7 Sacraments

Okay, so this week we're going to talk about the seven sacraments.

And the way I'm hoping to do that actually is making a frame for all of them and what they mean, particularly what they might mean for us as Episcopalians, is go back to talking about the disagreements about the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper first, as an invitation to hear how we might view actually the other six.

So most of us know if we've had something like European history or world history 101, that during the Reformation time particularly, there were three of the most basic ways of understanding the Eucharist emerged.

So one of them, the most traditional one, was transubstantiation.

And of course, that just means a change in substance.

And this is the idea that the elements at the communion literally become, literally become the body and blood of Jesus.

Now, people are pretty shrewd and have known that, hey, that bread that is now the flesh of Jesus doesn't seem to taste like flesh, it tastes like bread.

And this relies on some categories from the philosopher Aristotle.

Aristotle said that everything that is sort of has two ways of being.

One is its essence, and I guess the way to think about that would be its molecular formula.

So the essence of water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

That's its essence.

The other part is its accidents, that is the way that it's expressed.

And so consider that water can be a vapor, it can be a liquid, it can be a solid when it's frozen.

All of those accidents are very, very different, but they're all essentially the same.

Another way to hear it might be that form and substance.

So transubstantiation says that at the Mass, the bread becomes the body of Jesus, and the wine becomes the blood of Jesus.

And really this means at the chemical level that they've they've changed.

They appear to be bread and wine, but they're actually, in fact, the body and the blood of Jesus, which is how then they're able to be conveyors of grace.

They're literally, they're literally the flesh and blood of Jesus.

And so what you tend to see in transubstantiation theology, uh particularly around the Eucharist, is a reenactment of God's sacrifice.

And one way that this can be understood and tends to be understood, is that every time there's a mass, it's sort of like sacrificing Jesus again in order to make atonement for our sins.

That is, um, this idea says that God is super just, and as a result, God has to punish any sin, and Jesus took the punishment for us.

So this is sort of based on an understanding of justice, one understanding of justice, and that is part of what happens when we have a transubstantiation theology.

And it's also what happens, you know, what's played out is that there are sort of magic words.

And um, the magic words in the Mass are hocus corpus maim.

This is the body of Christ.

But uh for children in the pew, or even for illiterate priests, um, they may have heard or said hocus pocus, and man, if those words can turn some bread into flesh, imagine what they could do to your stubborn donkey or to your sister.

So there's a little bit of magical transformation that happens, and um the magic is real even if it isn't apparent.

The magic is real at the chemical, the molecular level.

Martin Luther disagreed with this understanding and said, no, no, no.

Um there's more mystery to it than that.

So Martin Luther said, uh came up with the word consubstantiation, which means no substantial change.

And he didn't mean no change at all.

What he meant is that the change at the Eucharist doesn't happen in this Aristotelian category.

So Luther said, look, this whole business about um essence and accidents doesn't really fit here.

Um Luther said there is actually a very significant change that happens at the Eucharist, and that is that the the bread and the wine have the real presence of Christ.

And um, that's mysterious language, but maybe it's helpful to hear when I talk to my day school kids about this.

I say, look, you know, ordinary bread and wine uh is used to nourish our bodies, it has energy, and so what the real presence does is it says, hey, not only is this gonna nourish our bodies, because it has calories, just like anything else we eat, but um this essentially now has um nourishment and energy for our spirits.

And that isn't um that isn't quite how Aristotle would have understood it, but again, it is Christ is really present in the bread.

And uh actually, if you're a consubstantiationist or a transubstantiationist, once the elements are consecrated, they have to be treated like they're special.

So, you know, in our sacristy we have a sink called a piscina that has a drain pipe that goes directly into the ground because whatever wine is not consumed that has been poured into a chalice has to be either consumed by a priest, layperson, deacon, or returned to the ground.

We do not put consecrated wine into the sewer ever.

What about what's left in the in the cup afterward?

We wash that out with uh holy or distilled water and then drink that water or pour that water down the bassina as well.

The bread, it turns out, we can throw to the birds because the consecrated elements just need to go back to the earth, but they can't go into the landfill.

So we have to treat these things different because we say the real presence is in them.

Um the third position that sort of emerged regarding the Eucharist was neither transubstantiation nor consubstantiation, but symbolism, and this was really the work of um Holdrich Zwingli and a few other of the Anabaptists who came after him, who said, look, this really is a symbolic, this is really uh representing something that's already happened.

It's good for our reminder, it's very important, but we can't really say that Jesus is more present in this bread or in this wine than before.

And so, really, the symbol uh it only works according to how you think it works.

Um, which is to say that you could go to a symbolic Eucharist and your head could be in the wrong place, and you could have these elements and you wouldn't have any additional spiritual energy.

Again, the goal is not to energize your spirit here, it is to replay a story.

Um, oddly enough, uh, if you're into the symbolism group, actually in any of these groups, um, there can be uh a little bit of consternation around taking communion, because if the real presence is there, or if you interact with the symbol in the improper way, the concern has been for for many over centuries, well, couldn't it do you some damage?

If you uh haven't properly gone to confession, or if you don't have the correct mindset when you take these elements, couldn't that be like disrespecting God?

And wouldn't there in fact be a price to pay instead of grace received?

Um, and so uh this is a real concern in all in all three camps.

And those positions really just allow us to say, hey, uh what really happens when we do these sacraments?

Now, our prayer book says that um a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

And so again, I think it's really helpful to think about the day school example I gave you.

