Good morning! I am Tim Roberts and I have the great honor of
being the pastor here at Sunrise United Methodist Church. Before we go any
further, I want to also welcome you here on this first Sunday of the year. As
you have made your way here, I am sure that there were many other opportunities
that were beckoning you to pull you away from being here, but maybe it was by
providence, sheer determination, or maybe just by habit, you are here today and
I pray that you receive a blessing from God by being here.
You know, it's not by accident that I used that word just a
moment ago, "habit," because that is exactly what we are going to be
considering for the next several weeks. Being the first of the year, many
people throughout the world will be resolving to either end some bad habits,
start some new ones, or maybe a combination of both. In any case, maybe it
would be a good idea to first consider exactly what a habit is.
Webster's Dictionary gives several definitions for
"habit," but for our purpose here today, we are going to concentrate
on this one:
a settled tendency or usual manner of
behavior.
Now with that being said, many people look at habits as being
something bad, either because we may focus on the negative ones or we may
identify habits as being "stuck in a rut." But, friends, what if we
changed our paradigm and started seeing them as something positive and as a
means of growing and deepening our faith? Wouldn't that be a worthwhile
endeavor?
Well today, we begin a series of twelve different spiritual
disciplines or Holy Habits, as some people call them, which have been used
throughout the centuries to do just that. Probably none of these are new to
you, but over the course of a few weeks, it is my hope and prayer that you find
a few of these that you can incorporate in your daily lives that will help you
in your journey to grow closer to God.
In addition to the weekly messages, I also invite you
participate in the daily exercise of meditation by either purchasing a Daily
Journal, which I currently have eight copies not spoken for or by participating
online
The daily study is a personal but can also be used as a guide
for small group study as well.
Our first holy habit is sacraments. Now, I know that is a rather
curious one to start with and for good reason. Would anyone like to take a shot
at defining what a sacrament is?
[Allow response]
We are much better at giving examples of sacraments than we
are at defining the term. The word itself is derived from the Latin word, sacramentum, which roughly translates as "Holy Mystery."
Humh, well, that doesn't help a whole lot, does it? I mean, after two
thousand years of theologizing, it appears the best that we can come up with to
try and define this term is that it's a mystery.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, set our doctrinal
understanding of it as: "a means of grace" and in that meaning "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
grace."
Now, throughout Christianity, denominations vary on the
number of sacraments they observe, such as our Roman Catholic brothers and
sisters observe seven different sacramental acts. In The United Methodist
tradition, we observe two acts means of grace - those being:
1. Baptism
2. Communion
So, what makes these two sacraments? As we understand them,
these are acts that were instituted by Jesus as a way of bestowing God's grace
and also commanded by Jesus for his followers to continue to do.
The first, Baptism, is kind of strange to be considered a
habit for United Methodists though. This is because we believe in "one
baptism." Unlike many of our other Protestant siblings, we believe that we
are baptized only once, because baptism is all about the act of God pouring out
this amazing grace and not about the act of us seeking it. So, it's about what
God does and not about what we do.
Well, with this being the case, you may be asking, how do we
make baptism a holy habit? We do this by participating in the baptism of
others. If you will recall, when we baptize people, of whatever age, we
reaffirm our baptism thorough remembrance and reconfirming God's love poured
out for us.
We do this through this curious term that not a whole lot of
people are familiar with, but is one that helps explain a bit more this Holy
Mystery of sacraments. This term is anamnesis, which means "actively engaging
in remembering."
Friends, let's take a few minutes to think about this for
just a moment. How do we normally go about remembering events?
Normally, when we remember some event, we may start recalling
some visions, which may then bring to mind some of the dialogue that was
exchanged. If we take the time and share recollections, we may remember more
than we thought we could. But, usually, that's the extent of remembering - an
act of passive recollection.
But with anamnesis,
that's not the case. In this fashion, we relive the act to the extent of
actively participating in the event again. If we were to engage in anamnesis
over our graduation, we would put one the cap and gown, go through the whole
pomp and circumstance of the ceremony, and even have the graduation party
afterward. At no time would it be passive, but always active.
Now, using this understanding, let's think about how it
applies to our second sacrament, Communion.
In Luke's gospel, we read an account of Jesus sharing the
Passover meal with his disciples the night before his crucifixion. Let's take a
look at this passage.
Luke
22.14-19
14 Then at the proper time Jesus and the
twelve apostles sat down together at the table. 15
Jesus said, "I have looked
forward to this hour with deep longing, anxious to eat this Passover meal with
you before my suffering begins. 16 For I tell you now that I won't eat it
again until it comes to fulfillment in the Kingdom of God." 17 Then he took a cup of wine, and when
he had given thanks for it, he said, "Take
this and share it among yourselves. 18 For I will not drink wine again until
the Kingdom of God has come."
19 Then he took a loaf of bread; and when
he had thanked God for it, he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples,
saying, "This is my
body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."
Take a look at that last line: "Do this in remembrance
of me." Looking at it through this new lens of anamnesis, we can see that
the "Do this" part is just as crucial as the "in remembrance of
me." This is why the liturgy we participate in is very active. We take the
bread, we give thanks to God, we break the bread, we share the bread, we take
the cup, we again give thanks, and then we share the cup.
Some other Christian traditions consider communion as a
"memorial meal" in which the participants merely remember the story
of the Last Supper. But with our understanding of anamnesis, we are not just recalling the event that happened some
two millennia ago, we actively share in the meal with the other disciples and "the REAL PRESENCE" of Jesus is with us.
Today, we come together to participate in Holy Communion,
which we do about each month. But today as we come together, we come armed with
a new understanding and appreciation for why we do it and ready to make it not
just a habit, but as a holy habit.
[Communion]
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