The passage: Be ready, because the Son of Man comes at an hour you do not expect.
I do not think I can use the Sundays in Advent better than by speaking to you of the Lord’s Supper, since you are invited to keep it every week. There are strong reasons for fixing your thoughts on it now, because your thoughts are turned to it often without being fixed on it profitably. You read of debates, trials, legal judgments about it in the newspapers, mixed with all the frivolous talk of the day, until you may be tempted to think it the least serious subject the papers discuss — vague and interminable where other questions lead to results, yet stirring up all the pettiest passions and party stratagems, as if Christians had chosen this topic on purpose to show the world how little love they have for one another.
No doubt such thoughts have arisen in many hearts, and it would be sad if no others had. There must be a compensation for every evil, since all things work together for good to those who love God. When we find the question of Sacraments mixed up with the vulgarest, most mundane matters, we may learn that they are gifts to common men, not to theologians, and that their power, if real, must show itself in our daily lives. Our disgust at seeing low feelings mixed with what we call transcendent and divine may lead us to ask whether there is some peaceful refuge from this strife. The painful discovery that the same vehemence and triviality we condemn in others has its seat in ourselves may lead us to ask whether there is an escape from ourselves as well as from the world. The answer to these questions may open to us the deepest and most practical meaning of the Eucharist.
But a minister of Christ has no business assuming that these better feelings will win the contest if left alone. He must do what he can to keep them from being crushed by confusion of intellect, perplexity of conscience, or weak belief in the Power that sustains us when we are most feeble. A right use of Advent may be one of the most effective ways of counteracting the harm and drawing out the good latent in our Church’s present troubles. Most people feel something of gladness in Christ’s Advent when they connect it with Christmas, and something of awe when they connect it with judgment. The Church brings both together in today’s services. Each mood belongs to the very nature of the Eucharist — we lose both if we lose either — and these controversies threaten both alike. If we can establish and realize their union, we will have averted a great part of the curse.
It often happens that two subjects, each of great importance and each beset with nearly equal difficulty, are set before us. After failing to clear either, we conclude that both are hopeless labyrinths not worth exploring. Then we discover a passage between them, and one becomes the clue to the other. I believe this is true of these two great subjects — not merely of theology, but of human life. There is a problem about Advent which earnest consideration of the Eucharist may help us solve.
What is the problem about Advent? You have all been perplexed by it. You hear of the Son of Man coming, and are told to be ready — language that recurs throughout the New Testament, sometimes as a thief in the night, sometimes as a bridegroom returning from the wedding, both combined in my text. What do these mean? Are they merely figures for the necessity of preparing for death — is our departure from this world what is meant by the coming of the Son of Man? If so, what has this to do with Christ’s first coming, and why are the two brought together today as if closely related? But if that is not the meaning, where lies the force of the warning, and how can each of us apply it to himself? How can a coming to reign or judge the earth at some distant day be held forth as an event each man must be ready for, which may come upon him suddenly? Divines may have their technical explanations, but what is addressed to the conscience of ordinary men must commend itself to those consciences. A call to cast off the works of darkness cannot itself be a dark oracle; a message from the true God needs no tricks to explain it. If this language is not strict, what language is? Is it not meant to lay bare the falsehoods of our hearts, urging us to put on armor of light before the Judge and Searcher of hearts?
These questions cannot be parried. But neither can those raised by the Feast of the Lord’s Supper — not the captious questions of sceptical minds, but those that have tormented Christendom for centuries, debated in schools and nations, watchwords of opposing Churches to this day, all turning ultimately on the presence of Christ. When we come to that Feast, is he there or absent — a real presence or an imaginary one? Do we meet him only because we believe him to be there, or is he there as the ground of our belief? If present, must he not be equally present to unbelievers as to believers? If present, may he not be worshipped there? If not present, does the Sacrament mean anything — is there any substance or person behind the sign, any bond between us and it, any bond between the visible and invisible world?
These are practical questions too, as practical as the others, and cannot be dismissed as too mysterious. They are debated in drawing-rooms and disturb the hearts of poor men and women; they cannot be too mysterious for God, whom we daily call the Author of peace and ask for knowledge of his truth, to show us our way into them — so that we may not lose the peace Christ gave, of which his hand and side were the pledge, nor the truth that alone can make us free.
We speak of the coming of Christ — perfectly Scriptural language. But our Lord himself speaks far more often of the coming of the Son of Man, as he does here, and it is worth asking whether that name sheds light on our first set of questions. What was the desire of nations? What were the tribes of the earth seeking, as we can gather from their songs, mythologies, and the complaints of philosophers and of common people alike? Surely a Son of Man — one higher than men, able to govern them, yet acquainted with men, able to feel and suffer as they did. Uniting these seemed impossible, yet each side drew people powerfully, and it was felt that some reality must correspond to this ideal. When we speak of Christ’s coming in humility, entering Jerusalem on an ass amid hosannas proclaiming him heir of David’s throne, we mean that he combined what seemed contradictory but what the human heart confessed to be essential in the Divine Man it awaited. He had the right to rule all human wills, and established that right by never exalting himself, by being the servant of all. His birth in the manger, his temptation, his cross, interpret the power he showed when he stilled the storm, restored the madman, raised the dead — his royalty and divinity were most fully expressed in his humiliation and sorrow. These declare the true nature of power, and the mind of him from whom all things proceed. Whoever has owned Jesus as the Son of Man has seen in him the Father of All.