Outward and visible is like eating and touching and smelling food.

Inward spiritual grace is like being nourished within our spirits.

Of course, the Eucharist means more than just nourishment, or certainly can, but but just thinking through how that's sacramental uh hopefully is a little bit helpful.

Um it may also be helpful though to hear that Eucharist means thanksgiving.

Um, it's simply a Greek word that means that, and there's a dual movement happening, hopefully.

Eucharist is when we give thanks to God.

You know, in right one language we say it is meet right and our bounded duty to give thanks to thee at all times and in all places.

So that's Eucharistic language.

We're supposed to be thankful no matter what.

But I want to suggest to you that Eucharist is also the time in which God is thankful for us.

And um, this is certainly not new theological thinking.

It goes back a long, long way, that God is in fact grateful for us, thankful for us exactly as we are.

That God is sort of like a parent who curiously watches their child, um, not to see whether they'll get it right or wrong, but because they're enamored with them.

And so as a result, God is really happy to offer us God's presence through the Eucharist and the other six sacraments.

It's worth saying that what we sort of ended up doing as Anglicans is saying, when we use the words of institution, um, this bread is my body, we also attach to it, do this in remembrance of me.

So we kind of show both positions in our liturgy.

This is the body of Christ, which sounds a little transubstantiationist, do this in remembrance of me, which sounds really symbolic, and that's what puts us in tension and in that middle category of consubstantiation.

Again, that doesn't mean Christ isn't present.

It means that presence is uh mysterious and can't be reduced to things like um accidents and uh and essence.

So uh what's interesting to hear is that the Eucharist uh was happening uh within a few weeks of the resurrection, apparently.

This has been the primary way of Christians worshiping, and it's taken a lot of different forms.

Uh earliest it seems to be it really was a shared meal, not just a piece of bread or a bit of wine.

Uh think of a potluck, quite frankly.

And I mentioned uh just a few minutes ago that some people have worried, hey, what if I take the Eucharist in the wrong spirit?

Does it damage me?

Well, Paul addresses such a situation in 1 Corinthians, but uh contextually what was happening there is that people were taking the Eucharist in the wrong way.

That is to say, um they were having a potluck, and um people showed up at four because they didn't have jobs or they were retired or they had luxury, and they ate all the chicken.

And the people who came after work, there was nothing for them.

And Paul was saying, listen, um, the way you're doing this, you're not living into God's Thanksgiving for all of you or your Thanksgiving for the community.

The way you're doing this act of Thanksgiving is excluding people, it's creating divisions because the people who have the leisure to come earlier are eating all the food and people are excluded.

So it's actually is a really interesting way to think that if we exclude people at the Eucharist, that might be the biggest danger.

Uh not, hey, let's exclude ourselves because we don't feel right.

Exclusion is the biggest danger because if people don't get a share of God's real presence at the table, we're doing it wrong.

Now, look, you know, if somebody has made all the chicken and then they choose to eat it, isn't that their right?

Well, no, because they've offered it up for the community.

So the people who are coming early, they may have brought all the food, and those working class people might have brought nothing, and so they got nothing.

In some ways that's fair, but it's not what it means to be a community.

And it's not what it means to offer a gift.

This is an interesting thing.

When you give a gift to the community, it's been given and it's for everybody, and then to take it back is exactly what destroys a community.

So in some ways, you don't have to give the gift, but when you do, it's given.

And uh more than anything, that seems to be what Paul's speaking to.

It's not dipping a little piece of bread in a chalice of wine, but eating all the food at a potluck before anybody gets a share.

So I want to suggest that we've got this old tradition about how the Eucharist can hurt us, but really it seems like the biggest injury is whether or not everybody's given access to it or not.

Of course, the Eucharist is um half of our service, as we talked about last week.

It's the liturgy of the sacrament.

Uh, the service begins with the liturgy of the word, and the goal in the liturgy of the word is to break open the scriptures and be nourished by them, as is the goal of the liturgy, to break open the elements and be nourished by them.

Um, it's interesting to hear now, because we're talking a little bit about closing common cup, that um for a long time wine was reserved only for the clergy, certainly throughout the Middle Ages.

And so part of our Reformation heritage is everybody, not just clergy, has access to both elements.

And the other interesting part that we've got to hear last week is that neither element is superior to the other, that receiving one is receiving enough of the real presence of Christ.

And I think even greater, and surely God is greater like this, intention to receive is as good as receiving.

And that means if you have a feeding tube in the hospital and you want to have the Eucharist, you get the real presence of Christ, whether you get to eat it or drink it or not.

Or if you're concerned about viral outbreak, but you really would like to receive the Eucharist, you get the real presence of Christ.

I mean, this is actually pretty old, old theology.

Um, there is one other thing to say just briefly about the difference between the substantiation opinions and the symbolism opinion, and this came out really, really early in the church, which is hey, um, these sacraments, and they're traditionally are seven, what happens if the person administering the sacrament is a scumbag?

And I I want you to really think scumbag.

Like, what happens if this person is a uh a batterer or a child abuser or has stolen money?

Like, doesn't that compromise the goodness of the sacrament?

Like, if my hands as a priest are dirty, how can I offer you anything clean?

And the rule offered really, really early was that the sacrament works in spite of the priest.

This is how big God's real presence is, or how big God's ability to change the substance is, that it works not because of the priest, but in spite of the priest.

Or um even better, it God's grace um is not dependent upon people.

