I used to think that the whole point of Christianity was getting out of here. I really believed and was told that if I prayed the “sinner’s prayer” and believed that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, then I could die and go to heaven.
Now, I wanna be clear here. To be “saved” one must believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God, God from God, of one being with the Father who did indeed become incarnate and was made man. One must believe that He lived a sinless life, was crucified for the forgiveness of sin and rose from the dead. One must believe that He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and that His Kingdom will have no end. But nowhere does the Bible say or our Creeds confess that the goal of belief in Christ is to “get outta here” and live forever in heaven. Actually, Jesus seems very concerned not only with what we believe but how we live. Jesus seems very concerned with us being saints. A saint is defined as “a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God.” I’d like to use this as our working definition of what it means to be a saint as we consider our texts today: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 Psalm 24:1-6 1 John 3:1-3 Matthew 5:1-12 In His time here and even today, Jesus was a polarizing figure. He was a human being. Albeit born of a virgin and fully divine, but nevertheless fully human. One could argue that He is the most human person who has ever lived. Jesus is the essence of what it means to be truly human. This is our destiny if we are in Christ! But I digress… Jesus’ teachings were controversial to the religious leaders of His day not because they were wrong but because they pushed, in many ways, the faithful to even greater heights and set an even higher bar than the religious leaders of the day. The leaders had an idea of holiness that was off. It wasn’t that God didn’t want them to follow the law. He made that pretty clear to them throughout the covenantal history of His people. No, God expected them to “follow the rules.” But following the rules alone wouldn’t get them to where God wanted them to go…holiness of heart. That’s why Jesus was radical to them. He challenged their thinking and, sometimes, like in our gospel text today, told them they weren’t going far enough! Jesus sets a high bar for holiness, for sainthood. In this famous passage of the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus, in effect, turns their religious world upside down. All these years, the people had been told by their leaders to follow a set of rules and they would be just fine. But following the rules wouldn’t get them to holiness. Jesus tells them that it’s not enough to follow the rules; their hearts needed to change. Jesus is calling to mind the promise of God through the prophet Ezekiel (Ez. 36:26). Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who recognize their need for a Savior. Blessed are the meek, those who are humble. Blessed are those who mourn, who weep for their sin. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who long to be like the God who is holy. Blessed are the merciful, who recognize the mercy of God and return it to others. Blessed are the pure of heart, who understand that God looks to the heart and not the appearance (1 Samuel 16:7). Blessed are the peacemakers, who are themselves at peace with God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, who share in the suffering of our Savior. Blessed are those who are reviled for the sake of Christ, who embrace with joy being “lumped in” with our Lord and, for many, die with His name on their lips. This is a much higher and holier bar than don’t walk too far on the Sabbath. This kind of bar produces saints, not just people wanting to get outta here. But how, we ask ourselves, can we live this way? Is this even possible? The beloved Apostle tells us resoundingly in our Epistle reading today, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” There is astounding power in this! Look at what manner of love God has given us! He has called us sons and daughters and promised us that we shall be like Him! Our hope in Christ purifies us, even as He Himself is pure! Oh, what a promise! And if we live this way, if in the power of the Spirit we submit our lives in humble obedience to God our Father and His Christ, we shall be like those the Psalmist writes of in Psalm 24, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness form the God of his salvation.” And not just “one day” in the future will this be true, but it is true now if we are in Christ! And now we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses and then we will be surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who will forever praise Christ the King! We have the privilege even now of joining with the saints who gather around the throne every Sunday when we celebrate the Mass as we see in the beloved Apostle’s Apocalypse, where we read and experience every Sunday, “After this I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands: And they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and the ancients, and the four living creatures; and they fell down before the throne upon their faces, and adored God, saying: Amen. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honour, and power, and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen.” Oh saints of God, fall down! Fall down and worship our God, who has come in flesh to make us saints and children of God! Fall down and worship with our saintly brothers and sisters who have gone before us and will come after us! Fall down and worship our Lord Jesus Christ, who was and is and is to come, for all eternity, King forever! Thanks be to God!
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I have cried watching movies before.
