If I Had One More Sermon to Preach

Last Sunday my sermon topic was “If I Had Only One Sermon to Preach.” My assumption was that that would be my “swan song” here at St. Margaret’s, but then the Rector e-mailed me and said, “since next Sunday is your last Sunday here, why don’t you preach?” I agreed, knowing that I really hadn’t said it all. I guess I could call this sermon, “If I Had One More Sermon to Preach.” Having one more sermon to preach, my thoughts went immediately to the Eucharist, the service that, for me most completely expresses what it means to be a Christian.

The liturgy is, of course, in four parts or movements, each one addressing one of the needs for Christian living. The first part, the so-called proanaphora, is all that leading up to the offertory. It includes the lessons from Holy Scriptures and the sermon. It is a time for teaching and learning, a time to rehearse the great truths of our faith. As Christians we all need to be learning all the days of our lives. We need to be open to new truths as well as to look at old ones, whether we be seven or seventy. I like to think of an old friend of mine who is an atomic physicist and who spent his whole working life trying to unearth the truth about one obscure particle in the atom. If it took all that time for Bob to learn only part of the truth of a small fragment of creation, think of how much more difficult it is to learn the truth about the Creator. That realization has kept me open to hearing from other religious people who may also have a fragment of the truth about God. But of course preaching is more than imparting information. Preaching needs to inspire us, in part because we slip so easily into doubt - at least I do. Like my recovering alcoholic friends I need to go to church to sustain my belief in the God who saves me and keeps me whole.

The second movement of the liturgy is one we often pass over as the church’s way of funding itself, the offertory. But of course the offertory is much more than that. We bring up the offerings of bread and wine and money because these represent our body and blood, our lives, our work, our relationships. For us Christians these things are gifts from God, and have to be offered back to God. This is about stewardship, about how God makes sense out of our lives. On this Labor Day weekend we need to remember that we are all “called people,” called to our work in the world. Vocation is not just for clergy, but for all of us. I am fond of the saying I have already quoted to you, “Who we are is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.” It begins with the offertory, our offering up ourselves in the Eucharist.

The third movement of the liturgy includes, of course, the consecration of the bread and wine, presided over by the priest, but really the act of the whole congregation. In the consecration we ask God to accept our gifts and to make them into his gifts for us, the love, the power, the wisdom we need for life. Bread and wine, body and blood, are strange things to be bearers of blessing, but for the early church, and for our Lord, they stood for two things. Bread, of course, is the “staff of life,” the basic food to keep us going. The bread of the Eucharist acknowledges that fact, but adds to it the realization that we “do not live by bread alone,” that we need some basic food to fuel our live, spiritual food. The wine, symbolizing Christ’s blood, the thought of drinking blood, is a problem for many people. We need, I think, to go back to the mind of first century people. One of the things early people discovered was that blood was essential for life. When blood left the body of an animal or a person, death ensued. They saw the blood as the life of the creature. I believe Jesus took this belief into consideration in choosing this symbol. To partake of Jesus’ blood meant taking on his life, his spirit., the spirit of love and compassion and forgiveness. The truth most of us learn in life is that we are not “self made” persons, that we can’t “do it alone,” that we need to open ourselves to the grace, the love, the power of God. When I forget this, I do it to my own peril.
Then there is the fourth part of the Eucharist, a part that seems almost incidental, but which is critically important. It is the dismissal, the words from the deacon in which we are told to go back into the world “to love and serve the Lord,” “rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Christians, though we are meant to “worship God every Sunday in the Church,” are not meant to spend all our time within the church’s walls. Being Christian means being out in the world. St. John didn’t say “God so loved the church...” but “God so loved the world...” One of the great things about St. Margaret’s Church is the organized outreach this church exercises. You have so many opportunities to be serving in the world, not forgetting the forty or more hours a week most of you spend being “gainfully employed.” Going “in peace to love and serve the Lord is our weekly commissioning. You have learned and been inspired, you have offered up your life, your possessions, your work, your relationships to the Lord, you have been fed with Christ’s body and blood, now you are sent forth with peace to be Christ’s servants in the world. Amen