concept that is! Nowhere in the Bible do we read that poverty is to be eliminated in this age. In the human economy as God created it, the poor always will be with us. But in v. 9, we read that ”He who is generous will be blessed, for he gives some of his food to the poor.” And, in vss. 22 & 23, we read, “Do not rob the poor because he is poor or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord will plead their case and take the life of those who rob them.”

In Psalm 146 we heard that God “gives food to the hungry.” “He supports the orphan and the widow,” something James exhorted us to do in last week’s epistle reading.

James wrote the most about the poor in his epistle. “My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.2 For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,’ 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 5 … did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man.”

These passages provide a very small sampling of the many times caring for the poor, the orphan and the widow is stressed in Scripture. One could even say that Scripture is shot through with this theme. Among today’s readings, James stands out as using by far the strongest language. He begins by suggesting that those who dishonor the poor by showing favoritism to the rich are in some way weakening their faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. But then he continues, saying that “if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”

That’s damning enough, but it’s just the backdrop for his familiar statement that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all.” We all have heard that verse before, but the severity of its implications may not have struck us with sufficient force. In this context, even dishonoring the poor identifies us as sinners and as transgressors of the whole Law.

According to the rabbis, in the Torah alone, just the five books of Moses, there are 613 commandments, though some say that “only” about 300 of these are relevant today. Good luck keeping all 300! Perhaps you will say that we’re no longer under law but under grace. We certainly believe this to be true, yet it may not be true in quite the sense that we attach to it. As it happens, while the Torah may contain only 300 relevant commandments, the NT contains well over 1,000 commandments, not just the two we recite every Sunday at the beginning of our worship.  

Obedience to all 1,000 of those NT commandments would demand much more of us than we realize! Even our regular Sunday morning liturgy is full of commandments that we pass over with little consideration of how hard it would be to keep all of them. Law-keeping is a challenging matter. Ask Paul, who recognized in Romans 7 that sin attacks us by using the law to deceive us and even to kill us, spiritually speaking.

Returning to James, he ends this subject by asking, “Do not they (who dishonor the poor) blaspheme the fair Name by which you have been called?” Imagine not only weakening our faith in the Lord of glory but also blaspheming His Holy Name, the Name that is above all names! The meaning is absolutely clear. Jesus taught by word and by example that the poor, the outcast and the marginalized were to be cared for at every opportunity, even or perhaps especially those among them who were regarded as having no worthiness. Can you think of such persons in your circle of acquaintances? If not, we may need to be getting out into the world a bit more, out of our cocoons and into the market place where the poor, the orphans, the outcast and the marginalized actually live.

James uses this example of dishonoring the poor as the jumping off point for one of his most controversial statements, the one we reduce to: “faith without works is dead.” Sadly it’s our very propensity for reductionism that is at the root of our troubles with this verse. When read as I just quoted it, without retaining all that James actually wrote, it creates the supposed conflict between his teaching and that of Paul. What James actually wrote is, “Even so faith by itself, without works, is dead.” Paul would have agreed wholeheartedly! Faith is not a stand-alone matter. For both Paul and James, faith was an active concept that must be worked out in the way we live, or its reality is seriously to be doubted.

John Murray, one of the greatest Reformed theologians of the 20th century, wrote, “Faith without obedience is presumption, just as obedience without faith is self-righteousness.” Hear it again: “Faith without obedience is presumption, just as obedience without faith is self-righteousness.” The first half of that sentence addresses James’ conviction that faith demands expression or demonstration. He wrote, “You show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” Brilliant! After all, did not Jesus Himself say, “By their fruits you shall know them? Every good tree bears good fruit” (Matthew 7:16, 17). “Faith without works is presumption,” a presuming on God’s grace, a cheapening of grace, a refusal to accept the demands of true faith.

But then Murray adds, “obedience without faith is self-righteousness.” This was precisely the problem of the Pharisees, as we looked at it just last Sunday. Between scrupulous obedience to the letter of the law and adherence to the fences they had built around the law, the Pharisees truly believed that they had earned God’s favor on their own. Jesus came to burst that bubble for them and, by extension, for us, whenever we, too, begin to rely on what we perceive to be our own goodness. God’s grace is costly grace, it’s sacrificial grace, and while we rightly say that it’s freely given and altogether unmerited on our part, it still requires something of us in return. Actually, it requires all of us in return; we call that our sanctification. What was the “first and great commandment,” according to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself? We all know it because we hear it every single Sunday morning without exception: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

That’s a tall order, and it’s certainly one we all fall short of, much of the time. Those 4 “all’s” really hold us accountable! Most of us are content to get by with loving the Lord our God with some of our heart, soul, mind and strength, on a periodic basis.

That’s precisely the theme, the emphasis, of James in his epistle. James is asking more of us than we’re accustomed to giving. While he doesn’t actually cite the “first and great commandment,” he does cite the second one that, according to what Jesus says in Matthew, “is like it:” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:39). James calls this “the royal law,” and says that if we’re fulfilling it, we’re doing well.

Perhaps he’s hoping for us to respond that, in all honesty, this commandment is hard to keep. We find it difficult to love others as we love ourselves. Sadly, there’s a broad continuum from those who are mired in self-hatred on the one extreme to those who are mired in narcissism on the opposite end. Neither extreme lends itself well to love of others.

Furthermore, and importantly, love of others needs to be much more than a slogan. James writes that the “royal law” is something we are to be “fulfilling,” not just quoting. Love for others demands action, otherwise the validity of the mere profession is rightly to be questioned. James wrote, “If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?” (2:15, 16).

In our weekly liturgy, immediately after we have exchanged the “peace” with each other and as we transition into presenting our gifts at the altar, we hear these words from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God” (5:2). Christ, as we know, moved well beyond self-love to redemptive love. He actually laid down His life for us and for our salvation. What a great challenge it would be for us truly to “walk” in that love! That would be a far more effective motivator for loving others than self-love alone. The two need to be set side-by-side: both loving our neighbors as ourselves and loving them as Christ loved us. That would constitute “walking in love” at its best.

What can we conclude from all of this that will affect the way we live in the week to come?

1. First, we must conclude that caring for the poor, the orphan and the widow is an obligation placed on every one of us by the God Who made us all, rich and poor alike, and established that the “haves” should be caring for the “have nots.”
2. Second, we must conclude with James that if we show favoritism to the well-dressed wealthy persons in our lives, we are doing four reprehensible things: dishonoring the poor, weakening our own faith, committing sin, and blaspheming the fair Name by which we have been called. That’s a challenging list of consequences stemming from our failure to care for the poor and needy. And while Proverbs 22:23 tells us that “the Lord will plead the case [of the poor and afflicted] and take the life of those who rob them” (Prov. 22:23), James asks us, “Did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that He promised to those who love Him?” It almost sounds as though we are the replaceable pieces!
3. Third, we must agree with James that “faith by itself, without works, is dead.” Being pious attendees at church does not ensure us a place in God’s heavenly Kingdom. More is expected: no, more is required of each of us, more than we’re accustomed to giving. We are to show our faith by our works.
4. Fourth and last, we must recognize that we are required to love others both as we love ourselves and “as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God.” Our obedience, like His, must be sacrificial if God’s perfect will for us is to be accomplished. And when we love as He loved, the sacrificial component is accepted with willingness of spirit and gladness of heart.

Are we prepared to do this for the sake of God’s Kingdom? In a short time, all of us will pray together, perhaps somewhat mindlessly, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” When we sing those words this morning, may we recommit in our hearts to doing whatever it is that God is calling us to do, remembering that some things are sufficiently clear in God’s Holy Word to be required of all of us with or without a specific call. Remember that it was our Lord Himself Who, right after teaching “The Lord’s Prayer,” added, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Some callings belong everyone. Don’t get caught waiting for God to show you His will. He already has, in His Holy Word and through the voice of the Holy Spirit. Just do it!

