Sermon on the Holy EucharistYou know, this morning, each one of us left home. We left our beds, our living rooms, our television sets, our kitchens, our closets full of clothes, our cupboards full of stuff, we left all the symbols of our ordinary lives. Why did we leave home this morning? Not for the usual reasons. We didn’t leave home to be entertained. We didn’t leave home to buy and sell things. We didn’t leave home to hold a political caucus, or build something, or organize something, or take care of business. Why did we leave home this morning?
First of Three in a Series
The early Christians realized that in order to become the temple of the Holy Spirit they must ascend to heaven where Christ has ascended. They realized also that this ascension was the very condition of their mission in the world, of their ministry to the world. For there – in heaven – they wre immersed in the new life of the Kingdom; and when, after this 'liturgy of ascension,' they returned into the world their faces reflected the light, the 'joy and peace' of that Kingdom and they were truly its witnesses. They brought no programs and no theories; but wherever they went, the seeds of the Kingdom sprouted, faith was kindled, life was transfigured, things impossible were made possible. They were witnesses, and when they were asked, 'Whence shines this light, where is the source of this power?' they knew what to answer and where to lead men. In church today, we so often find we meet only the same old world, not Christ and His Kingdom. We do not realize that we never get anywhere because we never leave any place behind us.
To leave, to come... This is the beginning, the starting point of the sacrament, the condition of its transforming power and reality. -- Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1995, p. 28.
We left home to become the church of Jesus Christ this morning.
We left home in order to be lifted to a higher dimension of being.
We left home to seek first the Kingdom of God.
We left home because we have died with Him and so we will rise with Him.
We left home because when Christ was crucified, home ceased to comfort us, when God was rejected by this world that promises comfort, security, pleasure and power, this world lost its luster for us. So we left home, when the world said that God was no longer welcome at the heart of this world. No longer can we fool ourselves and say that the ordinary activities of the world - buying and selling things, building and striving for success, achieving a good self-image, exercising wealth and power, pursuing comfort, security and pleasure – no longer can we fool ourselves with the illusion that these activities will fulfill us. There is an emptiness to all these worldly aims, for when God came to this world, God was sent away, Christ was crucified, and so our illusions have died.
But strangely, it was precisely this, that opened the way of Joy for us!!!
To leave the comforts of home, to make the journey with Christ, brings us to our true home. And this morning, that is why we left our ordinary homes, our isolated, individual lives. We left there to come and gather here as the church of God, as the mystical body of Christ, as the citizens of heaven that Christ has made us to be. We came here to ascend to the Kingdom of God with Christ, to partake in the heavenly banquet as the body of Christ. We left all that clutter behind to have our vision cleared, our consciousness raised, our Love renewed and strengthened, for when we are in Love (and are we not a people in Love), we are in Joy.
Who leaves home but a lover bound for a union with his beloved? Who leaves home but a bride headed for her wedding feast? Who left home this morning when you left home? You are the lover, you are the bride, you are the one who has come here in love, for love, to be renewed and strengthened in divine love. And there is great joy in that. Greater joy than the world can ever give with its television programs, power suits, dieting regimes, and all the other things that claim to offer us some sort of fulfillment.
If you are not fulfilled in this life, welcome! You were not meant to be. A world without Christ is not a fulfilling place – it is an empty place of false appearances, clever tricks with smoke and mirrors, illusions.
If you watch television, you know this is true. What does each ad promise but a better life. Is it true? Have you tried buying these things? Do they really give you a better life, apart from the first high of buying something new? Do they really give you a better life? Or is it just a more cluttered and confused life, a life of more stuff? And now you have to find ways to deal with all that stuff? And the new stuff, quickly becomes old stuff. So, is it true?
And the scams just seem to be multiplying these days. When I try to find something on the web, I am appalled by the sophisticated websites that mimic others and pull you in all sorts of wrong directions in order to make money. I went online trying to find the INS website to download forms for a friend, and there are hundreds of very official looking websites with American flags and all the INS forms, but they are private businesses and charge you money for free government forms. And all this seems to be quite legal. What on earth? It’s the same old game, isn’t it?
So, is it true? Do all these things make our lives better?
No, that’s why we left them behind this morning, and that’s why we need to leave them behind every morning, and every moment. We need to let go of this ordinary home so that we can find our true home with Christ in heaven. Jesus loves us, yes, but He can’t do much for us if we won’t leave our old life in order to be loved and made new by him. We can’t put the new wine in the old wineskins. If we are not willing to leave the old home, how can Christ bring us to our true home.
