I grew up Roman Catholic. I almost became an altar boy. Almost, until I got caught stealing baseball cards from the corner store. The store my mother also worked at. Nice Tom.
Anyway, I never questioned anything at the Catholic Church or the Mass. I just lived in it. But my dad had a radical conversion to protestantism–he got saved watching Jimmy Swaggart on TV! (This was before Swaggart’s missteps into promiscuity and CSNY’s equally compelling song, “American Dream,” where they ridiculed him for his mistakes. The video is pretty great. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABfsIInfXgU. But we’re not here to talk about 1980’s pop culture.)
The Mass.
After my dad “got saved” he started going to a baptist church. And man, they were not easy on the Catholics. The pope is the anti-christ, saints are just dead people, and the Mass is a pagan ritual. The Mass was no better than anything you might find in some cannibalistic tribe, “They re-sacrifice Jesus and then eat him!” We were taught that all you needed was the Bible: the Bible read, preached, and memorized. The Mass was a human creation that was not from the Bible.
And here I am, come full circle, presiding over the Mass every Sunday. Things come around, don’t they? I imagine that something like that is the story for many of you. Although many of you don’t come from Episcopal or Roman Catholic backgrounds, you sensed that something deeply important was happening, something necessary to your soul. Others of you do have the Mass in your background, but you may not even be sure why you’re doing what you’re doing.
So what happened? How did I turn the corner? How did the Liturgy, the Mass, and the Lord’s Table become so important to me? Are they Scriptural? Is any of this stuff from the Bible? I want to examine that very thing in Sunday School for the Fall series, beginning next Sunday the 10th, 9:45-10:15.
Let me just say one thing here: the Mass isn’t against Scripture. The Mass is Scripture lived out. Instead of just preaching or memorizing Scripture, in the Mass you are doing Scripture. Paul commands you to pray and set your heart on things above. That’s precisely what happens at the Lord’s Table! What do we say every Sunday?
Priest: The Lord be with you.
People: And also with you.
The whole service, but particularly the Lord’s Table, is us living in a state of prayer. Then:
Priest: Lift up your hearts
People: We lift them up unto Lord
Now, as we pray the Eucharistic Prayer, we are lifted up into the heavenly places, praising God with the angels:
Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Hosts.
Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory.
You are literally brought up at that moment into a heavenly spiritual realm. Then, as we are lifted up into the heavenly places, mingling with angles, we go to meet Jesus. And he feeds us with his own divine life in the bread and wine.
Then, at the end, we are let back down to earth and we must go our way out into the world, spreading the Good News of what we have seen and heard.
Priest: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!
People: Thanks be to God!
See you soon!
Tom+