The Journey Onward

So, What’s a Sacrament?

In my last post, Ordinance to Sacrament, I shared a bit about how I’ve journeyed from understanding Baptism and Communion as ordinances to understanding them as sacraments.  In this post I’d like to share some of what I’ve been learning about these holy mysteries.

Lots of folks have attempted to define the term sacrament, but one definition I’ve found particularly helpful is in The Book of Common Prayer (BCP).  The BCP defines sacraments as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” 

I see two sections in this definition of a sacrament. First, a sacrament is an outward and visible symbol of God’s invisible grace at work in our lives.  The outward symbol in Communion, for example, is the bread and wine.  Second, a sacrament is a means by which we receive God’s grace.  The inward grace we receive by taking Communion includes all the benefits of the Body and Blood of Jesus.

In order to better understand how receiving God’s grace works I needed to better understand grace itself.  Grace is the unmerited favor we receive from God. Sometimes grace gets confused with mercy.  Mercy is not getting what we deserve, whereas grace is getting what we do not deserve.  A right relationship with God, the forgiveness of sin, freedom from feelings of worthlessness and shame, and all other gifts from God, we receive not because of anything we have done to earn or merit them, but by God’s grace alone. He grants these as free gifts.  Our salvation, for example, is a gift of grace. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2.8-9). 

Throughout our lives God grants his grace in many diverse ways and at various times, but there are several special and specific ways, which the BCP described as “sure and certain means” of grace.  Means of grace are actions or places in which God has guaranteed to meet with and impart his grace to everyone who participates in them.  They are unique places where the veil between heaven and earth seems to wear thin.  Not participating in these means of grace does not indicate a person will experience nothing of God’s grace in their life, but it does indicate they will not experience the bit of grace they would have experienced had they participated in those particular means of grace.

When I got to this point in my thought process an objection rose up in my heart.  How is grace grace if we have to do something, like participate in a sacrament, to receive it?  Doesn’t this indicate the act of participating in the sacrament has become a work by which we merit, or earn, God’s favor, thereby rendering grace graceless?

This was an important question.  As I considered it I thought of giving an un-earned gift to my daughter.  When I desire to give her something she needs to put herself in a posture to receive the gift, otherwise she will never actually benefit from the gift.  For instance, if I want to give my daughter a piece of candy I can hold the candy out to her, but she needs to open her hand to then take hold of the gift.  By merely opening her hand she has done nothing to deserve or merit the candy, she has simply responded to my overture of gift giving by readying herself to receive the gift.  The more I thought of this example, the more the idea of a “means of grace” made sense to me.  By participating in a sacrament we do not somehow make ourselves worthy of God’s favor, we simply avail ourselves to his gracious gift.

When I considered all this it made sense to me that we, as followers of Jesus, could ready ourselves in such a way as to receive God’s grace.  The way we do this is by faith.  Understood this way, a sacrament is a means by which we receive God’s unmerited favor, which we avail ourselves to receiving in faith.

This brought another question to mind. “How do we acquire the faith that readies us to receive God’s grace?”  The answer I discovered to this question is that faith is itself a gift of grace.  The wonderful Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, a document written by official representatives of the Lutheran denomination and the Roman Catholic Church, says this “Faith is itself God's gift through the Holy Spirit, who works through Word and Sacrament in the community of believers and who, at the same time, leads believers into that renewal of life which God will bring to completion in eternal life.”

So, God grants us the faith that makes us able to posture ourselves in such a way as to receive his unmerited favor, his grace.  This may sound like circular reasoning, but it makes sense to me that our loving God would enable us, who are helpless in ourselves to choose to follow him, to avail ourselves to receive the unmerited favor he longs to pour out on us.  I praise God for these holy mysteries, and I praise him for his grace. 

Ordinance to Sacrament

The church environment in which I was raised never used the word sacrament.  We had ordinances.  And there were only two, Baptism and Communion.

When I was eight years old I wanted to be baptized.  I don’t remember exactly what I thought baptism was all about, but I knew it was part of following Jesus, and I wanted to follow Jesus with my whole heart.  Sadly, and it seems somewhat arbitrarily, the church of which my family was a part would not baptize children until they were nine years old.  Since Mom had no objection, we went to a church across town that would baptize an eight year old.  At that time I remember affirming my love for Jesus, my belief that he died for my sin and rose from the dead, and my commitment to follow after him all the days of my life.  I was then, praise God, baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

As I grew older I remember thinking it odd a church would actually withhold baptism from a follower of Jesus.  The reason for this, it was explained, was that the central purpose of baptism was to be a public profession of faith.  And how could we know for certain an eight year old actually possessed a faith of his own to publicly profess?  Similarly, the symbolism of death and resurrection was meant to symbolically refer to something that had already happened in the life of the Christian.  And how could we be sure an eight year old had in fact been crucified and raised with Christ?  The ordinance, it was taught, conferred no special grace nor offered any other particular spiritual benefit other than being an opportunity for obedience, so putting it off for another year didn’t really matter.  I had a hard time finding support for all this in Scripture, and couldn’t help thinking there must be more to Baptism than all that.

I had a similar experience with Communion.  As a boy I remember wanting to take Communion every week; it was my favorite part of worship.  But our church only participated in this ordinance once a month or so.  Whenever we did celebrate Communion it felt almost like an afterthought or an inconvenience to our service.  It had to be squeezed in somehow to a schedule already chock full with Bible teaching and song singing.  

When Communion was explained we were all assured there was nothing uniquely special about the bread or the grape juice.  Communion, like baptism, was a purely symbolic action.  The bread and juice were merely mnemonic devices, designed by Jesus to help us remember his death.  I remember thinking that was an odd purpose for Communion.  After all, how could I ever forget something so important to me as the death and resurrection of my God?  As with baptism, I couldn’t help thinking there must be more to the Body and Blood of Jesus than mere memorial. 

Later, in Bible College as I read Church history and theology I was confronted with the term “sacrament.”  Sacrament is a transliteration of the Latin sacramentum, which is itself a translation of the Greek mysterion, or “mystery.”  I learned that for the vast majority of Church history Christians have understood those actions I knew as symbolic ordinances, as sacraments, holy mysteries through which God conferred something of his grace on his people.  I immediately resonated with this idea of Baptism and Communion as sacrament.  As a result I have, for several years, been engaged in study, conversation, and prayer in an effort to better understand the meaning and purpose of these holy mysteries.  I’ll share some of what I’ve been learning in my next post.