Uh it works even when we do it imperfectly.

Uh that lies at odds with the symbolic um opinion, just a little bit, right?

Because if we don't uh come to the symbol correctly, then what we've done is presented a um a warped, a distorted symbol, and that can wreck it for everybody.

Um so I just want to say that sort of out front.

And and and then this is our celebration then of the Lord's Supper.

It's called a major sacrament along with baptism because the prayer book says it is for everybody.

That is, everybody is called to it, and everybody can do it.

The Eucharist, of course, is a essentially a rite of renewal whereby we are renewed for our faith journey.

And baptism is a rite of passage whereby we change from one mode of being to the other permanently.

Um the frequency of the Eucharist has changed a whole lot over time.

Like in a monastic community, it wouldn't just be once a day, it might be multiple times a day.

In the Episcopal Church, it used to be once a month, and this is prior to the 1976.

It might have only been once a month where you grew up, the other three times might have been morning prayer collectively.

Uh now we do it every week.

And um, you know, I think what's interesting is people say, well, we do it every week, and that waters down the significance.

And um, I suppose another way of thinking is uh doing it every week upholds the significance because um we in fact need the spiritual nourishment sacramentally more than just once a week, more than just once a day.

Uh in Jesus' original words, he sort of says, whenever you drink wine, remember me, whenever you eat bread, remember me.

And the diet at his time on average was a two-pound loaf of bread a day per person.

That was 90% of your energy.

Five percent of your energy and nutrition every day came from wine, and that wasn't just in one sitting.

So at the time of Jesus, I in the words of institution that we always share at the Eucharist, um, we get to hear, hey, we have this opportunity to remember as often as we do basic things like eat and drink, and I would even say breathe.

And remember is a really important word because it doesn't just mean like looking through a photo album, it means in the hardest sense, imagine that your arm has been cut off, it has been dismembered.

Remembering is when you reattach it and regain the use of your arm.

So we get to remember our faith, we get to reattach God's nourishment for us throughout every day, and and that seems to be um what Jesus was driving at, I would say.

And that's what the sacraments offer us.

Um, some again are repeatable and some are once and for all, but ways to reattach ourselves to God and to the community and to ourselves.

Okay, that's that's uh number one, the Eucharist.

Um the next one is baptism, and this is the next major sacrament.

Uh we tend to do this for infants in the Episcopal Church, actually in the Methodist and Roman Catholic Church as well.

I grew up Southern Baptist and we reserved this practice for adults because we believed in adult believer baptism.

That is, um people should know what they're doing when they do it.

That does appear to be the most biblical position, and maybe you're wondering why do we baptize infants?

And the short the short rule is that um the early church did in fact only baptize adults, and that if you wanted to be a bapt, if you wanted to be baptized, uh you actually had to apply two years in advance.

You had to go through a rigorous instruction protocol, but you also had to have basically a chaperone, make sure you were living a life worthy of getting the name Christian.

And if you weren't, your candidacy was canceled.

Um that seems to have changed mostly in the mid-400s, and one of our big influencers is Augustine of Hippo, who um was a prolific and um he was a very, very intelligent guy.

And Augustine decided, and um I think the feeling of this is right, even though I would disagree with the particulars, um, Augustine decided that people are basically bad.

And he decided that happened in the Garden of Eden.

That is, Adam and Eve, when they disobeyed, something changed about them, like transubstantiation in a bad way.

And uh that's permanent, so it's passed on genetically.

And Augustine says literally that Adam's sperm shriveled, that it became less than God had originally created and intended, and that the act of procreation, therefore, passes on this sort of shriveled or smaller way of being onto everybody.

So we're born sinners, Augustine said, and that's the doctrine of original sin.

We're born with something inherently wrong with us.

That got developed in later centuries to say that babies have original sin, and so if they die without being baptized, they'll go to hell.

And the thing that people believed in deeply that would remove all sins was baptism.

And so, with a high infant mortality rate, it wasn't long before people were clamoring for the church to baptize their infants so that they didn't die and go to hell.

It's maybe curious to hear that even before Augustine, the Emperor Constantine, chose to be baptized not at his conversion in 312 or 321, whenever.

You reckon that to be, but on his deathbed in 332, because he wanted to save baptism for the time in which it could do the most for his benefit.

So he saved it for his deathbed uh so that he could get the maximum benefit of forgiveness of sins and not worry about his immortal soul.

Well, back to Augustine, uh started baptizing infants.

And what's curious to know is that the word baptized is a Greek word, and in Greek it means dunk or immersed, and we don't do that because dunking and immersing babies seems a little bit well dangerous.

And um King James knew this very well when he translated the Bible into English in 1611 or authorized that translation, but because of the practice of the church and the theology that had developed around the practice, he chose to leave the word a Greek word instead of rendering it into English.

So, strictly speaking, there is no John the Baptist, there's John the Dunker, there really is no baptism, there's full immersion, like dying cloth, or um again, or getting dumped.

Um, I've told you briefly before about the history of the shell.

A lot of churches have shells, and those come later because there aren't really seashells in the River Jordan.

Um, the shell comes to us from uh Santiago de Compostelo, the um pilgrimage church in Scotland, St.

James, and um not Scotland and Spain, pilgrims would make a three, four hundred-mile journey in pilgrimage to this place in Spain that was thought to be the edge of the world, and they brought back from the end of the world a shell, a seashell from the end of the world, and that became an actually interesting metaphor for baptism and something that their parish clergy, their local clergy, uh, would use as a prop.

