Midweek Theme: Preparing for Holy Communion
The Second Midweek Service in Advent Fasting and Bodily Preparation Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In tonight’s reading, the widow Anna limps around the temple day and night, “worshipping with fasting and prayer”—watching and waiting for the Christ to visit and comfort her. Dear Christian friends, In order to prepare themselves to receive the Holy Communion, many of our parents and grandparents joined Anna in her fasting. On those sparse Sundays when the Communion was finally served, many of our ancestors began their day of worship by not eating their usual morning meal. They wanted the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus to be the first food that broke their fast. Many would spend their breakfast hour, not with spoon in hand, but with a hymnal or a Bible or a prayer book opened in front of them. For them, fasting was not about the mimicry of Old Testament Law, as some cults and some misled Christians foolishly do today. Like us, our parents and grandparents were the New Testament people of God. By fasting, our parents voluntarily engaged themselves in what Luther called a child’s exercise (LC V). They were, after all, children in the same sense that we are. Nor did fasting amount to their holiness or create their holiness. By fasting, our parents wanted the emptiness of their bellies to illuminate and identify the emptiness of their souls. They wanted bodily hunger and thirst to push them beyond the surface of the bathroom mirror, so they could see and admit their “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). Holy Communion was to be served that day. Soon enough, at the altar, their “hunger and thirst for righteousness… shall be satisfied.” For the moment, there in the Sunday morning sunrise, it was enough for our parents and grandparents to wait. Long before them, Anna waited with them. In the same way that they waited for the coming of Christ in Holy Communion, Anna likewise waited for the coming of the Christ in His mother’s arms. Anna waited, “worshipping with fasting and prayer.” I do not know how many Christians among us today continue to wait with Anna in our ancestral tradition of a Sunday morning, pre-Communion fast. I am afraid to ask; for a number of reasons I really do not want to know the answer. You have been educated to believe that “fasting and bodily preparation are indeed fine, outward training” (SC VI), even if you have developed the habit of ignoring your education. Anna does not ignore hers. There were two, separate forces exerting themselves on Anna’s body. The first was the force and power of her fasting, in which you may or may not see fit to participate. That is your business. Anna deliberately imposed the fast upon herself, and it would be up to you—you alone—if you joined her in your own self-impositions. No one avoids the second force exerting itself on Anna’s body, helping her to prepare for the coming of Christ. Hers was a “bodily preparation” over which she had no control and against which she had no defense. Your bodily preparation is one and the same. Anna “was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.” Anna’s bodily preparation for the coming of Christ was a double-edged sword: the same sin and death that had widowed her was also the sin and death that forced her to shuffle and limp toward her own grave. Whether or not you see fit to join Anna in her fast, prepare for yourself for Holy Communion by looking at your body and your life. Anna “was advanced in years.” No matter what you might think about your own, physical frame, the reality of your strength or beauty or vitality is less than you see. Anna “was a widow until she was eighty-four.” Regardless whether you wish to join our parents and grandparents in their unfed Sunday morning preparations for Holy Communion, at least prepare yourself for Communion by reminding yourself of what you lost when they died. “Fasting and bodily preparation [such as aging and grief] are indeed fine, outward training” because these things so graphically illustrate what we are not, what we have not, what we cannot. These things prepare us for Holy Communion because in Communion we receive the Christ who is, the Christ who has, the Christ who can and who does. Perhaps we should think of grief as an emotional or spiritual form of growing old. Perhaps we should think of our arthritis, our gout, and our graying hair as physical forms of grief. Grief and aging are both wonderful ways to focus on and long for the coming of our Christ, whether it is Anna’s longing for the Christ who comes in His mother’s arms, or ours for the similar coming of Christ in Holy Communion. Whether carried by Mary into the temple or delivered in bread and wine here at this rail, we all get the same gift: to us as to Anna, the Consolation of Israel comes. Anna has good reason “to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” and so do we. Simeon is not the only one whom God so graciously allows to depart in peace. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
