Nielsen’s Nook

I came across an interesting entry in The Anglican Tradition: a Handbook of Sources edited by G. R. Evans that caught my eye this morning while I was reading. A little water is customarily added to the wine during the consecration of the elements (BCP, 404). Buy why? How has this come to us and what is it attempting to communicate to those who participate in the Eucharist?

Part 3, §110, Evans directs us to the Council of Florence and the Decree for the Armenians:

Water is mixed in because, according to the testimony of the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church mentioned in the preceding discussions, it is believed that our Lord himself instituted this sacrament with wine mixed with water. Furthermore, this is a fitting representation of our Lord’s passion. … For we read that both, that is, blood and water, flowed from the side of Christ’ (Evans, 120-1, c.f., John 19:34).

Further more, Revelation 17:15 appears to equate the waters with the people and so the mixing of water and wine marks out the union that is celebrated at the Eucharist between Christ and His people.

For we see that the water represents the people and the wine manifests the blood of Christ. Thus, when wine and water are mixed in the chalice, the people are united with Christ, and the faithful people are closely joined to him in whom they believe.’ (Evans, 121)

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter. [1]

These lines of Eliot give me pause to ponder. Many changes have come in life and many that I have longed for have eluded me. A hardened unbelieving retirement age man told me one time that he did not have any regrets towards the end of his life. What sort of devil can so numb our souls that we become indifferent to the sense of loss and regret that grows up around us, great weeds in our aging garden?

I watch my little girl play in the sprinklers, make mud volcanoes, and sprinkle music power on me. Flashes of the once-before short like a fused bulb across my weathered memory. Ah, when time was free and naivety had thrown its blissful cloak across the mud puddle.

There was something tranquil about the moment. It wasn’t important that we were in our back yard. It wasn’t important that we were together on a Saturday or otherwise. The warming peace that comes, even now while writing, is that of simple communion, just being together. Contentment, I think, is the obscene key to unlocking love.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning. [2]

I’m 34 and I’ve got regrets. Places I should have gone. Things I should have studied. Holes that I can’t seem to circumscribe. And yet, if I understand Eliot here, the exploration is not sailing away from our regrets, but moving through them.

For me, I am sure that I will never mature past the Cross, where in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, God passes over and forgives all for which I have regret. The Eucharist is a cross-shaped celebration of life in Jesus, where all the holes are circumscribed. It is a time when I confess my sins, taste the goodness of God, and hear the Gospel of grace proclaimed over me in thought, word, and deed. In the stillness there is a reposed reminder that I am aboard a Great Ship that continues moving Christward as it has for millennia. In dying I am raised, indeed my end is my beginning.

[1] Eliot, T.S. East Coker, V.190-201.

[2] Eliot, T.S. East Coker, V.202-209.

Thirsty ones come to the waters! The Lord sees our want; he knows our deepest needs. With this intimate knowledge of us he does not exploit us; but, he seeks to fulfill us. The human situation is not simply that we “still haven’t found what we’re looking for;” but, that we are looking for all the wrong things. Why do you spend money, the prophet asks, on what you do not need? Why do you work so hard for that which does not satisfy? Before and after these questions, the Lord has wrapped us up in his mercy: you who are poor, come and eat what is good, delight yourselves in rich food, so that you may live.

This passage in Isaiah seems to be at least one of Jesus’ sermon texts in his Sermon on the Mount, namely in his introduction we commonly call the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (Matthew 5:6, author’s translation).

If the questions posed by Isaiah 55 affect you; if they thud off the emptiness that I believe we all have when we consider the lusts of our own flesh; then, I believe Jesus’ words have a most merciful weight for us.

Most of us don’t strive after the unsatisfying because we really enjoy being unsatisfied. Sometimes we do not realize just how unsatisfied we really are. Other times we know that we’re unsatisfied, but don’t feel we have any better options. In even other situations, we cannot imagine how any of this matters because we’re operating in an economy of the world that uses completely different currency than the economy of life. It is as if we have fistfuls of cash we just printed out on our home computer, funny-money, and we cannot imagine why it buys us nothing.

It is not the rich that buy what Jesus offers. In fact what Jesus offers cannot be bought at all; it is received as a gift. We see that in Isaiah 55: Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. In the language of the Beatitudes, it is the poor who paradoxically trade in Christ’s economy, for theirs and theirs only is the kingdom of heaven. These are not the blissful poor, the ignorant poor. No, they are painfully aware of their poverty, such that they mourn it.