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

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
 
I will begin by doing something not in my normal path of exegeting Scripture, that is, I will juxtapose some of the words of Jesus in the Gospel reading with words of His brother James in his epistle:

From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

Where do we find ourselves this morning on this continuum? Jesus’ list of evils that proceed from our hearts sounds a lot like lists that we encounter in the letters of Paul; and since we believe that both are divinely inspired, I think it’s important that we locate ourselves on these lists. Did you stop listening after “fornications, thefts, murders and adulteries,” assuming that you don’t fit anywhere in this catena of evils? Then you may have missed the places where all of us fit at one time or another: “coveting, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.” In our human nature we want to protest and say that it’s unfair of Jesus to include these inevitable human “slip-ups” alongside “murders and adulteries.” But He does, unapologetically! And James will raise the bar in next week’s reading by saying, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all.”

Why did I jam up Jesus’ list against what James writes? Because James tells us that all of these things, things he unabashedly calls “filthiness,” are to be put aside by us in favor of humbly receiving “the Word implanted.” What does he mean by that? He means that the Word of God, formerly entirely external to our existence, now by the power of the Holy Spirit has found a place within our very beings, within our consciousness, within our consciences. And since this has happened to us when once we lay claim to the faith of the Gospel, we find ourselves without excuse for not being “doers of the Word,” but  “merely hearers who delude themselves.”

Do we delude ourselves? James compares us to someone who looks in a mirror, sees his disheveled state, and walks away forgetting what he saw. That’s what he says we do, when we come to church, hear the Word of God, recognize how far short we fall of God’s standards, nod in agreement, mutter our “mea culpa’s,” yet go away fundamentally unchanged. What happens if we allow ourselves to be challenged and changed by our encounters with God’s Holy Word and with His Son at His table? James tells us that we will be blessed whenever we look “intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abide by it, not having become forgetful hearers but effectual doers.”

Sounds reasonably simple, doesn’t it? But therein lies the problem. More often than not we fall into the trap James correctly identifies. We hear, we acknowledge, we depart, we forget and we fail to do what we heard and perhaps even pledged to do. It’s not enough to hear God’s Word, agree with it, consent to its claims on us, yet to walk away in forgetfulness and not become “effectual doers” of those things that are expected and required of us. There’s the rub.

Jesus said to His contemporaries, “‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Neglecting the commandment of God, they hold to the tradition of men.” Is that what we do 2,000 years later? Certainly every honest person will confess to doing this some of the time, some persons more than others.

What is it for which Jesus was condemning His contemporaries? He was addressing the religious leadership of His day, persons who were so deeply steeped in their traditions that they had built elaborate fences around the law in order to protect themselves, so they thought, from any possible slip-ups. But for this extra measure of precaution Jesus simply castigates them. Why? Because in exalting their traditions above God’s laws themselves, they had missed the whole  point of what, in God’s view, constituted righteous behavior. They walked within their own lines, yet in the process walked outside of God’s lines. Were they guilty of murder and adultery? Perhaps not. But that was not the focus of Jesus, nor was it the focus of James. Jesus said that “evil things proceed from within and defile the man.” His emphasis was not on the righteous exterior but on the interior castles: evil on one hand and righteousness on the other.

Which castles are we building? James, in verses we all love to quote, reminds us that “every good act of giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” That’s the verse from which the writer of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” drew the line, “There is no shadow of turning with Thee,” to which he added, “Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not.” If we presume to appropriate such characteristics to ourselves, then we definitely resemble the persons James describes, who look in a mirror then walk away, forgetting what sort of persons they really are. Only to God Himself can we say, “As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.” As for ourselves we hear the voice of Jesus say, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me.’”

I know for certain that some of you, hearing these words this morning, are thinking, “This is way too harsh.” I can assure you that the people Jesus was addressing thought the same thing. But I also will assure you this morning that I’m hearing the voice of Jesus myself and I’m saying, “Yes, Lord, guilty as charged. I, too, have hid behind traditions and fences and excuses and self-righteousness and pride. I, too, have believed that my righteousness exceeded that of many others and that I had some right to believe I had earned my way into God’s favor and His Kingdom.” Just then, I come back to the words of James, reminding myself that this is the brother of the Lord speaking:

“If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Visiting distressed widows and orphans is one thing, but what on earth did James mean by keeping oneself “unstained by the world?”  That sounds beyond the ability of any 21st century human being, given the preponderance of in-our-faces “stains of the world” everywhere we turn.

Now I’m right back to my mea culpa’s, to my candid acknowledgment of my own flaws, my personal failures, my “stumbling,” as James calls it, my inability to live up to God’s lofty standards. In such dark times we often find solace in the Psalms, especially in the Psalms of David, a man who knew well what it was to be forgiven by a God Who is gracious, compassionate and abounding in lovingkindness. But if we look to today’s psalm we’ll be hard-pressed to find any comfort or encouragement:

O Lord, who may dwell on Your holy hill? He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart. He does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; He swears to his own hurt and does not change; He does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.

I’m going with “will be shaken” for the moment. Again we have a grocery list of sins where we can find some to which we rightly can plead “not guilty.” And, again, in our honest moments when we remember what we really saw in that spiritual mirror to which James referred, we confess that we’ve not always walked with integrity, worked righteousness, spoken truth in our hearts and honored those who fear the Lord. It’s the positives that may condemn our hearts more readily than the negatives. The positives convincingly show us that we have sinned by falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). God’s glory is perpetually beyond our grasp.

Is there hope for us? Does anyone have a suggestion for a cure? Yes, as we already have seen, James offered the perfect antidote to our sinfulness, our inclination towards wickedness and away from God’s demands. James wrote, “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” Ideally, that’s why we are gathered here this morning. That’s why we’re to have a deep thirst for God’s Holy Word and a desire that it will truly be implanted in our very souls.

That’s exactly why we encourage all of you to practice the disciplines of daily Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. It’s also why we offer Adult Ed every Sunday morning, Bible Study every Sunday evening and Evensong with Eucharist most Wednesday evenings. All of those gatherings are designed to be spiritual thirst-quenchers. They provide opportunities for us to allow God’s Word to be more deeply implanted so that our souls may be saved. They help safeguard us and fortify us against filthiness and wickedness. They bring us together as sinners who deeply need this “implanting.” Each of these opportunities is saturated in Scripture. Psalm 1 describes the “blessed” as those whose “delight is in the law of the Lord and they meditate on His law day and night” (1:2).

We know that periodic or even regular attendance on Sunday morning is not enough. We admit that our commitment to daily Bible reading and prayer, our personal devotional life, is more hit-or-miss than “day and night.” We need to pray that, following the example of bishop Richard of Chichester, we will see Christ more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly, day by day. It’s the “day by day” part that eludes us.

Yet we’re aware of our need, of our thirst, of the spiritual shallowness that prevents us from knowing God better and from coming to terms with the sacrifice of His only Son for our sin and our salvation. Yes, the grace of the altar fills us in incomparable ways. But the Apostle Peter wrote that we must “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18) and the Apostle Paul prayed “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give (us) a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him” (Ephesians 1:17), that we “may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Colossians 1:9), and that our “love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment” (Philippians 1:9). Our growth in grace, knowledge, wisdom, discernment and love is predicated entirely on our deepened understanding of God’s Word and, through that, a deepened commitment to doing His will.

May this be our prayer together this morning, again with the 13th century bishop, Saint Richard of Chichester:
Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly (day by day).
 
