Not One in Seven (Midweek Message)

 

Not One in Seven

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 2, 2021

 

“Sev'n whole days, not one in sev'n,
I will praise Thee;
in my heart, though not in heav'n,
I can raise Thee.
Small it is, in this poor sort
to enroll Thee:
e'en eternity's too short
to extol Thee.”   --George Herbert

 

The film A River Runs Through It tells the story of Norman Maclean, who grows up in 1920s Montana living with his Scots Presbyterian minister father and brother.  The film opens with the deceivingly simple line, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” 

 

How possibly can fly fishing and religion be connected?  Most people, I think, find it difficult to see any connection between religion and everyday life.  We generally are conditioned to see faith, holiness, and religion over here—special, sacred, and separate, and everyday life over here, ordinary, profane, and common.  The very word “sacred” means “dedicated or set apart for worship of a deity.”  If something is set apart, that means it isn’t ordinary, it isn’t everyday. 

 

But what the character Robert Maclean means by this becomes clearer as he tells the story of his family.  Fly fishing on the Blackfoot River is part of the rhythms of the family’s life, where the sons struggle in the shadow of their minister father to find their way of being human, of making something beautiful of their life.  Church attendance, prayer, and faith are also part of their lives’ rhythms. 

 

We live today in an age where much of the wonder, awe, and reverence has been removed from life, a world where the realm of the sacred and holy is getting smaller and smaller.  That’s one of the reasons we have difficulty understanding a statement like “in our family, there was not a clear line between religion and fly fishing.” 

 

But if we are to be fully human, and true to our nature, we must not lose our sense of the holy, our sense of reverence, and our ability to see the holy, to see divinity, in ordinary things of daily life.   Among these are bread and wine, the ordinary elements Christ took at the last supper and said, “this is my body, this is my blood.” 

 

Tomorrow, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, in the Roman Catholic and Church of England calendars, is the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ (“Corpus Christi”).   Some people mock belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as superstitious “cookie worship.”  I wonder if they can hold anything in awe or reverence.  Part of the problem, of course, is that some people do indeed have superstitious and magical ways of seeing the Eucharist.  “Hocus-pocus” as a way to mock superstition is a corruption of the Latin translation of Jesus’ words when he instituted the Eucharist, “Hoc est corpus meum (This is my body).”  

 

But some peoples’ bad opinions or misuse of doctrine should not lead us to the opposite error of rejecting true doctrine.  We need to follow here the example of the young Elizabeth I, who affirmed her faith the Real Presence while declining to over-define the matter thus:

 

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

 

Key in experiencing and honoring the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is having a general idea about what a sacrament is: an outward and visible expression that not only points to, but participates in an inward, hidden reality.

One of my favorite hymns speaks of how our worship in the sacrament of the Eucharist must fit into a larger sacrament of life for us:  

 

Draw us in the Spirit’s tether;
For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them:
Alleluya! Alleluya! Touch we now thy garment’s hem.

As the faithful used to gather
In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father
Break the bread and bless the cup,
Alleluya! Alleluya! So knit thou our friendship up.

All our meals and all our living
Make as sacraments of thee,
That by caring, helping, giving,
We may true disciples be.
Alleluya! Alleluya! We will serve thee faithfully.

More simply, the hymn “Lord you give the great commission” says:  “Lord, you make the common holy, this my body, this my blood.  Let us all, for earth’s true glory, daily lift life heavenward.” 

 

We are now, after almost a year of impaired worship due to pandemic constraints, slowly recovering our normal patterns of communal worship as almost all of us have been vaccinated.  While saying a “Prayer of Spiritual Communion” after watching a livestreamed Eucharist has had to suffice, we now can join together in person and share in the bread and wine.  We still are doing it with little separately sealed packets, but hope to resume using a common cup with the wafer bread when infection rates are down here and more of our congregants feel comfortable with this. 

 

But some of us continue to hunker down, and watch church on the small screen. Though necessary for some who have greater challenges and risks than others in attending church in person, it is still a poor substitute for gathering in person and sharing the bread and wine. 

 

Making our worship of God seven days a week, not one in seven, “giving thanks in all things and at all times,” is a sign of healthy spirituality, and, as the older Prayer Book rite puts it, “our bounden duty.”   But this loses a lot of its meaning if we do not also set aside special times, special places, and special ways of focusing our thanks and love of God.   So let’s try to up our game, and resume common life and worship more fervently, strongly, and reverently than before even as we continue to try to follow Jesus the whole week long. 

 

Grace and Peace.

Fr. Tony+