Theology matters. We might be tempted to think that we don’t need to worry ourselves with “all that theology stuff”. All we need is the Bible and Jesus. Yet what we believe matters. Let me give you an example, and one that has changed my life. A few months ago my family and I were visiting the Episcopal parish of my cousin and her family. The church building is spectacular! Built in the mid 19th century, the nave is comprised of soaring arches, beautiful stained glass, and wooden pews that remind me of the fact that people were smaller 150 years ago. The service itself is a traditional Anglican liturgy that includes fully vested clergy, a choir, candles, and the kitchen sink. In recent years this traditional high Church formality has seen the church grow. In fact the parish is vibrant, and welcoming. I was even impressed by the fact that the Rector remembered us from our last visit. Worship at this particular parish is always uplifting and encouraging. But this was not the reason I stopped to ponder my theologian shift toward sacramentality. My experience during Holy Communion rocked my theological world.
As in most Anglican liturgy, the service for Holy Communion is the second half of the service following the liturgy of the Word at the beginning. It is a familiar service to anyone who has been an Anglican for more than a couple of weeks, myself included. As we stood and knelt, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Even when it was our time to come forward and receive the bread and wine, we were all too eager to commune. We knelt at the altar, and the priest placed the bread in my hands after proclaiming “The Body of Christ.” Next the associate priest took the bread out of my hands and dipped it in the cup proclaiming “The Blood of Christ” and placed it back in my hand for me to consume. That is the moment that my theology became real!
You see, for Christians in the broadly Catholic tradition, Anglicans included, we believe that the bread and wine of communion become the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. This is certainly a profound mystery, and one that we do not have time to explore in depth here. This is why we call it a sacrament, because it is not merely a symbol. The sacrament points us to a reality that cannot be fully explained. This is why the sacrament is also called Communion, because we are communing with our Lord Jesus as his real presence is with us in the bread and wine. When the associate priest handed me the bread after dipping it into the cup. I felt the wine drip onto my left hand. And this is where my theology became reality.
Why is this such a big deal, you may ask? (1) I’ve never experienced anything like this before in our local parish. When the priest hands us the bread, we dip it into the cup ourselves, and so I’ve never had it given back to me in that way before. (2) given my theological position, when the wine hit my hand, I quite literally had blood on my hands. Yet not just any blood, the blood of my Savior. The blood that redeemed me was on my hands. The only right response was for me to lick it off my hand in gratitude. Yet I still felt the residue of the wine for a while afterward, which gave me the opportunity for personal reflection on how this moment would change my life forever.
At that moment, I thought about how unworthy I am to hold the body and blood of my Lord in my hands. Sure I have held it before many times during Communion, but only the bread. The bread doesn’t drip, it doesn’t leave a residue. There was something visceral about feeling the wine drip down my hand that forced me to stop and ponder the reality of the sacrament. I had Jesus’ blood on my hands. My hands are unworthy; they are unclean, but not with dirt and germs. They are covered in sin. In that moment, I felt like Uzzah, who was struck dead after his hands touched the Ark of the Covenant while trying to steady it on a falling cart (see 2 Sam 6:6-8). And yet, why did I not drop dead right at the altar? My hands had touched something more precious than the ark. I had the blood of Jesus on my hands, me an unworthy sinner. Yet in that moment I was reminded that my sin was the reason Jesus came to die on the cross. He shed that blood so that I could be not only forgiven, but adopted into the family of God. Like Peter during the first Eucharist in the upper room (see John 13:9), I felt like crying out “not just my hands, Lord but cover my head and my entire body with your blood!”
That is the reality of the gospel. We are washed in the blood of the Lamb from head to toe.
This is why theology matters. Theology is not just for the classroom, and the halls of seminaries, it’s for everyone. It shapes us and is for us. Theology changes our lives.
Photo Credit Unsplash.com
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