Grace Transforming Nature in the Sacraments

Grace Transforming Nature in the Sacraments.

Water. “Now sanctify this water, Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit, that those who here are cleansed from sin and born again may continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our  Savior… Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit.” (Anglican Book of Common Prayer, Baptism, pages 307-308).

Oil. “Eternal Father, whose blessed Son was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be the Savior and servant of all, we pray you to consecrate this oil, that those who are sealed with it may share in the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever… And now, brother/sister, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Amen.” (Anglican BCP, Baptism, pages 307 and 308).

Bread and Wine. “Lord, we pray that in your goodness and mercy your Holy Spirit may descend upon us, and upon these gifts of bread and wine, sanctifying them and showing them to be holy gifts for your holy people, the bread of life and the cup of salvation, the Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ… And so, Father, we bring you these gifts. Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Anglican BCP, Eucharist, pages 375 and 403).

Marital Relations. “O God, you have so consecrated the covenant of marriage that in it is represented the spiritual unity between Christ and His Church; Send therefore your blessing upon these your servants, that they may love, honor, and cherish each other in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and true godliness, that their home may be a haven of blessing and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” (Anglican BCP, Marriage, page 431).

Oil. “O Lord, holy Father, giver of health and salvation; Send your Holy Spirit to sanctify this oil; that, as your holy apostles anointed many who were sick and healed them, so may those who in faith and repentance receive this holy anointing be made whole… As you are outwardly anointed with this holy oil, so may our heavenly Father grant you inward anointing of the Holy Spirit. Of His great mercy, may He forgive you your sins, release you from suffering, and restore you to wholeness and strength. May He deliver you from all evil, preserve you in all goodness, and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (Anglican BCP, Healing of the Sick, pages455-456).  

The physical elements above are the raw materials used in the Christian Church by the Holy Spirit to bring God’s very presence to us on earth. There are varying views of what a sacrament in the Church is, and how many of them there are. The actual word “Sacrament” is a legal term, “sacramentum,” which in Latin means “sacred vow.” It referred to the solemn vow a man would make when entering the Roman military, as well as the oath of honesty one would declare in the Roman courts. The early Christians adapted the term to designate the vows a person would take when being baptized into the Faith in a faith community. Soon other aspects of this commitment to Jesus would be called sacraments as well, such as foot washing, the Lord’s Supper, a special blessing on someone, and even marriage. The Latin Bible translated the Greek word “mysterion”, or mystery, for the Latin word “sacramentum” in various passages in the epistles. The Church then identified  many special acts of commitment and discipleship as sacred mysteries of the Faith, or sacraments.

Grace. A grace in the Christian faith is the undeserved gift to us of being allowed to participate in the life of God. We have no right to think God owes us anything. We don’t have a leg to stand on if we start thinking we have somehow earned the right to know Him in any way. He is the eternal, almighty God of the universe. God doesn’t owe us anything. But grace is God’s profound gift of accepting us as worthy, granting us the privilege of actually participating in His life. This gift of God’s love for us is beyond imagining. Grace is the eternal fact of Creator God desiring that we approach Him and develop a relationship with Him. Grace is God’s love offering to us which He initiated and to which we simply need to respond. Any gift of God’s grace that enables us to develop this life-saving relationship with Him is a sacred mystery. So sacraments in the Church involve material elements like bread, oil, water and wine to bring God’s presence into our lives. The physical elements of the sacraments are the means that God has provided, through the working of the Holy Spirit, to grow in our faith and become more like Jesus.

