[This is the first of three posts about the sacraments. Check out the second and third.]

What do we mean when we call something a Sacrament?

According to the Book of Common Prayer (pp. 857-8):

The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.

Many of us can recite the first half of that definition: the part about their being an “outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace”. But when we call something a sacrament, what are we really saying? Primarily that this (to whatever we are referring) is the observable part of something bigger. Like the water in baptism or the thin wafer many of us use for Communion. That these are something physical and observable, that direct us to something more than that.

Perhaps more difficult is the second half: that these are “sure and certain means” of receiving grace. Most challenging, I think, based on the way we think and behave, is that we are able to receive grace through physical means or that our “sacramental” habits possess in them the very grace “given by Christ”. Like Calvin, we might see that thin wafer, as just a wafer. We also need not adopt an understanding that is hard for our post-Enlightenment brains to comprehend: namely that the thin wafer that tastes like Styrofoam is somehow magically turned into a person’s flesh who has been dead for 2000 years. But we are being invited into a mystery in which that wafer becomes more than a wafer.

We may have to get what is meant by grace:

Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.

For us, then, the sacrament is a hint at the world beyond this one and are something we do together. They also exist as a means by which we can know and sense that GOD-given grace. It is no wonder, then, that the sacraments involve a physical nature: water on the skin, food and drink in the mouth, oil on the forehead, hands on the head and shoulders. Sacraments are intended to be experienced in our bodies, not merely our minds.

This, then, is the story of sense and understanding, of feeling and thinking. The sacraments can’t be confined to one way of comprehension.

Tomorrow we’ll explore some of the messy history of sacraments.

In the meantime, what is your experience with the sacraments? How do they feel? What do you think? And how have they worked?