From The Daily Lectionary for Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent
John 8:12–20
Jesus spoke to the people, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.” Then they said to him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
Of Word and Sacrament
Today I’ll leave the passage of scripture for your capable contemplation. Today, I wish to speak on what makes us a church, and in particular, a church in the Catholic tradition, and what that means for us in this time of quarantine. We are a church of Word and Sacrament. We are “fed” by both. So it follows that our Sunday liturgy is divided into two parts: The liturgy of the word, and the liturgy of the table. We hear and receive the word of God through scripture and preaching, enlivened by our collective imagination; and then we, in outward and visible drama, act out the reality of who we are as God’s own people. We gather around God’s table for a common meal (that’s what God’s people do), and we are nurtured in it, bound together by it, in God’s life giving Spirit; and then we are sent out into the world to nurture others by the same Spirit. Both the liturgies of Word and Sacrament inform each other. In scripture, we hear the wisdom from our ancestors in the faith; and we break bread together as a symbol of intimate hospitality and fellowship. God’s nurture is for both body and soul, for us and our neighbors.
In this time of pandemic, we must live for a time by the Word alone, and it is enough, because the sages tell us that the Word of God is food enough. We will abstain from the sacrament simply because we need not gather as a community in a common effort to care for our neighbors… and, of course, the liturgy of the table presupposes our physical presence. I would argue that it is our presence that makes holy, consecrates the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The Word of God comes to us through scripture (and art, and nature, each other, and through sometimes surprising means!) I see our abstinence from the Eucharist as a way, for a time, to give more of our attention to the power of the Word, its exhortations, and comfort, its enlightening nurture. It may be also that we become aware that we are sacrament for the world… outward and visible signs of God’s healing and loving presence outside of our red doors.
To that end, we are not streaming a full blown service of Holy Eucharist during this time, instead, beginning Palm Sunday, we will live stream, and record, an adapted “liturgy of the Word”: a collect, a reading, a homily, the prayers of the people, and a blessing. I’ve been doing this for the past two Sundays, with emphasis on the Word of scripture. My hope is that you will be fed, sustained spiritually, and bound together in Love though we are apart, during this time until the day comes when we can again gather as God’s people in the flesh… and what a celebration that will be!
A Prayer from the Great Vigil of Easter (BCP p. 291)
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably upon your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
