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Second Sunday after
Pentecost 2002
Words
are
always interesting, and especially for me when they are “church words.”
If I
asked you what “Corpus
Christi”
was, you
might suggest that it is a medium size city in Texas.
Years ago
in the Roman Catholic Church, Corpus
Christi
(for
which the Texas
town is named) was a festival celebrating the Sacrament of the Altar.
It was marked especially in Europe
and ethnic communities in this country by huge parades and liturgical
processions where the Eucharist was carried through the streets and
adored by
all the people who witnessed the spectacle. In modern Roman Catholicism
the day
is known as “The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.” Recently I saw a
fairly
large advertisement for a huge festival at a Roman Catholic parish in Doylesburg, Pennsylvania,
complete with procession, Latin Mass, picnic, and a dance with a DJ.
Now, that
sounds like fun, at least most of it, and might be fairly close to an
evangelical understanding of a celebration of the Body and Blood of
Jesus
Christ. Let’s talk about Lutheran history for a moment. Luther wrote
that the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood was for eating and drinking.
People
regularly went to Mass in Luther’s time, but they rarely took
communion. If you
ever read that Luther said we were to receive Holy Communion three or
four
times a year, don’t think he was saying that Holy Communion was to be
celebrated only three or four times a year. He was saying that at a
very minimum
people were to eat and drink the elements that often. Some allowed
years to go
by without partaking of the Eucharistic Banquet. They were merely
spectators.
When Luther wrote against Eucharistic processions, he was emphasizing
that
people should be eating and drinking Christ’s Body and Blood and not
carrying
it around. I asked the Vicar if he had Luther’s Works on computer
software
because that would have made finding the reference I wanted easier than
pouring
through my books. He doesn’t and I didn’t, so you’ll have to take my
word for
it. At some point Luther wrote that if you want to carry the Sacrament
around,
be sure you surround it with candles and carry a bell in front of it so
that no
one disrespects the Body and Blood of the Lord. We still carry the
elements
around. We carry the Sacrament to the sick, and on Holy Thursday we
follow
Luther’s advice and carry candles in front of the Sacrament as we move
it from
the church to the chapel of reservation at the beginning of the Triduum.
In
the text
from Romans we hear: “For there is no distinction, since all have
sinned and
fall short of the glory of God. They are now justified by his grace as
a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as
a
sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”
The point
here is that the Body and Blood of the Lord are to be active in our
lives. We
are who we are in our relationship to the Father by the agency of the
Spirit
because of the Blood of Christ. To make the word atonement more
helpful
it seems that using a device from teaching catechism is in order. Break
the
word down to three parts: at—one—ment. We are once again united with
God
through the Christ event.
That’s
the
evangelical or “good news” aspect of Corpus
Christi
celebrations.
The risen Christ, present in the Eucharist and in the church,
accompanied
people through their ordinary lives. There was and is music and dance,
picnics,
ordinary people carrying symbols of their trade or craft recalling our
procession through life and reminding us that the Eucharist is our food
for the
everyday journeys of life and into the world to come. Think, similarly,
of the
Arc of the Covenant, the very presence of God carried with the children
of Israel
into
the Promised Land. The Eucharist we receive and enshrine is never
simply a meal
or an object of adoration, but rather a “remembering” of a life given
for
others and a summons to seek the kind of communion with God and others
that
Paul proclaims.
Like
the
manna in the wilderness, the bread of life is what we need if we are to
complete our journey to God’s promised land. For without the strength
of the
Eucharist, we might lack the courage to follow the one who made the way
of the
cross and now bids us make it with him. Without the Eucharist, we might
prefer
self-seeking to the self-sacrifice of the one who died that we might
live.
Without the Eucharist, we might neglect to be as nourishing and
life-giving for
each other as the one who is our food for eternal life. Rather than a
symbolic
carrying of the Eucharist through our streets and towns, we are to be
the body
and blood of Jesus in our streets and towns, in our marriages, in our
parenting, in our friendships, in our lives of faith. We are to be
obedient
even as Jesus was obedient to his Father even to death, death on a
Cross. The
Gospel reading reminds us that words by themselves can be deceptive at
best,
nothing at their worst. Unless they are part and parcel of the rhythm
of our
lives, unless we are gripped by the Word to obey our Heavenly Father,
they can
be hollow sounds. No depth. No integrity. Nothing substantial. But the
true
presence of Christ is attached to Words and his body and blood is our
very food
and drink. And the pure gift of life is present within us both now and
forever
as we apprehend it by faith. And so we are not ashamed of the Gospel;
it is the
power of God for salvation to everyone. Thanks be to God. Amen
--K.T.S.
June 2,
2002
Texts:
First Reading:
Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28
Psalm
31:1-5, 19-24
Second Reading:
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 [29-31]
Gospel:
Matthew 7:21-29
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