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

This morning we return one last time to the Bread of Life discourse of our Savior as recorded in John 6. Our reading begins by restating the final words of the discourse, then continues by recounting the subsequent conversation between Jesus and His puzzled disciples. No doubt they were stumbling over His remarkable statement, ”He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him.” These words must have seemed far too realistic to all of His hearers, not just the scoffers but even those many disciples who were not prepared to deal with this challenging and mysterious concept, and simply left. And we still puzzle over this seemingly inscrutable truth today; yet we, like Peter and the others of the 12, have committed ourselves to following Jesus and meeting Him at His table. We simply say with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”

Here is what we understand by “the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament:” He is truly present. He is here. He presents Himself to us is these holy mysteries.[1] It’s a spiritual and sacramental reality that transcends our normal existence and mystically but truly unites us by faith with Christ in His once-for-all sacrifice for our sins. As Richard Hooker asked in one of his sermons, “Is there not a taste of Christ Jesus in the hearts of those who eat this supper? Do not they who drink behold plainly in this cup that their souls are bathed in the blood of the Lamb?”

That this happens by the power and efficacy[2] of the Holy Spirit has been affirmed and reaffirmed by the Church throughout all 2,000 years of its existence. In our Prayer of Consecration, we say these words that we call the “epiclesis,” the calling down of the Holy Spirit’s blessing on the elements:

“And now, O merciful Father, in Your great goodness, we ask You to bless and sanctify, with Your Word and Holy Spirit, these gifts of bread and wine, that we, receiving them according to Your Son our Savior Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of His death and passion, may be partakers of His most blessed Body + and Blood +.”

Note that everything is included here: all 3 Persons of the Godhead, the particular action of the Holy Spirit in consecrating the bread and wine, the remembrance of Christ’s passion, and the actual partaking of His Body and Blood according to His institution. This is why we also call the Eucharist “Communion.” “Communion,” as we saw last week, means “participating with” or “partaking of” or “fellowshipping with” someone or something: koinonia. For the Apostle Paul, it meant that in the Eucharistic meal, we are indeed communing directly with the Son of God through His Body and Blood given to us, with the result that we’re made one body in Him because “we all partake of the one bread,” as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 10 (vs.16, 17).

While the sacrifice of Christ is ever to be viewed as once offered, full and complete with neither the need nor even the possibility of its being repeated, the fact remains that Jesus continually pleads the righteousness of His sacrifice before the Father and we continue to receive His  benefits when, at His altar, we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia!” (Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25, 1 John 2:1). And we do not hesitate to call His table an “altar.” Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount spoke of leaving our gift at the altar until we are reconciled with our brother, something He would not have been expected to say if altars were soon to be abolished. The author of Hebrews writes, “We have an altar from which…to eat.” (13:10). Ignatius, a disciple of John the Evangelist, refers multiple times to the altar as a place of prayer and reception of the Eucharist. And perhaps most compelling is that we read in Revelation of the golden altar that eternally stands before the throne of God in heaven (chs. 8, 9, 14, 16) where He is ever worshiped and glorified.

Here it is that the sacrifice is celebrated, commemorated and embraced both as Christ’s sacrifice for us and as the place where we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. And here it is that we look forward to an eternity of praising the worthiness of the Lamb that was slain. His sacrifice was once for all, never to be repeated; but it’s recalled and acclaimed in perpetuity, forever and ever, world without end.
In the Holy Eucharist, Jesus comes to us corporately and offers His own Body and Blood in a true supernatural and spiritual sense. Here we sense His presence, here we feed on Him, here we are nourished, strengthened and sustained, and from here we are sent out in peace to love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote in Colossians 2:9; “In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (somatikos).

Think of this for a moment more: is there any other place where all of this comes together as truly and vividly? Yes, individually each of us may and ought to have frequent occasions when, wherever we find ourselves, we will be freshly overawed by the wonder of Christ‘s sacrifice; and, in such moments, we renew our commitment to love and serve Him with gladness and singleness of heart. But this altar is where we come again and again both as individuals and corporately, to be in His Real Presence through His Body and Blood, to eat and drink, to truly commune with Him by faith, to be refreshed and nourished with spiritual food and to go out challenged and changed by this holy, Sacramental encounter with our Risen and Glorified Lord and Savior, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

This is why it’s important for us to reverence this altar in awe and wonder for all that it represents. The altar makes Christ’s Presence more palpably real, it instills in us a heightened sense of what He has done for us, it challenges us once more to serve Him unreservedly and it gives us His grace to sustain us in all that we do in His Name. It serves as an indispensable element in our sanctification, our growing into the likeness of Christ as members of His mystical Body, the Church. Here we come to know Him better than we do anywhere else. Back in v. 40 Jesus said, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Nowhere in our Christian experience and worship do we look on Him more intently and intentionally than here in the Holy Eucharist.

This is precisely why Jesus instituted this Sacrament with His disciples and commanded that we should observe it often in remembrance of Him. And it’s why Paul cautioned against eating and drinking the Sacrament to our own judgment, not only if we do so unworthily, but even if we do it without sufficient regard for the very Body of Christ (see I Corinthians 11:29). On the other hand in John 6:51, Jesus said, “He who eats this Bread will live forever.” And in v. 54 He said, “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life,” and for the second time He adds, “and I will raise him up on the last day.” He says this twice in order to emphasize the connection between the Eucharist and both His own bodily Resurrection and ours. This also is why Jesus includes a reference to His ascension in v. 62 when He’s explaining His meaning to the disciples.

Why is this discourse of Jesus recorded only in John’s Gospel while John, surprisingly, is the only one of the four Evangelists to omit the Last Supper? Similarly we might ask why John alone omits the Transfiguration when he was the only one of the Evangelists to have been an eyewitness of it? Or, for that matter, we might ask why John omits any birth narrative but moves directly to the Baptism.

I believe the answer to each of these questions is essentially the same. John must have been aware of the 3 accounts that we call the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and of their focus on narrative, miracles and parables. Accordingly he substitutes for birth narratives a profoundly theological prologue. Instead of recording the event of the Transfiguration, John makes his entire Gospel a picture of the transfigured Christ, only alluding to the event itself in 1:14 where he writes that “we beheld His shekinah glory, the glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And instead of retelling the narrative of the Last Supper, he records in full the amazing Bread of Life Discourse with its powerful Eucharistic message and its promise of eternal life in Him.

Imagine the “aha moment” when these disciples, who understandably were perplexed at their first hearing of Jesus’ words in the Bread of Life discourse, looked back later through the lens of the Last Supper and paired His statement here, “Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in yourselves,” with His words in the Upper Room, “This is My Body… This is My Blood” (Matthew 26:26, 28), “Do this in remembrance of Me” (I Corinthians 11:24, 25). I think they wept, with tears of joy. And so should we, when we realize that, in our frequent receiving of the Body and Blood of Jesus, we, too, are participating in the same event that was first given to the 12 with Jesus physically present.

He is still here. He is truly present. He is making Himself known to us in the breaking of the bread, just as He did with the two disciples in Emmaus after His Resurrection. The bread that Jesus gives, His very Body, parallels the Bread of the Presence in the Jewish Tabernacle, set on a golden table alongside vessels of wine, just as we have it here (Exodus 25, q.v.). In Leviticus 24, Aaron is commanded to set the Bread of the Presence on the golden table every Sabbath “on behalf of the sons of Israel as an everlasting covenant” (diathēkēn aiōnion, LXX), language the author of Hebrews adopts verbatim when calling the Blood of Jesus “the blood of the everlasting covenant” (diathēkēs aiōniou) (Hebrews 13:20).
 
Now we see more clearly how this thanksgiving feast of ours connects our faith and practice with our Jewish roots, our heritage among God’s covenant people. The very same thing that brought salvation to the Jewish people, the people of God, at the first Passover is now renewed and re-imaged in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf.  