Hey, look, here's a shell from the end of the world, and that's part of what the theology of baptism does is say, look, um, baptism is taking us past the end of the world into a new world of God's grace and love, and um that's part of what the sacrament's meant to do.

You know, at the time of Jesus, uh water was considered to be a symbol of chaos and even evil.

And so Paul really early on says, when we're baptized into Jesus, when we're immersed into his life, we're also baptized into his death.

That is, our old way of living, which is based, um, and there's a lot of different ways to think about this, but on unselfishness and instinct and on our reptilian brains, has literally been drowned so that God can recreate us in a way that is um full of faith, hope, and love.

Um, what do I tell our day school kids about baptism?

Regular water gets used to do a few things.

It is used to hydrate people and plants so that they can grow.

It's used to wash off dirt.

It is used, especially in Texas in the summer, to refresh us when we're hot.

Um these are some of the basic uses for water.

So then imagine the spiritual uses for water are to wash off anything that is dirty, but also anything, frankly, that separates us from the love of God.

So um, to be honest, uh I found uh I'm more anxious about whether I should have sent my kid to private school in the second grade instead of the third grade, or whether I should have done a horseback riding a year earlier than I did, than I am often about whether I told a simple lie.

The lie I know how to deal with, I can confess it, put it behind me, but these sort of parenting worries uh they just seem to go on for me sometimes.

And um, this is what the real presence of Jesus would do is to wash off that anxiety.

Of course, uh we need refreshment, and this is part of why we have a holy water font, so that each week we come in, we can renew the presence of, hey God, um I just get tired uh sometimes eking out my spiritual existence day to day.

I could use some refreshment.

There's the intention also to be nurtured and nourished and rehydrated by that water.

Uh, and so these are some of the ways that we talk about baptism with our kids.

Okay, but on to the three ways of doing it.

Transubstantiation would say, hey, the water changes, and by the way, we do bless the water in the Episcopal Church, as the Roman Church would do as well.

But transubstantiation would say something changes about the human being.

Something is fundamentally different about the person after going under the water.

So then what you're in substantiated baptism is your very essence.

Your original sin is removed, and so there's sort of this chemical change that happens in your spirit at the spiritual level where you're no longer inherently evil and worthy of hell and despised by God.

So that's the transubstantiation sort of approach.

On the other end, symbolically, and this varies on denomination, how of how this looks theologically, um, I grew up in a denomination that was very much in a symbolism, but required people to go to be baptized in order to go to heaven because it was a symbolic way of obeying.

So you were supposed to do it because Jesus did it.

And if you wouldn't do that symbolic gesture of obedience, then there was going to be no hope for you.

Um and in the middle is this real presence, which again I think is the thing where we are invited to think about being reflect being refreshed and replenished and hydrated and uh having our worries and uh the the attitudes that sort of separate us from one another and from God washed away so that we can be new and bigger and better people.

And of course, what's interesting is that when we baptize infants, often the infant is not aware of that.

Um, I guess we don't really know what the infant's aware of, but probably not.

And so in some ways, public baptism is this really important step wherein um when we see somebody else get this real presence of grace, uh we're able to claim it for ourselves as well.

And there's this interesting part where we uh in the right, where we say that we'll do all in our power to support these persons and their walk with Christ, even if we don't know them.

We usually say we will.

In fact, I'm not sure I've marked anybody that does not uh say we will at the appropriate time.

And um and I think that becomes this really important part of that uh claiming that we are going to nourish one another and actually join God in working uh alongside the ways that the water can work in replenishing and growing and nourishing and cleansing one another.

So um we get to do this not only as a recipient, but as an observer.

And even though baptism happens one time as a rite of passage and we see other people do it, it becomes for us this rite of renewal.

And I guess the real question that we get to ask is, you know, is as consubstantiationists, um, particularly if original sin is not on the table, is there an essential change of baptism, or is there just a formal change?

Or again, I would say that that language doesn't really work.

This is uh Luther's gift to us.

There is this real mystery about what's going on, but we're really positive, especially when we see this happen in other people.

Uh many of us didn't get to see it happen to ourselves, but when we get to see it happen in other people, that that um God's grace is effectually working through this uh through these means.

Um and I have said this a few times before from the pulpit.

Um, it seems really easy to me to look at a baby and see somebody entirely lovely and lovable.

And then baptism is this practice, hopefully, where when we can do that for babies and commit to loving them, that we can look at the cranky adults in our life and say, oh look, you are a child of God too, and instead of being difficult, maybe you're just hungry or tired and we're committed to loving you.

And in those sorts of moments, um the real presence of baptism um can mysteriously work its way out.

I I do think we have to ask, you know, as with the Lord's Supper, um do you need to receive the Lord's Supper uh in order for God to want to nourish you?

Um, if is God angry when you won't eat from the table that uh that God has prepared, or um does God need you to be baptized in order to love you more?

And uh maybe this is a little bit uh heretical to say, but I would say no.

These are things that we need in order to better appreciate God.

So um we need them to as marking posts in our spiritual journey because if done right, these um symbols invite us into a deeper spirituality for ourselves, but also a deeper spirituality in our community.

And um, you know, in some communities it's a really strong piece that people can't uh eat from the Lord's table until they've been baptized.

And I guess the question is whether or not that's a human need, uh whether that's our rule or whether that's God's rule.

