The day when the word did not become flesch

The day when the word did not become flesh
It is the first Sunday in Advent and the beginning of the church year. For me as an ordained priest it became a day when the word did not become flesh. This happened unintentionally, it was not meant to be. This is what happened.
I was invited to preach in our Lutheran church in Grassy Park in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. It was to be a service with the Holy Eucharist (Holy Communion) I was told by the resident minister.
Coming to church rather early I said this to the organist, who did not seem to know. Now I just took it for granted. The elder on duty, one of my old youth leaders, did not say anything about it and I just assumed that we were going to have a communion service. I was also caught up by getting into the situation, how to do the liturgy etc.
Only when one of our theological students had said the prayer for the collection and the organist had intonated the sung Lord’s Prayer, did it dawn on me that something is not what I had expected. I must confess that I also was so caught up in the sermon message that I barely had got into the mood of the continued liturgy when this happened. To make sure I asked two elders and found out that communion was not on. I went completely blank. What is going on? What must I do? More than anything, a great sense of disappointment and emptiness went through my body. I was devastated.
Without delay I want to allay fears that I am about to point fingers at people or Grassy Park congregation as such. That is not the case and I am not going to waste time on finding out why there was this misunderstanding. I was first asked to do next Sunday, which I couldn’t and it may well be that in our telephonic conversation the minister meant that next Sunday was communion Sunday. It could also be that the minister did not communicate with his elder. But above all I must confess that I was pretty aningslös who did not see that nothing was prepared for communion, no chalice, no bread, no wine. I should have noted this even before we started and I should have checked this even before our prayer in the sacristy before the service began.
What is of interest is something else, namely my own reaction to the event. Sorry for being so self-centred but I need be. This in turn leads me to make the following three comments, on the fact that we have differing views of the sacrament of the altar, my own interpretation of this sacrament and finally the relationship between the sermon and the Eucharistic sacrament.
We should be honest about this rather sensitive issue. As I repeatedly say to students, the way you celebrate the Holy Week and Easter will also tell me what kind of theology you have. Likewise the Holy Eucharist; if you are part of the Zwingli Reformation of the 16th century you would perhaps still make do with one communion service a year, that is Maundy Thursday in the Holy Week. So one could also say if your view is that the preaching of the Word is paramount and everything else secondary then the way you handle the sacrament is different.
In the Lutheran tradition it is acknowledged that there is a kind of balance between Word and Sacrament. In addition, Luther’s understanding of Jesus’ words ‘this is my body’, ‘this is my blood’ is still of utmost importance and has had a remarkable influence on ecumenical thinking. Basically Luther says that what Jesus says is literally true, even though he cannot rationally understand it. This is the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar.
We are in a very exciting period in the Lutheran church in South Africa as the importance of this sacrament is ever more underlined. Soon enough there will be communion service on a weekly basis in many congregations, if only we have enough ordained ministers.
Finally it is enough to say that there is an intricate relationship between Sermon and Eucharist. It is true that I today was quite caught up in what I was saying about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as a public statement and symbolic action of immense power, as something that reached well beyond politics but which in itself has had far-reaching social and political implications.
Nevertheless I was never lost completely in the wonderful role of conveying the word. All the time, at the back of my mind, was this conviction that only when we come into the sacramental part of the service will things come into their own, become incarnate, become flesh, as it were. Now this did not happen and that is why I was so devastated.
Early in my priestly life, in fact in my first parish of Kalmar, did I learn to appreciate this wonderful experience of resting in the liturgy, delivering the message, which could be quite challenging, and then again be able to relax and allow things to happen, now in the form of the Eucharist, where, if Luther is to be believed, is a manifestation of the real presence of Christ, in the here and the now.
It is, as it were, the day when the Word did not become flesh, but that is not the real truth. Rather this mishap has alerted me to the importance of this sacrament in conjunction to preaching and praying, and hopefully we will in our church have a renewed discussion as to how we should develop our liturgy together, where the Word always will be in focus, but together with the celebration of the Sacrament of the altar.