One of the things we often say we come to Church for is to meet the Lord in word and sacrament. I think it’s quite obvious what we mean by that. We meet the Lord in word through listening to the words of Scripture and through our dialogue with him in prayer. And we meet the Lord in sacrament, through our sharing in his presence with us and his life given for us and to us in the sacrament of Holy Communion. But do we, in fact, really believe that we do meet the Lord in these ways when we come to Church? And if we do, what is our response to meeting the Lord? Do we go home from church as changed people, people who’ve come to a deeper understanding of our faith and who are inspired to live out that faith in the week ahead, or do we go home as the same people we were when we left home a little earlier on Sunday morning? One thing I’ve mentioned in the past is our need to share our faith with others, but do we ever tell people that we’ve even been to church, let alone that we’ve met the Lord there and how that’s affected us, or do we simply not mention it at all to anyone else but rather keep it to ourselves, as though our coming to church on Sunday was some kind of secret that we’re only willing to share with those who also go to church?
If our responses are of the latter kind, can we really say that we have met the Lord in word and sacrament when we’ve been to church? Surely if we truly believed that we had met the Lord in church, we’d want to tell people about it rather than keeping it to ourselves? Surely, if we truly did meet the Lord in church it would be such a wonderful experience that we wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about it even if we wanted to. So why do so many Christians keep their faith, and their church attendance, a secret? And they do, when I was saying my goodbyes to people at work before I left to go to Mirfield as an ordinand, I was amazed by the number of people who took me to one said and told me that they go to church but don’t say anything about it because of the ‘stick’ they’d get from people for it. Well, perhaps that’s true, but surely the joy and the thrill of meeting the Lord would outweigh any ‘stick’ we might get from people on account of our faith, and we couldn’t help but tell people about it?
This morning, I’d like us to think about our own experience of coming to church and our response to our meeting the Lord in word and sacrament here and compare these things to the experience and response of the two disciples we read about in this morning’s Gospel. They also met the Lord in word as they listened to him and spoke with him on the Emmaus road. And we could say that they met the Lord in sacrament too, because they recognised him, they recognised his presence with them, in the breaking of bread.
The response of those two disciples to meeting the Lord in word and sacrament was very different to the response many of today’s disciples have to coming to church. Their response was that their hearts burned within them as they heard the Lord’s words, as he explained the Scriptures to them on the road. Their eyes were opened as he broke bread at table with them. And they were so overcome with joy, so thrilled by the experience, that they set out straight away to travel the seven miles back to Jerusalem. We have to remember that this was a journey of perhaps two hours by foot, at night, in a land and time where bandits lay in wait to ambush unwary travellers and where wild animals such as wolves, bears, and even leopards and lions, nocturnal predators, still roamed the land. And yet they were so overcome with joy and excitement by their meeting with the Lord that they were prepared to risk those dangers to go and tell the other disciples, a group of people who were hiding out from the authorities at the time let’s not forget, to tell them about their experience.
So, when we come to church to meet the Lord in word and sacrament, do our hearts burn within us as we hear the word of the Lord? Are our eyes opened so that we really see and understand in a better and clearer way what we’re hearing and seeing when we meet the Lord in word and sacrament? Do we really recognise the Lord’s presence among us when the bread is broken, and we receive Holy Communion?
One of the problems we have in understanding the true power and meaning of the Lord’s words is the distance of time and culture that separates us from those words, from Jesus and his contemporaries. That is a problem but one of the things we can do to help overcome, or at least lessen this problem is to learn more about the faith and culture of First Century Jews. That can help us to understand what Jesus’ words would have meant to those who first heard them and just how powerful, not to mention provocative and potentially dangerous they were.
Have you ever wondered, for example, why Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath laws provoked such a strong reaction in the authorities, why it seemed to be this more than anything else that stirred up their anger and plots against him? In St Matthew’s Gospel we read about an argument Jesus had with some Pharisees about him allowing his disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath, something that the law forbade. Jesus countered their complaint with some arguments from Scripture, including one that reminded them that the priests profane the Sabbath to carry out their duties on the Sabbath. He then goes on to say that there is “something greater than the temple…here.” Implying that he is greater than the temple. But for the Jews the temple wasn’t only the centre of their worship as a people, it symbolised their whole view of the universe and it was, to them, the very dwelling place of God on earth. So for Jesus to say that he is greater than the temple was to imply that he is greater than their understanding of the universe, more important than God’s dwelling place on earth. He then went on to say that he, the Son of Man, was “Lord of the Sabbath.” But the Sabbath was created and hallowed by God himself so who could be Lord of the Sabbath except God? When we put these words back into their First Century context we can understand how powerful, provocative and dangerous they were. We can understand why these arguments about the Sabbath stirred up such anger against Jesus and why they led to plots against him, because we can understand these words as claims by Jesus that he was equal with God, or perhaps even is God.