And I can't really answer that yet, and I just would uh invite us to uh to uh to consider that.

Again, if if uh God needs it from us, then I think uh we end up in the transsubstantial uh transubstantial position.

And if it's something more like we need, I think we end up um in the other two camps.

Okay, uh a third sacrament is anointing with oil, also called unction.

Um in uh sort of older areas.

This was called Last Rites, and uh it was when somebody was given holy oil and confession and absolution on their deathbed to make sure that they did not go to hell uh when they died.

It was a way of trying to make atonement for sins once again.

Um I guess we could hear that all of these sacraments have at one time uh been understood this way.

Um we don't in the Episcopal Church have last rites, strictly speaking.

We have prayers at the time of death, but in a greater category than that, we have anointing with oil.

So we find in the book of James that uh if anybody is sick among you, you should anoint them with oil and pray for them.

And this is the scriptural grounding for this.

And I think it's even a little bit older, which is that um in the Hebrew Bible, a king was coronated not with a crown, but when a prophet um anointed them with oil.

That was sort of how they were enthroned or marked for the for the uh the crown.

And so um my own suspicion is that we anoint people with oil when they're in positions of weakness or despair or worry or anxiety to say, hey, precisely in this moment, you are going to be uh royalty to both the community and to God.

We're going to rally around you and your moments of felt weakness and isolation.

And um, I will tell you that praying for people with oil uh was not part of my evangelical tradition, but it has been really a powerful um sacrament for me, particularly as a priest, because uh instead of just saying some words over somebody, um, there's that physical contact with somebody's head.

And I invite you to think about how often um you have somebody, and maybe it's only a spouse or a child, um, touch your head uh willingly, intentionally, gently.

And especially to do that um with uh uh you know compassion and care um in their heart and their hands is is really a connecting moment.

Um again, I think we can consider this happening.

Hey, is this transubstantial?

So um is this oil sort of like a magical bomb that will uh heal your malady?

And if you don't have the oil, you may not get better.

Um is this um as always, is it something God needs us to do?

And healing in general is an interesting question.

I mean, is it something that we are looking for ostentatious miracles that uh, you know, in which limbs are regenerated, or are we looking for, in addition to physical healing, things like spiritual peace and grace?

Uh and I don't know that one excludes the other, but I think it becomes a really uh important thing to ask what it is we're looking for when we do these.

So um again, if if if we're transubstantial here, um oil is sort of like uh a magic potion.

If we're consubstantial, then we say the real presence is in things like the touch and the symbolism.

Uh-huh this is good to say the symbolism of kingship and importance, uh the real presence of Christ can be within that symbolism.

But whether you get it or not, I think there's like whether you understand that or not, there's this intimacy of touch that says, you know, in moments of of weakness and vulnerability, God would reach out and touch you.

And and um in some ways I think we can experience um the real presence of Christ that way, like I say, uh particularly the giving end, I certainly have myself and continue to do so.

Um it is important to remember that unction is a repeatable sacrament, and it is not just for somebody who is physically sick.

It can be somebody who is fretful, or again, uh could be for a parent or for a child who's taking exams or facing college admissions.

Uh, these are really, really um vulnerable moments in which, in general, we could use a little more grace and a little more presence and a little more touch from the Lord and the community.

So I think all of those are wrapped up in unction.

Curiously, um, anybody can can anoint somebody else with oil, although the prayer book does say that the clergy are the ones who bless that oil.

So it's uh my last diocese, the bishop actually blessed the healing oil for the diocese.

In the prayer book, the any clergy can do that.

Um bishop can only consecrate chrism.

That's something that we use at baptism.

It's different from healing oil, and that that continues here.

We only receive that from the bishop, but you know, it is uh possible.

I actually carry some oil in my car, and um there's this dual sacrament of of giving it um to people, but also having it to give to people for me, so that um for example, when I went to the post office when I first moved here, I saw some a postal worker time in a sling, and I asked if she wanted a healing prayer and anointing with oil, and she said yes, and I went to the car and got it.

And um again, there was this binding experience of touch and intimacy and prayer, and um it was strong for both of us, and um the other thing is even if it doesn't seem to be Christ is really present, that's a great thing, even if we don't experience it or feel it.

The real presence says Christ is there anyway.

Um, but any layperson can do that, can carry around holy oil in their pocket or in their car or in their pocketbook and offer that to somebody in a moment of need.

So um, if you've never received this, I offer it to you freely.

Uh, we have it at church in two or three places.

And um again, the the best part about the best kind of magic is you may not even feel it, and real presence assures us that Christ is really present anyway.

And that's where I think it's a step beyond symbolism.

Okay, um, another one to talk about is reconciliation.

It used to be known as confession, and reconciliation happens in our general service, in which we're offered the opportunity to confess the things we've done and left undone.

And uh, what's great about it is um liturgically the absolution is assured.

Like you're not going to confess your your your deep dark secrets before God and have the priest say, nope, that's too bad.

God has nothing to offer you.

Like the confession is something we get to do because we need to do it, but the absolution is guaranteed.

Again, I've never been somewhere where the priest has said no.

Um, so uh I think that's uh a really, really important thing to start with.

Um, again, we could consider from the transubstantial position that if we do this correctly, uh it's something God needs us to do.

But I would also suggest we can consider it consubstantially as this is something we need to do.

And we have this form in the prayer book that is in the event that um the regular general confession is not giving you the peace you need.

So um honestly, sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, there's things that bother me.

