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Some Thoughts on the Liturgy
THE EUCHARIST IS MORE THAN WORDS
+ One
of the classic Peanuts cartoons is the series involving Lucy holding a
football which Charlie Brown is supposed to kick
- every one including Charlie Brown knows that Lucy
is going to pull that football away as he approaches
- Charlie Brown will
fall flat on his back once again
- but Lucy convinces him every
time: “Trust me”; “my words are true”
- and every time it
happens: Charlie trusts her and she pulls away the
football and Charlie Brown takes the fall
- and Lucy says simply: “Words
are cheap”
- now, that is a
statement that describes human nature very well—words really do come
easily, and often they mean nothing
+
The people of Joshua’s time—first reading—on a high because of being back
in the Promised Land, say
Far be it from us to forsake the Lord for the service of other
gods.
- and in the very next book of the
Bible: the book of Judges (3:12), talking of the same people:
Abandoning the Lord the God of their fathers, who had led them out
of the land
of Egypt, they
followed the other gods of various nations around them.
- words are cheap
+
Simon Peter, braving even the ridicule of the disciples who were leaving
because they couldn’t accept the doctrine of the Eucharist says:
Master, to whom shall we go: you have the
words of eternal life.
-and in the same Gospel, 12 chapters
later, John records (18:25):
Simon Peter was standing there…and they said to him: are you not
one of his disciples? He denied it
and said, “I am not.”
- words are cheap
+ Words
do not a commitment make
- there are probably as many
examples of that as there are people
- any commitment
requires more than words
- a
commitment—if it is real—absolutely requires some type of action
+ Jesus
instituted the Eucharist for us
- viewed from a commitment point
of view, it was a commitment that was more than words for him
- he saw that this was
going to be a difficult doctrine—“hard to endure” the way some described it
in the Gospel
- and he
didn’t try to soften it at all
-
he was talking about his body and blood being given to us
-
nothing could deter him from doing that, even going so far as to allow some
of his disciples to leave
- and he went much further than
giving us a remembrance of himself in the Eucharist
- his whole life was a
commitment to the point of death, as he predicted
- words
were not cheap for him
+ As
we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, as guide for our lives
- we say words—we say them during
this worship service: “Lord, have mercy”; “I believe”; “I forgive”; “I
love”
- but words are cheap
- we have to be committed to doing more than words
-
we must allow this Eucharist to make us a little better than we are
-
we must really make Jesus an active force in everything we do
+
There was a song out a couple years ago by the group Extreme called “More Than Words”: “More than words,” they sing, “is all you have to do to make it real. Then you wouldn't have to
say that you love me 'Cause I'd already know.”
- put into the context of the spiritual life, we have to remember that our talk is cheap, we must have
our actions to be more than words.
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