Sermon on the Holy Eucharist
Second of Three in a Series
I was listening to the music of Thomas
Tallis, one of the great English choral composers, and my son Brendan came into
the room and sat down. I asked him what he felt when he listened to this music,
how did he experience this music? Brendan used the word “serene” and I was
pretty amazed that a 9 year old boy had that in his lexicon. I used the word
“sublime” and then, because I rarely use or see that word in use these days, I
said I had better look it up in the dictionary to make sure I was using the
right word to describe what I felt. Brendan went to the shelf, took the
dictionary down and looked it up for me. Together we skated our fingers down
the page, and found the word. To refine, to elevate . . . yes, that's right,
except that I was surprised to see a word I thought of as an adjective as in
“this is sublime” or a noun as in referring to “the sublime,” being described
as a verb. To refine, to elevate . . . to sublime.
Sublimation
is the process of refining, elevating, lifting higher. It reminds
me of the
parable that Jesus tells of the people who take their places at a
banquet, all
the important people moving straight to the most important seats, the
highest
seats, the highest places. And then someone comes in and humbly
sits in the
lowest seat of all. The Host comes to this guest and says,
“Friend, come up
higher,” and leads him to a seat beside him. The Host recognizes
the presence
of the friend, the one who loves, and elevates his humble guest.
What did the
guest do? I think he sublimated his ordinary desires, you know the
desire of
taking the best for himself. He sublimated his desire to be
regarded as
important, sublimated these ordinary self-seeking and self-serving
desires. His
sublimated those egocentric desires and fed the energy towards a
greater desire
to simply be at the banquet in the presence of the Host and the great
assembly. And so, the Host could fill him with the new life of
the Spirit and sublime
him, elevate him, refine him, lift him up.
We come here to church to sublimate
our base drives for praise, pleasure and power, to surrender our self-serving
thoughts and actions, and turn our desire towards serving God. Then we can be
filled with the wine of the Spirit and sublimed – refined, lifted up to a
higher realm, even to the Kingdom of God.
Last week, I talked about the first
step at length, in the metaphor of leaving our ordinary lives, with all our
ordinary and well-practiced habits of mind, heart and body, behind, so that we
might come into the newness of the Kingdom of God, partake of the heavenly
banquet and be made new ourselves. The opening acclamation of our service tells
us that we are here and now coming into the Kingdom of God. The Collect for
Purity reminds us to pay attention to what is clogging up our minds and hearts
right now, and let it go, turn away from it, so that God might be able to lift
us up higher. It is humility, an honest practice of self-observation and
surrender, that will allow us to take the lowest place in God's Kingdom. And in
God's Kingdom, the lowest place is better than the highest seat at the court of
the mightiest emperor on Earth. When we know that, we are being refined, lifted
up, into the sublime reality of loving God and loving our neighbors right here
and now.
So, once we have collected our
attention and drawn it away from the self-seeking thoughts that gunk up
our
hearts, once we are offering a more pure attention to God's Kingdom of
Love, we
collect our attention around the reading of Holy Scripture. Holy
Scripture, and
most especially the Gospels, are words that come to us from a higher
place. They are meant to stretch us beyond our ordinary
understanding, to refine and
elevate us, and ultimately, if we put the teachings of Jesus into
practice
sincerely, to transform us.
This is why we elevate the reading of
Scripture. We elevate it physically at the lectern. We elevate the Gospel book
before we read it. And because we are meant to put these sublime words of Jesus
into practice in the midst of our daily lives in community with one another, we
read the Gospel from the middle of the gathered community. It is the putting
into practice of the Gospel that brings the Kingdom of God into our daily
lives, and it is the attention to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that lifts this
gathered assembly up from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of God.
The sermon is a place for reminding us
to put the Gospel into practice in life. As preachers, we strive to preach
primarily from the Gospel and to bring the higher truth of Jesus Christ into
some sort of words and images that will help to draw us more deeply into the
reality of God's kingdom as we are drawn to this banquet in holy communion with
Christ and one another.
