by Bishop Mary Keldermans
At first glance, the readings we have just heard don’t look like they fit together, much less for a Holy Covenant ritual that we will celebrate in a moment.
The first reading is from the Acts of the Apostles and describes how the early Christians were building the Church. The Psalm is Psalm 118 which celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus. The gospel is about Jesus, the Good Shepherd as it always is on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. For their Covenant Celebration, Anne and Brian chose a reading entitled “Love is not to Possess” by John Kavanaugh.
Think with me though, at second glance there is an underlying message in each of these readings. And that message is love.
The early Christians heard and experienced Jesus’s teachings. Jesus preached about a God of love, didn’t he? He preached a message to love oneself, to love those society deems unlovable, the sick and disabled in short, to love everyone. The early Christians. wanted to keep Jesus’s message alive and so built a community where that kind of love was experienced and expected
Psalm 118 is but one of the 150 psalms in Hebrew scripture. Psalms help us express emotions, joy, excitement, love, and yes, grief and fear. Psalm 118 is a resurrection psalm, but also, a psalm echoing God’s love for us. Listen again to the second verse:
Give thanks to the Lord!
Our God is good,
whose love endures forever.
Let all the children of Israel say:
Gold’s love endures forever!
The Gospel reading about the Good Shepherd is meant to express the love that Jesus has for us. Now, I get Jesus is using a metaphor and the people of his day could identify with a shepherd and sheep in a heartbeat.
But, I’m a city girl and have no experience with sheep or shepherds. I have had dogs, Augie, Lucy, Murray, Walter and Jack and we presently have Skye, a loveable German Shepherd. I love her and have loved the others (who have gone over the Rainbow Bridge) to pieces Many of you have or have had fur babies and so you know, too, what it is to love an animal.
I am guessing that a shepherd might feel the same way about his or her animals that we feel about our animals and that is a feeling we can understand. That is the kind of love Jesus has for us.
And lastly, the reading Anne and Brian chose for today speaks of an all-encompassing love
“A love that is free from possession,
to walk alone and together,
it is to be perfectly one’s self, the freedom to be oneself. “
All of the readings then, are descriptions of different facets of love, and in just a few moments, we will see love in action as Brian and Anne make their vows before God, one another and us.
The church has given that kind of action a name. a sacrament. Sacraments are actions in people’s lives that are outward expressions of God’s love within community. Put a pin in that for just a moment.
Those of you who went to a Catholic Grade School will remember using the Baltimore Catechism in religion classes. It was written in a question/answer format. The answers had to be memorized, word for word and recited back to Sister, never mind if one didn’t understand the answer!
Let’s see if you remember the answer to this question:
“What is a sacrament?”
All together now!
“A sacrament is an outward sign,
instituted by Christ to give grace.”
Did we know what that meant? No. And I’m not sure what it means now. We didn’t care as long as we got the answer correct!
I have found a newer definition of sacrament written by author Tad Guzie
in his book The Book of Sacramental Basics one that I think expands on the Baltimore Catechism!
“A sacrament is a festive action
in which Christians assemble to celebrate their lived experience and to call to heart their common story.
The action is a symbol of God’s care for us in Christ.
Enacting the symbol brings us closer to one another in the church to the Lord who is there for us.”
Now, the church in her wisdom has codified seven actions that we celebrate in community as sacraments:
Baptism
Eucharist
Reconciliation
Confirmation
Marriage
Holy Orders and
Sacrament of the Sick.
The church in her lack of wisdom though, has not expanded that list in any way.
There are some other experiences that should surely qualify as sacraments. One would be when a woman makes vows to serve God as a sister or nun. She makes the same vows as priests do, she lives her life in God’s service as priests do, but in the Institutional Church, her vows don’t qualify as one of the seven.
Today, Brian and Anne’s Covenant Celebration is not one of the named seven, but it surely a sacrament. Anne and Brian have found this love and want to declare their love in front of God and our community. We will pray with them and for them and thank them for sharing this moment in their lives with us.
The last part of that Baltimore Catechism answer is “…to give grace”
Those three little words -seemingly tacked on to the end of an answer- are kind of puny.
Grace is the power of the Holy Spirit. Grace is not more or less, it is a deepening of the relationship we already posses with God.
The Church says this about grace when we celebrate liturgies in community: This is paragraph 10 from the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy:”
“From the liturgy [and sacraments] therefore, grace is poured forth upon us as from a fountain, they are the source for achieving in the most effective way possible human sanctification and God’s glorification.”
Think of a fountain and think of the water as grace, spraying all over! Anne and Brian then, will get crazy wet and receive a heaping dose of that grace for sure, but the church imagines we will all be splashed with that grace. No one then, walks away from a sacrament unchanged.
In closing, I’d like to look at the newer definition of sacrament one more time.
Anne and Brian, your covenant celebration is a festive action in which we of Holy Family assemble to celebrate our lived experiences and to call to heart our common story. The action is a symbol of God’s care for you in Christ. Enacting the symbol brings us closer to one another in the church and to the Lord, who is there for us.
Amen.