The old argument goes

children need to understand the sacrament before they receive it.

I am still surprised to hear this. As a priest, I hear it from people of all sorts. When they do suggest such a thing to me, I simply ask them

Even after they were baptized as infants?

The look I receive tells me that they don’t get it. They don’t get that the children they’re talking about have already received a sacrament without “understanding” it. Then I like to tell them a story. It usually goes like this.

Back when I was first ordained, I had the pleasure of serving with a man who worked with our youth. He was the primary caregiver at the time for his 3 year-old granddaughter, while his son was just learning how to be an adult at 18 and the granddaughter’s mother wasn’t really able to. Every Sunday, I would hear her race through the door and down the hall saying “I’m here to see Jesus!”

Now, I think she pretty much summed it all up right there. Is there something you are struggling with understanding?

Teaching

I can’t fault people for not understanding the sacrament. We developed a system of teaching long ago which refused the experiential part of formation to our children, but discouraged anyone over the age of 12 from continuing to wrestle with the intellectual part of formation.

What many of those 12 year-olds were taught came from what the Book of Common Prayer calls “An Outline of the Faith: commonly called the Catechism”. In the section outlining the Sacraments, it answers the question “What are the sacraments?” this way:

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.

A lot of us remember that first half pretty easily and rattle it off:

Sacraments? Yes. They’re…uh..oh yeah…the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

See, we get pretty close, most of the time. It’s the Prayer Book, you know. Helps the rote memorization.

But what does it mean?

outward and visible signs

We hear in this something external, but also something moving. It is outward, it is pointing or moving from inside to outside. You can see this thing. It is tangible and recognizable. It isn’t imaginary or inconceivable.

Signs are markers and illuminators, telling you what is inside the building or which direction to drive down the street. Signs reflect what is there and stand as symbols to elicit understanding.

of inward and spiritual grace

As signs mark what is within, they remind us that there is something inside. There is a spiritual, non-physical grace that is within. The sign, which reflects what is within, pulls it in an outward direction so that it may be seen and known, but now draws the viewer inward, so that we can see past the sign and toward the grace itself.

given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.

All of that sign and symbol and reflecting GOD mumbo jumbo aside, the devout Christian needs an answer to the physical. We eat a wafer. It’s all just symbolic, right?

A sacrament, as an outward sign of an inward grace then is virtually the only way we can confidently and honestly allow ourselves and one another to receive grace. It is the way we know that grace is given and received.

So the question (for the good Anglican/Episcopalian) is not whether or not the wafer is the literal body of Christ or a symbolic act using only a wafer, but that what we receive is the very grace of GOD. It is the outward, knowable, acceptable, tangible thing that we can receive and know bears the grace and love of GOD.

On its head

The sacrament, then, is not about the bread and the wine and what happens to them, but what happens to you when you receive it. It is about the giving and the receiving of grace. It is not about a magic trick or the theology surrounding the act, or the memorizing of a formula that you can rattle off when a person asks you what a sacrament is, it is the experience! It’s getting your grace on!

In other words, sacraments are almost entirely about the experience and have virtually nothing to do with understanding. They are the vehicle by which we receive and know the grace of GOD. They are our means of knowledge. The grace cannot be understood without the experience of receiving.

That means a child can never understand the sacrament until she receives it.

And I’d further postulate that one achieves a deeper understanding of the sacrament through the giving or presiding at the sacramental moments. When one participates in the distribution of communion, baptizes another person or stands as support for one seeking confirmation, joins a collective laying on of hands, or hears a confession, one is able to better know that grace. So a parent or instructor that denies a child communion and herself does not actively seek her own experiences as the giver of, or participant in, a sacramental moment with another, is doubly depriving and wholly misunderstanding the nature of the sacraments. As the late Bishop Gordon might have said: She’s got it backwards: her daughter needs to be in church and she needs to go to Sunday School!

Loving Communion

That girl, running into church, looking to see Jesus understands. She gets it. You know how I know? Because she’s running. She isn’t walking. She’s running. Running to see Jesus.

Like Peter and the Beloved Disciple to the tomb, she runs. To see. To be with. To know and to love Jesus.

She does that, not by showing up to church and sitting like a lump in the back pew.

She loves.

And I see my son, who is doing the same thing; who can’t wait. He runs to the altar rail. He slips between people who haven’t intended to leave room for anybody, and he shakes with anticipation. He grins at me and he reaches up to receive. And when the cup comes by, he dips and eats and jumps along back to his seat.

And if Mom hasn’t gone up yet, he takes the opportunity for seconds.

I’ve come to believe this is true: only people who understand the Sacraments try to get seconds.

 

I’ve written before about the Sacraments. I’d love it if you checked yesterday’s post and the links at the bottom of the page.