The Sacraments: God's Teachable Moments
Notes
Transcript
Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
TO PREACH HC SACRAMENTS GENERAL—USE HEBREWS 10 MESSAGE
Scripture Reading: Romans 4:9-17
Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 25, Questions and Answers 65-68
Sermon Title: The Sacraments: God’s Teachable Moments
This evening, we turn our attention to a couple of the practices or rituals that take place regularly in our worship services: the sacraments. We’ll be using the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 25. So I am not planning on getting into the nitty-gritty of the Lord’s Supper or baptism because that would take going there are six more Lord’s Days with 17 more questions and answers in the section. What I hope we can take away is the big picture of the role of the sacraments to confirm our faith as well as what it means that God gives them to us as signs and seals.
When I worked for Confrontation Point Ministries during my college summers, staff and campers were encouraged to be on the lookout for teachable moments. A teachable moment is when in the middle of an activity, serving others, or just going about normal routines, we notice something happening that provides us with a lesson. In our everyday experiences, things happen or we catch a glimpse of something that reminds or connects with a deep truth and provides a lesson that we can take away. On those trips, it could be as simple as how we saw a member of our group exemplifying our theme for the week by connecting with those that we were serving. Other times it was a bit more spiritual: in seeing the way a waterfall pours down into a stream and then continues on, we might be given an insight to the way the way God pours his Spirit into his people and then continues with them in the callings of our lives.
I wonder tonight, with the answers we just confessed, if we can think about the sacraments as “God’s Teachable Moments.” The sacraments are very much things we do, or to use the language of answer 65, things we “use.” We hear the truth of the gospel in the reading and preaching of the Word to produce faith in us, and then the Spirit uses the elements in a complementary way to further preach the gospel promise that Christ has given himself for us. Pastor, author, and currently prresident of Princeton Theological Seminary Craig Barnes writes in his book, Body & Soul, “When I stand in front of the Lord’s table, offering [the congregation] his broken body and poured out blood, I present the sacred kiss that communicates the same thing as the sermon, but in ways that go far beyond the limits of words. And when I offer the sacrament of baptism, I’m doing the same thing: bestowing the grace of God in a way that can be experienced and not just heard.” In being sprinkled with water, eating a piece of bread, and drinking a cup of grape juice or wine, our attention is drawn to the truth of what happened in the sacrifice of Christ, his body broken and experiencing death, his blood poured out, to wash over our sins.
What takes place though is not just that our attention gets drawn to the message of grace in Jesus Christ, but we confess that the Holy Spirit confirms believers’ faith by our use of the sacraments. Q&A 67 tells us a bit more what this confirmation is about, “By the holy sacraments [the Holy Spirit] confirms that our entire salvation rests on Christ’s one sacrifice for us on the cross.” The confirmation that takes place in these special occasions in our communities of faith tells us that Christ’s sacrifice, and the forgiveness and resurrection that comes as a result to all who believe is not just something to take notice of or digest like we would facts in an academic setting, but this changes our lives and we trust that the Holy Spirit effects and even nourishes our spirits in our participation.
One of the communion formularies we use contains the language, “The sacrament thus confirms us in God’s abiding love and covenant faithfulness.” Likewise, our baptismal services provide that the sacrament confirms the promises that God made to Abraham of an everlasting covenant, of giving his will to his people, and of forgiving our sin and wickedness. When the catechism speaks of there being this confirmation of faith taking place, it is helpful to see that it is not just pastor and elders presiding over and serving the sacrament to the members who are present, but we have an active partnership between the Holy Spirit and believers. It is while we are participating that the Holy Spirit accomplishes all the work. God is the one who in our celebrations continues to reveal the effectiveness of his promises. If we can see these as teachable moments, then the sacraments are the way God teaches us by reaffirming who he is and showing himself faithful as often as we practice them.
