Sacraments

The Christian faith is the most earthy of all religions: after all, it is rooted in the incarnation. Among other things, that supreme miracle insists that the physical matters a great deal. It matters so much to God that he expresses himself through it. He did it so uniquely when Jesus took human flesh. But the same principle of divine life through physical means remains central to Christianity. That is why the faith of the New Testament is unashamedly sacramental.

A lot of confusion gathers around the term sacrament. Some Christians are shy of it; others can speak of little else. Basic Christian usage is to see a sacrament as “a physical token that expresses a spiritual reality”: as the old Anglican Catechism put it, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” The catechism rightly goes on to say that Christians use this word sacrament of the two ordinances “ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same [that is, his grace] and a pledge to assure us thereof.” The word derives from the Latin, where it was used of a soldier’s oath of allegiance. All of this helps us to understand the normal Christian usage of the word.

Clearly the sacramental principle runs through the whole of life: a kiss, for example, or a handshake is an “outward and visible sign” that should, and normally does, convey the “inward and spiritual grace” of love and friendship. But depending on the attitude of the donor and the recipient, they may not do so. So the two great sacraments Christ left us, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace of God, which enable us to begin and to continue the Christian life. They are meant to be channels of his unseen, but very real, grace to us. And we can certainly rely on the attitude of the donor. They are vehicles of God’s grace and in the primitive church were not merely token signs but dynamic events—a real washing and a real meal. But that may prove ineffectual if on our side there is no response: if we grasp the hand, so to speak, but not the friendship proffered; if we accept the kiss but reject the love.

The sacraments, then, like the incarnation whose influence they continue, are not only pledges of God’s lasting grace to us but should be, and normally are, channels of that love. Most Christians restrict the word to describe the two great outward actions with inner meaning that Jesus himself inaugurated, namely, Communion and baptism. Some denominations, rather unhelpfully it seems to me, add five more, which were not inaugurated by Christ and which are five among many other external acts with inward meanings. Other denominations (for example, the Quakers) observe no specific sacraments, arguing that all of life for the Christian is sacramental. They enshrine an important insight. In refusing to limit the number of sacraments to two or, with the Catholics, to seven, they insist that everyday life is shot through with gracious invitations from God to find him in the center of life rather than in the religious periphery. And that takes us to the heart of the sacramental principle.

» See also: Baptism

» See also: Body

» See also: Church in the Home

» See also: Communion

» See also: Worship

—Michael Green