CLent1

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 9:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

February 22, 2010

Some people have asked when the next instructed eucharist will be.

And I thought, why not during Lent?

So, during the Sundays of Lent, I’m going to give a series of five sermons on The Holy Eucharist

1)     Coming to church, Baptism, Sacrament

2)     The Word – read, sung, proclaimed, prayer?

3)     The Offering – gifts exchanged, prayer?

4)     The Great Thanksgiving

5)     Sent forth

Coming to church. How do you enter into this house of God?

A couple comes into the church,

dipping their fingers into the bowl with the baptismal waters

and signing the cross on their foreheads.

In their pew, they kneel for a moment of quiet prayer.

They ask God to be present to them this hour.

They thank God for the blessings of the week.

They cross themselves and sit back in the pew,

and look over the bulletin until the organ prelude starts.

And as the service begins, their minds know every word of the liturgy.

Their hands and knees and feet move into the different postures,

a choreographed dance that this dance team

has done together for years.

A young woman checks out the Episcopal church nearest her

on the internet and decides to attend one Sunday morning.

She went with her parents to another denomination as a young girl

until they moved.

Once settled in their new city, they never found a church they really liked.

The Sunday paper in the morning and afternoons with friends

became the pattern and they just stopped going.

Recently she went to her college roommate’s wedding,

which was in an Episcopal church –

-        very different from the church she had attended as a child.

She liked what she experienced there during the wedding ceremony –

the sacred feel of the interior space, the quietness.

So she’s decided to try it out.

She walks up the steps, feeling a bit awkward;

sees an usher with bulletins;

goes to the door where he is,

smiles and takes one from him.

She looks inside the church at people sitting quietly,

some kneeling.

She has to figure out where to sit and looks up the aisle.

When she sees an empty spot right next to the aisle,

she goes and sits there.

She feels a bit exposed as she looks at the unfamiliar and tries to decipher the bulletin.

As the service begins, she follows the bulletin line by line,

jostles hymn book and prayer book,

and watches those around her for cues of when to do what.

It is after she has walked up and taken communion,

watching with eagle eye what the person right before her does,

it’s after communion that she settles back in her place and is still,

listening to the soft singing,

watching others walk by her;

everyone going in the same direction,

but each one taking his or her own steps

to receive something from God that day -

that she decides she will come back.

The couple and their two children get to church just as the tower bell is ringing.

A few minutes to talk with friends and then get the kids

from their Sunday School room to the bathroom

and then hurry over to church.

They get to the door, just as the procession has started down the aisle.

They scout for a place to sit.

They prefer to sit up front so the kids can see.

But, today, they have to sit in the back pew.

By the time they deal with coats and get somewhat in place,

the processional hymn is finished and the priest is saying,

‘Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins.’

This is a new season, new words,

and they get their leaflets opened and find their place.

The children are old enough to read

and so the parents point through the hymns as they are singing

and show them the responses to say in the prayer book.

During the sermon, the dad sees his son drawing on the bulletin

with the little yellow pencil from the back of the pew.

The boy is drawing what looks like a comic strip.

The first frame has a stick Jesus with a halo

facing a mean looking stick figure

who is pointing to the stones on the ground.

The second frame has shows a stick Jesus at the edge of a cliff,

looking down.

Then a third sketch of Jesus standing on the top of a columned building

– must be the temple.

And then the dad watches his son draw a fourth scene -

Jesus walking away from the mean looking stick figure devil.

The dad realizes he has missed most of the sermon, but that’s okay.

He saw something better, his son pondering what he had heard in Sunday School and in church,

drawing his own interpretation of the gospel reading.

The teenage girl slips up into the balcony.

Even though she knows God is everywhere,

it is here that she feels his presence the most.

She is either sitting with her family, or her friends, or acolyting.

When she is sitting in the pew,

sometimes she doesn’t remember a word that has been said or read,

as she daydreams about school and friends,

but she has a sense of contentment, belonging

as the liturgy washes over her.

When she’s at the altar, assisting the priest,

she is more attentive to words and gestures

and likes the sense of holiness -

of knowing that God is right here,

in the bread and wine, in the music floating through,

in the faces of the people she sees at the altar rail.

Worship. Church.

We show up for different reasons, bringing in with us all kinds of needs.

We join Christians who have shown up through the ages.

We read texts that go back thousands of years.

We pray the same prayers that millions upon millions have prayed.

What is it that we come here for?

We come to encounter the living God.

And I believe that we show up expecting to be changed in some way.

It is the doors that admit us to this mysterious place.

Lay aside, they say, all that cramps and narrows,

all that sinks the mind.

Open your heart, lift up your eyes.

Let your soul be free, for this is God’s temple.

It is likewise the representation of you, yourself.

For you, your soul and your body,

are the living temple of God.

Open up that temple,

Make it spacious, give it height.

Heed the cry of the doors.

Of small use to you is this house of wood or stone

Unless you yourself are God’s living dwelling.

The high arched gates may be lifted up,

And the portal parted wide,

But unless the doors of your heart are open,

How can the King of Glory enter in?          [Romano Guardini]

Baptism and Holy Eucharist are the two foundational ways we enter in.

And Baptism –

Baptism is an invitation to enter into the household of God.

Think of it like this –

You have read books and listened to tapes and talked to people

who know about a wise and famous person who speaks so clearly of God.

Through these books and tapes and people’s accounts,

you have such admiration for this person.

You want to devote your life to his teachings,

to pattern your life after his, so that you may grow into

such a closeness with God, a peace that pervades every part of you.

Then, one day, you get the opportunity of a life time.

You’ve actually been invited to visit his home.

When you get there you hope to get a tour

and to meet him.

You have one or two carefully thought out questions you yearn to ask him.

But, in the end, after the tour and actually getting to meet this hero of yours,

he invites you to stay, to live in his home,

to become a member in his household.

That is baptism – where we are invited to live in Christ,

so that we might fully share in his life with God.

In the Holy Eucharist, God enters in to our lives through Jesus.

In the person of Jesus the divine-human encounter takes an absolute form.

Jesus is THE sacrament of the presence of God.

The outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.

When Jesus knew he would no longer be with us,

he told us to break bread together

and share the cup with each other -

an outward and visible sign of his presence among us.

We come here for encounters with God.

And we come through here on the way toward God.

You might say that

God is the destination.

Jesus is the river.

Church is the boat.

Spirit is the wind in our sails.

[close]