Transformed from the inside out

Remove your sandals, for the place on which you stand is holy ground…take up your cross, and follow me. And so we continue in our lives as people of faith.

Today is the second of the two weeks of teaching in our worship services about what we do and why we do it. Last week we talked through – ok, I talked through – the first half of the service, the Liturgy of the Word; today I’ll pick up with the instruction again after the Peace with the Liturgy of the Table. Last week I talked about worship as our response to God’s presence. In the structure of our service, when we gather in worship we first receive God’s word in scripture; the first way we respond is in prayer. We come to worship on holy ground to respond to God, who loves us. In some ways that alone would be enough – to listen to the word and to respond with prayer. And in many Protestant churches that is the end of it on most Sundays. But in our tradition, all of that leads us to the table – the altar, where God feeds us, changing us more and more into the people God desires us to be. Helping us to take up our cross and follow.

The late great pastor and writer Eugene Peterson wrote about worship in his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (a title I love). Worship, he wrote, does three things. It centers our attention on God, so that we’re more familiar with God’s ways. It gives us a ‘workable structure’ and meaning for our lives. And it nurtures in us our need to be in relationship with God – something we need whether we feel like it at first or not. Worship, in other words, can change us, body, mind, and spirit.

It’s a wonderful idea. We might be more aware of how worship changes our minds and our attention: we hear stories and teachings that remind us that God created us, redeemed us, provides for us, forgives us, calls us to live a certain way. As we listen to and speak the words of the liturgy, it refreshes our memories so that we can recognize God in the complicated mix of our lives. But worship also acts on our souls and bodies. As we go through the motions of worship – the literal motions, moving our bodies as we stand, kneel, sit, sing, exchange the Peace – we are acting ourselves into a new way of being. We are taking on a different structure that echoes out into our lives. And the action of taking and receiving and eating and drinking at the altar in particular shapes us and how we live: as we come forward to be fed, we find ourselves learning to be hungry, and so to feed others.

There’s a wonderful Italian proverb for this, l'appetito vien mangiando. It means ‘the appetite comes with the eating.’ When we eat, sometimes it is only with the first bite that we realize how hungry we are. As one writer says, ‘The desire for good food is not always fully present at the start of a meal. Often it emerges gradually, stirred by smell, taste, and repetition. One bite follows another. [It’s] a process already in motion, not a plan or an intention…Appetite does not arrive once eating has proven satisfying; it takes shape while the act is unfolding… The transformation happens within the continuity of eating itself.’

The proverb in Italian usage applies to many other things besides eating, of course – work, study, projects, relationships. And it applies to our journey of faith in God. We might come to the altar at first for a whole host of reasons that aren’t so much about communion with God – habit, community, love of beauty, and so on. But when we are fed by God, that begins something in us. We aren’t satisfied once and for all – our appetite for God is only whetted. The more we come, the more it changes us. Our lives become more centered in God. As Peterson says, we begin to want shalom – wholeness and peace – and shalvah – prosperity and security, the state of feeling so utterly at home in God that we are never alone and have nothing to fear. And so, unconsciously at first, we begin to change.

Paul’s letter to the Romans describes what it looks like when a community lives this way together. Love one another with mutual affection…be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers…Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. It’s all in the imperative tense, but it’s not so much rules to follow as a description: when we live the life of Jesus, here is what we do. We live less for ourselves and more for the sake of others. We begin to think the way Jesus does – we act as Jesus does – we are Jesus for others. That’s what the church is called to be.

Or as Jesus tells us in the gospel today, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For…those who lose their life for my sake will find it. These might at first feel like hard words, full of suffering and death. But I think what Jesus is saying is that in the life of faith, we grow by letting go, bit by bit. Parts of our selves – the parts that are not our true God-given self, the parts that we and the world around us created and pretend are important – those parts will die, while the parts that are of God thrive and grow.

This change happens partly on our own effort, when we seek to change our lives – by training ourselves and acting as if we’re already there, acting as if we’re more loving and more selfless than we really feel, acting as if God is at the center of our lives. In the language of the liturgy, we have to get up, walk forward, put out our hands and eat.

But as we do so we slowly relinquish control over our lives and our direction and allow God to lead. We find ourselves waiting on God’s timing rather than insisting on our own; letting go of cherished hopes and desires instead of raging when they aren’t fulfilled; asking where God is calling us next, and whom God is calling us to love. By taking and eating, we are slowly transformed into the people God desires us to be. It is less our effort than it is God growing within us, transforming us from within and without.

There is more to this ritual of worship than meets the eye, in other words. Like any ritual, we can resist its meaning and deny its effect on us. God always allows us to say no. But practicing the Eucharist week after week invites us into a transformation of our souls and a transformation of our community – into people who love and follow Jesus without worrying about the cost. Who live as Jesus would have us live, embodying God’s love in the world. At the altar we take and eat, and we are fed – so that we may love, and become love, for this world.

As the words of the old beloved prayer of humble access say, let us pray: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.