They tend to not necessarily be notorious sins, they just tend to be things that, again, I've decided for my children, or I've made decisions in my marriage that were not wrong.

I just wonder, what if I'd done this instead of that?

And so this is an opportunity to say, hey, you know, we can sometimes get so caught up in the past uh and worried about the past that we fail to live in the present and even close our orientation to the future.

And the sacrament of reconciliation is so we can be reconciled with God's reconciliation of our past.

So we sort of get to hear, hey, um God is gonna put all of this behind you.

So when you leave reconciliation, make sure you put it behind you as well.

Um don't continue to stew or worry about this, but trust that God has put this behind.

And this is where, you know, reconciliation is a little bit different from forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a gift that you give yourself.

It's a gift where you say, I'm not going to be defined by my past anymore.

But forgiveness is a unilateral decision.

Reconciliation takes two people.

So in the rite of reconciliation, you're hearing God reaching out actually and saying, I'm trying to reach past you being stuck in some kind of moment of the past of misery, of um regret, of remorse.

I'm trying to reach past that.

So I'd just like to open yourself up to my reach so that we can have a future together, a future in which we're present.

And um, the way this goes is we do it face to face.

It's not like um in older days in which these were anonymous confessions.

And uh again, we do one in the middle of the service before the Eucharist, so you don't have to do an individual confession before the Eucharist, of course, um, because we have the general one.

Um we do this face to face so that you can have eye contact and intimacy with a human being and know that um a minister who has been ordained precisely in order to speak on behalf of God in a few rare moments is doing that and saying the absolution that you're that is being uh announced and proclaimed is coming directly from God.

There's this interesting thing where as clergy people we have a few opportunities to speak on behalf of God.

The sermon is not one of them, um, but the absolution is, and um this is you know sort of the one of the weightiest parts of our service is being able to offer.

For absolution on behalf of God.

And again, we don't have to sit there and stew whether we're going to give it.

We get to proclaim it.

It's a foregone conclusion that the absolution is going to be offered.

So this again, I think, is part of the magic of reconciliation, like the real presence magic, not the kind that um is a s is sort of a spell that changes your essence.

Another human being gets to hear what you're really worried about and assure you that God is not worried about that anymore.

And again, in that way we we offer um we offer the real presence of the Lord to people who are isolated because of their fears or their memories or because of their own bad decisions.

Um the problem symbolically, I think, in the symbolist camp, uh and also in the transubstantiationist camp, and this is part of what really got Luther going, was you're supposed to um do penance, that is, make right what you did wrong, but you're also supposed to feel contrition.

And what Luther could never get his hand around is whether or not he felt contrite enough.

He always felt bad, but was it bad enough?

And um that enough bit uh ratcheted him up so much that he finally decided that he could never feel bad enough, and nor did he need to.

It wasn't based on his feeling, what he put into the spell, so to speak, but on the power of the spell itself, that um God didn't need us to feel a particular way in order to pronounce our absolution.

Um I think in us for uh in order for us to really live into it, we might need we we might need to feel a certain way for us to receive it, but that that wasn't God's need at all.

And so that's a really interesting way to approach this.

I don't know if you've ever done the sacrament of reconciliation.

It can take um as few as five to ten minutes.

Uh it can take a long time, depending on what it is you'd like to sort of get off your chest um that is keeping you from breathing in deeply God's grace.

But the right is in the prayer book, and it's been a very powerful experience.

Uh in general, uh I've probably done this about seven or eight times in seven years.

So it's it's not uh a popular thing in our tradition, at least not in my experience, but it is really effective and powerful to be a part of.

Okay, um another rite, of course, is marriage, and marriage is again not a major sacrament because not everybody is called to it.

Uh and then, you know, part of what we get to consider is is marriage a transubstantial change, is it consubstantial, or is it symbolic?

If it's transubstantial, I guess the question is like what is the essence of change?

And in some ways we can say two have become one, even though they appear to be two.

So uh like the the the molecular structure of a couple has changed to mirror one another.

Um you know, in in the uh traditional Roman church, and this still exists in the documents of the church, even though the practice has changed a little bit.

The rain reason for marriage is procreation of offspring.

Um in the Protestant tradition, marriage is about unity and children are optional, and so those are totally different ways uh we get to hear this.

Um we mark a trans, we do mark a um a rite of passage change in marriage because it used to be boyfriend, girlfriend, or man and woman, and now husband and wife, and those terms are really exclusively used still, uh, sacred or secular, for um for people who have had the sacrament of marriage.

Um again, I don't know what we say changes in marriage at the transubstantial level.

It it could be again that the molecular level has changed, but you know, in terms of the ways that marriage represents a real presence, of course, have to do with vow making and vow keeping and seeking unity in all things.

So the question is, is unity just a physical molecular thing or is it a spiritual thing?

And can we be unified as couples even when we have different opinions?

Does unity mean uniformity?

I would say not.

Um in these ways, I think marriage becomes a model for God's grace and a way of participating in it.

Um, that unity does not equal uniformity, that uh our love relationships are not based only on how we feel, but on our vows and our commitments.

Because certainly, in my experience, anyway, if you only love somebody as much as you feel like it, your marriage will probably last you about two years at the longest, and then you'll be done.

So um without commitment and perseverance, uh, marriages don't tend to last, and there is something really, really sacramental about, well, I'm convinced, um, living into God's love, even when we don't feel like it, by practicing it when we don't feel like it.

