I’m an Incarnation groupie. I love me some beer and brats, sweat trickling down my face with the smell of saw dust in the air, the taste of my wife’s mouth, her small lips. And Jesus gives all those gifts to me. As the brilliant (& unorthodox?) Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann taught me: the sacraments are not creation made strange. Rather, the sacraments reveal the real nature of the whole world. God became flesh, God became food for the world as the beginning, the down payment towards God’s glorious plan to restore the whole universe to its rightful role of being sacramental, being the place in and through which people meet with their God and commune together. In other words, sacraments are not magical portals to God, as though the “natural” world occasionally hiccups and you’re Harry Potter on a spiritual trip to a heavenly Hogwarts.
But this is primarily because there’s really no such thing as a purely “natural” world. There’s no such thing as “sacraments” (as in holy portals) because the whole universe is shot through with the presence of God. At the same time, Jesus is training us to discern God’s presence faithfully, and one of the central ways His Spirit does this is through water, bread, and wine. He said to do it, so we obey, and trust Him, and seek Him there. But just as water, bread, and wine become, by true evangelical faith, places where the Holy Spirit ministers the life of the Triune God to and through His blood washed saints, so too, all of creation contains this potential. The picture of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth where God makes His dwelling forever with man — that’s the picture of this world, this material world bursting with God’s glory and presence, where the gift and the Giver are held in perfect balance establishing both without obliterating either. That’s what I mean by incarnation groupie. God is good, His creation is good, and His gifts are good.
I affirm the goodness of creation, and the greater goodness of the particular gifts of God to His people in the Word and sacraments, in gesture and ritual, in liturgy and prayer, in fellowship, song, and joyful praise. Worship can occur in any moment, but the soul gripped by grace receives these special gifts with particular astonishment and fearful joy. God is surely in this place.
But there is a hierarchy in the gifts or an order to them, and the Word comes first. The gospel comes first. The Word read, preached, sung. But this is not merely an existential claim or an ordo salutis; this is not creeping Christian rationalism. This is a historical claim. The Word comes first because the Word came first. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word became flesh and was broken on a Roman cross. The Word became flesh and His blood was shed for the life of the world. Then, and only then, when the Word kicks down death’s door, when He rises triumphant over all His enemies, then the world is made new.
But that reality is hidden and obscured by the sin and death that clings to every son or daughter of Adam. Apart from the invasion of the Spirit, apart from the fire hose of God’s grace bursting through the scales on our eyes and heart, we are all just like the dwarves in the Last Battle insisting that we are still in the dark stable, eating straw and dirt, when in fact there is a new world all around us and a lavish feast spread for the hungry.
What is true of history — first the Word made flesh, then the world made new — remains true of every person who enters this new world. The Word comes first. Jesus comes first, in the person of the Holy Spirit and becomes flesh in an individual’s life. And then, and only then, is the sacrament grace, does the Word become food, is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a holy place where God’s presence is known and felt. Otherwise it’s all just more kindling for the fire. And this is why my friend Josh in a recent comment is mistaken. Jesus plus baptism and Jesus plus all kinds of other things is possible because Jesus is not annexed by any of His gifts. He can and does meet His people in those places, but apart from the powerful working of the Spirit making a man new, the gifts of God are just a bunch of hay and dirt in the dark.
And all of this is just to say that it’s all grace, through and through. God always initiates, always breaks through in His own way, in His own timing, on His own terms. We do not hold Him; He holds us.
Chris says
Excellent Toby! Thanks for this post. I have a feeling some of it may show up in a sermon in St. Louis some time soon (credited of course) 😉
Adam says
I was hanging in there with you until the very end where you seem to have dislocated the trusses of your argument. You went from ‘all of life is sacramental’ (amen to that), to ‘none of life is “really” sacramental’ until you’ve had an extra-sacramental experience of God’s grace – a waterless born-again experience I assume. (I’m sure you would qualify that a bit, or perhaps not.)
Schmemann was anything but novel in his statements regarding the sacramentality of life. The orthodox do not believe seven exclusive sacraments, but in seven greater mysteries that reflect the mystery of all of life in the post-incarnational world.
The grace filled material world does not become grace to us only after a formless, sacramental-less, grace idea (word) comes to us. Rather the grace of God, and the Word, is communicated through the whole of life which necessarily includes the material world – especially those mysterious sacraments. Salvation is mysterious, and the Spirit is (Lord forgive me) all willy-nilly. He fills the waters, but he also fills our hearts.
The Word is not annexed by His gifts, His gifts are annexed by Him along with the entirety of the material creation. He is in all places and fills all things through the Spirit. There isn’t a place where God’s love, and grace, are not found. All of life is sacramental, all of life is grace. That grace isn’t “activated” by a prior bodiless grace event, but is participated in by faith and thanksgiving. It is in offering God’s creation back to Him in thanks that we begin to partake in the Divine outpouring of gifts.