Sacrament has been described in literally hundreds of ways. Because there is a mystery involved, there may be no perfect definition to sacrament, but perhaps these descriptions will help us get a handle on what a sacrament is in the life and ministry of the Christian church:

• Outward signs of inner grace;
• Sacred mysteries to convey grace to our souls;
• Material forms of grace for our spiritual benefit;
• Visible symbols of the reality of God;
• Vehicles of God’s grace to enable believers to grow in being sanctified;
• Earthly materials by which divine life is given to us;
• A physical sign of a spiritual reality;
• The material elements that unite us into a spiritual union with Christ;
• God’s gifts of Himself in created matter for our transformation;
• When God’s grace elevates nature into being vehicles of God’s presence;
• When God’s gift of the Holy Spirit transforms matter for our own transformation;
• When God’s Spirit brings divine life to tangible elements for our benefit;
• The physical elements that are inspired by the Spirit to bring God’s influence upon us.
• Material objects that are channels God’s energy and power to believers in the Church;
• Tangible elements that bring sanctifying grace to believers;
• Created elements that usher us into participation in the divine life;
• Signs of grace entrusted to the Christian Church by which spiritual life is strengthened and empowered.

Jesus is Himself the Great Sacrament for us, the ultimate physical sign of God’s love for us, who enables us to dwell in God and He in us. Jesus  is the material channel that conveys God’s transforming work in our lives through His Holy Spirit. Jesus is the visible demonstration of God’s desire to reconcile with us in our sinfulness, and it was Jesus, the Son of God, who was consecrated by the Father and the Spirit to take away the sin of the world. The human body of Jesus, now in the heavenlies, is our supreme  Sacrament, Grace in the flesh, the Church’s greatest sacred mystery in human form.

The Sacrament of the Human Person. Each human being is created from created dust, from nature, has been brought to life by the breath of God, and is made in His image. So each person, born of flesh and nature and elevated by grace into a sacred sacrament. Every single person on earth is a visible sign of an visible reality of God’s presence. Profoundly speaking then, each person is a living sacrament. The following words from 20^th-Century saint John Paul 2 says it best, as quoted in an article in the Catholic Telegraph: “In his Theology of the Body, St. John Paul II went even farther by speaking of the sacramentality of the human body. He did not mean the human body is some kind of eighth sacrament alongside the traditional seven. Rather, he taught that because of man’s unique place in the cosmos, the human body bears some of the qualities of a sacrament. All sacraments use material things (e.g., water, oil, bread, wine) to convey spiritual realities. While composed of matter drawn from the earth, the human body at the same time effectively makes present the mysterious, spiritual reality we call “person.” In this way, the body reveals the person and can be said to be the “sacrament of the person.” Even more, because the human person is made in God’s image and is called to communion with Him, the human body also bears the capacity to make God present in a visible way: “The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it” (TOB 19:5).”

The sacraments being celebrated in the Christian Church depends on the actual church. Many Protestants do not recognize any sacraments at all, and others tend to recognize two sacraments… Baptism and Communion, because Jesus in the Gospels was abundantly clear about instituting those acts of discipleship. The traditional, historical faith communities, though, namely the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, have adopted seven sacraments in its ministry of discipleship… Baptism, by which a person is born into the new life in Christ and brought into the household  of faith, the Body of Christ; Confirmation, by which a baptized person is personally affirming his faith and vowing a life of commitment to Christ;  Eucharist, by which a believer partakes of divine life by digesting the spiritual food of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, and strengthens the unity of those believers who share in this Communion; Confession, by which a believer participates in spiritual reconciliation by confessing one’s wrongdoings to a priest and receiving forgiveness from God; Healing, by which a person who is suffering with sickness of any kind receives prayers for healing and for restoration to full health; Ordination, by which a man receives his holy orders of serving others in the name of Christ; Matrimony, by which a man and a woman reflect the union between believer and God by committing themselves to a communion of life and faith with each other.

A Special Word on the Sacrament of Marriage: When we consider the profound mystery of the Mutual Indwelling, God in us and we in God, Scripture often points to various analogies to help us understand the mystery that is in so many ways beyond us. The Bible often uses a metaphor that describes a physical union that points to a spiritual union. Looking at a Double Union in tangible reality will help us think more deeply about a Double Union in a spiritual sense. There are physical signs in our earthly life that illustrate at least some of the meaning of our union with Christ. Uniting with Jesus as a branch grafted onto a vine is one way (John 15). Another way to picture this spiritual union is through marital relations.