My wife and I have a really nice set of living room furniture that we could never have afforded to buy.  If you knew my wage, you would wonder how this furniture happens to be in my home at all. It is furniture that was given to us by a most gracious friend when we bought our home. So when people pay compliment to it when they visit our home, I am quick to mention that it was a fantastic gift. I cannot boast in myself or my provision, but in what the Lord has given us benevolently.

Ultimately the couch is going to disintegrate; but it is a figure of the way God’s gifts work in the divine economy. He gives us the greatest riches in such away that we may not point to it as a result of our own labor or merit or wealth; however, what God gives us is really ours to care for and walk in.  This gives the Christian the impetus for meekness.

Isaiah has asked us why we hunger and thirst for that which does not satisfy. Jesus proclaims that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. We of ourselves will chase after all sorts of things, all the wrong things. Christ comes to us that our affections may be recalibrated and our appetites whet for what is glorious and truly wealthy.

Righteousness is a character trait of the Lord. God is not righteous because he does certain things. Rather he is simply righteous, in and of himself. We are created as the image of this righteous God and yet we have chosen a path that is most unlike him. We live in a way that is disharmonious with our status as image and this disjunction is the root of our dissatisfaction.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:10-11 that we are blessed when we are persecuted for righteousness sake, when we suffer on his account. In these two verses the grammatical parallelism identifies righteousness as Jesus himself.

And so we come full circle. God sees us buying everything but what will truly satisfy and grow us. He is not content to placate our “bentness,” to multiply our fists full of funny-money or nice furniture. Rather, he enters our economy with his own currency, himself. It is an infinite currency that has only one bill. In God’s economy there is Christ: Christ incarnate, Christ crucified, Christ risen and exalted, Christ the Lord. He alone is the righteousness of God. He alone is the one human being who has lived as the image of God also in his likeness. As such, fellowship with God has been restored for humanity (Colossians 1:15-20).

When we see what God offers all humanity in Jesus, how foolish are we to not seek the Lord while he may be found. He calls us to lay down the fistfuls of funny-money that we have printed off for ourselves and lay hold of Christ. Why, scripture asks, do you spend your money for that which is not bread.  Jesus will later ask why do you labor for bread that perishes, “for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (John 6:33)

Every Sunday this truth is proclaimed, reenacted, and received by faith. The Word of God is spoken, inviting all who thirst to the living waters. Every Sunday we celebrate the Word of God broken in which the bread of life is given to the eater that in mind and body, the whole person may be gratified with Christ, who alone satisfies. For it is Jesus who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4:6).

I have a feature in my blog engine that alerts me when people cite a post I have written. While that sounds like a cool feature, it was quite strange when I saw today for the first time a citation of an article I wrote, entitled “A Reformed Liturgical Diet,” from October 2006. The article itself is an exegesis of the Westminster Shorter Catechism which was aimed to show that Reformed churches have historically had a much higher view of the Sacraments than present day instances.

As one who deeply loves, cherishes and practices expository preaching, you can imagine my shock when the name of the post citing “A Reformed Liturgical Diet” was entitled “Expository Preaching under attack.” I would have appreciated the opportunity to interact with the post 2 years ago; however, since I didn’t then, I will do so now. So before you go any further, please take a moment to do the following:

1. Read my original post A Reformed Liturgical Diet
2. Read Expository Preaching under attack at the Two-Edged Sword blog including the comments.

A Two-Edged False Dichotomy

First, for the record, I believe deeply that expository preaching is crucial in the churches of Jesus Christ. So I take exception to the way I have been misrepresented. Preaching is “Christian storytelling” and it is every bit as sacramental as the Lord’s Table. God, after all, is not words of any language. He certainly transcends the confines of vocabulary and exegesis. Nevertheless, the Church has been picked up and carried throughout history through the Spirit’s attending to the preaching of the Word of God. In fact, I would say that to the extent we unfold the Word of God to the people is the extent to which God empowers the sermon. The point of my article is to urge readers back toward the balanced liturgical diet given us in the Scripture of Word and Sacrament. To pit the preaching of the Word over against the Sacraments is a false dichotomy, at least in the Christian economy.

