The Mystery of the Sacred Presence

Ron Campbell
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

September 7, 2008

In the summer of 1980 I was privileged to participate for three months in a pastoral care course at Seton Hospital led by Dr. Will Spong, a deceased and beloved Episcopalian priest and Director of the Counseling and Pastoral Care Center at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, here in Austin.

As my wife and I had adopted our son in 1976 when he was six days old, and as in that day most likely I would not have been in the delivery room, I had not experienced seeing a brand-new human life born!

So, I asked Will, “Do you think I could see a baby being born?!”

He said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Soon, I found myself standing beside an obstetrician at the foot end of a bed in a delivery room, with him giving me a “blow by blow” description!

“Wait, don’t mind me! Take care of her!” I exclaimed!

When that little baby boy came out, I was overcome, overcome with the sacredness of the moment!

And this little baby was not even my biological child!

I still do not think that I have ever experienced a more holy moment!

“The Mystery of the Sacred Presence”

Now each of us in various places, times, and circumstances have likely had some comparable experience, when the awareness of a sacred presence surprised us and over-whelmed us!

Last Sunday Rev. Robert Hall preached on the text from Genesis which witnessed to “The Mystery of the Sacred Presence,” as God came close to Moses in the form of a burning bush in the Sinai Desert as Moses tended his father-in-laws sheep in a desolate place.

The curious thing about THIS burning bush was that the flame did not burn out! We know from observation that every now and then bushes in this desert spontaneously explode in flames; just like babies every day, fly out of mothers in and out of hospitals all over the world!

Moses stood before that bush in wonder and amazement! The voice he interpreted as God voice, spoke to him, “Moses, take off your shoes, for you are on sacred ground!”

When I stood there in that birthing room at Seton I knew, even at the time, I was standing on holy ground. What we usually take for granted as a natural process was really a profound miracle!

Both can be described as natural processes: bushes in the desert bursting into flames when the heat and humidity indexes reach a certain transformational point; human babies coming out of women’s bodies.

But in both cases, Moses, and I, experienced the mystery of a sacred presence.

“The Mystery of the Sacred Presence”

The mystery of the sacred presence comes to persons the world over, throughout the ages, for as we read in Genesis, “We are created in the image of God.” We are created by God in a divine mystery, and we are created for God; to long for God, to seek God, to aspire to God, and to rest in God’s divine presence in this life as well as the life after death of the body.
In the church historically the two places we most likely expect to experience “the mystery of the sacred presence” is in what we inadequately call the sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion.

First let’s look at the sacred presence in Baptism.

To become an official member of Tarrytown, we ask you to attend three New Member Orientation sessions. The content of the sessions is Methodist theology, Methodist History and Organization, and Tarrytown, its ministries, vision, and how to join.

What we don’t cover is the Sacraments. But because the Sacraments are so important to faith and discipleship we require an additional, private session with one of the pastors. We want the ritual of baptism to be as deeply meaningful as possible, not just another beautiful baby and another beautiful young couple in the church of the beautiful people! We also require a session with anyone who was baptized but not confirmed, and anyone who is making a profession of faith to be baptized.

In May of 2002, I discovered, powerfully, how the actual experience of the sacred mystery is far more important than how we understand it. May 25, 2002 two of our members were in Seton Main Hospital with serious physical challenges. Jim Mayfield and I each were standing by the two families as they awaited the outcome of serious surgeries. About mid-day, one of our members, Alexis Saint, realized she had a problem with her pregnancy while driving down MoPac two weeks before the due date of her third child.
Her doctor admitted her immediately at Seton and during the day they induced her and she delivered a baby boy, WILSON THOMAS SAINT. He was born dead. His umbilical chord was wrapped around his neck twice.

Ann Beaty stayed with the Saints all day, and after Wilson was born she came to church and got her worship book.  After Wilson was cleaned up by the nurses, each family member held him and blessed him as they passed him around the family circle. Then Ann conducted the service of baptism and Wilson was baptized by water and the spirit.