I mean, if we’re being honest. The most recent time I cried watching a movie was at Easter, this year, when I watched, again, “The Passion of The Christ.” I was, and still am, in the latter stages of officially joining the Catholic Church and still kind of processing some things in my mind and heart. There comes the scene in the movie where Jesus’ cross is being lifted up and the scene flashes back and forth between the crucifixion and the Last Supper. As Jesus’ cross is lifted up, we see the scene where He lifts up the bread He will break and we see the lights come on for the Apostle John. It’s a powerful scene and I broke down. I tell that story to illustrate what I'm talking about today... As my journey into the rich tradition of the Church deepened, I ran into another kind of hurdle. The Eucharist. First off, I didn’t even know that that meant. I had to look up the word Eucharist. Basically, it means “thanksgiving.” It’s a little more complex than that but that’s the basic meaning. Most Protestants call it “The Lord’s Supper,” or “Communion.” I want to say very clearly here before I go much further: In discussing the Holy Eucharist, we must approach with great caution. Here’s what I mean by that. We are delving into things that are very great mysteries that we will never, on this side of the Parousia, fully understand. Having said that, this is really important and there are a lot of things about the Holy Eucharist that we can understand. Furthermore, what we cannot always understand by reason, we can accept by faith. My treatment on this post of the Holy Eucharist will by no means be exhaustive. Tomes have been written on this by many people way smarter than me. My intent is not to give a full theological treatment to this topic; rather, to discuss very briefly how I came to this position. I want to begin this one, not by talking about Church history even though the Church has had much to say about this matter, but by considering the words of our Lord first. If you have a Bible, I suggest reading John 6 to start. Once you read that, I think we’re pretty much done here. Ha! I’m kidding. In all seriousness, that text is pretty clear. Jesus was abundantly clear. There’s not a lot of wiggle room there. He said (paraphrasing slightly), “You have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.” And, by the way, there was no mistaking what He said. It’s pretty clear from the text that the Jews knew exactly what He meant by what He said. In fact, it was so clear to them that they were like, “Is this dude nuts? We can’t eat his flesh and drink his blood.” Notice that Jesus didn’t back down. He didn’t say, “You’re misunderstanding me guys. I was speaking metaphorically. I didn’t mean what you think that means. It’s symbolic only.” He didn’t say that. In fact, He doubled down. And that’s when everybody started leaving. Do we really think people would leave if Jesus was speaking metaphorically? Now let’s consider the Last Supper, at which Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist. You can read Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22 and even 1 Corinthians 11. I want us to first look at what Jesus said. This is super important. Can I just be really brutally honest? One of the things that I became really frustrated with within my former Protestant tradition was a lack of taking seriously the plain meaning of the text of Holy Scripture. I mean, my Baptist people had no problem taking some texts literally but then the ones that made them uncomfortable were explained away by, “Well that’s not what that means.” Enough of that, back to the text… Read those texts. What did Jesus say? He said, “This is My body….This is My blood.” He did not say, “This represents My body and blood” or “This is a memorial of My body and blood” or any other linguistic gymnastics Protestants want to do with this. Jesus, our Lord and Savior, said very plainly, “This is My body…This is My blood.” I should just drop the mic and walk away now. I mean, really. Doesn’t this pretty much settle any debate, erase all doubts? It should. What’s the point you may ask? Why is it necessary that Jesus do this and ask us to do this? “He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the ages and to entrust to the Church his Spouse a memorial of his death and resurrection.” (USCCB) But isn’t it just bread and wine? I mean, it’s not really Jesus’ body and blood, is it? Why would something so “crass” be true? Why can’t it just be symbolic? Because that’s not what Jesus has given us. Because God inhabits and uses physical matter to give to us His grace. Water for baptism, bread and wine for sustenance. God uses His creation. I mean, He came in the flesh after all. As I ran headlong into this, I was astounded to learn that the unanimous position of the early Church was of the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Unanimous. There is so much more I could say, so very much more. But this is a blog post, not a doctoral dissertation. I am happy to recommend resources for you if you want to learn and study more. For me, this has become an unspeakable comfort to me. Now I don’t have to conjure up some emotional feeling. Now I don’t have to wonder, “Is Jesus really here with us as we worship?” Now I don’t have to close my eyes and try really hard to imagine a spiritual concept. No, I have, we have, the Church has, before her very eyes week after week, day after day, a flesh and blood physical reminder…nay, the very body, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus and not merely a reminder. We have been given a very great gift by our Lord, Church! We have this most blessed assurance of the presence of our Lord in His very body, blood, soul and divinity in the Blessed Sacrament! Oh Church, what a gift of His grace! Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world! Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb! |
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