Second, historically speaking the Reformers were fighting for an increased frequency of the Lord’s Table in worship. At the time of Luther the Eucharist was celebrated only once a year and then the laity only received the cup. Calvin is fairly clear that he would have preferred a weekly communion but had to settle for quarterly with the council at Geneva. So it is a bit strange to me, historically speaking, to hear modern-day Reformed so dismissive of sacraments for which our tradition gives instances of those who were once willing to give even their lives for them. Calvin’s seminary graduates had a life expectancy post graduation of about six months. Influences on Calvin, perhaps we should call them teachers, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli in turn had great impact on Thomas Cranmer such that the 1552 Book of Common Prayer is dedicated to Vermigli.

Third, when “Mr. Baggins” comments that “These guys don’t know what they’re talking about. They are attacking preaching itself,” I am compelled to remind us all that my piece was an exegesis of the Westminster Shorter Catechism on the subject of the Lord’s Table itself. I have spent a bit of time in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, in particular to study the nature of the Sacraments in the life of the Reformed churches. I do not want to impute such lack of engagement to Lee at Two-Edged Sword; however, Mr. Baggins makes assertions without even hobbit sized amounts of substantive argumentation. Consequently, it is hard to see how he is not dismissing the Westminster Confession and significant influences on its development like John Calvin and other Magisterial Reformers all in one broad stroke.

In short, I would expect that Lee and I have different universes of discourse in approaching the question of the role of the sacraments in the life of the Church. John Chrysostom would never have gone for preaching apart from the sacraments and yet he is held up as substantiating Mr. Baggins assertions. What I leave you is not a gauntlet (for I have no desire to engage in polemics here); but, instead an exhortation to consider how Chrysostom, himself a huge influence on Calvin and other reformers, would approach the balance that has historically always existed between Word and Sacrament.

It occured to me this morning, while observing fellow parishoners receiving Holy Communion, that there seemed to be a distinct impression from the Reformation in the distribution of the elements. It is my understanding that in the period prior to the Reformation churches celebrated the Eucharist generally once a year and when it was celebrated laity received only the bread, never the wine.

One of the things the Reformation fought to recover in the Church Catholic was both the frequency and unity of the Eucharist that they perceived present in the Church Fathers. It is communion with the undivided Christ that is promised in the Eucharist. As such both kinds, bread and wine, which the Lord commissioned, should be used. Further, with such weighty thing as communion—communion with the Living and Incarnate Christ being offered—it made sense to incorporate the Eucharist back into the regular corporate worship of the Church.

I do not know at this point how this plays out in Roman or Eastern Orthodox churches (or for that matter churches outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Dallas); however, what I see at St. John’s is that it is the Lay Eucharistic Minister and the Sub-Deacon, both being laity, who serve the consecrated chalice to the parish during Holy Communion. Perhaps this is a visible reminder that the chalice has been returned to the people that they might celebrate their full and gracious bond to the undivided and perfect Christ.

Chapter 14 of Calvin’s Institutes is a marvelous treatise on the Sacraments, which are “another aid to our faith related to the preaching of the gospel.” [1] It is the words that accompany the Sacraments that makes them what they are. [2] “A sacrament is never without a preceding promise but is joined to it as a sort of appendix, with the purpose of confirming and sealing the promise itself, and of making it more evident to us and in a sense ratifying it.” [3]

At this point Calvin seems to be saying, that God conveys grace to his people through the symbiosis of Word and Sacrament. It is not “enough if the priest mumbled the formula of consecration” to himself; rather, the words of institution should be “added to the element and it will become a sacrament.” As such the sacrament “requires preaching to beget faith.” [4]

Sacraments as Seals

Calvin then deals with an objection that apparently was contemporary with him. The objection went something like this. If the word that precedes the sacrament is the true will of God then the sacrament adds nothing to it. If the word that precedes is not the will of God, then the sacrament that is predicated on that word will not teach it.