Matthew tells us that when Jesus was with His disciples in the Upper Room, after celebrating the Passover Seder meal, “He took a cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is My Blood of the covenant (diathēkēs), which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). All of this ties together seamlessly with the way the Passover Seder was celebrated. At the Seder meal, 3 cups of wine were presented, one during the introductory rites, a second during the meal itself, and a third, the berakah or “cup of blessing,” after the meal was finished. You may remember that Paul asked in I Corinthians 10:16, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ?” In Luke’s account of the Last Supper, which is the source of the words of institution that we say, it was “after supper” that Jesus took the cup, clearly the third cup, the berakah, the cup of blessing (22:20).

What was He doing? He was making a direct connection with the first covenant, which at the first Passover included sprinkling the blood of a lamb on the doorposts of every Jewish home. Now He speaks of the pouring out of His own Blood for us and for our salvation. And, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, in God’s economy and for the accomplishing of His purposes, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin” (9:22). Jesus is saying clearly that this covenant does not so much replace the old one as it informs it with new meaning, with a new application, with a new methodology that was required in order for God to fulfil His divine purposes for all of His people.

And there’s still more. At the conclusion of the Passover Seder, it’s mandated that 4 or 5 of Psalms 113-118, known as the Hallel Psalms, Psalms of Praise, are to be sung or recited (the first and/or the second having been read or sung earlier). Both Matthew and Mark tell us that after the third cup, Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn before going up to the Mount of Olives. Have you ever wondered what hymn it was that they sang? Well, we know the answer: it was the same Hallel that is sung at every Passover Seder! And here are just a few of the lines from those psalms that Jesus would have sung then:

1. First, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the Name of the Lord” (116:13). That’s what we call this cup when we say: “It will become for us the cup of salvation.”
2. Another: “O Lord, I am Your Servant, the Son of Your handmaiden; You have loosed My bonds” (116:16). These words suggest both the Virgin Birth and the victory of Christ over the bonds of sin and death.
3. Then there’s “I will offer You the sacrifice of thanksgiving” (116:17). This is precisely what we call our Eucharist, which very word means “thanksgiving.”
4. “I shall not die but live” (118:17), obviously foreshadowing the Resurrection.
5. Fifth, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (118:22), words that were applied to Jesus by Peter (in both Acts 4:11 and I Peter 2:7) and Paul (Ephesians 2:20) and by Jesus Himself (Mt. 21, Mk. 12, Lk. 20).
6. And then, “Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord” (118:26), words used by the crowd acclaiming Jesus on His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (Mt. 21:9, Mk. 11:9, Lk. 19:38) and, once again, used by Jesus with reference to Himself in His lament over Jerusalem (Mt. 23:39). Jesus sang all these words!

Now there’s just one last thought. At the Passover Seder there’s actually a 4th cup of wine to be taken after the singing of the Hallel: appropriately, it’s called the “Hallel cup,” the cup of praise. But both Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus omitted the 4th cup, and that immediately after singing the Hallel, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Why was the Seder left incomplete?

We’re not left without possible explanations. First, as only John tells us (in ch. 15), when Jesus took His disciples out of the Upper Room, His next words to them were, “I am the true vine and you are the branches.” Soon after that, He led the disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, where He prayed 3 times, “Father, if it be possible, take this cup from Me.” Jesus knew that there was to be a 4th cup, the “cup of salvation” about which they had just sung in the Hallel. Jesus refused the customary offer of wine when He was on His way to the Cross. But in His final moments on the Cross, He said, “I thirst,” and then accepted sour wine from the sponge. And John tells us that “when Jesus had received the wine, He said, ‘It is finished;” and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit” (John 19:28-30). The Passover was now completed. The sacrifice was finished. The blood of Christ was poured out for us. The cup of salvation was filled.[3]

And there is another possible explanation. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us that Jesus said to His disciples, “I tell you that from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s Kingdom.” Discounting a sip of sour wine from a sponge in the moment of His death, Jesus may have been telling His disciples that the omitted 4th cup was to be saved for that glorious moment when we, along with His disciples and all the company of heaven, will be seated at the table for that great feast called in Revelation “the Marriage Supper of the Lamb” (19:6-9). That will be the greatest imaginable Hallel cup, the very cup of everlasting praise, where the finest food and the royal wine of heaven will be ours to enjoy in the company of the One who shed His blood and instituted this feast where we may partake of Him.

“He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him; he who eats this Bread will live forever”  (John 6:56, 58). “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz.” “Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation: through Your goodness we have this bread to set before You. It will become for us the Bread of Life. “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, borei p'ri hagafen.” “Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation. Here we have this wine to set before You. It will become for us the cup of salvation.” Prepare yourselves to meet Him here this morning. Then come. Eat and drink “in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving.” “This is His Body, broken for you; this is His Blood, shed for you.” In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] It’s not spiritual “hocus pocus,” words that literally were created as a caricature of the Eucharist, probably based on a perversion of the sacramental blessing from the Mass, “Hoc est corpus Meum,” "This is my body"

[2] “Power” comes from the Latin virtus , Gr. dunamis; “efficacy,” from efficacia, refers to the operation of the H.S. in effecting the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Calvin adds the Latin vigor, by which he means the life that Jesus promises to those who eat His Flesh and drink His Blood (John 6).

[3] Some of the thoughts behind this were drawn from Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper by Brant Pitre (Doubleday, 2011). Pitre also credits The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism by David Daube (Hendrickson, 1995, original 1956).

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Very high on the list of FAQ’s in the Church is this: what happens up here and why? What should I believe about it? Why is it of such paramount importance? Why should I not be casual about it, even about skipping it altogether? Why do some people, especially Roman Catholics, believe that they must never miss it? What did Jesus mean when He transformed the Passover meal into the Last Supper and commanded us to do it as a perpetual memory of Him? And what did Jesus mean when He delivered the Bread of Life discourse in John 6? It sounds so disarmingly literal!

This week and next, we are going to wrestle with these incredibly important matters that are absolutely central to our faith and worship, matters than which there is very little of greater importance for us to understand and practice as followers of Jesus Christ, matters of such great significance that they are viewed by many as essential to our salvation and by most as indispensable for our growth in sanctification, and matters that, to our detriment, have divided the Church over the centuries. On this mysterious teaching there have been at least six principal positions. To review them briefly:

1. Transubstantiation: the view that the bread ceases to be bread and the wine ceases to be wine other than in their appearances, their “accidents;” both are changed in “substance” to become the very physical Body and Blood of Christ, while the bread and wine are annihilated. This is the present view of the Roman Church, first debated in the 11th century but not fully articulated until the 13th century.
2. Consubstantiation:  This is said to have been the position of Luther, though herejected the terminology to his deathbed. Those who hold this enigmatic doctrine teach that the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine; but that during the Eucharist, the true, natural substance of the Body and Blood of Christ coexists alongside the substance of the bread and wine. The believer receives both the bread and Christ’s Body, both the wine and His Blood, together yet separate
3. Sacramental union: This is Luther’s actual position. He taught that in the Lord’s Supper the bread and the wine are present in a natural manner while Christ’s true Body and Blood are present in a supernatural manner, not confined to a particular space. Luther believed in what he called the ubiquity of Christ’s Body: that it could be everywhere at once, both in heaven and on earth. In the sacramental union the consecrated bread is united with the ubiquitous body of Christ and the consecrated wine is united with the blood of Christ (“in, with and under”) by virtue of Christ's words of institution (“This is My Body, this is My Blood”), and not by the  recipient’s faith. The result is that anyone eating and drinking these "elements," the consecrated bread and wine, truly eats and drinks the physical body and blood of Jesus as well. Lutherans believe to be Biblical the doctrine of the manducatio indignorum ("eating of the unworthy"), i.e., that even the unworthy eat and drink the very Body and Blood of Christ, but they partake to their condemnation. The Body and Blood of Christ are materially present, not only spiritually present, and are received orally by all.
4. The denial of any special presence. This view, wrongly attributed to Zwingli though held by many of his followers, holds that the Eucharist is a bare commemoration of the death of Christ, and that the bread and wine are mere symbols or tokens to remind us of his Body and Blood. This is the view of many evangelical churches. A variant of this is known as the “receptionist” view, that is, that nothing at all happens unless and until the recipient believes that the Body and Blood of Christ are being spiritually received. This variant is actually somewhat closer to Calvin’s view, though not the same
5. Sacred Mystery: This is the official view of the Eastern Orthodox Church. While it teaches that the bread and wine do become the Body and Blood of Jesus during the consecration by a priest, they do not define how this sacramental mystery happens. The sacrament is withheld from all non-Orthodox Christians, as historically has been the case in the Roman Catholic Church with non-Catholic Christians. But no Orthodox person may partake of the Eucharist without preparation through confession, absolution and fasting. 
6. The real spiritual presence: This seems to have been the doctrine of nearly the entire Church until the 11th century. As it’s the teaching of the Anglican Church and of Calvin and many others of the Reformers, it has 1500 years in its favor. The bread and wine are received naturally as bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of Christ are received spiritually. Christ’s glorified Body remains corporally in heaven, but by the Holy Spirit it is made present and mediated to us in the Sacrament.

 
Because this is the view of our Church, we need to look into it more deeply and discover its roots in Scripture and in the teaching of the Church. According to Jeremy Taylor, a prominent 17th century Caroline divine,
 
“The result of the doctrine is this: it is bread, and it is Christ’s Body. It is bread in substance, but Christ in the Sacrament; and Christ is as really given to all that are truly disposed (AH: by faith), as the symbols are: each as they can be; Christ, as Christ can be given; the bread and the wine, as they can be given, each to the same real purposes to which they were designed; and Christ does as truly nourish and sanctify the soul as the elements do nourish the body.” (Jer. Taylor, On the Real Presence, sect. I. 4, slightly “updated” language by AH).
 
In this view, the very life and power of Christ are received by faith, while the unbeliever partakes to his condemnation. So when we say, “The gifts of God for the people of God; take them in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on Him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving,” we are remembering Him as He commanded us to do, as Zwingli taught; but also spiritually we are partaking of His very Body and Blood as mediated to us by faith through the power and efficacy of the Holy Spirit, as Calvin taught. Yet we are not physically, carnally chewing on Him as in the Roman view (and also, perhaps, in Luther’s own admittedly ambiguous view). As John Jewell, the first and greatest apologist for reformed Anglican faith, wrote in 1562, “We do not touch the Body of Christ with teeth and mouth, yet we hold Him fast, and eat Him by faith, by understanding, and by the Spirit.”

Thomas Cranmer, the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to whom we are chiefly indebted for many of our Anglican formularies, maintained a doctrine nearly identical to  that of Calvin [and before him Bertram, aka Ratramnus (died c. 868)]. Cranmer wrote:

“I say, as all the holy fathers and martyrs used to say, that we receive Christ spiritually, by faith with our minds eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood: so that we receive Christ’s own very natural Body, but not naturally nor corporally.” “It is my constant faith and belief that we receive Christ in the Sacrament, verily and truly. My doctrine is that He is by faith spiritually present with us, and is our spiritual food and nourishment, and sits in the midst of all those who are gathered together in His Name; and this feeding is a spiritual feeding and a heavenly feeding, far surpassing all corporal and carnal feeding, in deed and not in figure only.” “I say that the same visible and palpable Flesh that was for us crucified, &c. &c. (AH: born of the Virgin, suffered, crucified, dead, buried, raised, glorified, ascended), is eaten of Christian people at His Holy supper. The diversity is not in the Body, but in the eating thereof; no man eating it carnally, but the good eating it both sacramentally and spiritually, and the evil only sacramentally, that is, figuratively” (Remains, III. pp. 5, 288, 289, 340. See also II. p. 441, IV. p. 16).

What can we make of all this? First and foremost it must be emphasized and accepted that the Eucharist is the central act in almost all Christian worship from the earliest days of the Church as described in the book of Acts to the present. Why? Because we do it in obedience to the command of Jesus Himself to do this in remembrance of Him (Luke 22:19, I Corinthians 11:24, 25). Sadly, Satan has made significant inroads in the Church to create numerous divisions, first by separating the Western or Roman Church from the Eastern or Orthodox Church in the 11th century, then by separating the Reformed Church from the Roman Church in the 16th century, then by dividing Protestants into a variety of staunchly defended positions. The only area of verbal agreement is with the term, “Real Presence,” which is generally agreeable to Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and Orthodox, solely by virtue of its breadth and uncertainty of meaning.

What do we believe and teach to be true to the Word of God and the faith we have received through the Church, as expressed in the catechism of the ACNA (To Be a Christian)? I believe that all we need to affirm is found in the words of the Post Communion Prayer as it is given, not in our liturgy from the Church of England, but in the new ACNA Texts for Common Prayer. Some of you know this prayer well enough to say it with me by memory. For the rest of you, I have included it on the bottom of your page of lectionary readings for today:

Heavenly Father, we thank You for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of Your Son, and heirs of Your eternal Kingdom. And now Father, send us out to do the work You have given us to do, to love and serve You as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To Him, to You, and to the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.
 
Look with me at the key phrases in this wonderful prayer. It says everything that we need to believe about the Sacrament. The Eucharist provides the “spiritual food,” not just the physical food, that nourishes and sustains us, the daily food for which we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. It also represents our communion with the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, of Whom we are “living members” and heirs of God’s eternal Kingdom. And we are assured of these truths through what we term the “holy mysteries.” These always will retain an element of mystery that demands and defines our faith.

What does it mean that the Eucharist is shrouded in “holy mysteries?” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “mystical” as something “having a spiritual reality or import not apparent to the intelligence or senses.” This is the sense in which we use the word, not in some vague New Agey way that suggests non-reality or something that cannot be verified by any of our senses, including the spiritual, but in the Biblical and particularly Pauline sense of something that once was hidden but now is being revealed.

Our best example for today is indeed from John 6, where Jesus Himself refers to the manna given in the wilderness as an incomplete and temporal foreshadowing of His own Body given for our eternal sustenance, the very Bread of Life. The word “Manna” is thought to mean “What is it?” Moses responded, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat” (Exodus 16:15). Note two things: that this bread is mysterious, and that it comes from God. And so, when Jesus tells His listeners in Capernaum that He Himself is the Bread of life also sent down from Heaven by the Father, He makes the connection and also presents to them a mystery that remains mysterious to this day.

Now we should be able to see more clearly than ever why it is that we call our faith both incarnational and sacramental. The Word that was made human flesh in Bethlehem is now made flesh once again in the Holy Eucharist and in us as members of His Body. In that sense we must agree completely with Luther about the ubiquity of the Body of Christ. Yet we also can agree with Calvin and others that His glorified Body resides physically, or corporally, in heaven, but spiritually in us and, in a greatly heightened sense, in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist where He is truly present, both spiritually and sacramentally, to all who believe, by the power and efficacy[1] of the Holy Spirit.

Thus the incarnational and sacramental mystery of the Eucharist also extends to the mystery of the Church as Christ’s Body corporately, which is precisely why gathering together constitutes the Church while no single individual is the Church. Alone we are incomplete. This is precisely why Jesus Himself said “I am the Vine and you are the branches” (John 15). And, even more  compellingly, He said, “Where 2 or 3 are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).