Uh again, marriage is not for everybody, but the hope is that um whether it is or isn't for us, that when we see people who are committed to loving one another in these ways, who are committed um to this level of intimacy, that we are strengthened in our faith and in our friendship.

And uh there's this really great Jewish read about marriage, which is that the first thing that happened in the garden when Adam and Eve ate the apple and acquired knowledge is that they knew they were naked and they used their knowledge, their knowledge did not feed them to take better care of each other.

In fact, they were naked and they were ashamed of their nakedness, they were ashamed of their vulnerability and their flaws, and um the rabbis said that marriage is when two people come back together who are naked and are not ashamed.

And it's just a really, really interesting image that um the rabbis understood that marriage reunites the image of God and it does so without shame in the middle of vulnerability.

So one other bit I left down is that the the rabbis read Genesis chapter 2 and they read the first human being as being androgynous and um like a hermaphrodite.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

And when Adam falls asleep, God in fact splits the hermaphrodite in two so that both genders come out of one entity.

And when the man and woman come back together, they they complete them, they they complete the original complementarity.

Uh so it's really interesting to think about um this real presence uh as completing the community that is inside of God.

After all, we say God is Trinitarian, God is three as much as God is one, so there's this community in God, and um marriage does that.

Um and how God is present in that, you know, again, I having been married 15 years, I'm I'm definitely a consubstantialist, but I but I also recognize the real the real presence of God in in marriage and my vows and my spouse and in my um living out of my vows, especially when it's difficult.

Um okay, two rites left.

Confirmation.

Confirmation is uh a rite in which uh, particularly in our church that baptizes infants, it's a milestone where we say, look, I didn't have a choice about this when I was a baby.

And maybe I didn't have a choice about God's grace either.

It's there whether I wanted it or not.

But in confirmation, we say now, as adults or as people who have walked the road of faith long enough that we sort of know how we'd like to orient our lives, that we're making the claim that baptism was chosen for us, but confirmation is chosen by us.

That with all that we know, we intend to commit ourselves to this way of life and way of faith.

And so um what happens at confirmation essentially is that a bishop will lay hands on our head and say, Bless you in keeping those vows, and I'm going to confirm you, I'm gonna recognize this milestone, this commitment, so that you can hold on to it in moments of challenge or weakness.

You can go back and say, uh, look, I've got the blessing of the community, I've got the blessing of the bishop.

The bishop laid hands on me as a way of God saying, You can do this.

Um, you're you're with me, God, in moments that are difficult.

So confirmation represents, I think, all of these opportunities.

Um, if we're transubstantial, then confirmation marks some kind of inward change to us.

Um, you know, and and I think some people have that experience, but I would say that the consubstantialist, consubstanti, that um there may not be an essential change to us at confirmation, like in our molecular level, but that there is this real presence where the community and the bishop, and we've done classes to help do our thinking.

We've had conversations with people who are having similar thinking.

Hopefully, we've gotten to know our clergy a little bit better, so that we've really tightened down the community and said, hey, the faith that's in you, I see it and recognize it, and we're just we're going to confirm that, we're going to celebrate that.

We don't call it conformation because at the end of the day, it's not just about memorizing a catechism, it's about confirming the faith that's in us and the ways in which we've seen God be active in our lives and confirming our intention to live that out going forward.

So um, so there's confirmation.

As with all of these other sacraments, uh, you can look at the service in the prayer book and read the notes, and the prayer book will give us even more insights into sort of not only what the rite looks like, but the efficacy the rite might have in our lives.

Last one is ordination, and uh it's really important to hear from the prayer book that um the church is the ministry of the laity, and then the deacons, and then the priests, and then finally the bishops, which means the laity comes first, and truth be told, there are more laity than any other order, and so it is the job of the laity to be the body of Christ.

We can't do that um any other way, really.

And so um ordination, though, is a moment where we say, okay, within this really big church, some of us have different roles, and some of us are called the different roles, and within the body, some of us are called particularly to look after those who are not being looked after.

And this is what deacon means, it means servant in Greek, and so the deacons were the ones who made sure that the Greek widows were treated as well as the Jewish widows.

Um, the Greek people were also evangelists, most notably Philip, who made sure that people who were stigmatized, like eunuchs or from different countries, were given the same access to God's grace as anybody else.

Again, they they helped the church community not become overly homogeneous and to make sure that they were ministering to all the needs of the world.

So we still have these people in that church today, they're deacons, and um in every diocese they look a little bit different because deacons serve at the pleasure of the bishop.

But just from my last place, I would tell you, um, we had a guy who was doing prison ministry for years and years and years.

I was really, really important to him.

And one day the bishop said, Look, you know, uh, we really need you to wear an episcopal collar because your service is so important and so meaningful, and your faith is meaningful to you.

And uh boy, you know, if you could represent the church, this would be a real win-win.

So um, my friend Tom was deaconed, and um and he uh he wore that collar and he represented the church every time he went in into the prison.

And then, of course, whenever he came to the church, he represented the prison to the church and said, Look, you're not allowed to um look down on these people because they've made a mistake.

They just happened to have been caught, but they've served their time, and um you can't ignore them, you need to pray for their needs.

And so he represented the marginalized um to those of us who were not in those circumstances, and he represented the church, especially by recruiting and loving and spending time with these people uh when he went into the prison.

So um deacons are these servants first, and they get to do it sort of representing the church, and they get to represent um the needs of the world to the church.