Adam says
Schmemann on Word and sacrament:
“Yet in the liturgical and spiritual tradition of the Church, the Church’s essence as the incarnation of the Word, as the fulfillment in time and space of the divine incarnation, is realized precisely in the unbreakable link between the word and the sacrament. Thus the book of Acts can say of the Church: “the word…grew and multiplied” (12:24). In the sacrament we partake of him who comes and abides with us in the word, and the mission of the Church consists precisely in announcing this good news. The word presupposes the sacrament as its fulfillment, for in the sacrament Christ the Word becomes our life. The Word assembles the Church for his incarnation in her. In separation from the word the sacrament is in danger of being perceived as magic, and without the sacrament the word is in danger of being “reduced” to “doctrine”. And, finally, it is precisely through the sacrament that the word is interpreted, for the interpretation of the word is always witness to the fact that the Word has become our life. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). The sacrament is his witness, and therefore in it lies the source, the beginning and the foundation of the exposition and comprehension of the word, the source and criterion of theology. Only in this unbreakable unity of word and sacrament can we truly understand the meaning of the affirmation that the Church alone preserves the true meaning of scripture. That is why the necessary beginning of the eucharistic ceremony is the first part of the liturgy — the sacrament of the word, which finds its fulfillment and completion in the offering, consecration, and distribution to the faithful of the eucharistic gifts.” – Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, pg 68-69 (1987)
Josh says
“The Word comes first. Jesus comes first, in the person of the Holy Spirit and becomes flesh in an individual’s life.”
While you cite some pretty heady metaphysics at the onset of this article, you don’t speak like someone who has a firm grasp on the omnipresence of God- the “at all times, filling all places and in all things” of God. The Jesus you speak of is the kind of Jesus who can “come first,” and when you say “first,” you seem to mean not only hierarchically but chronologically (or perhaps you mean “first” in an exclusively chronological way). I’m unaware of what this Word “coming first” looks like if the sacraments of grace are coming later- especially when pertaining to the God who is at all times in all places, and thus can never (within a metaphysical conversation) come “first.” There’s no difference between baptism coming first and “the Word” coming first within a metaphysical conversation of God’s presence (or the sacraments); it really seems like St. Athanasius’ “On The Incarnation” quickly clears up this kind of confusion, especially those portions early on when St. Athanasius declares that the Second Person of the Trinity might just as easily come as a moon.
Your understanding of the Word “coming” seems very much a product of the emergent ecumenism of Europe in the 18th century which has now completely captured the intellect and imagination of American Christianity; Christianity is become a religion of the heart, as it is no longer politically safe or expedient to practice religion in public, thus salvation means the Word “comes” in a fluctuation of the heart, a great and heartfelt innerness within the spirit, an invisible and emotional and intellectual quickening which is only fairly pursued along the same interiority. Of course, of course, all the talk about the Incarnation in this article makes some portion of your understanding of religiosity public, tangible- although that all seems at odds with your presentation of the Word “coming.” I’m sorry, but this all seems consumeristic; an amalgam of different religiosities across time, based on a very simple kind of appeal or expediency that this part has, or that part.
“God always initiates, always breaks through in His own way, in His own timing, on His own terms.” And I suppose that if God wants to break through in a Eucharist composed of Diet Coke and Pringles, who are we to confine Him to *one* of the means He chose to reveal Himself? Who are we to look askance when the church across town alleges that their pop and chips Lord’s supper brought out tears of repentance and confession of sin?
Matthew N. Petersen says
I’ve been reading too much Bonhoeffer for you to pull this one over my eyes.
Christ is “world’s splendour and wonder.” (Hopkins) Christ in His flesh is under all things, and so “Every phenomenon of nature was a word,–the sign, symbol, and pledge of a new, secret, inexpressible but all the more fervent union, fellowship and communion of the divine energies and ideas. All that man heard at the beginning, saw with his eyes, looked upon, and his hands handled was a living word; for God was the word.”
I’m with you there. But then you take it all back.
“The Word comes first. Jesus comes first, in the person of the Holy Spirit and becomes flesh in an individual’s life. And then, and only then, is the sacrament grace, does the Word become food, is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a holy place where God’s presence is known and felt. Otherwise it’s all just more kindling for the fire.”
I’m with you about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich only in the Spirit being a place where *Christ’s* presence is known and felt. But the Eucharist and Baptism *are* the Word of God. Christ comes to in Baptism on the Water, and in the Eucharist as the Bread and Wine. The Water is a tactile Word, and the Bread and Wine, gustatory Words. You can’t separate the Word from the Word like you do here. He’s one person, and it is precisely in his presence as Church, Preaching, Scripture, and Sacrament that He confers the Holy Spirit. Regeneration does not precede the Sacraments, regeneration is carried on the Sacraments. They are the Word.
Josh says
Sorry, couldn’t resist one more thing:
“God always initiates, always breaks through in His own way, in His own timing, on His own terms.”
Except icons. God never, ever breaks through in icons.
Adam says
lol.
Peanut butter and jelly, beer, brats, yes, but not images.
Brad Littlejohn says
I see you’re getting some flak here, but this is really fine stuff. Not much to add beyond that. Thanks!
Matthew N. Petersen says
Maybe I should expand my comment.
The Word comes to us in the Sacrament. We are able to resist or ignore the Word, but the Word is objectively there, causing regeneration, not contingent on regeneration. The sacrament is grace, regardless of the condition of the recipient. But a faithless reception of the sacrament is to mock the grace actually given and thus destroy the grace. So it would be more appropriate to say that if we receive the Sacrament and don’t thereby pursue Christ, God is speaking to us, and we are tuning Him out as irrelevant, or are spitting his Word back at him.
It’s an important distinction because if the Sacrament is only grace if I am in a correct state, God’s grace becomes dependent on me, and the gospel is therefore made dependent on me. Which is works righteousness.
I don’t agree with everything the following link says, particularly, I believe that in hearing God’s Word, precisely thereby we are made active. We listen actively, or reject actively. But as he says, the sacrament is the objective Word of God which creates righteousness, not which is conditioned on righteousness.
http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-absolution-be-unconditional.html