Of course by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit He is ever present with each of us. But in the clear sense that the Church as the mystical Body of Christ is made up of complementary members without all of whom it cannot exist (1 Corinthians 12:12-27), much less function as intended by God, so Jesus is more truly present with 2 or 3 corporately than He ever could be with only one.

When we share in His Body and Blood, as He promised to us in His own words, we are experiencing in the present all that it means to be partaking in, participating in, fellowshipping with Him in all His fullness, as a foretaste and guarantee of all that awaits us in our eternal life. This is what Paul was describing in I Corinthians 10:16: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation 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” (ESV). All these English words, “partaking, participation and fellowship,” as well as “sharing” (NASB) and “communion” (KJV) are used to translate a single Greek word, “koinonia,” and this rich cluster of meanings was absolutely foundational to the Eucharistic theology of Calvin and all the Reformers who came under the influence of his teaching, directly or indirectly.

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My Flesh is true food, and My Blood is true drink. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the Bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this Bread will live forever” (John 6:53-58).

When the Host and the Chalice are raised up and some people say the confession of Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” it does not mean that we have accepted the doctrine of transubstantiation that most Protestants find repugnant. It does not mean that any priest has performed a magic act. What “happens” at the altar is what God Himself does and He alone. The priest simply says the words and performs the actions.  

But it absolutely does mean that in these moments when the consecrated Host and Chalice are elevated, we are acknowledging that here we are drawn the closest to our Savior Jesus Christ that we ever can be. It does not mean that the bread and wine have ceased to be bread and wine; but it does mean that they have been blessed, consecrated and set apart for a holy purpose. It’s not that they have been changed; it’s rather that we are to be changed by our participation in Christ’s Body and Blood.

John Jewel wrote that it “was not Christ’s meaning that the wheat bread should lay apart its own nature, and receive a certain new divinity, but that He might rather change us” (Apology, Part II, 21). As Richard Hooker wrote, “The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not to be sought in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament.” And, with Jewell, he wrote that by Christ’s “divine power” and by the grace and supernatural efficacy of His Body and Blood added to the natural elements of bread and wine, there follows “a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration from death to life” (Laws, V.67.11). My prayer, every week, is that you and I all will be changed each time we come to this altar to receive the Body and Blood of our Savior, and that as changed persons we will leave this place to love and serve Him with gladness and singleness of heart.

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


[1] These two words (Latin virtus and efficacia) are found in many ancient discussions of the Eucharist, and they are frequently used by Calvin, Hooker and other Reformers. N.B. Virtus is used to translate Gr. dunamis and means “power,” not “virtue.”

May the Words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer (Psalm 19:14)

This morning I would like us to consider Paul’s words to the Ephesians about guarding our speech. Language is an amazing gift from God. It’s one thing that distinguishes us from all of God’s other creations on earth. It enables us to bless God, to praise Him, to give Him our thanks; to sing to Him, as Paul will say just a few verses later, with our psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

On the human, interpersonal level, speech is also a treasured gift from God. With it we can try to express our deepest feelings, share words of love, affirm and encourage each other, write poetry, record history, provide entertainment and humor, offer consolation, tell stories, describe things we have seen, recall experiences. It also enables us to share our faith with others. And that’s just a short list of positive things speech can do for us.

On the other hand, we know very well what Paul meant in today’s epistle reading when he warned about the negative consequences of speech. We recognize that while actions may indeed speak louder than words, it remains difficult and often impossible to take back words once they are spoken in anger, in falsehood, in blasphemy, in bitterness, in slander or in malice. Proverbs 11:9 says, “With his mouth the godless man destroys his neighbor.” Just imagine the destructive power that’s ours! A few chapters later the author writes, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Then he adds more poetically, “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit” (Proverbs 15:1, 4).

The harshest words in all of Scripture about the tongue are found in the Epistle of James, where he writes: ”The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. No one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the image of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing” (James 3:6, 9, 10).

Does this sound over the top? Or does it sound strangely familiar? There’s a broad consensus today that our own country is more sharply divided now than it ever has been throughout our entire lifetimes. Whether or not that’s true, one thing is certain. Never before has “freedom of speech” meant what it means today: the freedom to spew out the most venomous and vitriolic language without a thought of censorship or the offense of others. We tend to ignore altogether Paul’s admonition in Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.” This strongly suggests that we need to think carefully before responding and to measure our responses in terms of graciousness.

Instead, families, churches and community groups are fiercely divided and are feuding over an endless succession of political and social issues. And once a position, any position, is assumed and articulated in a mean-spirited fashion, the damage is done and the differences are seen as irreconcilable. At best, the damage control is daunting. To use the language of Facebook, a language with which I confess to having no more than a passing acquaintance, we live in a society where, once we have spoken out for a particular position, we simply “un-friend” those who hold a different one. “Healthy dialogue” has become a thing of the past.

What does the Apostle Paul have to say in our epistle reading regarding our speech? He begins by making an appeal to lay aside falsehood and speak only the truth. Here he definitely has God on his side. Looking again to the author of Proverbs, we read that “there are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him,” and number 2 on that list is “a lying tongue” (Proverbs 6:16-19). If a lying tongue sits that high on a list of things God hates, we need to take great care that we are speaking only the truth and, as Paul admonished us in last week’s epistle, we must safeguard our speech so that we are “speaking the truth in love” to the end that we are contributing to “the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15, 16).

Then, in addition to our speaking only the truth, Paul raises the bar by saying, “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” Let me read that again: “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” That’s a loaded statement that would challenge nearly everything that comes out of our mouths. Seriously, how hard do we work at saying only those things that edify others in the very moment that we say them? And notice that here Paul has moved from saying that our words should be “gracious” to saying that they need to impart grace to those who hear them. That’s definitely a statement that moves well beyond the negative and resoundingly into the positive. Wouldn’t that be a great goal for every Christian, to be a grace-giver in our conversations with all who cross our paths?

Many of us could throw in the towel right here. But Paul is not finished. It’s in this very context of what comes out of our mouths that Paul says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” Do we grasp that thought? Does is even cross our minds? Paul takes it beyond offending the human targets of our speech to saying that we are grieving the Holy Spirit of God, something that none of would wish consciously to do. This may not be a matter of committing the so-called unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but it seems precariously close. At the very least we should be quick to say that we would choose to guard against grieving God’s Holy Spirit. And that, in colloquial language, translates into “watch your mouth!” No wonder some of our mothers took that to mean “wash your mouth” with soap.

Next Paul gives a sort of summary statement of ways that we cause offense with our mouths. He does so by providing one of his oft-encountered grocery lists of negative things: “ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice” (verse 31). Imagine: no bitterness, no wrath, no anger, no quarreling, no slander and no malice! What about those who love to quarrel? I’ve known devout Christians and even clergy who seem to feed on quarreling. They may use a gentler term for it, but it comes across to others as a quarrelsome spirit.

What about anger? Wasn’t Jesus angry on at least one occasion, when he made a whip to drive the money-changers out of the temple, those who had turned His Father’s house into a den of thieves? But Paul already has answered that question up in verse 26 when, quoting from Psalm 4:4, he writes, “Be angry yet do not sin.” There he’s drawing an important line between righteous indignation, as exhibited by the sinless Jesus, and anger, as often exhibited by the rest of us. For us, it’s very hard to draw that inconvenient line between righteous anger and sinful anger.

And Paul also warns us not to go to bed angry. We may think this is good advice for getting a better night’s sleep, but that clearly is not on Paul’s mind. Rather he says that when we do it, whenever we go to bed without resolving our anger towards another person, we’re opening a window for Satan to attack us (verse 27). I imagine that every one of us knows exactly what Paul means by that! Deferring the resolution of anger rarely helps it to go away more easily. Deferred anger festers. We may hope that somehow it will go away by itself, and occasionally it appears to have done so. But when we leave it to chance, we’re passively depending on the other person’s grace rather than actively imparting grace to that person.

