Holy Tuesday Sermon 2024

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 

Three of the six Sundays in Lent this year I was at churches that were using Rite I, and it refreshed me with one of what I believe is the greatest (and longest) sentences in the BCP: 

Almighty and ever-living God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us, and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son our Savior, Jesus Christ, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. 

I remember as a child the feel of the words “we are very members incorporate in the mystical Body” in my mouth, and being so curious about what “incorporate” meant. I didn’t know that word. And we only said it on the 4th Sunday of the month, when we had communion, so I didn’t get a whole lot of chances to ask about it. 

Very members incorporate in the mystical body. I heard “very” not as meaning “truly” but as meaning “really, really, really,”. We really really are members in the mystical body. Our very beings, our bodies, and souls, have been grafted into the Body of Christ, incorporated, embodied, in a way we cannot easily define, but in a way that we experience in prayer, in sacrament, in friendship. 

We receive Christ’s Body and blood, and that establishes his abiding presence within us so that we become part of this blessed wider body; still a mystery; but one that has hope of eternal life and the kingdom of God.

And within that mystical body, some of us have taken vows to participate in the Body in a particular role, as a particular member—as deacon, as priest, as bishop.  All Christians who are baptized have made vows to be part of the body and to participate in our covenanted relationship with God as ministers of the Gospel in the church and the world. We are only “the blessed company of all faithful people” when we are all. 

But those who are ordained have offered up more—or at least, if not more, something different. We are those who when God said, “Whom shall I send and who shall go for us?” spoke up and said, “Here I am, send me.” And with that affirmation of call, things changed. 

Someone gave me a book about the episcopate when I was elected and I remember reading in it something along the lines of “with each successive ordination you give up more of your freedom because you no longer speak or do or live just as yourself as a human being, but as yourself as a deacon, priest, or bishop.” And those limitations accumulate and are sometimes very painful. But so, too, do the privileges. 

One of those greatest privileges of ordained leadership is leading our people upon the Triduum journey. We get to not just tell the story of the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection—but to act it out, and reflect on it in our preaching and conversations and to point to the acts of service, sacrifice, violence, love and redemption that collectively bring us the sure and certain hope that the poor really are blessed, the meek really shall inherit the earth, and the grieving really will be comforted and life and love really have conquered death and Christ really is risen, he is risen indeed. 

Not everyone has yet fully tasted the bread of life that takes away their hunger. We have the cure of souls of people who are spiritually hungry and thirsty; some of whom know they are yearning for the one true bread; and some of whom are confident that they are full because they have feasted on the empty calories of self-satisfaction and ego. If you look outside our doors it is even more daunting. 

And I know some of us are daunted… how shall we sing the Lord’s song in Arizona in an election year while a world is at war, and disease is endemic, and we are afraid of declining numbers in churches, and we are afraid of the increased threats of violence to some of our people and communities, and we are afraid that we are just not enough. That is it too late, too far gone, and while we will go through the motions this Holy Week, we will not expect it to change anything or anyone.  

Remember that even Jesus had second thoughts about moving forward to the cross. “Father, if it be in your power, take this cup from me, but not my will, by thy will, be done.” So when your knees shake, and you aren’t sure how to go on: do what Jesus did and sit for a while and pray. When the hour comes, you will find the strength, you will find the words, you will find the deep well of compassion that abides in us and helps us to see Jesus in the neighbor we struggle to love, in the persecutor who approaches us with hate. We will find the deep well of compassion for ourselves, for our failings and frailties. We do not serve using only our own gifts and skills. We rely upon the power of the Holy Spirit that was given to each one of us first at our baptism, and then at our ordinations to serve God, the three in one and one in three, rather than the powers and principalities of this world. 

The powers and principalities of this world do not want to hear the message of self-emptying love, sacrifice, and redemption that we will be telling this week.  And those powers and principalities wield great sway over the members of this body, lay and ordained. 

But this week we will cling to the promise of God that there is true power in the shepherd rather than the warrior, the donkey rather than the warhorse, the dinner table rather than the courtroom, the cross rather than the sword. 

True power is in the empty tomb and not the empire’s throne room. 

We are very members incorporate in this mystical body.  What a joy to be bound together with Christ and one another.  It is impossible to walk alone when we have him with us, and when we have one another. 

Christ be with me, Christ within me.

Christ behind me, Christ before me. 

Christ beside me, Christ to win me, 

Christ to comfort and restore me. 

Christ beneath me, Christ above me

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger

Christ in hearts of all that love me

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Amen.