First, the purpose is to glorify God, that is, to declare God’s greatness, express gratitude for God’s grace and proclaim God’s Word. The second purpose is to help worshipers connect with God, that is, to enjoy God now in anticipation of enjoying God fully forever.
As expressed in a recent editorial, I’ve glorified and felt connected to God in every worship style from a Latin mass (the regular practice of my childhood) to a Jesus rock concert (I performed often in my teen and young adult years); from Gaither-style, country gospel singing to African-American Pentecostal dancing; from a chilling, Maundy Thursday Tenebrae to a thrilling Easter sunrise triumph.
Three common elements – bread, wine and water – bring focus to worship across the full range of liturgical and cultural styles.
Amazing things happen when these sacramental elements get poured, sprinkled and served. Families who argued their way to church now lovingly pass the elements to one another down the pew. Elders who had been arguing vehemently in a Presbytery’s business meeting now serve one another bread from a common loaf and dip it in a common cup. Rival athletes receive not just the elements; the victors and the vanquished now embrace one another as friends. In the process, tense shoulders relax, pulses slow, blood pressures settle. Estranged spouses celebrate together God’s covenantal claims upon their baby.
What is it that exerts such power over us? Don’t know really, although Eric Mount offers succinct and rich thoughts about the radical power of the sacraments (p. 10). Is the water bleaching away our sins? Are we feeding on the literal body and blood of Jesus? Is the presence of the resurrected Lord permeating the elements? Are we celebrating the covenant meal in anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb? Are these just symbols intended to remind us of the story of the brutal crucifixion of our Savior? Centuries of debate haven’t settled those questions.
One thing we can say for sure: the sacraments of baptism and Lord’s Supper make reality more real. God becomes more real. Those seated and standing around us become more real. We become more real.
I’m reminded of the words penned by Margery Williams in 1922 in that child’s story book, The Velveteen Rabbit.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
Nothing has greater capacity to make us real than the love of God, and nothing seems to make that divine love more real to us than when we eat the bread and drink the wine. And nothing conveys the good news of God’s grace more clearly than when water is sprinkled over a child who has contributed nothing – not even faith – to the grace outpoured. And, frankly, the baptism of a new convert reminds one and all that it IS by grace that we are saved through a faith that is itself a gift from God.
Through this Lenten season we have gathered together in places that have encouraged us to get real, to be real and to know the reality that is God. In holy week, we pause to re-encounter and re-enact the life-giving power and reality-conveying news of God’s mercy, love and grace as embodied by Jesus the Christ. May it be that the radical power pervading the sacraments will renew us and many others in the reality that is thicker than anything else we can see and hear or taste and touch.
— JHH
