The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

People from other church traditions sometimes wonder what goes on here. What is all this up and down and kneeling in the Episcopal Church? Why do some people make the sign of the cross or genuflect before entering their pew? All that kind of stuff.

The reason is that the Episcopal Church, like all the Church Catholic, is a sacramental church, a church that believes that "outward and visible signs" convey "an inward and spiritual grace." Christianity, as we understand it, is a sacramental religion, even a physical religion. Our faith is that we receive grace -- that which is holy and sacred and spiritual -- through ordinary physical things.

Our protestant heritage has tended to spiritualize Christianity. Protestantism has, on the one hand, emphasized the mental or intellectual aspects of religion -- the things we might know or understand with our minds -- and, on the other, emphasized the emotional side of religion -- how we might feel about God. And we in the Anglican tradition have shared in some of this.

But in our Catholic heritage, there is a physical side to our religion as well. There has long been, for example, a sense of sacred space, a sense of the importance of physical places that are consecrated, set aside as places where we experience God in special ways.

Sacred space has taken a beating in recent years, so much so that many do not think of a church as significantly different from any other kind of auditorium or hall. I was once at a wedding rehearsal where a young man who was late came up the aisle smoking a cigarette, completely oblivious to the presence or sensitivities of other people, much less to the presence of God.

I resist this decline in sacred space, and that's the reason for the signs at the church door which ask that coffee and water bottles stay outside, along with food and chewing gum and pagers and cell phones. This space, I believe, is, in a very real way, different from the kitchen or the patio or the coffee shop. Physical space and physical gestures can be sacred space and gestures. Physical things convey meaning and the presence of God, because life is like that. Life itself is sacramental.

Take posture, for example. Posture is an outward and visible thing that conveys great meaning. And posture, in the Church Catholic, has always been seen as significant. The custom in the Episcopal Church is to sit for instruction, to stand to sing, and to stand or kneel to pray. But why? Is one posture more appropriate for prayer than another?

Well, it is clear that one can pray at anytime. My seminary theology professor once made this point in a humorous way. Before class one day, when the Angelus rang for noonday prayers, he was out on the steps smoking his pipe. He continued to smoke during the time for prayer, and after the prayers were over one of my classmates asked him, "Father Griffiss, is it permissible to smoke while you pray?" And Father Griffiss, always the theologian, replied, "That's the wrong question. The right question is, 'Is it permissible to pray while you smoke?'"

Of course, one can pray while smoking, or while sitting, or while lying in bed in the morning or taking a test or driving to Denver. But posture, like smoking or gurgling down a swig of water or coffee, says things. Posture can say things we very much want to say; it can also say some things we might not want to say.

If you are sitting in a room, and the President or a superior officer, or even someone who is just significantly older than you, were to enter the room, would you remain seated? I would hope not. Standing is a gesture of respect for the office or person.

That's why we stand or kneel for prayer in church. It is a posture appropriate for the occasion and the place. Standing or kneeling is appropriate for the act we are engaged in, the act of supplication, especially supplication addressed to God. Sitting down says something we might not want to say under the circumstances. Sitting is the posture of the classroom. It says, "I'll listen to this. I'll consider that." To many, sitting does not seem to be the most appropriate posture for making an appeal or a plea. When we come into the presence of Almighty God to confess our sin, or to petition with heart and hat in hand for some need to be met, sitting, the posture of being in charge, just doesn't say what many of us want to say under the circumstances.

And consider praise. Can you imagine singing a hymn of praise sitting down? Such an act calls for standing up! And some feel the need to raise their hands as well. How we use our bodies is part of the praise. Just consider what it would be like to sing our opening hymn today while sitting down, or to sit down while singing Hymn 599, which we're going to sing again later today. Or try singing your national anthem while sitting down. I was in a church once where we were asked to remain seated to sing "The Church's One Foundation." I just couldn't do it. So I stood, the only one to do so. It just makes no sense to me to sit while singing a hymn like that.

