Sept 5, 1999
"Not For Us
Alone" (NON NOBUS SOLUM)
(Exodus
12:l-14)
One of my pleasant high school
memories was the study of Latin…not so much the
study of Latin but being in the Latin Club. And the Latin
Club was fun! At our social meetings we wrapped sheets
around ourselves (a faintly erotic thing to do as an
adolescent), wore sandals (quite daring forty years ago),
and pretended to be guests at a Lucullan banquet by
lounging on our sides and dropping grapes into our
mouths. And there was that further tonic of feeling, as
Latineers, that we were the brainy, superior types of our
student body.
While I quickly lost in the real
world my comprehension of Latin (and the silly attitudes
associated with classicism), some rudimentary of Latin
phrases remained and has opened the door to my
imagination now and then. This because Latin phrases
still pop up - what American can ignore SEMPER FIDELIS
and I PLURIBUS UNUM - and often the thought is not only
more concise but more winsome in the dead language of
Latin than any living tongue.
Almost every university in
America has a Latin motto: No one made much of ours at
UCLA but when I attended a summer session at Harvard
College I could not help but be impressed by the Latin
motto "VERITAS" (Truth) which looms over the main
entrance gate to the yard. And later, as a graduate
student at Yale, I became aware that Yale College had
tried to outdo Harvard by adopting as its' Latin motto:
LUX ET VERITAS. (Light and Truth.) Oxford's Latin motto
is both longer and more scriptural - DOMINUS ILLUMINATUM
MEUM (The Lord is My Light).- but Oxford created its'
motto 500 years before the ivy colleges.
In our Protestant order of
service most congregations still follow the Latin outline
for our communion though we, just like the Catholics
today, do not invoke the Latin phrases. Still the Latin
pattern we have: ADESTES FIDELIS (We gather to praise
God) CONFITEOR (We say confession), AGNUS DEI (We
celebrate Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world), TE DEUM (We praise God), the
PATER NOSTER (Our Father or Lord's Prayer) and DEI GRATIA
(We give thanksgiving to God).
Right after this worship I'm
going with our six confirmation students over to Rosary
Catholic Church to observe a catholic mass and then have
lunch with Father Harold Naylor. We will see many more
similarities than differences in the two celebrations of
communion.
*******
Latin phrases often occur in
church sanctuaries as inscriptions and one phrase which
recently caught my attention in a stained glass window
is: NON NOBUS SOLUM which translates into the phrase of
today's message: NOT FOR US ALONE.
NOT FOR US ALONE is a useful
motto to carry with us as we approach communion. Because
it corrects out pious tendency to think just the
opposite: That communion is for us alone. Communion is
not for us alone. If communion is based in the reality of
God, as I firmly know it to be, then communion has to be
for everybody. The celebration must flow with past and
future celebrations of communion; the dead and the yet to
live are covered by the blessings of communion. Both
those within the church and those without are included in
the divine intention behind communion.
True, Jesus is the founder and
the special presence in communion, but I don't believe he
meant for us to put a copyright or monopoly on the
meaning of communion and hold its' effiacy solely to
ourselves. Quite the opposite: NOT FOR US
ALONE!.
It's the case that most
Christians find in communion an intimate experience with
God and with other believers. It was no surprise to me
that on the recent survey of what religious acts you
would like in your millennium celebration, most of you
gave preference to communion on December 3l, l999, and we
shall have that.
But I hope the full spirit of
that act will be that we celebrate communion for the
whole world on that unique occasion and not just for
ourselves..
The Latin phrase NON NOBUS SOLUM
(NOT FOR US ALONE) is one of the doors to our imagination
I invite you to use now. Two thoughts come to me. The
first is that we can hardly pretend to an exclusive claim
on Communion, either as liturgy or in its meaning,
because Christian communion arises and evolved directly
from the Hebrew ritual which Katherine Long has read
about from Exodus l2. Holy Communion is based in the
Jewish Seder meal at Passover.
Our Hebrew text recalls the
Passover story celebrated at the Jewish Seder. The Hebrew
word SEDER means ORDER OF SERVICE and from it we have
obtained the heading for many of our Protestant worship
bulletins. We Protestants are indebted to our Hebrew
language roots as well as our Latin!
There is still some debate
whether the event in the upper room on the last evening
of Jesus' life was a Passover meal (it was the week of
that festival) or a fellowship meal, but even if not a
Passover meal, we can confidently know that Jesus had
participated in an annual Passover celebration every year
of his life since childhood. Therefore, the cup which he
raised had to bring to mind to every Jew present the cup
raised by the most honored male at a Seder meal; and the
bread which he broke would have called to mind the
Passover bread.