Calvin replies concisely that the sacraments function much like government seals. If the seals were attached to a blank piece of paper, these seals would be in vain; however, when they are “added to the writing, they do not on that account fail to confirm and seal what is written.” [5]

The sacraments, being signs or tokens of God’s covenant, are therefore, “exercises which make us more certain of the trustworthiness of God’s Word.” As “visible words,” sacraments represent “God’s promises as painted in a picture.” [6] Calvin goes on to say that we are free to call sacraments “the pillars of our faith”:

For as a building stands and rests upon its own foundation but is more surely established by columns placed underneath, so faith rests upon the Word of God as a foundation; but when the sacraments are added, it rests more firmly upon them as upon columns. Or we might call them mirrors in which we may contemplate the riches of God’s grace, which he lavishes upon us. For by them he manifests himself to us (as has already been said) as far as our dullness is given to perceive, and attests his good will and love toward us more expressly than by word. [7]

Conclusion

It seems explicit that for Calvin, to have the word alone, preached or read, is expressly deficient in the attestation of God’s good will and love towards us. That is not to say that the Word is not sufficient for our salvation. Rather it is to say that the Word on its own terms establishes the sacraments as an outward means by which Christ communicates to us Himself and all the benefits of redemption.[8] As such “Christ is the matter or (if you prefer) the substance of all the sacraments; for in him they have all their firmness, and they do not promise anything apart from him.” [9]

I’d welcome your reflections on this. I would expect, but cannot promise, that my wife will have a pretty insightful reflection on this at Per Caritatem.

[1] Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John Thomas McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., The Library of Christian Classics ; V. 20-21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 4.14.1.

[2] Ibid., 4.14.6.

[3] Ibid., 4.14.3.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 4.14.5.

[6] Ibid., 4.14.6.

[7] Ibid. Emphasis added.

[8] This is purposefully Westminster Confession language which I hope will be helpful for Reformed Christian readers of a Presbyterian or Reformed heritage. See specifically questions 85-97 in the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

[9] Calvin, 4.14.16.

For further reading see, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology)

For those who enjoy context, our scripture readings this morning at St. John’s were Acts 1:1-14; Psalm 47; 1 Peter 4:12-19; and John 17:1-11. ]

I walked away from worshiping the Resurrected and Ascended Christ this morning with a profound impression that I want to encapsulate here. The Gospel promises eternal life for all who believe in Jesus Christ. Many of us, for manifold reasons, have come to believe that eternal life is something we hope to participate in after we die. It’s out there somewhere beyond time. In a sense that’s true. Eternal Life is beyond time; however, that’s because eternal life is God himself, who is alone alive by no other cause than himself.

It is this God, revealed to us in Scripture, that has not been content to keep eternal life all to himself, to remain a hermit of divine proportions. Rather, God came down, stooping, as it were, to bind himself to us in the person of His Son, Jesus the Christ. This Christ is our life, our eternal life, for he has trampled down sin, death and hell for us by his own death. Now being raised from the dead, Christians celebrate this life now in their lives. It is not something that we will only one day have, but Christ gives himself fully to us now.

This is celebrated in the liturgy every Sunday. Eternal Life, himself, calls us to worship, speaks to us in His Scriptures, hears our confession, forgives us our sins, and bids us to eat his flesh and drink his blood - to partake of Him, who is alone the life of the world. Such is the bond of love that Christ has made to his people. The cold shackles of sin, death and hell have been burst opened by Life, who has said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:29-30 ESV)

Such is the union we see as Life, himself, prays for his Church. We see his longing for unity with us as we demonstrate that bond in love to each other.

__________
HT: Fr. David Houk, Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, preached the sermon that spawned this meditation.

Listen now [14 min]:

In light of the post a few days back on The Role of the Eucharist in the Sanctification of the Christian, I found a great article by Dr. Craig Higgins, Sr Pastor of Trinity Church PCA in Rye, New York. I commend the article, Spiritual Formation and the Lord’s Supper: Remembering, Receiving, Sharing (Summer 2006, Vol 24, No 3, pp 71-78), to you and wanted to share an insightful quote from Robert Bruce, the Scottish Reformation era pastor on the nature of Christ received in the Eucharist:

It is certainly true that we get no new thing in the Sacrament; we get no other thing in the Sacrament, than we get in the Word. For what more would you ask that really to receive the Son of God himself? Your heart can neither desire nor imagine a greater gift than the Son of God, who is King of heaven and earth…. Why then is the Sacrament appointed? Not that you may get any new thing, but that you may get the same thing better than you had it in the Word. (Robert Bruce)

HT: Paul Buckley at Words, Words, Words for directing me to this article and to Pastor Craig for writing it.