This has been the faith of Christendom, giving all their worth to Advent and Christmas: that such a Son of Man has actually proved that dominion over men is his, that from him they receive the life of body and spirit, the power to see, hear, think, believe, hope, love — that apart from him they have no life at all.
So Christ’s first coming, in great humility, means a continual lordship over the being and faculties of man. He did not spend thirty-three years on earth merely to display someone with whom men had had nothing to do before and would have nothing to do after. He came, the Apostles teach, because by him all things were created and consist, because he was heir of all things, upheld all things by the word of his power, and the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in him bodily. This purpose was not complete until he rose and ascended, claiming the glory he had with the Father before the world began. That vindicated his title as Lord, proved him the Christ who could baptize with the Holy Spirit, began a society that could only be universal since it stood on the name of the Son of God and Son of Man, and led captive our captivity to sense and visible things — fulfilling the promise, “The Lord God shall dwell among you, and be your Father, and you shall be his children.”
This helps us understand the language about the coming, or unveiling, of the Son of Man after the Ascension — we should give the same words the same force wherever they occur. Consider how Apostles who believed in this Coming must have viewed every event in world history and in individual life. Such events must have seemed discoveries to the world of its true King, who directs the secret springs statesmen only pretend to direct, whose steady government calm times witness to, and whose righteous authority is attested by the great crises when society’s frame is rent and the crimes of its evil rulers are visited with fire and blood. One such act of retribution stood before the Apostles as the coming of the Son of Man in their own day — unlike any before it, gathering up all previous history and inaugurating the new, declaring Jesus to be the Son of Man the Jewish nation existed to witness, in whose name its kings reigned and prophets spoke, whom it rejected because he came to bless all families of the earth, and who was exalted to bless them despite that rejection. This was the revelation Jesus taught his Apostles to expect, and they taught the Churches to expect and even long for, with awe, as judgment on their own land and redemption for humanity. The destruction of the Temple was the sign of the Son of Man — the sign that his body was the temple where God meets man.
The Apostles clearly meant this unveiling to be the measure for all later movements and catastrophes in the world — manifestations of the same invisible presence. And when, as in my text, the address turns to the individual conscience, telling each to be ready not knowing when the Son of Man comes, I see no reason to doubt the same events are meant, since every man’s life is bound up with his nation’s and his kind’s. What affects a society affects each member; the difference between members lies in how earnestly each takes such warnings to himself. But this does not exclude the truth that every non-national judgment — family chastisement, sickness, the voice of parents and friends, any secret monition — is likewise a call to remember the Son of Man, a visitation from him. Our own experience tells us the force of that phrase in describing the pricks of conscience and the judgments on our thoughts and acts. What are we convicted of, but some selfish deed that showed we did not acknowledge the obligations laid on us by the law of our kind? Are not the torments of a sick bed this very witness — that a Son of Man is Lord over us, and in despising his brethren we despised him?
We may then admit that “in such an hour as you think not the Son of Man comes” gives all the warning about death that preachers have drawn from it, and more. It is no contradiction to say that though on earth we may live as if under a law of selfishness, with no ties to others, when we close our eyes on this world we pass into a region where we shall know beyond doubt that the Son of Man reigns, where it will be impossible to imagine ourselves out of his presence or to escape the divine law of love binding man to man and earth to heaven. The lie we lived by must then be exposed, our whole scheme of existence broken open, and we must confess him who gave himself for men as Lord of all.
Now to the other subject. If this is the New Testament’s idea of Christ’s coming, to the world or to individuals, what makes us ready for it? What saves us from the sleep our Lord warns of, or rouses us if it has overtaken us? Surely we must be reminded of his presence with us. The natural notion that the invisible is unreal, that he does not govern us because our eyes cannot see him, that he does not govern the world because the world fancies it governs itself — this must be set aside. We need constant assurance that the senses are no better judges of moral truth than of physical truth, that self, which seems the center round which everything revolves, is no more truly the center than the earth is the center of the heavens. What can give us this assurance — make the great paradox on which Christendom and all modern civilization depend, that one who died on the Cross is King of Man and in him all God’s glory is revealed, a real, determining principle of our lives, or else a torment and witness against us when we act otherwise? An ordinance telling us Christ is not present, but that we may by memory recall an act he once performed, or by imagination bring his person to mind, would confuse us about his first coming as much as his second. The death it presented would be a mere event, not a power drawing all to itself, not the pledge of victory over death and hell. And the hope such a service encourages would be equally unsatisfactory — not a hope of the pierced Son of Man revealed to every eye, but only of rewards for those who believed or loved him more than others. But would a service supposing that, by miracle, he becomes present for a season though habitually absent, vindicate his incarnation and death any better? Would it not void the idea of an actual union of God with men in a Mediator, void his own words “I am with you always,” void the truth of his visitations in the different circumstances of our lives?
