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Sept 5, 1999 (Exodus 12:l-14)
One of my pleasant high school memories was the study of Latin…not so much the study of Latin but being in the Latin Club. And the Latin Club was fun! At our social meetings we wrapped sheets around ourselves (a faintly erotic thing to do as an adolescent), wore sandals (quite daring forty years ago), and pretended to be guests at a Lucullan banquet by lounging on our sides and dropping grapes into our mouths. And there was that further tonic of feeling, as Latineers, that we were the brainy, superior types of our student body. While I quickly lost in the real world my comprehension of Latin (and the silly attitudes associated with classicism), some rudimentary of Latin phrases remained and has opened the door to my imagination now and then. This because Latin phrases still pop up - what American can ignore SEMPER FIDELIS and I PLURIBUS UNUM - and often the thought is not only more concise but more winsome in the dead language of Latin than any living tongue. Almost every university in America has a Latin motto: No one made much of ours at UCLA but when I attended a summer session at Harvard College I could not help but be impressed by the Latin motto "VERITAS" (Truth) which looms over the main entrance gate to the yard. And later, as a graduate student at Yale, I became aware that Yale College had tried to outdo Harvard by adopting as its' Latin motto: LUX ET VERITAS. (Light and Truth.) Oxford's Latin motto is both longer and more scriptural - DOMINUS ILLUMINATUM MEUM (The Lord is My Light).- but Oxford created its' motto 500 years before the ivy colleges. In our Protestant order of service most congregations still follow the Latin outline for our communion though we, just like the Catholics today, do not invoke the Latin phrases. Still the Latin pattern we have: ADESTES FIDELIS (We gather to praise God) CONFITEOR (We say confession), AGNUS DEI (We celebrate Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world), TE DEUM (We praise God), the PATER NOSTER (Our Father or Lord's Prayer) and DEI GRATIA (We give thanksgiving to God). Right after this worship I'm going with our six confirmation students over to Rosary Catholic Church to observe a catholic mass and then have lunch with Father Harold Naylor. We will see many more similarities than differences in the two celebrations of communion.
Latin phrases often occur in church sanctuaries as inscriptions and one phrase which recently caught my attention in a stained glass window is: NON NOBUS SOLUM which translates into the phrase of today's message: NOT FOR US ALONE. NOT FOR US ALONE is a useful motto to carry with us as we approach communion. Because it corrects out pious tendency to think just the opposite: That communion is for us alone. Communion is not for us alone. If communion is based in the reality of God, as I firmly know it to be, then communion has to be for everybody. The celebration must flow with past and future celebrations of communion; the dead and the yet to live are covered by the blessings of communion. Both those within the church and those without are included in the divine intention behind communion. True, Jesus is the founder and the special presence in communion, but I don't believe he meant for us to put a copyright or monopoly on the meaning of communion and hold its' effiacy solely to ourselves. Quite the opposite: NOT FOR US ALONE!. It's the case that most Christians find in communion an intimate experience with God and with other believers. It was no surprise to me that on the recent survey of what religious acts you would like in your millennium celebration, most of you gave preference to communion on December 3l, l999, and we shall have that. But I hope the full spirit of that act will be that we celebrate communion for the whole world on that unique occasion and not just for ourselves.. The Latin phrase NON NOBUS SOLUM (NOT FOR US ALONE) is one of the doors to our imagination I invite you to use now. Two thoughts come to me. The first is that we can hardly pretend to an exclusive claim on Communion, either as liturgy or in its meaning, because Christian communion arises and evolved directly from the Hebrew ritual which Katherine Long has read about from Exodus l2. Holy Communion is based in the Jewish Seder meal at Passover. Our Hebrew text recalls the Passover story celebrated at the Jewish Seder. The Hebrew word SEDER means ORDER OF SERVICE and from it we have obtained the heading for many of our Protestant worship bulletins. We Protestants are indebted to our Hebrew language roots as well as our Latin! There is still some debate whether the event in the upper room on the last evening of Jesus' life was a Passover meal (it was the week of that festival) or a fellowship meal, but even if not a Passover meal, we can confidently know that Jesus had participated in an annual Passover celebration every year of his life since childhood. Therefore, the cup which he raised had to bring to mind to every Jew present the cup raised by the most honored male at a Seder meal; and the bread which he broke would have called to mind the Passover bread. NOT FOR US ALONE. The Passover Seder instituted in Exodus has many echoes in