And this has always been the hardest part, the part that stopped many a good Christian from coming to the wedding feast. There seemed so much important stuff happening at home, in our ordinary little, very complicated and consuming world. We have a hundred channels, lots of shows to watch on TV. And there is so much to do, to buy, to sell, to take care of. We can fill our days with exhausting details of all that we think we need to do in order to be happy. And its true in spirituality as well. We now live in a spiritual marketplace where we are told we need to read more books, attend more workshops, practice this or that program or regimen . . . and on it goes.
One thing is needful.
We need to leave all that behind and come to the feast. That is all.
We need to leave all that behind so that we can become open to love and be drawn by love to the one who loves us beyond all knowing, to Christ, and to his communion of love.
But leaving home is the hardest part. And we will struggle with it long and hard, if we are fortunate enough to struggle at all (and I’m sorry to say this, but most people don’t struggle at all – they don’t leave home, or if they do, they come to church and try to make it more like home.)
Flannery O’Connor, in her novel Wise Blood, has the character Hazel Motes preach to a crowd in the market place. “I preach the church without Christ,” he says, “where the lame don’t walk, the blind don’t see, and the dead just lay there.” And people follow him, they want to hear it, this message of a church that never asks them to leave home, this church that simply imitates the world, this church where the dead just lay there. It has been this way a long time. This is nothing new.
And fortunately, our service addresses it right at the start of our gathering in a beautiful and ancient prayer – the Collect for Purity.
Our homes are complicated places, cluttered with things and tasks and all of our thinking about them. We tend to carry all that with us in our distracted minds. Even as we enter the church, we are not paying attention to what we are doing. We are not paying attention to the One who draws us here because we have not yet truly left home until we leave the old thoughts and desires behind us. Then we can enter a new place, a place where the new creation draws us to Love and Joy beyond anything this world knows.
So the prayer reminds us.
The prayer lets us know that God sees all the clutter in our minds and hearts. The prayer asks us to become mindful of this situation as well, to observe ourselves and see all that is going on in there, clogging up the works with our ordinary thoughts and desires.
Some of us came this morning with judgmental thoughts rumbling round. Even if we didn’t know that, we saw someone and the judgments and prejudices got aroused. Our attention is captured by this.
Some of us are being pulled by a desire for chocolate, or coffee, or the exquisite Sunday meal we’ll enjoy later, or the game, or the pleasure of someone else’s imagined company, or our attention to the clock. Even if we didn’t know that when we came, the prayer reminds us that all that is running around our hearts and minds. How can we come into the house of prayer when we’ve carried our ordinary home with us here in our minds? We can’t, so the prayer bids us let it go. God knows all about it. Let it go.
Some of us are disturbed by some slight or offense or even a grand and dramatic injustice that was done to us. We are longing to get somebody back, give them their due, let them be hurt as we are hurt, or at least tell somebody how badly they’ve treated us. Even if we didn’t know that when we came, the prayer reminds us, because God sees all that stuff. And we can’t come into the Kingdom of God with that – those resentments don’t belong there. We have to forgive and let it go, for real and for good.
And you know what – it is nothing new. None of this stuff that rattles around in our minds and hearts amounts to anything real, it is nothing to separate us from the Love of God, or one another. It is nothing to get lost in shame about. It is really nothing at all but the old man or woman, the human personality, telling its old stories, acting out its old dramas, making its same old appeals for our attention. It is simply the way things are in this ordinary world, but we have been called to embrace a higher dimension of living – we have been called out of this ordinary life with its dead-ends to Eternal Life. And that is a world where two laws reign: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. In that world there is no room for all these crazy self-centered dramas. So let’s not strengthen these little things, let’s not give them our precious attention. Because all these thoughts and desires are being strengthened every time we give them our attention. Let’s become aware of what we are giving our attention to, let’s try to turn it away from what has captured it. We are being pulled in all these directions constantly without even knowing it. Jesus asks us to turn away from all this: this is what is meant by the simple word, repent – turn away from it. Let those thoughts go, don’t follow them, just turn away from them.
So don’t start judging yourselves or one another for it.
The prayer doesn’t judge. It just tells it like it is: God already knows this whole story. God already knows the silly, petty, crazy, very superficial thinking and feeling that is cluttering up our hearts and minds and holding us back.
So now, as we pray, we open with a prayer that is well over 1000 years old. Apparently they knew all this back then, long before the millions of self-help books and spiritual workshops, for the Collect for Purity invites us to leave all that chasing after illusions of comfort and control and to truly remember that we have left home this morning. We have left it all behind in order to follow Jesus. We’ve left our nets, like the first disciples, we’ve left our homes, our ordinary thoughts and feelings. And God already knows all about it. God sees it and does not condemn us. All God asks is that we take a good look at it ourselves, and then turn away from it, leave it behind, so we can be welcomed into the real church, not the church of the marketplace, not the consumer brands of religion, the real church, where the lame do walk, the blind do see, and the dead are born anew to eternal life.
Collect for Purity
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
July 9, 2006
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