We knew absolutely that Wilson’s little soul was held lovingly and securely in God’s hands. God didn’t need us to baptize Wilson. But we did! Pastorally we had a need to seek God’s sacred presence in this most horrible event, if we were going to be able to “walk and not faint!”

“The Mystery of the Sacred Presence”

Now let’s look at the sacred presence in communion.

After I completed my pastoral ministry education and training at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 1981, I decided not to accept a full-time appointment, but to locate my family and not move. As a result, for twelve years I worked full time in education as a school administrator and special education counselor.
Eight of those years I accepted part-time appointments in small area churches.

One of those churches was Driftwood UMC. In the 1930’s the Baptist Church in Driftwood burned down. The Methodists invited them to share their church. An unusual arrangement was established that carried down through the years until just a few years ago. Methodist Sundays were the 1st and 3rd Sundays. The 2nd and 4th were Baptist Sundays, and they rotated the months that had a 5th Sunday. Each church maintained their own roles and preserved separate traditions outside of the Sunday worship, as every Sunday the Baptists and Methodists worshipped together regardless of which preacher presided! (When you looked out at the gathered congregation, you couldn’t tell who was a Baptist or who was a            Methodist! Or if some other kind of Christian had wandered in.)

The Baptist pastor had served there many years. He was a dominating personality and had insisted that the part-time Methodist pastors assigned to Driftwood not serve communion on the first Sundays as is our custom. So these folks only received communion a couple of times a year in special services. From the start I insisted that I was going to initiate communion every first Sunday, but I wanted to find a way we could both serve it our own way, or even to work together as a pastoral team, showing the unity of the Spirit that reaches across our differences. I sat on the tail-gate of his pick up truck and took him to Hut’s Hamburgers for lunch to talk about our views, understandings of communion, and how we practiced it.

These discussions were very informative for me. I learned a great deal about how the evangelical side of the denominational equation understands and practices the sacraments much differently from the liturgical side. His bottom line was that he could not with integrity participate in any way on Communion Sunday with me. It violated his theological understanding. Period!

Given this stalemate, the first Communion Sunday I preached on the text we have as our scripture today, I Corinthians 11:23-26.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,  and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’  In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

In my message I shared that in the apostolic church, the early church, and through out Christian history to this day, there has always been a diversity of understanding of what communion means, what happens in communion, and how Christians have practiced communion. The invitation I gave to come and receive was open to all, everyone who loves the Lord, repents of their sins, and desires to live a new life in Christ are welcome! Yet also I encouraged any one who did not want to participate to feel good about that decision too.

The people started coming to receive in a long line up the center isle. I put a wafer and a cup on the piano by me for the pianist (The Baptist pastor’s wife!). She did not take it. She and her husband the Baptist pastor who always sat on the back pew in the corner on Methodist Sunday, were the only two people who did not participate in communion that day.

That was one of the days when “The Mystery of the Sacred Presence” overwhelmed me! Many persons had tears in their eyes and on their cheeks as they received the cup and the wafer. All expressed in physical ways how moving it was to finally experience the Lord in the sacrament of communion after so many years of being denied the sacrament.

“The Mystery of the Sacred Presence”

Each of us in various places, times, and circumstances have likely had some experience when the awareness of a sacred presence surprised us and over-whelmed us! And each of at some time has experienced the sacred presence in the church in a service of baptism or Holy Communion.

Today is Communion Sunday and Presence Commitment Sunday. On the front porch today is the second Sunday of opportunities to be present through the many, many programs, classes, and ministries of our church. In committing to be present in the worship, study and spiritual growth opportunities of Tarrytown, we are really making decisions to participate in “the mystery of the sacred presence” as we come to experience in the “means of grace” available to us in the community of believers.

Today, as we share together and experience the Sacrament of Holy Communion, let us be especially open to the Spirit of the living Lord, and expect the gentle touch of Christ in the places in our hearts and souls where we need it most. Amen.