Living Faith 7.5-7.7
In the distant days of my first ministry, an elderly woman was transferred into the local seniors’ home. She had never married and at 90 had outlived all her immediate family. Her nephew, unable to find an adequate facility closer to home, had moved her the 200 miles to our community. She was bedridden, somewhat deaf, nearly blind… and alone. They told me she had arrived so I took my late father’s little black communion kit, which my mother had presented to me on my ordination for occasions exactly such as this. I spoke the gospel words, broke the bread, shared the wine, as the church had taught me to, held her hands and prayed. And the lady knew that she was not alone. Her Saviour was with her, as he is with all the Church.
And she was grateful “beyond words.” How do I know? She probably said, “thank you” though I do not recall that, but I know with complete certainty that she was grateful, not from words but because she took my hands in hers and kissed them. A reserved maiden lady, born in the reign of Queen Victoria, kissed the hands of a barely competent young minister because he had brought her the signs of the presence of the Saviour. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. There it is. We are not alone for Christ is with us and some special signs assure us of that gospel truth. Words are not always enough.
There is no word for “sacrament” in New Testament Greek. The closest equivalent in Greek is probably mysterion from which we get our English word, mystery. The presence of Christ with us by means of water, bread and wine, is indeed a mystery which we will never fully grasp but perhaps there are a few key points that we can understand.
One is that the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments work together. Long ago, one of the great thinkers of the Christian church, St. Augustine, noted that without the word, the water of baptism is just, well, water, nothing more. So he explained, “The word is added to the element, and there results the sacrament, as if itself is also a kind of visible word.” The same is true of the bread and wine of communion. When the word is added (not a formula spoken by a minister but the gospel) these common elements become means by which Christ the Living Word is with us. Christ calls us into life with him in baptism and shares his strength with us in communion.
Living Faith tells us, therefore, “In obedience to our Lord’s command and example, we observe two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion.
“These are visible expressions of the gospel given as means of entering and sustaining the Christian life.”
Setting the celebration of the sacraments and the preaching of the gospel against each other would be like deciding which of our children we love most. It is possible but terribly unwise.
We sometimes call the sacraments “means of grace,” that is, signs which convey the love of God we can neither earn nor deserve. As such, they are primarily God’s action, not ours. They are not rites we perform for God but rather representations of what God has done for us in Jesus. To be sure, we respond to God, both at the font and table and then in our lives, with praise, thanksgiving and obedience. But it is just that, a response. Life is always a conversation with God. But God has the first and primary word and also, for that matter, the final word. The work of the visible words of the sacraments assure us powerfully of the love of God for us.
(By the way, this emphasis on the sacraments as the work of God is why we have ministers rather than priests and communion tables not altars. The Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice we offer to God but rather God making real and present to us, through the Holy Spirit, the sacrifice Christ offered, once and for all, for us. But that would be another article.)
Still, we do not have to insist that our understanding of the sacraments is the only correct one nor do we need to define all the processes of the sacraments. The history of Christianity has too often been marred by battles, sometimes literary and sometimes literal, over the mode of Christ’s presence in the sacraments.
Our spiritual ancestor, John Calvin, though among the most rational and intellectually rigorous of theologians, was content to leave the manner of that presence somewhat undefined. Calvin writes: “In his sacred supper Christ bids me take, eat and drink his holy body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine. I do not doubt that he himself truly presents them and I receive them.” There is a presence of the Lord Jesus in the sacrament that is at once symbolic and real but Calvin does not venture fully to explain what he experiences by faith.
In the end it does not matter so much how Christ is present with us as that he is present. The real question is not what happens to the bread and the wine in communion or to the water in baptism. The question is what happens to us. Will Christ live in us because we have been baptized and share table fellowship with him? If so, the sacraments will have done their work.
About stephenfarris
Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris is dean of St. Andrew's Hall at the Vancouver School of Theology.