Christian understanding of communion. There is an emphasis upon the whole community gathered to honor God and in the Seder there is a special welcome to strangers, which is why Jews are solicitous to invite gentiles to their Seder, and an equal role for children. The early church diverged from this hospitable attitude by fairly early excluding non-baptized adults from the communion proper - they had to leave the church - and not paying attention to the need for children to be present and participate. The modern church has begun to correct these denials which are incompatible with the Hebrew antecedents both in the Seder and in the character of Jesus who always found room for strangers and children in his company. At the SEDER table each person has a cup for wine (or grape juice for the children), and a printed SEDER or ORDER OF SERVICE (read from the back to front) because all will join in common prayers and songs much like a communion sharing. At the beginning of SEDER, the leader washes his hands just as at the Catholic mass the priest washes his hands in public at the beginning of the sacrament (as I do in private). Washing of hands signifies that something sacred is about to take place. The heart of SEDER is when the youngest child at the table asks: "What is the meaning of this service?" And the oldest person present begins to give an account of the story of Passover and of Unleavened Bread: The promise or covenant of God with Abraham and Sarah, the leadership of Moses, the nine plagues and now the tenth with the death of the first-born where no blood on the doors of the Hebrews provided the Passover, and finally the freedom gained on that night and the beginning of their journey toward the Promised Land. The concluding thought is the challenge that every person in every generation think of himself as having left Egypt under the guidance and protection of Almighty God. All good theology for us to recall at our communion. And then there is usually a fine meal served by the hosts. (Remember our shared lunch afterwards today!). Someone sent me a "business NEWS FLASH", undoubtedly inspired by the mega- mergers taking place like Wal-Mart's current buy out of major European food and shopping chains. It began: "Continuing the current era of large scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that next holiday season Christmas and Chanuka (the Jewish festival) will merge…it is believed that the overhead cost of having l2 days of Christmas and 8 days of Chanuka was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high quality service during the Fifteen Days of Christmukah, as the new holiday is being called." Mega-merger of liturgies is not, of course, the track I'm on today. NOT FOR US ALONE calls us to honor our antecedents, not to blur them.
NOT FOR US ALONE. We also need to be challenged to the universal significance of Communion. Communion is not exclusive to the congregation, the denomination, nor the doctrinal contexts in which it is celebrated. Another e mail brought to me this week a story called ROOM ONE: A man arrives at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asks, "Religion?" The man says, "Methodist." St. Peter looks down his list and say, "Go to room twelve, but be very quiet as you pass room one." Another man arrives at the gates of heaven. "Religion?" "Baptist." "Go to room eight, but very quiet as you pass room one.": Another arrives: "Religion?" "Lutheran." "Go to room eleven, but be very quiet as you pass room one." The newest arrival says, "Wait. I can understand there being different rooms for different religions, but why must I be quiet when I pass room one?" St. Peter tells him, "Well, the Fundamentalists are in room one, and they think they're the only ones here." It isn't really a kind nor an ecumenical story unless we realize that every denomination and sect which has ever existed could at one time or another find itself listed in its exclusivistic ignorance in Room One.. And I find the story's premise misleading: I don't find comprehensible that God would have different rooms reserved in heaven for Methodists, Catholics Lutherans, Fundamentalists, Charistmatics, or even Community Church folks. How incredibly and ridiculously human-centered that assumption! In order to preserve due order in the order of service on earth, each congregation and church has its preferred way to celebrate communion and its' own beliefs, but can we possibly think that Almighty God is going to honor, much less bind His authority, by our earthly rules and regulations and differences regarding our ceremonies and our doctrines! When it comes to heaven I believe everyone shall be welcomed at God's table. If we're not all there, I doubt any of us will be there. I see us all together singing out our TE DEUMs and GLORIA'S and ALLELULIAS in whatever language, though it might be wise to start brushing up our Latin. NON NOBIS SOLUM. Not for us alone! We are not alone in these phenomena which we call our religion, our faith, our spirituality, our communion. God is with us and God makes all the difference in opening our attitudes and hearts through communion to all peoples.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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