Now, the Episcopal Church is pretty unique here because when we do holy orders, uh we're the only church that would give you separate ordinations.

So I was ordained a deacon even though um it was not my call.

I um definitely feel a pull to care for the marginalized and to serve, but um I also felt a call to offer reconciliation and sacraments to the community, and so that call is played out in the priesthood, and so technically what the priest can do that the deacon can't is um is offer uh the Eucharist, can offer the absolution, and can offer the blessing at the end of the service.

Uh, those are like those the sort of the liturgical things.

Of course, the deacon wears a sash and uh the priest wears a stole.

Um, but uh and the priest can do a few other things, as I mentioned, like bless holy oil.

Um, these are things that we can do on behalf of the community.

We wear um the collar in the Episcopal Church because historically that's sort of where we've that's our root, that's where we've come from.

And um, you know, just as with a deacon, when I go to the hospital in the collar, people recognize the church coming through the door, which means I'm supposed to be really careful how I conduct myself because of course I want the church to look really good.

And this becomes really important when we uh pick people or confirm ordination for people, is that um you know there's this there's this duty and privilege of service, and it is not for everyone, and it's not a better way of being in ministry, it just happens to be the way that we feel called.

So, you know, the treasurer of the church is in no way less of a minister than the priest, uh, nor is the sexton.

There's just different roles that we've uh chosen to do, and with different roles, there's different responsibilities and privileges.

Um, you know, I would say that's the consubstantial position.

I think transubstantially, if something changes, then there is a hierarchy of people, and some people are holier than others, and that can that can obviously separate us into saying things like father knows best, uh, which is um sort of idolatry uh at its worst and certainly puts us in um in ways of of being in community and communion that are not necessarily helpful.

Uh the truth is if we forget that priests may not be the most pious or righteous people in the room, we do everybody a disservice.

I wasn't priesthood because I won a piety competition.

I was priesthood because my bishop, my commission on ministry, enough of my peers and people I ministered to saw what I felt like was God calling me to do this role.

Uh and to hopefully do it faithfully.

But uh I I am sure I could probably give you a list of 50 lay people I've known who are better people than I am.

And um that isn't how it works.

It's not about being better or more righteous, it's about the role that we're called to fill and honor.

And so um I've been ordained to the diaconate, I've been ordained to the priesthood.

The last role in the holy orders is the bishop, and the bishop has a third ordination or consecration.

If the bishop is going to be a diocesan bishop, the bishop would be enthroned.

What can the bishop do?

The priest can't do.

Um, the bishop can ordain priests and deacons, so ordination is not for me.

I get to have a role in it, but it there has to be a bishop, not just priests.

Um the bishop can confirm, which I can't do.

I'll present uh confirmands at the end of the bishop as the sponsor, and the bishop will confirm them or not.

Um, always has confirmed them so far for me.

Um and the bishop can consecrate the chrism.

So again, there's a few things the bishop does that the priest doesn't.

There's a few things the priest does that the deacon doesn't.

There's a few things the deacon does that the laity don't, but this is how the roles are meant to work and together.

And again, I think we have to ask, you know, is there some kind of molecular change that makes um the clergy sort of more magical or more holy or more pious?

I would say no, that's the transubstantial position.

Um is is there is Christ really present in the priest as much as Christ is really present in the laity?

And I think what's interesting is we have these rites that offer um, hey, we recognize God's gifts in you, we recognize uh the ministry you're going to offer, and essentially we're going to bless you.

You're going to wear this uh uniform, you're going to do these roles in the church like communion and baptism and absolution.

You're going to do these because we recognize you sort of already being attracted to and already living that out.

And thank you for serving us in these ways while we serve in other ways.

Um I, you know, I think we can approach ordination from a bunch of different ways.

I do think, and I remember going back to my own ordination, I was really afraid that I wasn't good enough in a piety category to be ordained.

It was a really, really scary and heavy thing for me, particularly because I came from a symbolic worldview, and I uh was afraid I was gonna mess up the symbolism.

And I think again, the real presence says, you know, it really isn't about it really isn't about just you.

It's about what God can do with you and through you.

Uh that was that's a rush through our um through our seven sacraments.

And I would tell you just here at the end that um I probably left a lot out and uh probably went a lot of places you or may or may not have been interested in, but I will say there are seven sacraments in the prayer book, but maybe it's helpful to hear that each of us have sacraments that are not in the prayer book that are meaningful for us.

Like for me, I would tell you that uh learning is sacramental.

I experience God's grace sacramentally, even though you won't find the sacrament of learning in the prayer book.

Um, I find a few other things to be sacramental.

We've chosen seven as the basis for ways that everybody can experience outward signs of God's inner grace, and many of these come back to things that the early church was doing and Jesus did himself.

Um but please know that if you have um sacramental experiences while hiking or while meeting somebody's physical needs, or again, uh by learning or even by producing art or viewing art, that um that's not questionable, that's right.

Um because since God's grace is unlimited, it can be expressed and experienced in unlimited ways.

Um so uh my prayer for you is that if you haven't experienced these seven, that you'll give them a chance, knowing that the real presence of Christ is available even when you don't feel it.

And um that if you have experienced grace outside these seven, you'll be a promoter of that grace and say, hey friend, you really should go try hiking.

And uh you can grow closer to God that way and um feel inwardly um God's presence through this outward activity.

Okay, um thanks for listening, and next time we'll be talking more specifically about the confirmation rite.