THIRD SUNDAY OFLENT 09
CLEANSING THE LITURGICAL TEMPLE: SACRAMENTS NOW
March 15, 2009
Today, Jesus cleanses the temple in Jerusalem. Let’s shift the focus from that temple, to the local catholic church. Let’s change the time, from that of Jesus, to our own – to an average Sunday morning when we go there for a Sunday mass. A lot of people say they would like it to be ‘better liturgy’ than it is. For some, it is too formal – too stiff, far away, remote from their real life. For others, it is too informal – too casual, too run of the mill, not reverent enough to suggest a new presence of a living God. There are liturgical temptations. How do we cleanse our liturgical temple?
Sacraments are often seen as things that give grace. Yes, they are. God uses them as instruments to give us the grace we need. Yes, God does. But that is not all they are, and not all God is doing. It is not even the main thing. Sacraments express something. They make God’s way of relating to us, visible. They are ‘signs’, ‘symbols’, ‘icons’, ‘images’ of a graciousness in God that is conveyed and given to us so that we can have and live some of that graciousness. That’s how they ‘give grace’. They make that graciousness visible when they give it a social form. They show us, rather than tell us, that it isn’t real unless it you can touch it and feel it in the relationships people have as a community. When we go to a ‘very good Mass’, it can sometimes feel like that. We are shown how much Jesus is with us, and how much we are with one another, and we actually are more with Jesus and one another by seeing it. We see how God meets us and as a result we meet one another more.
We live our ethical lives differently as a result, with more love, more relationship.
Some people say this is a spiritual, or even mystical approach to God and sacraments and the church community. Perhaps, I’m not sure. I think it is just real and normal to love and relate to other people. In faith, I think it is just real and normal to think God loves and relates to people like that, even to us. It is so much more real and normal to believe that, when you understand who Jesus is – God among us, showing us God, by entering into our social lives. Each Mass, each liturgy, is meant to show us that, and so give us that. It helps us be better persons. Together.
So how could Jesus ‘clean up’ our sacramental life now? We often talk about ‘going to’ the sacraments (‘going to’ Mass, ‘going to’ confession). We would do better not to think like that. It would be better to think in terms of ‘taking part in’ or ‘sharing in’ or ‘doing’ something sacramental. What’s that? We often used to say that we ‘went’ (to mass) to ‘get’ grace. I am not so positive about that way of saying it. What we share in and take part in and do is ‘express’ how gracious God is in the way God relates to us. We can’t ‘do’ that without being more expressively gracious ourselves than we usually are! If we don’t actively contribute some of our own gracious way of relating to one another, then not even Jesus can clean up our sacramental life…
If a sacramental act doesn’t express what is special, unique and distinctive about God’s way of loving and being generous, it’s not in the full sense a sacrament. It’s more like an attempt at an act of magic (in the not so good sense). And that’s a very big ask…
How do we know what God’s special way of loving really is? Only because God has shown us, in Jesus, and sometimes in one another. How can we dare to express THAT – shouldn’t we leave it to God to do that when God wants to? No. God leaves it to us. God wants us to show it, here and now, in our own lives. To sit back and wait for God to do it again, is laziness, not liturgy.
There’s a problem. If we do this at all, the basic place to do it is in our own real lives – at home, at work, with friends. That’s the primary field for an expression of God’s way of relating. When we think the primary field is in the church building, we have got priorities upside down. The incarnation never happened in a temple or a synagogue, it happened in a backwoods village – maybe in a spare room of a house! To cleanse our sacramental life, we have to start at home. But – when we do something good to express God, at home, with our own people, that isn’t a sacrament is it? Not in our usual language. But in reality, you can’t have a church-sacrament without it. Baptisms aren’t up to much without birthday parties. Church forgiveness isn’t worth having if you don’t have loving understanding at home when you’ve done something stupid. Eucharists aren’t up to much without family meals. Church weddings aren’t worth the signatures if there isn’t a real marriage between the people concerned. When married people exchange the sign of peace in church, it means nothing if they don’t exchange their whole committed bodily love at home. Anointing the sick is more like annoying the sick if you don’t stay with them and really support them when they need you. Etc.
So why have sacrament-rituals in church anyway? Because we need them, too. There are some expressions of love (of God’s love) that home-life or work-life or friendship-life is too limited to ‘contain’. We need a bigger context. We need somewhere where all the different people and families can come together and express together that it is all something like God’s way of loving for all of them. It needs a larger public. It needs both the small and the large arena. But I think, the large depends on the success of the small.
Does it all make us more gracious people to one another? Do we let some of that graciousness come out in these expressions? If it does, we don’t need anyone to cleanse the temple of our lives. God lives there anyway.
Catholics generally in the last decades seem to have changed – for the better - their appreciation of what sacraments are for them. They mightn’t have the words just used to say it, but they know it. They were not told to feel like that by various official liturgical renewals. They were not always received well by some church authorities when they did. But they did. Jesus was still cleansing his temple, and the cleansed liturgy was cleansing the people. It is their whole existence that has changed, and the process goes on, it doesn’t finish when Mass is over.
They know, in their Eucharists, that Jesus is saying to them: here, me, for you. And they say and do that for one another. They too say, here, me, for you. The main event is not a priest doing something they can’t do. It is all of them doing something Jesus enables them all to do. They keep on doing it at home. They know, in their marriage, that Jesus is saying to them: give yourselves to each other. And they say and do that for each other. The main event is not the wedding ceremony. It is the marriage reality every day and every night from then on. They know, when they have a misunderstanding with some one, they need to make up, and use the occasion to come to a better understanding together. They like to get a blessing on that sometimes from the Church. It is not just the blessing that is the reconciliation: it is the ongoing process it gives a little more expression to. The conclusion is that “the church” (in a practical local sense) today is very different from what it was assumed to be some time ago. It is a group of adults who have come to terms with who they are and why they are on earth. They have discovered Jesus and they believe in him. They have discovered their group as a place where they can live differently because of their faith and express together what their faith continually means to them. They do so by loving one another. They see themselves as being constantly immersed further into a new way of living like this. They show God’s sort of loving.
Yes, Jesus has cleansed his temple. Grace isn’t part of retail therapy. Don’t try to purchase more grace from Jesus (he isn’t selling): express more gratitude for his generosity in showing you God.