Does Paul offer any helpful and positive antidote for all these speech problems with which every honest person is all-too-well-acquainted? Indeed, he does. In the final verse of this chapter and the opening two verses of the next chapter, Paul counterbalances his grocery list of common faults in our speaking with an incredibly valuable grocery list of ways we can do better. There are 5 of these:

1. Be kind to one another. “Speaking the truth in love” would be high on the list of ways we can exhibit kindness to others. We’re not asked to compromise what we believe to be true, but we are shown that our truth-speaking needs not to be too edgy. Is Paul speaking directly to some of us on this subject? I think he is. Try never to be the one to whom someone says, “You could have been kinder.”
2. Be tender-hearted. I love this one. I happen to know that some of you are genuinely tender-hearted persons. And when you wear your tender-heartedness on your sleeve, others are likely to cut you a lot of slack when you occasionally and inevitably slip up in what you say.
3. Be forgiving. For many of us, the opposite of being forgiving may not be being unforgiving. Rather it’s being dismissive. It’s much easier to “un-friend” someone than to repair a relationship through forgiveness. We once had a person say that we only need to forgive those who come and ask us for forgiveness.  But Paul knocks that spirit out of the equation at once by saying that we are to forgive others “just as God in Christ has forgiven” us. When we pair that with what Paul had written in Romans 5 (8, 10) about Christ dying for us when we were sinners and were His enemies, we get the point. If we take the initiative in forgiveness, we are imparting grace by our godly behavior. When we harbor resentment and withhold forgiveness, we’re hurting both ourselves and the other person.
4. Be imitators of God as beloved children. Now Paul is saying something really broad and really daunting. Jesus and virtually all the New Testament writers call us God’s beloved children. And that is what we are positionally through our adoption into God’s own family. We need to be acting out that position by imitating God in our interpersonal relationships and in our daily speech. If you don’t find that challenging, then I can only assume that you aren’t paying attention to what Paul is writing here.
5. “Walk in love as Christ loved you and gave Himself for you, a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God” (5:2). As we remarked last Sunday, these are words with which we preface every Eucharist. We say them at the very point when, in thanksgiving for what God has given to us, we present to Him our offerings of substance, bread and wine. But the offering that God repeatedly says He desires most is the offering of ourselves. If we do that, and “walk in love,” we may also speak in love.

As David discovered in Psalm 51:17, when repenting of his sin with Bathsheba, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” This is why we say our Prayer of Confession right before we come to this table to receive in thanksgiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. If we are to walk in love as Christ loved us, this is the broadest thing that’s asked of us in this Pauline list of ways to do better. If we’re walking in love, we will be kind to others, we will be tender-hearted towards others, we will be forgiving of others, and we will truly be imitating God as His beloved children. Then at last we will be channels of God’s grace to others.

May we all renew our commitment to these things today. May they effect a change in us that, far from grieving the Holy Spirit of God, will instead rejoice His heart. When that change occurs, it will show up in our speech patterns. And when that happens, it will transform our relationships with others in positive ways that will bring glory to God Himself. 

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

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
 
Since most of you already know that today’s epistle reading from Ephesians is among my favorite passages in Holy Scripture, you might think that I’ve taken a liberty with the revised common lectionary in order to use this as my sermon text. On the other hand those of you who have been following the lectionary over the past few weeks will recognize that it’s purely serendipitous for these verses to show up today, to our mutual nourishment.

Several themes emerge from these verses, including some very important things about our interpersonal relationships as members of the body of Christ. Paul starts out in vs. 2 by mentioning humility, gentleness, patience, and tolerance, all governed by love. Later in vss. 11 & 12 he moves on to the diversity of gifts given to us for the carrying out of the ministry of the Church and the equipping of the saints. Finally in vss. 13-15, he writes about our need to be maturing in our faith, speaking the truth in love and building up the body in love.

Note the predominance of love as the governing principle. Love creates the only environment in which growth and positive relationships can flourish. It’s the only environment in which humility, gentleness, patience, and tolerance have any real chance of flourishing. It’s what should characterize all our relationships with each other. Paul will start off the next chapter with words that you hear prefacing every celebration of the Eucharist, but you may not know their context: “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God.” Those words provide a perfect transition between our exchanging the peace of Christ with each other and then presenting our gifts of bread and wine at His holy table to be consecrated, set aside, for His blessing and our spiritual nourishment. “Walk in love as Christ loved us.”

Tucked between these themes is the central one: the theme of unity within the Body of Christ, that elusive “oneness” we all desire yet know in our hearts to be the Church’s greatest failure. It’s a failure that grieves the heart of Jesus, Who fervently prayed for our unity in His last and longest recorded prayer, the High Priestly or Intercessory Prayer found in John 17. It seems unlikely that Paul had the privilege that’s ours of reading and knowing that great prayer, since John’s account of it was not written until about 30 years after Paul’s death. But there’s no question that Paul understood the concept and the importance of our being one in Christ. In these verses, in addition to his seven iterations of the word “one,” Paul challenges us to be “diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit” (vs. 3) and to “attain to the unity of the faith” (v. 13).

Unity requires some force, some glue, that holds everything together. In addition to his bookends of love, Paul’s dual emphasis on the Spirit and on faith should speak volumes to us about why the Church has failed. When it comes to being one in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and coming to a consensus on our faith, we have not done too well at “oneness.”

Tonight at Evensong we will be looking at a portion of Hebrews 11, that remarkable “Faith Chapter” of the Bible, with its impressively varied list of “heroes of the faith” from the triumvirate of patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, through Joseph and Moses, to Rahab the prostitute. And in the rest of the chapter, the author tosses in Abel, Enoch, Noah, four of the judges, King David, the prophet Samuel, and a generic list of unnamed prophets, rehearsing both their exploits and the instruments of their suffering and martyrdom. There we have quite a range of individuals and practices. Truthfully, I have no idea how Noah and Rahab would have gotten along, or how it was even possible for both of them to end up in Hebrews 11. But the glue that holds together all these faith heroes and explains their place in this chapter is summarized in a single word: faith.

The other bit of glue that Paul proposes as critical to our oneness in the Body of Christ is the Spirit, the unity of the Spirit, the “one body and one Spirit” of verse 4, surprisingly coupled with the “one hope of our calling.” If there is one place where most of the Church falls down in its quest for unity, it’s right here where Paul begins, with his emphasis on the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the mystery of the Holy Spirit frightens us away from seriously embracing the Spirit’s work in the Church. But we all know that while the gifts that Paul mentions here in Ephesians 4 are said to have been Christ’s gift of grace, everywhere else Paul refers to the Holy Spirit as the Source of our gifts, gifts that are given to every believer and are to be identified and exercised for the good of the whole, for the building up of the whole body. The exercising of those gifts is what initiates the hope of our calling. All of us are called. Each of us has a gift. Some of you have multiple gifts. The challenge is to be putting those gifts to work, verse 12, “for the equipping of the saints.” This is a really important piece of our quest for unity. And it puts into play the ultimate hope of our calling in God’s eternal Kingdom.

In I Corinthians 12 Paul tells us that the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each of us “for the common good” because the Body cannot function properly unless all of its parts are working together harmoniously. And it’s no coincidence that Paul uses his discussion of gifts of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12 to preface his great chapter on love. We hear it at most weddings. But we should be hearing it regularly, even routinely, not only as the key to a great marriage but also as an indispensable key to the functioning of the Church. It’s all about love. That’s what Paul was really saying. That’s what he meant when he wrote, “Now abide these three: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love” (I Corinthians 13:13). It’s about how our relationships should be playing out in the Church. We are to “walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us.”