In the Beginning. Starting with the definitive word from Jesus: “Haven’t you read the Scriptures about creation? The Creator made us male and female from the very beginning, and for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, sticking to her like glue. He will be literally joined with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Husband and wife will be two persons united into one.” (Mathew 19:4-6).

The Grace of Marital Relations. Let’s consider the spiritual aspect of marital relations. Stretching way back to the beginning of the universe, it looks like Creator God designed a secret plan to have intimate fellowship with all those humans of His, all made in His image. God has desired fellowship with us since the beginning. He instituted marriage with that in mind, in which a man and a woman join into a union of 2-becoming-1 flesh. Hebrew scholars have noted that “flesh” in this Genesis context actually suggests something close to a blood relative. That’s how intimate marriage was intended to be. God designed marriage to be pleasurable, fruitful, fulfilling, satisfying, and leading right into the bearing of children if possible. And God wanted marriage to be a foretaste of the desired union with each of us. God, believe it or not, yearns to be intimate with each of us, and what better illustrates that union than a joyful experience of a marital union at the human level? Marriage is a sign that points to the spiritual unity planned for us inside God. So the intimate, pleasurable and fruitful marriage is actually meant to be a sacramental sign, pointing us to our destiny as believers, a spiritual union with Christ! The physical union signifying the spiritual union, the physical reality of marital relations giving us a vivid picture of the spiritual reality of living within Christ. The sexual act, as wonderful as that is, is not intended to be the end of the story. It is meant to suggest the spiritual relations we could enjoy with God. Marriage reveals the type of relationship God wants with each of us. Physical sex, which pretty much involves every aspect of our being, is a profound part of what it means to be human. Sexual activity in a marriage enables each spouse to give pleasure to the other out of love and devotion. Dare we say that our intimate fellowship with Christ, which also demands our all, is a spiritual version of marital sex?

Distorting the Design. Marriage is God-defined, God-designed, and God-ordained. No human person has the right to redefine marriage, tear apart God’s plan, or remove its sacred foundation. God’s plan from the beginning was to create a home in which a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife in a permanent, faithful relationship. The 2-in-1 union of husband and wife was intended to be, among the other obvious joys, an exciting reflection of the relationship between God and a believer. So what happens when a society tries to dismantle God’s design? A same-gender relationship, for instance? Or sexual activity outside of a faithful marriage of husband and wife? When that happens, God’s plan is torn asunder, it tragically obscures the understanding of God’s desired union with us. If the sacred illustration of God’s purposes for each of us is broken or rejected or distorted, then the true picture of spiritual union with God will become unknowable. There will be no reference point. Without a pure human experience to point to, how could anyone even begin to imagine the type of relationship that Christ wants us to have with Him? It’s no wonder that the downfall of marriage and family spells the downfall of the Christian faith in a society.

Both Individual Union with Christ and Corporate Union in Him with Others.  It looks like Paul wanted to focus on the worldwide community of believers more than the individual believer in his letter to the Ephesians 5:30-32. After quoting Genesis 2:24 like Christ did, Paul goes on to say, “Yes, I truly believe that we are all living members of Christ’s body, and as I relate this to marriage, it is indeed an enormous mystery. I may not understand all of this, but I can tell you this… the marriage of 2-becoming-1 is meant to be a vivid picture, a clear illustration of the union between Christ and the Church, the oneness that exists between Messiah and His universal household of faith.” Isn’t it amazing to think about the fact that Christ wants to contain the whole world inside Him if it comes to that? Since creation, God has wanted to enjoy a unity with His people. As individual believers, we are inside Christ, and as a universal body of believers, we are likewise inside of Christ. Fortunately Jesus says, the more the merrier!