There are certain ineffable actions. A kiss, for
example, is a physical act that communicates things that are impossible to fully
put into words. The most important things in life are difficult to put into
words. That’s why we have poets—to explore and probe the borders of language,
and to create new metaphorical possibilities. If you have a wonderful
experience—seeing a sunset, falling in love, hearing a symphony—whatever it is,
you very quickly run out of adjectives to describe what happened. Words alone
make us feel empty. The sacraments are like that. They are actions that
communicate beyond words. Unfortunately, post-enlightenment rationalism has
taught us that reality is an intellectual formula. We think that reality lies
in words, when, in fact, the New Testament shows that it works the other way:
“The Word became flesh.”
“In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . .
. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” John 1
That
is what Advent and Christmas is all about. Today is the first Sunday of Advent.
The word means “coming” or “arrival.”
The focus of the season is on the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and the
anticipation of his return. Advent is more than simply marking a 2000-year-old
event in history; it is celebrating the revelation of God in Christ whereby all
of creation will be reconciled to God. That is a
process in which we now participate, and the consummation of which we
anticipate. We affirm that Christ has come in the flesh, that he is present in
the world today through his church, and that he will come again in power. Advent
is characterized by a spirit of expectation and longing. There is a yearning
for deliverance from the evils of the world. We hope that God, who sometimes
seems distant, will rule over all His creation in truth and righteousness. It
is that hope that once anticipated the coming of the anointed one—the Messiah.
That same spirit now longs for his return to come and set the world aright!
God’s people once cried out
in oppression and anguish, “How long O Lord?” And then, when we least expected
it, under the boot of oppression, in a night without light, came THE Light; in
a world without hope, eternal hope was born; in the midst of despair, we heard
the singing of angels. The spirit of anticipation during Advent,
and the realization of incarnation during Christmas ought to imbue the church
with a sacramental understanding of salvation. There can be no true spirituality
without sacramentality. But what does that mean? What is “sacramentality”?
It means that all reality is
potentially the bearer of God’s presence and the instrument of God’s salvific
activity on humanity’s behalf. This principle is rooted in the nature of a
sacrament as such—a visible sign and instrument of the invisible presence and
activity of God.
Christianity sees in Christ the full embodiment of God. Since God became
human, then God is seen, touched, and heard in the context of human living. “He
is the Image of the invisible God.” This is the principle of sacramentality.
The church celebrates certain rituals (primarily baptism and communion) that
make the saving presence of God tangible. They are moments of encounter with
God that deeply affect our lives. Christ is present, LITERALLY, in baptism and
communion in a sense that far surpasses anything conjured up by subjective
remembrance. What we celebrate during Christmas is a tiny preface to this
ongoing reality.
Most Evangelical Christians do not think in these terms, and it
certainly does not describe my own church heritage. Leaving baptism aside for a
separate discussion (regarding its efficacy), I was raised in a tradition that
eschewed any “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. It was done “in
remembrance” of Christ’s death and resurrection. That’s remembrance ONLY.
Anything beyond this radical Zwinglian understanding was deemed “too Catholic.”
I currently attend a church where the Eucharist is celebrated once a month.
While many of us would like to celebrate it weekly, that too has been deemed
“too Catholic.” Sadly, this misses the point. Christianity affirms that God
became human in the person of Christ, that we are receptacles of the Spirit,
that the church, collectively, is the body of Christ on earth, and that
Christ’s presence is mediated to us through real and tangible elements. Much of
Christianity has become, in a sense, too spiritual. The obsession with
spirituality that is disconnected from physical reality, and the preaching of salvation
as a plan to escape this world is, at best, a reversal of what Christianity has
always taught, and, at worst, a return to some early heresies.
But sacramentality embraces more than sacred rituals. It also promotes
the idea that we live in a sacred world because it has been created by God. For
this reason, every tangible element of creation from the natural environment to
human persons provides an opportunity to encounter something of God’s presence.
Understood in this way, the principle of sacramentality affirms that as we
study and explore the human condition, as well as the natural environment, we
are actually discovering more about the presence of God.
C.S. Lewis stated this brilliantly: “It is a serious thing
to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the
dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature
which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a
horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of
these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it
is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct
all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all
politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere
mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life
is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with,
marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