Another thing we can do to grasp the power of the Lord’s words is to try and put ourselves in the shoes of those people he was speaking to and about. One very good story to do this with is the story in St John’s Gospel about the woman taken in adultery. I’m sure we’ve all been in the position of having people baying for our blood, at least metaphorically speaking, so we should have no difficulty in putting ourselves in the position of the woman in that story. How often have we had people accusing us and wanting some action taken against us, knowing that those doing the accusing and wanting to punish us are no better than us and are guilty of all sorts of things they ought to be called to account for themselves? At times like this, how often have we wished that someone, anyone, would speak up on our behalf and get the mob off our backs? But how often have we been part of the mob, tut tutting at what someone else has done, and saying this or that ought to be done about it, and perhaps about them, whilst ignoring the fact that we, and the rest of the mob are far from perfect, or innocent, ourselves? And how often have we had to back down and walk away, shamefaced, when someone has had the courage to stand up to us and point that out? As Christians, we ought to have no trouble putting ourselves in the Lord’s shoes, not condoning wrongdoing, but standing up to and speaking out against the hypocrisy of those who would condemn others whilst being sinners themselves. But how often have we had the courage to do that? If we can put ourselves in the shoes of these people in this way, we can make the Lord’s words come alive and we can meet him in and through his words in a very powerful and meaningful way.
Our distance in time and culture from Jesus and his contemporaries can also be a problem for us when it comes to understanding how we meet the Lord in sacrament too. What we have to try and do here is to understand that what Jesus meant by remembrance when he told his disciples to do this in remembrance of me, isn’t what we mean by remembrance.
The Lord’s last supper was a Passover meal and so to understand what Jesus meant, we have to understand remembrance in the context of a Jewish ceremonial religious meal. To this very day, at their celebration of Passover, devout Jews recount the story of the first Passover. But they don’t think of this as simply remembering and retelling the story, they do it with the understanding that, through the ceremonial retelling, they become part of the story. They remember and recount the story so that the events of the first Passover become a living reality for them in the present. And this is the way we’re called to remember the Lord’s last supper with his disciples.
Jesus was a Jew and so when he spoke of this ceremonial remembrance, he didn’t mean a simple recollection, a mental recalling of what he’d done, so the sacrament of Holy Communion is not a simple memorial of what Jesus did that night or what his Passion and death means for us. As we remember and recount the story, the events of that night become a living reality for us in the present. Some people argue that as Jesus’ sacrifice was made once, and only once, for all, it can’t and doesn’t need to be repeated. But that itself is a misunderstanding of what’s believed to happen through this ceremonial remembrance. No one is saying that the sacrament of Holy Communion is a repeat of Jesus’ sacrifice, but rather that, just as for the Jews, the ceremonial remembrance and recounting of the Passover story makes the first Passover becomes a living reality in the present, so in the sacrament of Holy Communion, Jesus own sacrifice, the sacrifice he made once and for all almost 2,000 years ago becomes a living reality for us in the present. That’s not an easy concept for us to understand but if we can get our heads around it, it does make it so much easier for us to understand too, that we do indeed meet the Lord in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
There can be no doubt that we do need to share our faith with others, and I think we’ll be more inclined to do that if we’re able to share our experience of faith, and the best way we can do that is by meeting the Lord regularly in word and sacrament ourselves. We need to meet the Lord in word and sacrament so that we can grow in faith and understanding and so be more able to share our faith with others. We need to meet the Lord in word and sacrament so that we can be inspired to live out our faith so that others can see the difference being a Christian makes to us and in our lives. And, just like those two disciples who met the Lord on the Emmaus road, we need to let the joy and excitement of meeting the Lord in word and sacrament help us to overcome any fear or reticence we might have about sharing our faith, and about sharing our experience of meeting the Lord in word and sacrament, with others.
Amen.
Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, 23rd April 2023
Entrance Antiphon
Let all the earth cry out to God with joy; praise the glory of his name;
proclaim his glorious praise, alleluia!
The Collect
Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life,
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Acts 2:14, 22-33
Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-11
1 Peter 1:17-21
Luke 24:13-35
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Acts 2:14, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 