In the fall of 2011, I was privileged to lead a group of parishioners from my church on a pilgrimage to a number of Virginia’s colonial churches. One of our stops was at Grace Episcopal Church in Yorktown, a parish founded in 1697. While we were there our host told us about their Eucharistic silver that dates from that same period in time. She informed us that rather than putting their precious silver on display in some glass case—like a museum exhibit, they instead prefer to use it as it originally was intended—for worship every Sunday. She told us that each time she holds that beautiful, 17th century chalice in her hands and receives the communion wine, she is so moved by the thought of the people and the history the chalice symbolizes that she wants to turn and look out the windows of the church toward the cemetery, where so many members of the congregation are buried, and just say “thank you.”
Truly, her heartfelt gratitude is so stirring and delightful, yet, at the same time, uncommon. It illustrates an aspect fundamental to the Christian tradition that we often forget—the abiding presence of the Communion of Saints.
The fact is: you and I are not alone. We are part of a great continuum of believers that reaches back in time to a point we cannot even imagine and extends infinitely into a future we cannot foresee. A passage from the Book of Revelation describes it as “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” [Rev. 7:9] It is a massive cloud of witnesses—witnesses to the redeeming, life-giving love of God: people seen and unseen, known and unknown, present in this life as well as in the life beyond. Encircling us in love, enveloping us in prayer, empowering us by their presence, the saints of God support us all the day long, year in and year out, as we struggle to lead meaningful and righteous lives.
Unfortunately, it has fallen out of fashion to believe in the abiding presence of our spiritual kinfolk; a casualty of western, rational thinking. Yet as Christians, we continue to profess with our mouths to believe that the dead do not simply cease to exist, that there is life after death, and that in the next life, the faithfully-departed do congregate as a communion of saints and actively exist. But are we just giving lip-service to a quaint, romantic notion leftover from a silly, out-of-date, superstitious period of our history?
I argue that, contrary to what the popular culture would have us believe, we are not ignorant, overly-sentimental or superstitious, but, in fact, are very much enlightened to live with the conviction that these fundamental tenets of the Christian faith are true. That instead, it is primitive and narrow-minded to believe that life consists solely of what occurs in this material world. That unless something can be confirmed by scientific analysis, it cannot exist. That the ego should be the dominant, guiding force in in all our actions and the world should revolve solely around our needs. These are the marks of the misinformed, the misguided, and the deceived.
In the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus teaches an alternative way of engaging the world. Through wisdom of the Beatitudes, our Lord offers us freedom from a life of self-centeredness and suffocation. He points us toward a larger purpose. He helps us to see that you and I can be part of a larger reality that extends beyond the limitations of our ego. That our lives can be interwoven with the lives of others in an epic endeavor so much larger than ourselves. That you and I are necessary and vital participants in God’s redemption of all creation. That by actively engaging life, we will make a real difference in the betterment of this world. To know this, to believe this inspires great comfort, it is empowering and motivating—a reason, a real purpose for living. Truly, this is enlightenment, it is good news! [Matt. 5:1-12]
The second key point I want to make regarding the gratitude of our Yorktown host concerns the silver chalice itself. There is an old saying about Episcopalians, that for us, “matter matters.” In other words, we believe that God is capable of working through material things to achieve our salvation, which is why we have such high regard for the sacraments of baptism and Holy Eucharist. This high regard extends to other tangible things as well, such as chalices, Bibles, stained glass windows and even church buildings. We see these things as concrete, real-life manifestations of God’s love for us, our love for God, our regard for family, friends and neighbors, and our devotion to the Church.
Like the good folks in Yorktown, most Episcopalians are blessed with a rich material inheritance—a fabulous, historic place of worship that proclaims a long-standing and powerful ministry to the communities in which we live. A beautiful church, built with natural materials, shaped by human hands, and offered to the glory of God. It makes real the notion of the Communion of Saints. All around are reminders—names and dates, tablets and plaques, the dead interred in the Columbarium—reminders of our spiritual ancestors who came before us and helped raise these churches up out of the earth. The ministry of these saints forms the very foundation on which these sacred spaces are built. Every time we gather for worship, the saints surround us. Surely, these are places where generations of faithful Christians have come to know God, to experience God’s love and to share that love with others. The very walls of our churches are saturated with prayer.
A virtuous quality that all saints share is that they do not draw attention to themselves, but instead point and direct all attention toward God. The same can be said for our places of worship. They point to something greater, more enduring and gratifying, more valuable, more precious than anything of this earth.
And that is the reason that silver chalice was created in the 17th century and the same reason our churches were built over the years since then. They were created by our forebears, the saints who precede us in our common spiritual journey, to help us know God. In fact, the primary intention of church properties is to provide a myriad of opportunities for all who come to them to bump into God and fall deeper in love. It is said that sacred space is not so much about space where something is done, as it is about space where Someone is encountered—with, of course, that Someone being God.
The Communion of Saints are incredibly generous to us. We receive an inheritance beyond measure. Words fail to convey the magnitude of how wonderful, how thoughtful, how life-giving their gift of God’s love to us is—all except those used by the docent in Yorktown, which are, “thank you!”
The question is, “Will future generations be able to say the same about us?”