After the sermon, we remember that we
have set our hearts upon God, as known in the Trinity. We do this in the
ancient words of the Nicene Creed, which is more a mystical love poem than it
is a statement of rational beliefs or concepts. This movement from the ancient
words of Scripture, to the modern interpretation of the Sermon, and then to an
ancient creed of the Church reminds us that we are being drawn beyond our
understanding of time. The Kingdom of God is an ever-present reality, in the
ancient words of Scripture, in the living experience of disciples today, and in
the mystical formulations of the 4th century church. The Kingdom of
God is the same then as now, it is the Kingdom of Love, always.
Having expressed our love for God in
the Creed, we now express our love for one another in the Prayers of the
People. There is much to give thanks for, and yet, in the prayers of the people
we find, again and again that our prayers remind us of the broken state of our
world, and of our own lives, the broken relationships, the suffering and disease,
the fragmented nature of our lives. As we pray for healing and reconciliation
in our world, we are lead back to the broken, fragmented, diseased states
within us. We see again the lack of unity within each one of us, that keeps us
turning away from one great, unified desire for God and spending our lives in
fragmented efforts at serving our many little selves, our many little desires
for comfort, pleasure, praise and recognition. And so, looking at ourselves, at
our own lives, in the light of the Kingdom of Heaven, we can see so much that
misses the true aim of our lives. The true aim of our lives is loving God and
our neighbors. So much holds us back. It is time for the confession of sin.
And once we confess our sin, it is
forgiven. Indeed, it is already forgiven. But it is so good for us to see the
sin, confess it, and know ourselves to be forgiven. For then we can turn
towards God's Kingdom in freedom and with singleness of heart, purity of
purpose, and in great humility know that the lowest seat at this banquet is
higher than anything our false selves have to offer us. No wonder that when we
are possessed by the false selves we feel anxious, fearful, hard-hearted,
defensive, cut-off from the soft heart of God's life and the subtle and sublime
energies of Love. In those inner states, we are cut-off, because we have cut
ourselves off. So we confess, we are forgiven and free, and we take the lowest
seat in the Kingdom, in immense wonder, gratitude, and awe.
Absolution assures us of what we
already know in our Baptism –– we are forgiven, loved, and free.
And so, in that tremendous love, we
greet one another with the holy kiss, the peace of God.
I want to ask you to pay special
attention this morning as we continue our worship. Listen to the music in your
own voice this morning. Listen as you say the Creed, is there the warmth of
love in your voice? Listen as you pray for the world. Are love and hope
resonating in your voice? What
we say with the music of our voices is far more penetrating than the words we
use. The vibration of sound is more alive, and the music in our sound says so
much.
A child once said that love is when
your name is safe in someone's mouth.
Are these prayers safe in your mouth?
Are the words of Jesus safe in your mouth? Is the body of Christ safe in your
mouth?
This is an awareness you might want to
extend out into the world after the service, listen for the music in your voice
and in other voices as you speak. Pay attention and try to make it sublime,
something that lifts up and elevates one another. This is a beautiful gift to
give the world.
And right here and now this morning,
in our worship, offer this gift to God and to our assembly in the music of your
voice as you pray.
At the Peace, pay attention to how you
meet one another, how you greet one another, the music in your voice as you
say, “the peace of the Lord.” Is the peace of the Lord safe in your mouth? Is
it being expressed by your whole being as you greet one another with the holy
kiss of God's peace? And kiss can be a metaphor –– not everybody wants to be
kissed, so you don't need to actually kiss. But kiss is a beautiful image for
how the peace of God meets between us as we meet one another in the Kingdom.
Try an experiment this morning: don't
try to greet everybody. Just greet the people around you, but be
very aware of
expressing God's love as you do, with careful attention. There
are no rules to
it. Some people like to hug, some don't, or at a given moment,
some may and
some may not. Loving is paying attention to such things and
responding with
selfless care for the other. So bring your attention just to the
people around
you and greet them carefully, with great love. In such humble
little ways is
the Kingdom of God expressed, just greeting one or two or three others
in love. As Mother Teresa said, we can do no one great thing, but
we can do little
things with great love. This morning do the little thing of
greeting just a few
other people with the great love of Christ, and sharing that deep
peace.
This is our ministry of reconciliation
in action. This is the Beloved community. And in these little ways does God's
love grow within and among us, and lift us higher. Amen.