Is there then some more comprehensive theory of the Eucharist that could supersede both of these? God forbid I should propose one, or wish you to embrace it! My aim is to show how miserably men fail when they try theories about God’s relation and intercourse with his creatures — not because I think that relation less real, or that intercourse more uncertain, than relations among men. Indeed, I know no ground for human relationships except our common relation to God, and no security for lasting fellowship except what depends on nothing accidental, but on the Unchangeable God himself. This relationship is represented to us in Sacraments Christ himself ordained — outward signs of a spiritual grace given by him who cannot lie. It is not represented by theories, which are products of our intellect, have no hold on the deeper spirit, cannot take living form, and are necessarily partial, dealing with what is dead rather than what is alive. I do not set a new theory against the old ones worn out by centuries of friction yet still refusing to die; I set the Sacrament itself against all of them. It was appointed by one who knew what is in man; it has not grown old and will not, being as fresh now as when the first disciples received it with joy and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. What this Sacrament asks of us — lawyers and divines alike — is that we not imagine it needs our patronage or explanations; that we let this man and that utter his rash, imperfect dogmas without opposing equally rash ones; that we let Christ care for his own ark without supposing our clumsy hands can steady it. God’s history has long ago judged such vulgar experiments. Every age tries to prove itself wiser than he is, better able to maintain his cause; he has poured contempt on such attempts even by learned and noble minds of other times, and will surely expose the puny mimicry of ours.
But he has never scorned, and never will scorn, one who seeks not to defend or theorize about this Sacrament, but simply to receive it. All are invited to that. If told that the wicked either do not partake of Christ’s body at all, or partake to their own destruction, a man may well say, “Then I must not come near that table, for I am wicked — my conscience tells me so.” But he may go further: “I see no way out of this wickedness unless someone has come to deliver me and my kind from it, to make us partakers of his righteousness. I hear such a one has come; my fathers believed so, and here is the Sacrament that assured them of it, that they might eat and live, cast off darkness, and put on the armor of light. It speaks to me, who feel the need perhaps more than they did, just as it spoke to them. It bids me partake of one who died that I might live forever. My spirit needs that food. Whether I have the faith required, God knows; I leave myself in his hands. I am weary of myself, and want to be delivered from the burden of self — I want the life of the Son of Man, who did not spare himself but gave himself for men. Perhaps I want more than this; if so, I believe God will give it. This much I know I want, and this I will seek.”
Another may have been harassed by thoughts of death and the need to prepare for it. He has tried to fix his mind steadily on the chance that his soul may be required of him soon, and found it generally impossible — the duties of life keep intruding, and he cannot neglect them; but if he neglects them to make himself fitter for death, a bitter contradiction seizes him, for he feels he is only cultivating the selfish habit that is the very nature of sin. Then he hears of being ready for the Son of Man, of a Sacrament that shows forth his death until he comes. “To show that death to others, and share in it myself,” he thinks, “must surely be better than desperate efforts to realize my own. So I enter into the common death, come into sympathy with all my fellows, and gain the mind of him who never sought to please himself, but died that we might have life.”
I give these as instances of how men may grasp the inner nature of the Sacrament — most puzzling to dogmatists — through sheer necessity, through the experience of their own errors and deepest evil. Such people, finding Christ at the altar, will find him also in the study, by the fireside, in their daily work. Worshipping him there will guard them from idolizing any outward thing — bread, wine, or anything else that is sacred as God’s creature and accursed when made into a god. Those who eat this heavenly food in haste, as the Lord’s Passover, staff in hand and shoes on feet, know they need it to save them from forgetting an unseen Presence, from devotion to anything visible. They have no time to speculate; they want strength to live, to be ready for the Bridegroom whether he calls them to toil here or feast hereafter, wanting to share his humility, sure that this was in truth the greatest manifestation of his glory.
And if we come to the Eucharist with these desires, it may be a blessing rather than a harm that we have read of it amid reports of the crimes of states and individuals, tyrannies and slaveries abroad, frauds at home. It can bear such contact, for the Son of Man himself came into closest contact with a tyrannical, slavish, Mammon-worshipping world, in order to raise us out of it — that we might know the Spirit of Cruelty and Lies is not our king, that we have a Father in Heaven who will not let us yield to any oppressor if we yield ourselves to his Spirit. In baptism our godparents declared us children of that Father and renounced our oppressors in our name. In the Eucharist we assert our sonship, claim to share in the Son through whom God owns us as family members, and ask that nothing in heights or depths, present or future, may separate us from his love or break our allegiance. In it we declare our hope in a Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world by his own sacrifice; so we ask to be ready when the Son of Man comes to claim us as sacrifices to God, and not to be found choosing another master, shutting ourselves into a hell of selfishness and despair. In the Eucharist we give thanks for a death not for ourselves only but for the whole world; so in it we look forward to a Redemption not for ourselves only but for the world, when Christ shall appear without sin unto salvation.