Again, it's not that one cannot pray or praise God in other ways, and some people, such as the disabled and the elderly, cannot stand or kneel. But for those of us who can, standing or kneeling just seems to be part of what we want to express when we pray or sing. Posture, an outward and visible act, is a sign of attitude and station. It says something about who we believe God is, and about who we believe we are. Posture carries sacramental significance.

Outward and visible signs are important in life. In algebra, "x" and "y" are signs. They stand for something other than themselves. They are arbitrary signs. You can make "x" mean whatever you want it to mean in an algebra problem as long as you make it stand for the same thing in every instance. And if you make "x" stand for oranges rather than apples or unicorns, nobody gets very upset about it.

But what about a nation's flag? A flag, too, is an outward and visible sign, a physical thing. In one sense, it's just an ordinary piece of cloth. But unlike "x" in algebra, a nation's flag is not an arbitrary sign. A nation's flag is a sign that tells a particular story. You cannot make the American flag stand for anything you want it to. It cannot stand for the people of China or Russia or South Africa. It stands for the people of the United States. It sums up all the history and aspirations of the people of this nation, and if you try to change either the flag or the meaning, or if you desecrate it, people do get very upset.

And this brings us to what today is all about. This brings us to the most important outward and visible sign of our life as Christians. It brings us to Christ, and to the host. Is the host just another ordinary piece of bread? Well, in one sense it is, but in another sense it isn't.

Some of you know that I just can't stand the "D" word. Well, the "W" word is another word to avoid. Right now, at this moment, before our Eucharistic Prayer, before we consecrate them, it is all right to call those little round pieces of bread "wafers." They're just ordinary pieces of bread. But after we have consecrated them, they are no longer ordinary bread. After we consecrate them, they are hosts. From the Latin "hostia," a sacrifice.

With our prayer we set these otherwise ordinary physical things aside for something very important and special. They become for us a sacrament, an outward and visible sign that conveys to people of faith the entire story of who we are, the story of creation, fall, sin and failure and slavery, exodus, redemption and freedom, culminating in the Cross and Resurrection. The host, the outward and visible sign of God's sacrificial love on the Cross and at the empty tomb, conveys grace. It is for us both the history of our sin and slavery and our hope of salvation and freedom, a history and a hope we consume as spiritual nourishment.

It is like another thing that has sacramental value to me personally. The painting you see in front of the altar today was painted by our younger son Ethan when he was eight years old. It is a painting of a vase of flowers, and on it he wrote, "Ethan Casey, November, 1973, to Mom and Dad." It was Ethan's gift to us, and of course we put in on the refrigerator door along with other such gifts.

A few days later, Ethan and I had an argument. I no longer remember what the argument was about; perhaps Ethan did something I asked him not to do. And then one of us said something, and then the other said something, and it was not long before we reached the level of all-out war. Sometime afterwards, Ethan went into the kitchen and took the painting off the refrigerator and tore it into ten or twelve pieces.

Well that broke my heart, of course. And I'm sure Ethan's heart was broken as well.

But there was a remedy for the painting. It was called "Elmer's." And I took some Elmer's, and mixed it with some tears, and repaired the painting.

And the really good news is that there was a remedy for Ethan and me, too. It was called forgiveness. And Ethan and I mixed our mutual pride and stubbornness with our tears and forgave each other. Oh, the scars are there -- they always are -- just as you can still see the scars on the painting if you look closely. But Ethan and I remain one with each other as father and son, and as friends, just as the painting is once again a painting of a vase of flowers, a restored painting. So the painting now hangs on our wall at home, as it has for twenty-nine years, a sacramental sign of the possibility of grace and reconciliation.

The greeting card says that "love is sometimes what you need the most when you deserve it the least." Well, that's close to the truth. But the real truth is that love is always what you need the most when you don't deserve it at all. That's the truth of the Gospel, that love is never deserved. Love is always and ever a gift, a gift God very much wants you to have.

And that's what the host offers, because that's what Christ offered on the Cross. The host is not just a fractured piece of bread. It is the Body of Christ broken on the Cross, where it was offered there as Christ's sacrifice of love for us.

Which brings us to the most important sacrament, the most important physical thing of all -- you and me, the Body of Christ, Christ's Church.

