Sermon notes from 4/14/22
Some years ago, I found myself in front of a Sunday school class of first-graders, tasked with teaching them about what it is we do together in church. We walked around the sanctuary, and I pointed out the various places and objects around us: the altar, the tabernacle, the crucifix, and so on. I struggled with how to possibly explain the substance and significance of the Mass to a bunch of six-year-olds, but it was a thrill to see their wonder when I told them, “did you know…that when we are in church together and we receive the Eucharist, we are seeing a little bit of heaven?” We spoke about how Jesus came into our world to love us, forgive us, and show us God, and we talked about the Eucharist being a special place where heaven and earth are close together.
A couple of weeks later, I received a note from a parent. He reported with some amusement that his little son had started announcing to the family in the car on the way to church that it was, “Time to go to heaven!” I imagine that this is a strange thing to hear from the mouth of your six-year-old, but I have never forgotten it. In fact I think about this every time I approach the altar at the offertory in every single Mass I have ever attended or celebrated since. To come before the tabernacle of God - to encounter Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood - this is to see a glimpse of heaven.
You know, the Bible doesn’t actually tell us very much about heaven. We know from scripture that heaven is the dwelling place of God. We know that it is the place from which Christ came and the place to which he returns. We know it is the dwelling place of the angels and that it is comprised of many of what some translations call “mansions.” Heaven is the ultimate destiny of those who love God, and yet we are given little information about the details. What will our bodies look like? Will we know one another? What could existence feel like without the heaviness of earthly burdens like time or decay? And, of course the urgent question: will we get to see our pets? The answer we do have in the midst of uncertainty is this: in heaven, we will behold God face to face. We will see a collapse of any distance that we have ever imagined between ourselves and God. And in the immediate presence of his glory, we will recognize all creation as God’s, beholding its beauty as he does.
So there are at least three things we can hope for in heaven, among others: to see God face to face. To see how close we have always been to him. And to see others as he sees them. These are properties of heaven. And they are the properties of the Sacrament of Christ’s holy Eucharist.
At the Last Supper, Jesus holds broken bread before his disciples and declares, “this is my Body.” He does not say, “this is sort of like my body.” Or, “here’s a nice representation of my body.” He doesn’t insist that we run an algorithm regarding the mechanics, but he lays this ordinary, material food before his friends and pronounces something remarkable. The one who proclaimed, “I am the Bread of Life” gives them, and gives us, his Body itself, promising that whenever this Bread is blessed and broken in his name, we proclaim his death until he comes. We know him in this Sacrament. Not a facsimile of him. Not a ghost of him. But Jesus himself, in whom we see no less than God.
In the Blessed Sacrament, there collapses any illusion of distance between ourselves and the love of Christ. We are united with him in glory and joy, receiving his Body and Blood, and as Saint Augustine wrote, “beholding what we are, becoming what we receive.” What a strange thing for the Son of God to become known to us in bread: bread that we hold and touch, taste, smell, eat, and digest. How gritty, how earthy, how humiliating this is - for the Son of God to give himself to us as something eaten by the young, the sick, and the poor. And yet…in this gift of the Sacrament, we see the Incarnation itself. What a strange thing for the God of the universe, creator of heaven and earth, to become known to us in flesh and blood. How gritty, how earthy, how humiliating this is - for the King of Glory to come to us as a baby, an itinerant teacher, and one who washes the dirt from his students’ feet. And yet…this is how God has chosen to be made known.
And then there is the transformation of our perception. This re-authorship of the order of all creation. In the Sacrament, what much of the world prizes is turned on its side and we are welcomed into a new way of seeing everything. The Sacrament is not a prize won or an achievement unlocked. It is gift, pure and full. It is the act by which we see one another as God sees us: whole, worthy, and free.
It is truly an astonishing thing to receive the Sacrament in a church with our family in Christ. Just as we reserve the Sacrament safely and beautifully in the tabernacle behind the altar, we suddenly find one another shining with the holiness of Christ. We extend our hands and receive the cup, each of us becoming little tabernacles as we become one with Christ’s Body and Blood. Just as we genuflect before the golden tabernacle behind the altar, perhaps it could be meet and right to genuflect before one another in those quiet moments after communion, recognizing one another as blessed, transformed, and beloved.
Imagine Christ’s first apostles: tabernacles of grace around that supper table. Imagine those first fledgling churches described in the Acts of the Apostles, people of all backgrounds gathered at homes and in fields, repeating the same words we hear repeated at each Mass to this very day. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians that we heard this evening is the oldest record we have of the Eucharist. It was written sometime in the mid-50s AD, and those words: “This is my Body, given for you. This is my Blood of the New Covenant” - these have been the words repeated in churches and chapels and bunkers and basements and cathedrals and prisons and back yards for two thousand years. Two thousand years of tabernacles, radiating with the same righteousness.
And so here we stand at the threshold of heaven, on this very night where Christ gives us the Sacrament of Life. This is where we reach our arms forward, making small mangers with our hands - one on top of the other - to be a resting place for the incarnate Christ. This is where our hearts are opened to his grace and mystery, where we are embraced and united with the one who first loved us.
Come. Let us walk one another toward heaven.
Preached by Mother Brit Frazier
Maundy Thursday
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia