#CHRISTISNOWHERE – When Will King Jesus Return To Make Everything Alright? Third Sunday of Advent Sermon

“For as the earth brings forth it’s bud, As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the LORD God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”

What a beautiful and compelling vision of the future.

For Israel, righteous justice and joyful praise was most definitely not sprouting among the empires of the world.

It seemed as if God was no where – not in the temple, not on the throne, and not amongst the people.

Though Israel knew they had sinned against the LORD and broken their covenant, they wondered when the punishment would end.

It seemed that returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding their life in the Promised Land was the beginning of a new era with God.

But now a new empire was directing the affairs of the nations, and injustice and sorrow marred the gardens and cities.

Which is why Isaiah’s sermon resonated so deeply with Israel.

When would righteous justice flourish – not only in Israel, but also in the surrounding nations?

How long, O Lord, until all the peoples of the earth praised you instead of their idols?

Isaiah reminds Israel who it is they worship, of how great and good is their LORD.

He announces to them that the Spirit of the LORD God will descend upon an anointed servant who will come to Israel.

This anointed servant will preach good news to the poor and heal the brokenhearted.

The LORD God will send his servant to proclaim liberty to the captives and the Jubilee year of the Lord.

The LORD God will have his day of vengeance, and God will comfort all who mourn, giving them beauty for ashes, oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

If Israel is a garden, the LORD will plant righteousness that the people may be called oaks of justice.

And through this rebuilding and replanting, Israel shall rejoice and God will be glorified.

Through the LORD’s faithfulness, he will make an everlasting covenant with a people who are continually unfaithful to him; BUT, the Lord God will direct their work in truth.

Through what the faithful LORD God does with unfaithful Israel will result in all the world acknowledge that surely Israel is blessed of God.

Isaiah is so sure of this planting, of these oaks of righteousness, of a world rejoicing at the justice and faithfulness of God in how he rebuilds Israel, that he declares himself already clothed in salvation, already putting on a robe of righteous justice, like a bride and groom all decked out in their finest beauty.

Isaiah is so confident in the LORD God, he believes with every bone in his body that justice and joy will spring forth before all the nations.

It will happen as sure as when the garden causes the things that are sown in it so spring forth.

Isaiah wrote to the people of God during the Advent of the First Christmas.

As the people of God, we are now reading Isaiah during the Advent of the Last Christmas.

We read of Isaiah’s confidence in the LORD God almost twenty five centuries later.

Sometimes it seems, on this side of that first Christmas that the robes of righteousness are wearing thin and the coats of salvation are getting threadbare.

We need Isaiah’s sermon now just as much as when Israel needed it then.

They were ready and waiting for the anointed King, their Messiah, their Christ to come and cause justice and joy to spring up from the parched earth.

But Israel crucified their king, cutting down the gardener with all the injustice and hate that we are all to familiar with still today.

God brought comfort to all the people of God who recognized Jesus to be the Son of God and the Son of David.

Through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, God signaled his faithfulness to Israel while vindicating Jesus as the LORD and King of Israel and all the nations of the world.

But through the crucifixion and resurrection we also begin to see how the LORD is going to sow the seeds of righteous justice and joyful praise throughout the world.

He’s going to do it through the church scattered throughout the whole world. In every city of every nation there will be a gathering of men and women who are faithful to the LORD Jesus Christ.

Because of their confidence in the coming of the Lord to establish the kingdom of God, they live now in light of a future that may not come in their lifetime.

They rejoice always, praying constantly, giving thanks to God in all things, for they believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is both with them and coming again to reign upon the earth.

And when he does, the justice and joy that the church has been striving to sow in their community will become true of the whole world.

The justice and joy of the church will become seeds for that nation, and God will cause justice and joy to spring up from what was sown in that place.

Maybe you are having a hard time imagining what it will look like for justice and joy to spring up from the earth.

I want to show you a small three minute movie where you will see men springing up from the earth in justice and joy at Christmas time.

You may have already seen this chocolate commercial.

It’s a story known as the Christmas Truce and it took place exactly one hundred years ago this Christmas, during the first five months of the Great War, of what became known as World War One.

It helps to know a bit of history to appreciate the beauty of this compelling event. The first five months of the Great War was the worst warfare the world had ever seen.

The world had seen many horrific wars over the thousands of years of recorded history.

But none like this.

Prior to World War 1, great battles lasted one day, maybe three days. No battle had ever raged on everyday for a month.

When the battles started in August between Germany and the Allies, France expected the war to be over by the end of September.

So when December came and there was no end in sight of the war, the nations became gravely worried about the new world of chaos they were descending into.

Though the truce only lasted for a day, and though the war raged on to consume over twenty million lives in the next four years, there was a moment where justice and joy sprung up from the earth.

It’s a picture of what could have happened had the rulers and authorities turned away from their fear, pride, and greed.

That Christmas Truce was a brief picture of what the Last Christmas will be like, when the LORD God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up, conquering the dark powers and evil forces that enslave the nations in a kingdom of war and darkness.

You can see the video here:

WW1 Christmas Truce

We are not living in World War I, but we are still living in the aftershocks of it, one hundred years later.

You may not be living in the trenches, but you are living in a time where it seems like Christ is no where.

There is so much injustice in our nation.

There is so much loneliness and despair.

There is so much violence and death.

There is the every day grind of having to work with people who suck the joy out of the air; of living every day in pain or hardship or the constant struggle to survive with no end in sight.

Maybe it’s the nagging feeling that for all you have accomplished, there is still an emptiness that cannot be filled.

Maybe you need your own Christmas Truce: to rise up out of your trench and choose to rejoice in the LORD and believe that Christ is now here.

It’s important to note how Isaiah ends his poem: “As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”

In your hardship, in your grief, in your sadness, in your difficulties, in your uncertainty, in your anxiety, in your sufferings: what are you sowing?

When the evil one seeks to sow bitterness and despair in your heart, do you join him in it?

When the devil speaks lies to you, do you add to them?

When evil strikes you, your family or friends, when death unfairly strikes down those you care about – do you let the shadows of death creep in and drain your life away in despair and anger?

Isaiah writes to Israel, reminding them that it is the Lord who causes righteousness and praise to spring up, but we must sow things into the garden in order for anything to spring up.

There will always be death in this world, but are you sowing life?

There will always be injustice and wickedness, but are you sowing righteous justice and goodness?

There will always be sorrow and despair in our world, but are you sowing kindness and faithfulness anyway?

We plant and water, but it’s the LORD who makes it grow.

There is an old Israelite myth that if you wept over the seeds that you sowed in the spring, you would thus be able to rejoice as you reaped a bountiful harvest.

Sometimes it’s in pain that we continue our faithfulness, sometimes it’s with tears that we do the next right thing.

But we look to the coming of the LORD, whether in our lifetime or in the generations to come, and we believe that he will come and cause justice and joy to spring forth before all the nations from all the seeds that we sowed with our tears.

“In that year of the LORD, he will comfort all who mourn, giving them beauty for ashes;the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called oaks of righteousness, that He may be glorified.”

2020 Lectionary Reading for the Third Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 61v1-4, 8-11 / Psalm 126 / 1Thessalonians 5v16-24 / John 1v6-8, 19-28

Interpreting The Christian Mission of the YMCA by Paul Limbert

A reflection upon the arc of YMCA Christian Emphasis in 1998 by Paul M. Limbert, aged 101, having served the Lord and the Y movement for almost 80 years. He died 20 days later after giving this address to YMCA professionals at Blue Ridge Assembly.

Paul M. Limbert was an ordained Christian minister and renowned leader within the YMCA movement. His work with the Y includes Springfield College as an educator and President; the CEO of the World Alliance of YMCAs in Geneva, Switzerland; CEO of YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina. After retirement Paul mentored, led, taught, served men and women around the world for over thirty years; his influence continues on in the YMCA still today.

For more on Paul M. Limbert, you can purchase a copy of his autobiography: Reliving A Century.

Reliving A Century, by Paul M. Limbert, given to me by Steve Tarver

This talk “Interpreting The Christian Mission of the YMCA” was given on December 4th, 1998 for a YMCA Professional Group gathered at Blue Ridge Assembly YMCA by Paul M. Limbert, aged 101, 20 days before he passed away.

The typed/photocopied version I received was given to me in November 2020 by Steve Tarver, CEO of the Greater Louisville YMCA, who was mentored by Limbert. I’m publishing it here on my blog to make it more accessible to the wider Y movement.

INTERPRETING THE CHRISTIAN MISSION OF THE YMCA – 12/4/1998

It is not only a pleasure but an honor to be asked to speak to this important group of YMCA professional leaders from the South Field. At my age, it is a pleasant surprise to be asked to speak anywhere! People would expect me to be in a wheelchair, dimly aware of what is going on, doting on memories from the past.

I have been quite puzzled how to approach this subject of Christian purpose or Christian mission today. It might seem like “old stuff” to some of you. I have been dealing with this subject for more than 40 years. Is this still a timely topic? I am tempted to pause and ask you whether this is still a live question in the circles where you move. And if so, whose concern? The staff? The members? The public? And to what extent is this an important question to you personally? Where do you stand as a Christian? What questions do you have, either theological or practical? I am not stopping, but I’ll be glad for your comments on these questions later.

  1. Let me take a few minutes to review my concern with this question. In the early 1940s, before I was President of Springfield College, I was involved as chairman of a Commission on Religious Emphasis and YMCA-Church Relations under the State Committee of the YMCA’s of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Those were days when relations with the Catholic Church was a live issue, and there were many Roman Catholics in Massachusetts and in the YMCA. Much of this pamphlet seems surprisingly relevant to today’s situation. I quote only one sentence:

“No participant in the YMCA is required to accept the Christian faith or join a Christian church, but he ought to be aware that he is joining a Christian organization which recognizes the importance of religion and makes resources available for the deepening of Christian faith.“

2. A few years later I was stationed in New York City as secretary, among other things, for the National Committee on Christian Emphasis. Part of my time was given to writing a book entitled Christian Emphasis in the YMCA. This was based in part on a survey of what YMCAs were actually doing. For many, this became a kind of “bible” of both philosophy and practice.

3. Twenty years later I was in Geneva as executive of the World Council of YMCAs and had first-hand contact with Catholics (two members of our staff), Orthodox (a World Council meeting in Greece), and any number of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists within the YMCA membership. I attended many quadrennial World Council Meetings, including the one in Kampala (1973) where we wrestled with whether to change the Paris Basis. And of course there was the “top” experience of the 1955 World Centennial Conference in Paris in 1955. The report of that series of conferences, And Now-Tomorrow, is still worth reading.

4. Then followed 30 years in “retirement”, when I was privileged to maintain close contact with the YMCA’s across the country and around the world. In my autobiography you will find several pages entitled “Reviewing the Christian Mission of the YMCA: An Elusive Goal” (pp. 351-354), with a page of a few of the many articles I have written on this subject (p. 354).

I take this time for this historical review not to brag but to bear witness to a central concern for Christian mission through the years in our Movement. But how about today? Is this still a live issue? I do not live near the seats of power in the YMCA, but I cite several illustrations of lively interest.

1) The Executive Committee of NAFYR met in Orlando in November. On the docket was a proposed mission statement for NAFYR and resolutions from two chapters relating to the “C” in the YMCA. I will not take time to quote the new NAFYR mission statement, and I do not have details about the resolution from the chapters. But apparently for my retired colleagues this is still a lively question.

2) Our National Council had a Task Force which attempted to formulate a revised statement of Christian purpose. This ran into difficulties about two years ago and the proposal to leave “Christ” out of the statement aroused a flurry of protest. The Task Force gave up the idea of a change and instead is concentrating on mission. On the letterhead of our National Council correspondence is a more or less official statement that is widely copied locally:

YMCA mission: to put Christian principles inot practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.

3) I have written a critique of this statement, but can not go into detail now. My brief comment is made in a publication which is another indication of current interest in Christian mission: a quarterly publication by the Charlotte YMCA called Dunamis, described as “A Newsletter to Encourage YMCA Leaders in the Christian Faith.” Are there publications of this kind in the South Field?

4) My last illustration: Some weeks ago Jay Lippy asked me to confer with him at this center. He is on the staff of the Tampa Metropolitan YMCA as Spiritual Emphasis Director. This is the first appointment of its kind that has come to my attention for many years: adding to the staff a person whose central concern is the Christian emphasis of the YMCA. Whether this is a trend I do not know. I am not even sure that I recommend this type of appointment. It may raise an old question about departmentalization. But at least it is another reflection of current concern. We would like to know more about how he is approaching this new assignment.

At this point you may expect me to launch into an analysis of what we mean by “Christian Mission” and how to express it. Instead, I want to make a “functional” approach. Let us look at the various groups with whom we are dealing in the interpretation of the Christian basis or mission of the YMCA.

1. The Public (statements in print). Every Association has its brochure, its printed statements about what the YMCA has to offer. Sometimes these are confined to schedules and events. But usually they include some statement of what the YMCA is and how it seeks to serve individuals and the community. This bulletin or brochure is important for our concern today. How do we interpret the YMCA to the public and our constituency? If I were a chief executive officer, this would be one of my important concerns: to put into print what the YMCA stands for. I would want to make clear that the YMCA is open to persons of all churches, all faiths, or none. Yet I would want to make clear that the YMCA has a Christian heritage and basis and seeks to put into practice the basic convictions of this movement centered around the teachings of Jesus and his outlook on life.

Some years ago the World Council of YMCAs published a little booklet entitled Christian – But Open. many YMCAs in the USA might prefer Open – But Christian. Take your choice! But some catchy title of this kind would be useful. How can we interpret to the public and to our adult members the basic Christian orientation and dynamic of our movement?

2) The Members. My impression is that most YMCAs are sadly lacking in their interpretation of the Christian basis of the YMCA to our own members. If I am wrong, correct me. But my impression is that the recruiting of members is primarily a matter of numbers and fees. To what extent do we try to explain to new members their responsibilities and our expectations? The process of interpretation would have to be carefully adapted to varying age groups. And it dare not be a dull, routine performance. Questions would be encouraged. There would be stress not only on bad language and not getting in fights, but on friendly relations and concern for others.

In my judgment, the current emphasis on values and responsibilities tends to be too abstract. Illustrations and stories are more effective. And at least an elementary understanding of how Jesus dealt with people is essential. Stories will be far more effective than slogans. Very few YMCAs will organize Bible studies, but a skillful teacher will find ways of using the Bible for illustrations. The stress will be on the right kind of relationships. And a realistic understanding of the way God deals with people is essential.

The job of a Membership Secretary – if there are any such – will take on new meaning.

There is of course also the broader interpretation of the YMCA historically and worldwide, which will be an important part of the education of members. But more about this later.

3) The Staff. In this process of interpretation the leadership is of cetnral importance. I think of both the professional staff and the volunteers. And the maintenance, non-professional staff dare not be overlooked. But I am thinking primarily of the full-time professional leaders.

Many staff meetings are routine affairs, with emphasis on jobs to do and events to come. Seldom can these be turned into educational experiences. Probably provision must be made for a series of sessions dealing with serious study and discussion. We have our curriculum for leaders in the early stage of their experience. Why not a continuing program, in spite of other pressures? It is this kind of continuing staff study that lends itself to a lively discussion of the Christian basis and purpose of the YMCA.

High on the list of topics would be a fresh study of the life and teachings of Jesus. Many of our leaders have had little opportunity for serious Bible study. Many are not ready to take on a study of the “C” in the YMCA with members because their own understanding is so shaky. I am ill at ease in leading a discussion in a field where I I am poorly informed. If a staff member is clear about the basic Christian purpose of the YMCA, he will find ways of communicating his point of view to members.

I would be glad to confer with any of you about suitable books for study in a staff session of this kind. In the field of the life of Jesus and his teaching, I have often recommended a book by a German Catholic professor, Hans Kung. It is a ponderous volume of about 700 pages. but it has basic insights that I have not found elsewhere. A year ago someone borrowed my copy and did not return it. But here is another book in my library that I recommend highly: The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders (Penguin Press, 1993).

Some of you are aware that during the last ten years there has been a fresh study of the Biblical records, particularly the four Gospels, sometimes referred to as the Jesus Seminar. To what extent are these records historically reliable? Did Jesus really say what he is reported to have said? E.P. Sanders takes these studies into account. His approach is truly scholarly, but positive. I assume that you would be interested in a scholarly approach of this kind rather than a writer who avoids critical examination of Biblical writings. The South Field could set a pattern for the national movement if you were to develop a program of continuing staff study related to the Christian basis of the YMCA.

4) I conclude by dealing with an aspect of our question that relates to all three areas: the public., the members, the staff. I am thinking of the broader picture of our YMCA Movement. Our tendency is to think of the YMCA in local terms: its membership, its program, its constituency. The average YMCA member has no idea of the breadth of this movement: its history, its spread to all corners of the globe, its reality as a world organization. I have one of those long photographs taken at the World Council Meeting in England in 1994. There is an amazing array of different colors, costumes, nationalities. There are about 1000 persons from over 100 countries. If only our “average” members could get the thrill of belonging to a world movement like ours! Ordinarily we shy away from pride. But you will forgive me if I am proud of belonging to a movement of this kind. And one of the thrills of my long lifetime was being in Westminster Abbey for the observance of the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Some of you heard me speak of the quarterly magazine published by the World Alliance, YMCA World. I will not elaborate, but I remind you that here is a publication that goes beyond our World Service program, great as that is. The World Alliance includes national movements never mentioned by World Service. This quarterly would be an eye-opener for many Associations – and even for many professional leaders. Recently I have been in correspondence with Bart Shaha, General Secretary of the Asia Alliance of YMCAs. In his newsletter he tells about a recent visit to Nepal, where there are now 11 small YMCAs. I did not know that the YMCA exists in Nepal. There is news here of YMCAs in other countries of Southeast Asia little known in this country.

Only a few of us have had the privilege of first-hand contact with YMCAs in other parts of the world, but each one can have a part in interpreting the wider dimensions of the YMCA. As we read of fires and floods and famine, we can remember that the YMCA is one of many organizations helping to restore these broken communities – and doing this as part of our service as Christians.

I have only touched on the challenge to renew a vital Christian spirit in our far-flung YMCA. You are the ones in the field who must carry through over and beyond my limited understanding and capacity. You are the ones who must translate these few suggestions into reality!

Paul M. Limbert

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4

YMCA, Communion, Ecumenical Unity: Alexander Schmemann’s For The Life Of The World & the Eucharist

What is a way that communion can be part of the YMCA’s Christian ecumenical work in a community to build stronger bridges for a healthier spirit for all? Expanding and enriching our grasp of communion opens up new possibilities.

What is Communion? In part, it is about union with Christ Jesus, with God, with God’s people in Christ, across the globe and the ages.

As the Director of Christian Emphasis with the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne, Indiana, and as one connected with other Christian Y workers around the state, country, and world, I muse often on why communion isn’t a more common practice within our association.

When I was first hired, and I proposed offering communion at different branches in the chapels for our members, I was discouraged from doing so. The main reason given focused on the non-unifying reality of communion, how it was not as inclusive as other Christian practices like praying, volunteering in the community, singing, or a Bible study.

Interestingly, this is a very similar reason given in the early days of my denomination, formed in the last decades of the 18th century, for why they only practiced communion quarterly as a church.

The Church of the United Brethren in Christ was formed amongst primarily German Protestants, led by a continental German Reformed pastor and a Pennsylvania German Mennonite minister. They had close ties with the British clergyman Francis Asbury of the Anglican-Methodist movement.

It was a heady day of revivals, of preaching to mass cr0wds in open fields or large barns. They sought to proclaim a simple message of salvation to churched-people.

The liturgy around communion in the Reformed, Mennonite, and Anglican churches became tainted with formality, a dead spirit, and legalism. A result: a de-emphasis on the role of communion in a Sunday morning worship gathering, and an over-emphasis on the proclamation of the word for the explicit result of the salvation of souls for Christ.

The YMCA movement in 1844, a British product of Anglican and Dissenter Christians, highly valued the revival style, with founder George Williams leaving a legacy of constantly witnessing to strangers for the salvation of their souls.

While the Y valued unity and harmony in the movement, as expressed in the 1855 Paris Basis, the emphasis was on the extension of the kingdom through revival-style tactics that led to the salvation of souls. It would seem that communion was delegated as a sacrament of the church, and the Y was not a church, but the Y could help the church out by saving souls, and then sending them to the church.

This became a complicated scenario. Often the young men saved by the YMCA didn’t want to join the stuffy old churches in town. So the Y had to provide discipleship courses and ministry training of their own. Springfield College provided a lot of this educational operations. But without the emphasis on communion, which was the role of the church.

The Y has moved on from offering Christian education courses as part of its core identity. Many other para-church organizations have sprung up over the decades to evangelize and disciple youth, men, and families. There is a current movement in the Y to strengthen the “C” – I’m part of that work; but: to what end? What can we learn from our past 176 years of Christian ministry work (evangelism & discipleship) and build on it, rather than repeat it or over-nostalgiaize it?

Click on pic for more on the World YMCA celebration and reflection of their 175th anniversary gathering.

My own church tradition has a mixed relationship with communion, much like many other conservative Evangelical congregations. With a reductionistic-like focus on the salvation of souls as the highest, most important, very urgent priority – the role of communion is minimized. It’s not always clear how to connect communion to the salvation of souls, other than to over-emphasize the atonement for our sins made through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus on the cross.

While that part of communion is true, there is more to the sacrament of communion than just substitutionary atonement, of justification by faith, of sanctification by grace. There is also the spiritual unity that is inherent in the name of the practice: commune + union = communion. And it is this element that the YMCA can retrieve and build upon, especially with our emphasis on unity, on being “for all” and building bridges.

Rather than skim the surface in connecting with the many different kinds of Christians in the YMCA, we could make thoughtful attempts to build stronger spiritual bonds through the practice of communion. It’s not just the sharing of a cup and bread that bind us together, but how we understand it, what it means to us, how it connects us to what God has revealed to his people through Christ, through the Scriptures, and the saints who have come before us.

Growing up in the UB church, we partook of communion quarterly. Because it was so special, we didn’t want to take it too often, as that might cause us to take it for granted. Also, we didn’t want to be like the Catholics or liberal mainline congregations who took it every week. But even as a youth, it seemed to me that if communion was as special as we said it was, shouldn’t we do it every week? When I started a church, we “compromised” and practiced communion every month. For certain sermon series, we might do it every week, which was a relief for some in our congregation, and a stretch for others.

The practice of communion continues to stick in my heart as a sacrament which I want to understand better, that I want it to mean more; it seems to me there is more to it than what I was taught or experienced growing up. Getting to know faithful Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, and Methodist Christians who took communion every week has helped a lot.

I realize that there are certain restrictions that some denominations place on their members when it comes to partaking of communion. Because it is so special, it is especically guarded, to help keep it pure and it’s meaning sacred.

My Protestant evangelical heritage prompts me to open up communion to the world, but to also pay attention to the concern to keep it special. I’d like to find a way where we could offer communion every week, maybe every day, in a way that it would be open to the world, and still be special. The YMCA seems to be a vehicle to attempt those experiences.

In our under-nourished Christian ecumenical work, once a hall-mark of our YMCA identity, and now in America almost largely forgotten, the sacrament of communion could be a spiritual practice which re-focuses Christian Y members on Christ in a new, ecumenical way.

Something like this is needed for Christians to fuel the existential/spiritual work of racial reconciliation in our communities, adapting to and recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and building bridges across polarized chasms.

Thi attempt/experiment is not a replacement for the different Christian churches and how they do communion. But maybe rather a re-connecting point for Christians who are not part of a church tradition for many reasons, some of them being the hypocrisy of the church, the irrelevance of the church, the spiritual-deadness of the church, and other reasons.

There is much that needs to be thought out on this idea. For me, I know it includes continuing to expand my understanding of what communion means to other Christians and their church traditions.

This morning I was reading For The Life Of the World by Alexander Schmemann, former Dean and Professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary. The following paragraphs from chapter 2, The Eucharist, caught my attention, I had to re-read it several times, as it made fresh connections and new points about communion that I found to be inspiring, disturbing, and encouraging.

It opens up for me a richer vision of what is happening in communion, of it’s larger purpose, what it can mean for me and for us as participants, and what it can mean for the church and the world. This Orthodox perspective is new to me, so there is much I need to learn yet to keep it in context. Yet, I do know that I will never participate in communion the same ever again, having read this perspective by Rev. Schmemann. For me, it reads as a profound meditation on John 17:21.

“As we proceed further in the eucharistic liturgy, the time has come now to offer to God the totality of all our lives, of ourselves, of the world in which we live. This is the first meaning of our bringing to the altar the elements of our food.

For we already know that that food is life, that it is the very principle of life, and that the whole world has been created as food for man. We also know that to offer this food, this world, this life to God is the initial ‘eucharist’ function of man, his very fulfillment as man.

We know that we were created as celebrants of the sacrament of life, of its transformation into life in God, communion with God. We know that real life is ‘eucharist,’ a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and the value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled. We know that we have lost this eucharistic life, and finally we know that in Christ, the new Adam, the perfect man, this eucharistic life was restored to man.

For He Himself was the perfect Eucharist; He offered Himself in total obedience, love and thanksgiving to God. God was His very life. And he gave this perfect and eucharistic life to us. In Him God became our life.

And thus this offering to God of bread and wine, of the food that we must eat in order to live, is our offering to Him of ourselves, of our life and of the whole world. ‘To take in our hands the whole world as if it were an apple!’ said a Russian poet.

It is our Eucharist. It is the movement that Adam failed to perform, and that in Christ has become the very life of man: a movement of adoration and praise in which all joy and suffering, all beauty and all frustration, all hunger and all satisfaction are referred to their ultimate End and become finally meaningful.

Yes, to be sure, it is a sacrifice: but sacrifice is the most natural act of man, the very essence of his life. Man is a sacrificial being, because he finds his life in love, and love is sacrificial: it puts the value, the very meaning of life in the other and gives life to the other, and in this giving, in this sacrifice, finds the meaning and joy of life.

We offer the world and ourselves to God. But we do it in Christ and in remembrance of Him. We do it in Christ because He has already offered all that is to be offered to God.

He has performed once and for all this Eucharist and nothing has been left unoffered. In him was Life -and this Life of all of us, He gave to God. The church is all those who have been accepted into the eucharistic life of Christ.

And we do it in remembrance of Him because, as we offer again and again our life and our world to God, we discover each time that there is nothing else to be offered but Christ Himself – the life of the world, the fullness of all that exists.

It is His Eucharist, and He is the Eucharist. As the prayer of offering says – ‘it is He who offers and it is He who is offered.’ The liturgy has led us into the all-embracing Eucharist of Christ, and has revealed to us that the only Eucharist, the only offering of the world is Christ.

We come again and again with our lives to offer; we bring and ‘sacrifice’ – that is, give to God – what He has given us; and each time we come to the End of all sacrifices, of all offerings, of all eucharist, because each time it is revealed to us that Christ has offered all that exists, and the He and all that exists has been offered in His offering of Himself.

We are included in the Eucharist of Christ and Christ is our Eucharist. (p34-36)

For The Life Of The World, Chapter 2, “The Eucharist”, pages 34-36, Alexander Schmemann