If Ethan's painting had remained ten or twelve separate pieces, it could not now be a whole painting of a vase of flowers, restored and redeemed. Fragmented as it was before restoration, it could not have become a sacrament of grace, an outward and visible sign of love. Nor could Ethan and I ignore either the tear or the tears between us and be friends. We could not remain estranged and be family.

Just so, say Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, "We [in the Church] have got to break the habit of doing church in such a way that we continue to be deceived into thinking we can be Christians and remain strangers." (Resident Aliens) You and I, us -- we cannot remain strangers, unconcerned with each other and the world around us, and be made, as we prayed just this morning that God would make us, into a holy temple acceptable to him.

When we are not whole, when we are not one, we are neither who we want to be nor who God wants us to be. Even in simply ways, such as this morning. Lots of us are not here. Some are on vacation, others are in the hospital, some just decided to stay home and read the paper. I miss them. I miss all who are not gathered with us today, just as you are missed when you are not here, even when you are playing hooky. I hope you miss them too. God's Church is meant to be whole and one, and we are most like the Body of Christ we are called to be when we are all here, and one, physically as well as spiritually.

Life -- the way we sit, the way we talk, the way we walk. Through all our very physical life together we are a visible sign that communicates meaning. It is to a world broken by sin and conflict and estrangement that Jesus sends us to speak. And our lives do speak. To this broken world, either we convey the disease of a fractured body concerned mostly with ourselves, with the thousands of puny, fractured pieces of body we call by the "D" word, or we convey the unity and love and peace and hope of a whole and healing Body, the Body of Christ crucified and raised.

"God has reconciled you by Christ's physical body," St. Paul tells us. (Colossians 1:22) That's what the host, the Body of Christ we either kneel or stand before in adoration and faith, conveys -- that Christ's Body, broken for us on the Cross, can, by the grace of God, make us into a healed and healing Body that communicates his love to the world.

Later, after the Eucharistic Prayer, you will see and hear the breaking of the host. Liturgically, it's called the Fraction. It is a sign of Christ's love for us, a sign of his body broken on the Cross for the sake of the world. But later still, at the Dismissal, having received the sacrament, Christ's salvation and our hope of healing for us, we will ask God to send us out with his grace, restored, united, healed and healing, in our witness and service to the world.

How we go out into the world from here also involves some very physical things, just as it did for the disciples when Jesus sent them out. Jesus told them to expect to be flogged and persecuted, and he sent them to do some very particular kinds of things -- to heal, to give as they have been given to, to be the love to others that God was to them, and is to us.

This too is sacramental. Our going out from here is also the language of posture, the language of life, which communicates meaning. It's the language of rising from the dead. "Have you forgotten?" asks Paul. "Have you forgotten that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death? By that baptism into his death we were buried with him, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might set out on a new life." That new life is what we set out for when we leave here today.

A Vietnam veteran named David Busch tells a story of resurrection life. Busch and his platoon were hunkered down in some rice paddies one day, exchanging fire with the Vietcong across the paddies. Suddenly, a line of six monks started walking along the elevated berms that separated one paddy from the next. Perfectly calm and poised, the monks walked directly toward the line of fire.

"They didn't look left, they didn't look right," says Busch. "They walked straight through. It was really strange," he said, "because nobody shot at them. And after they had walked over the berm, suddenly all the fight was out of me. I just didn't feel like I wanted to do this anymore, at least not that day. It must have been that way for everybody, because everybody quit. We just stopped fighting."

That was a sacramental walk, the kind of resurrection walk that Jesus sends us not to talk about or to believe in, but to do -- a walk right through the warfare that the world is, conveying life rather than death, a walk that does unity and peace in the midst of conflict.

Like those monks, God's Church, you and I, us -- we are the the sacramental sign, the very physical reality of God's Word of reconciliation to the world. Christ's Church does have sacramental value. Both here this morning in our worship and out there in the broken world God sends us into, either we show forth the Body of Christ as a broken body only, a body that is fractured and arrogant and anxious and self-absorbed, or we walk the resurrection Body of Christ, united and healed and healing. Either way, we are a sign to the world of what we truly believe. It's the most physical thing about us, and the most spiritual.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.