Before I go too far into making it sound like it is the sacraments and our participation in them that salvation hinges, we need to draw back and make the turn to look at what it means for our sacraments to be “visible, holy signs and seals.” The sacraments are these events, these moments, which God has given us, that connect with our senses. They can help in keeping us from reducing faith to intellectual properties. As a pastor once told me, though, “the sacraments are not the thing, rather they point to the thing.”
We confessed that baptism and communion as signs more fully declare, more deeply cause us to understand, more clearly teach us about the gospel’s promise. But in and of themselves, what we practice when we use the sacraments is nothing extraordinary. To put water on one’s forehead or to immerse oneself in a body of water as some traditions do is not so different from taking a shower or going in a pool or squirting some water to cool off like athletes are prone to do. To have a meal of bread and wine is not unique; sure, in most of the cultures represented here, these two things may not be staples, but they were regular pieces of the meal back then. So when we participate in the celebrations of the sacraments, it is not the elements or how everything is set up that causes any effect, but it is by faith in the promises that are behind these signs that the Spirit reveals to us in a renewed light what this is all about.
That enters into what it means for the sacraments to also be seen as seals of the promise. Seals, we confess, of God’s work to “grant us forgiveness of sins and eternal life by grace because of Christ’s one sacrifice accomplished on the cross.” The way that we celebrate that sacrament emphasizes that the promise is for the whole body of Christ, whether they have the ability to participate or not; we take the elements seeing that God’s grace is for all whom he has adopted as his sons and daughters. But we also participate as individual members; we come recognizing that God created each of us as individuals and the call of faith is offered to each individually. When we consider the sacraments as seals, we get an incredible opportunity to give gratitude to God for calling us and saving us. We take very seriously who can participate, not because a physical baptism or taking part in the Lord’s Supper automatically saves or guarantees our salvation, but because we believe these things and seek to be obedient and as much aligned with the work that the Holy Spirit is doing.
In our Scripture reading tonight, we read about what might be considered an old sacrament, circumcision, which God gave to Abraham. Our practice of this is a bit different than how it was intended for him; God gave it as a sign of being one of the male descendants in the lineage God chose to work blessing the world through until Christ came. In verse 11, we read, “And he received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised…And he is also the father of the circumcised.” We see in the language of sign and seal, which we use to describe the sacraments we believe God has given to the church, that we are not to understand in a legal way that if you have them, you are good to go but if you do not then you are out of luck. No, rather, we understand that righteousness which exists in having faith and in being justified as we are by the Holy Spirit is the thing, and practicing the sacraments are ways that God’s people have the opportunity to see in clearer way, the way that puts our spiritual life right in the realities of everyday practices, even washing and having a meal.
To summarize what is taking place in the sacraments as a whole and with each of the practices. We acknowledge that the Holy Spirit confirms faith in believers; the Holy Spirit is the catalyst that makes faith happen but he also dwells with believers, especially in our corporate acts of worship. When we think about the Lord’s Supper, taking that bread which has been taken from a loaf and shared with us, we can say that this is a sign confirming that we share in the body of Christ and the sacrifice that he gave. Taking the cup of grape juice or wine or dipping bread into it, confirms that the blood of Christ is poured out for us that in Jesus’ blood, poured out and over us to make the atonement, to cleanse us. Our celebration is something we do on a regular basis because we are invited to and we often need to be reminded of those things. So too when we baptize a new believer or a covenant child, our use of water in a way that reminds us of how water washes dirt away, is a confirming action led by the Holy Spirit that shows how Christ’s blood washes over each of us individually and that the Spirit is also entering for the work of renewing us.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, our God is a compassionate God; he wants to see his people learn and grow. I think the sacraments are great teachable moment because they allow us to join in the experience; we get to do something to practice the story. But our doing can only be faithfully done when the truth is in our hearts and minds. If there is one thing that you can take with you next time you celebrate the sacraments be it here or in another church, remember that it is not all about us and what we do, but it is about God through his Spirit that makes his promises true and real in our lives. He is the One who offers to us what we do not deserve; he is the God, as Paul testified to, “who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”