NOT FOR US ALONE. The Passover
Seder instituted in Exodus has many echoes in Christian
understanding of communion. There is an emphasis upon the
whole community gathered to honor God and in the Seder
there is a special welcome to strangers, which is why
Jews are solicitous to invite gentiles to their Seder,
and an equal role for children. The early church diverged
from this hospitable attitude by fairly early excluding
non-baptized adults from the communion proper - they had
to leave the church - and not paying attention to the
need for children to be present and participate. The
modern church has begun to correct these denials which
are incompatible with the Hebrew antecedents both in the
Seder and in the character of Jesus who always found room
for strangers and children in his company.
At the SEDER table each person
has a cup for wine (or grape juice for the children), and
a printed SEDER or ORDER OF SERVICE (read from the back
to front) because all will join in common prayers and
songs much like a communion sharing. At the beginning of
SEDER, the leader washes his hands just as at the
Catholic mass the priest washes his hands in public at
the beginning of the sacrament (as I do in private).
Washing of hands signifies that something sacred is about
to take place.
The heart of SEDER is when the
youngest child at the table asks: "What is the meaning of
this service?" And the oldest person present begins to
give an account of the story of Passover and of
Unleavened Bread: The promise or covenant of God with
Abraham and Sarah, the leadership of Moses, the nine
plagues and now the tenth with the death of the
first-born where no blood on the doors of the Hebrews
provided the Passover, and finally the freedom gained on
that night and the beginning of their journey toward the
Promised Land. The concluding thought is the challenge
that every person in every generation think of himself as
having left Egypt under the guidance and protection of
Almighty God. All good theology for us to recall at our
communion.
And then there is usually a fine
meal served by the hosts. (Remember our shared lunch
afterwards today!).
Someone sent me a "business NEWS
FLASH", undoubtedly inspired by the mega- mergers taking
place like Wal-Mart's current buy out of major European
food and shopping chains. It began: "Continuing the
current era of large scale mergers and acquisitions, it
was announced today at a press conference that next
holiday season Christmas and Chanuka (the Jewish
festival) will merge…it is believed that the
overhead cost of having l2 days of Christmas and 8 days
of Chanuka was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By
combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to
enjoy consistently high quality service during the
Fifteen Days of Christmukah, as the new holiday is being
called."
Mega-merger of liturgies is not,
of course, the track I'm on today. NOT FOR US ALONE calls
us to honor our antecedents, not to blur them.
*************
NOT FOR US ALONE. We also need
to be challenged to the universal significance of
Communion. Communion is not exclusive to the
congregation, the denomination, nor the doctrinal
contexts in which it is celebrated.
Another e mail brought to me
this week a story called ROOM ONE: A man arrives at the
gates of heaven. St. Peter asks, "Religion?" The man
says, "Methodist." St. Peter looks down his list and say,
"Go to room twelve, but be very quiet as you pass room
one."
Another man arrives at the gates
of heaven. "Religion?" "Baptist." "Go to room eight, but
very quiet as you pass room one.":
Another arrives: "Religion?"
"Lutheran." "Go to room eleven, but be very quiet as you
pass room one." The newest arrival says, "Wait. I can
understand there being different rooms for different
religions, but why must I be quiet when I pass room
one?"
St. Peter tells him, "Well, the
Fundamentalists are in room one, and they think they're
the only ones here."
It isn't really a kind nor an
ecumenical story unless we realize that every
denomination and sect which has ever existed could at one
time or another find itself listed in its exclusivistic
ignorance in Room One..
And I find the story's premise
misleading: I don't find comprehensible that God would
have different rooms reserved in heaven for Methodists,
Catholics Lutherans, Fundamentalists, Charistmatics, or
even Community Church folks. How incredibly and
ridiculously human-centered that assumption!
In order to preserve due order
in the order of service on earth, each congregation and
church has its preferred way to celebrate communion and
its' own beliefs, but can we possibly think that Almighty
God is going to honor, much less bind His authority, by
our earthly rules and regulations and differences
regarding our ceremonies and our doctrines!
When it comes to heaven I
believe everyone shall be welcomed at God's table. If
we're not all there, I doubt any of us will be
there.
I see us all together singing
out our TE DEUMs and GLORIA'S and ALLELULIAS in whatever
language, though it might be wise to start brushing up
our Latin.
NON NOBIS SOLUM. Not for us
alone! We are not alone in these phenomena which we call
our religion, our faith, our spirituality, our communion.
God is with us and God makes all the difference in
opening our attitudes and hearts through communion to all
peoples.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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