And so, returning to Ephesians 4, prominent in Paul’s list of seven “one’s” is the trio in vs. 5 of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” In terms of numbers, the largest entity under the umbrella of Christianity is of course the Roman Catholic Church, where Pope Francis himself is fond of quoting this verse about unity. The Orthodox Church comes next, followed by the Anglican Communion and then the Lutheran Church. And even though there’s a striking amount of commonality among those faith communities, there are also strongly held positions that keep them apart. I think we’re making some progress, but we still have a long way to go.

Why is that? Isn’t there some way that we could strip away the layers of division and contentiousness? Paul wanted our “one body” to be characterized by “humility, gentleness, patience, and tolerance,” all governed by love. There’s our starting point.

But there also is our greatest challenge. If we could submit to the governance of the Holy Spirit in our lives and be persons who truly live by faith in the living God, and whose interpersonal relationships are entirely characterized by love, then we would have every chance in the world of healing our differences, of living as ONE.

How is this realistically possible? It’s possible because of the last of Paul’s seven “one’s.” Here it is (verse 6): “one God and Father of all Who is over all and through all and in all.” He is transcendent and sovereign, but He also is omnipresent and immanent. He is instrumental in all that happens in our world. That’s what is meant by “over all and through all and in all.”

This may remind you of what is said every time we prepare to receive the Holy Eucharist and these similar words about Jesus, God’s Son, are recited by the priest: “In Him and with Him and through Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory now and forever, Amen.” Those words, words that emphasize our incarnational and sacramental faith, occur at the climax of the consecration. Some believe that at the moment those very words are spoken, something happens at the table, something mysterious, something inexplicable, something wondrous, something exceeding human comprehension.

Here God is effecting whatever it is that God Himself effects, and it’s all to our benefit. Here, at this table, we receive what the God Who is “over all and through all and in all” is offering us “in, with and through” His Son: grace and nourishment, sustenance for the time ahead, the very Body and Blood of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.

Is this still hard for you to grasp? That’s actually a good thing, because it’s among those things that are meant to be beyond our comprehension, things that are in the realm of spiritual mystery, appropriated only by faith. And that mystery is to be celebrated. The full understanding of it all awaits us when, in the heavenly Kingdom, we feast with Jesus Christ Himself at His table in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Stay tuned next week and hear what our Lord Jesus Christ had to say about what happens at this table Sunday after Sunday and why it’s so important.

And understand that it’s here where we receive His abundant grace, are fed by His incomparable gift, and are enabled to love Him as He loved us and gave Himself for us and for our salvation. Only then are we truly prepared by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit to go forth into the world in peace to love and serve the Lord, through our loving care for others whom God places on our paths.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
 

​May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Today we’ve heard once again the story of what had to be the darkest time in the entire life of King David, who is described in Scripture as “a man after God’s own heart.” We marvel at the fact that a man who from his youth followed God’s leading so steadfastly, whose military exploits from the slaying of Goliath onward were accomplished in the power of God, who was anointed by God to be King over His people, whose lineage would include the Son of God incarnate Who would sit on the throne of David forever and ever, could have sunk so low as to commit unabashed adultery with Bathsheba and then to devise a murderous plot against Uriah. Yet in Matthew 1:6, we are reminded that "the wife of Uriah" was among the ancestors of Jesus.

Only God could act so mercifully and graciously out of His great lovingkindness. Still, we wonder at times how God could have pardoned David’s actions, and even more how this could possibly have been part of God’s eternal plan. The answer lies in our psalm, Psalm 51, where we find David pleading with God in those very terms: “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.” He acknowledges his sin without the slightest attempt to soften its reality or its depth. He says, “Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.”

But then David moves on beyond repentance to true reformation when he prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.” David recognized that unless repentance is coupled with a commitment to having a clean heart and a steadfast and willing spirit, there is no hope of experiencing the joy of God’s salvation.

It’s that reality that overwhelms every priest who stands at the altar washing his hands in preparation for offering to God’s people the very Body and Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. The words that the priest speaks privately in that moment are drawn from either Psalm 26, another psalm of David, where he writes, “I will wash my hands in innocence and I will go about Your altar, O Lord, that I may proclaim thanksgiving aloud and declare all Your wondrous deeds” (verse 6); or the words of today’s psalm, 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

The point is that our God is a forgiving God, a truth that David never forgot. In another great psalm, 103, my personal favorite, David writes: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (verses 8, 10-12). For David, that lesson was learned the hard way. But its reality was the source of his ability to start fresh and to bathe himself in God’s lovingkindness.

Every one of us can take comfort in these thoughts, because whether or not we personally have sunk as low as David, we can acknowledge with him both that we are born in sin and that our redemption requires that we individually plead with God: “Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7). Only then can we lay claim to those words from David’s prayer: “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit” (verse 12).

The concept of the joy of our salvation, so real to David, reminds us of the words of Jesus when He said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Later when He was in the Upper Room with His disciples, Jesus said, “These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11). Fulness of joy is what Jesus desires for those who follow Him. And He’s quite specific about it: He does not offer us the joy of the world, a joy that we all know to be transitory; rather He offers us His own joy, the only joy that can fill us up.

Our passage today from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is brief, but it’s filled with spiritual sound bites on which we could dwell devotionally to our great benefit. Verse 19 ends with one of those bites: “filled with the fulness of God.” My deeply devout mother, who would have been 106 on this the day of her birth, 7/29, actually wrote a musical setting of those words that we used to sing in the car on our family vacations. I have no idea what your family sang in your cars, though I’m certain it was not my mother’s song. But I can assure you that I never read these words without reflecting on my mother’s song and the spirituality that lay behind it.

When we pair that phrase, “filled with the fulness of God,” with the phrase in verse 17, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” and then we toss in the phrase from verse 16, “to be strengthened with power through His Spirit,” we have yet another probably unconscious reference by Paul to all three Persons of the Holy Trinity, just as we observed in last week’s reading from the previous chapter. When Christ dwells in our hearts through faith and we walk along our paths in the strength of the Holy Spirit, then we know what it is to be “filled with the fulness of God.”

The concept of being filled with God’s fulness is a bit mind-boggling. How could we presume to contain within ourselves God’s fulness without bursting? It may be that Paul is over-reaching here, but are we not at our best in every aspect of life when we over-reach? And why would that not be true in the spiritual realm, where just about everything we attempt sounds rather like over-reaching. If we presume to think that Jesus Christ Himself can literally dwell in our hearts by faith and that we can live each day in the power of the Holy Spirit, then the result should be at least an authentic taste of being filled with God’s fulness. Why not strive for that, overreaching as it may be?

In her song, my mother turned these words into a prayer by adding one more phrase: “filled with the fulness of God, Lord may I ever be.” That would make a great daily prayer for every one of us, a way to start each day. At the very least it provides food for thought that probably takes us several steps beyond where we live many of our days.

What all is included under the umbrella of God’s “fulness?” Certainly we could start out with His lovingkindness that He showers on us unstintingly. Then with King David, we can add God’s gracious forgiveness whereby He has “removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west.” Then we could further add with David that He gives to us “the joy of (His) salvation.” Along with that, we also have the joy of Jesus remaining with us so that we may be filled up with His joy. And finally we have the prospect of basking in the joy of Jesus for all eternity when we, entering into His presence, may hear His words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matthew 25:21, 23).

Take with you, today and every day that remains to you, that little phrase of Paul, “filled with the fulness of God.” Then turn the prayer of my mother’s song into your own prayer, “Filled with the fulness of God, Lord may I ever be.”

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