“My Soul, My Life, My All”
Mark 14:22-25
Mark 14:22-24: …
he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them and
said, “Take; this is my body.” The he
took the cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank
from it. He said to them, “This is my
blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
[Prayer]
On
Sunday, May 9, 2004 I had what would prove to be a life altering
experience. That Sunday morning, as part
of the interview process that eventually brought me here, I preached and
administered Communion. The hymn before
Communion that morning was “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”
I’ve
always loved that hymn. It never fails
to move me. But that morning, as Betty
Ann led the choir and congregation in singing the fourth verse without
accompaniment, the hair stood up on my neck.
It was at that point that I thought to myself, “I could get used to this!” We
all know the rest of the story.
How
appropriate it is to sing this hymn just before Communion. In it the basic message of the Words of
Institution is reiterated. “See, from his head, his hands, his feet;
sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did
e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?” Sorrow and love flowing mingled down –
this is stark imagery of our Lord’s blood being poured out for many. From his hands and feet – those parts of our
Lord’s body savaged by the cruel nails of his crucifixion, nails by which his
body was broken. Thorns composing so
rich a crown – the pain and humiliation of a cruel parody of coronation; more
torn flesh, more poured out blood.
That’s
not all we celebrate and commemorate when we take Communion. There is our Lord’s resurrection, when he defeated
sin, death, and evil just when they thought they had destroyed him. There are hints of the great wedding feast to
come, that day when Christ returns to claim his bride, the church, and the
reign of God's Kingdom will be absolute.
We are reminded of the Communion of Saints that has gone before us. We are united in spirit with every Christian
everywhere. And even as we fellowship
with one another, by the power of the Holy Spirit, our Lord Jesus Christ sits
at Table with us.
Along with the joy and celebration there are also reminders of
responsibility. Jesus paid a great price
to redeem us from our sins. He was the
Lamb of God, the ultimate sacrifice. In
the utter desolation of the cross he, experienced hell itself for us. How do we respond to such sorrow and love
flowing mingled down?
Let’s
turn back to the hymn. “My richest gain I count but loss, and pour
contempt on all my pride… Forbid it Lord that I should boast, save in the death
of Christ, my God; all the vain things that charm me most – I sacrifice them to
his blood… Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too
small: Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
Confronted with the saving love of God made real in Christ Jesus –
remembering our Lord’s broken body and his shed blood – Isaac Watts, writer of
the hymn, saw all the glittering promises of the world as something to
sacrifice, to give up because they are ultimately worthless. Such amazing love could never be earned or
purchased even if everything in nature were ours to give. Such love demands everything we are and
everything we have: our soul, our life, our all.
Dr.
Watts wrote of sacrifice. There is the
sacrifice our Lord made for us – his very life.
And then there are the sacrifices we are called to make in response. The reality is that everything we have is not
enough; it never will be. Still,
confronted with such grace, love, and mercy, our joyful and appropriate
response is to give the very best of what we have and what we are. Sometimes such giving will be sacrificial.
I’m
not asking for a show of hands, but how many of us have really sacrificed
anything lately? In my own life the
closest thing to a sacrifice I’ve made are the ten months that Sandy and I had
a commuting marriage in order for me to be your pastor. But compared to some of you who have spent
months, maybe even years, an ocean apart from your loved ones, that’s not
much. Or compared to the months military
families are separated, often knowing that the separation could be forever,
what Sandy and I went through was, at most, an inconvenience.
The
truth is that we live in a culture not much given to sacrifice, or sometimes
even inconvenience! It wasn’t always
so. Karl Travis, Pastor of the
He
went on to write, “Sacrifice has fallen
on hard times. A minister friend told me
how her congregation’s stewardship committee edited the word sacrifice from
their literature. ‘It’s a turnoff,’ the
committee argued. ‘Too negative’.” After that
he stated that, “Our affluent culture
charms us with the dream that we can have it all, now, and that we deserve it…
In a time of such acquisitiveness, is there still a place in our stewardship
toolbox for such a word as sacrifice?”
Good question. Some Christians
are answering it with a resounding “no!”
I’ve spoken before of houses of worship without crosses, the idea being
that the cross conveys a negative message of pain and sacrifice. Some theologians don’t even want to deal with
what happened on the cross anymore. They
find all that blood, pain, and torture to be messy and distasteful.
Sacrifice
is messy and distasteful. The
crucifixion of our Lord was a dirty, lonely, humiliating, agonizing
experience. His body was broken. His blood was shed. He died.
By the time his body had been in the tomb for three days there would
have been an odor of corruption. We sort
of skip over that part in moving from Good Friday to Easter. But the truth is that death isn’t pretty.
And
death is what took place on the cross.
There was, by the grace and power of God, resurrection. But all that painful, messy, dirty, smelly
dying had to take place first. Jesus had
to die. There had to be the sacrifice of
a broken body and poured out blood. And
there was. That’s how much God loves us.
The
question, then, becomes for us: “How do
we respond to such love? How do we honor
such sacrifice?” First we accept on
faith that it really happened. Then we
celebrate its eternal benefits. On a
regular basis we commemorate it. Then in
ways big and small we imitate the One who made it. We pick up our own crosses, whatever form
they might take. Sometimes the cross is
light. Sometimes it’s heavy. At all times we give thanks for the privilege
of carrying it. In the name of the One
who sacrificed everything, we become willing to sacrifice something.
We
live in a time and a place where most of what we call a sacrifice is really
just an inconvenience. Or maybe not even
that. I’ve dealt with church members who
were incensed because the 11 o’clock service ran ten minutes past noon. I served one church, where after being asked
by the Session to preach a series of sermons on stewardship, I was told that I
talked about money too much.
None
of that is surprising in a culture that cannot tolerate any kind of
inconvenience, a culture in which everybody wants everything instantly. Or in a culture where sex is talked about at
the drop of a hat, but honest and open discussion of our finances is
taboo. It’s as if what we do with our
money is none of anybody else’s business – not even God’s!
“Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a
present far too small.” So we sing. But
do we mean it? It would seem that the
average Presbyterian doesn’t. Earlier
there was a reference to Presbyterians giving a larger percentage of their
incomes to the church during the Great Depression than we do today. As the amount of discretionary income in
I
was happy to discover that the per-member giving at Grace is higher than the
denominational average. That’s good
news. But when we consider that the
denominational average is somewhere between two and three percent of our
incomes, maybe we’re not as generous as we think. Very few of us are giving sacrificially. For most of us it isn’t even an inconvenience.
Let’s
ponder on that as we gather at our Lord’s Table and commemorate his broken body
and poured out blood. But before that,
let’s take a hard look at some of the words we’re about to sing: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my
soul, my life, my all.” Amen.