what does "sacramental" mean?
everything a gift; everything revealing God
More than one person, in response to something I’ve written, has asked the question, “What does ‘sacramental’ mean?”
Given the name of this newsletter and the fact that I use the word left and right, it’s a fair question.
Clearly, I don’t mean that everything is a church-sanctioned sacrament, like baptism or the Lord’s Supper. The Anglican tradition recognizes an additional five rites “commonly called” sacraments. But these don’t cover everything in creation. So, how can we say that everything is sacramental? What do I mean when I use that word?
all is gift
I recently came across the story of a single mom in the UK who bought so many presents for her kids at Christmas time, you could hardly see the tree. She was slammed for spoiling her kids rotten. And you have to admit, the picture is a little ridiculous.
But in many ways, this is how our Heavenly Father has treated us. He owes us nothing. We have no claim on His generosity. But He has lavished it on us freely, pouring out grace upon grace in Christ Jesus.
In 1 Corinthians 4:7, the Apostle Paul asks his fellow Christians, “What do you have that you did not receive?” The question is rhetorical; he isn’t expecting them to come up with an answer. (“Well, there was that one time in the seventh grade…”)
Paul doesn’t expect an answer because there is none. All is grace. All is gift. Everything in the universe is like one enormous monument to the generosity of the Lord God.
This gets to the essence of how I would like to define “sacramental.” We treat a thing as sacramental when we receive it for what it truly is: a gift from God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
including your self
Our trouble isn’t the sacramental world full of wondrous gifts meant to draw us deeper into the reality of God’s grace. Our trouble is that we just don’t see the world for what it is. We have to be prodded, reminded to come to grips with the gift-nature of all creation.
So when Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” he is pointing us back to this sacramental reality. Everything comes from and through and to God (Rom. 11:36), even our very selves.
I’ve written elsewhere that God IS. Given that God is the One from Whom everything in creation derives its existence, St. Athanasius calls God “the fount of all goodness.”
Existence is good. Created things exist and are, therefore, good. But they aren’t good in and of themselves; they are only good because they derive their good (and existence) from God.
In other words, God gives existence to all creation out of the abundant overflow of His infinite goodness. Our very being is gift. Everything we have, everything we are is a token of divine generosity.
When we receive our selves and all other things in this world as gifts from the Father’s hand, we treat them sacramentally. If we treat creation as just a bunch of stuff to do with as we will, it won’t draw our eyes to heaven. However, if we receive created things as sacramental—as the gifts that they are—then we will look beyond the gifts to the Giver. The gifts become a means of participation in the life and joy of our Heavenly Father.
gifts and sacraments
“Gift” and “sacrament” may not be obviously linked in our thinking. But I believe they should be. You can see it in the Christian sacrament of communion.
When Christians think “sacrament”, communion—or the Lord’s Supper, or the eucharist—is likely the first one that comes to mind. It’s the paradigmatic sacrament of the Christian faith and the one we celebrate most frequently.
Each week in church, the minister says this:
On the night that he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take, eat; this is my Body, which is given for you: Do this in remembrance of me.”
Notice the words Jesus spoke to His disciples: “this is my Body, which is given for you.” He invites His people to receive the gift of Himself. The gift is His physical body, broken at the cross, given in the bread of communion. Christians believe that, receiving the bread in worship, we receive Christ.
The created thing is a means through which God gives us His grace. The gift is Christ Himself. The bread is the means through which the gift comes. God is the giver; we are humble recipients.
Reflecting on the nature of gift exchange in human culture, Lewis Hyde argues that “the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved.”1 Gifts create relationship. By giving gifts to us, God, incredibly, establishes a relationship with human beings.
This is the wonder of the sacrament of the eucharist, where, in the cup, this relationship is made explicit: “this is my Blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you, and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” A covenant is a relationship of promise. The ultimate gift God gives is the gift of Himself in the person of His Son. In that gift, relationship is recreated between God and humanity, heaven and earth.
God’s gift of created things to us—including our very being—is an invitation to participation in His love, life, joy, and peace. Sin and selfishness break that connection. Christ reestablishes it in His incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension.
In Christ, Christians call God “Our Father.” Now everything can become sacramental for the Christian, because we can receive everything as a gift from the hand of our loving Heavenly Father.
fighting the de-sacramentalizing impulse
I’ve written already about the “gift-ness” of all creation, and the fact that consumerism undermines our ability to receive this world as the gift it truly is. But it isn’t just consumerism that does this. The entire ethos of modernity de-sacramentalizes everything. It transforms everything from gift to mere stuff.
In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard speaks of it this way:
[N]ow the whole world seems not-holy. We have drained the light from the boughs in the sacred grove and snuffed it in the high places and along the banks of sacred streams. We as a people have moved from pantheism to panatheism. Silence is not our heritage but our destiny; we live where we want to live.… The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it.
You and I live in a de-sacramentalized world. Our world tells us we own our bodies and can do with them as we like. We’re told that we should maximize our earning potential and treat ourselves like a brand-name product. We regularly hear that life is a competition, a zero-sum game; if we aren’t winning, by definition we’re losing.
I would love to say that we can fight this de-sacramentalizing impulse with the right ideas. (Then, of course, I could share those ideas with you here, and all you’d have to do is read them!) But that’s not how it works. We can’t think our way to a sacramental approach to life.
For now, I think the greatest way to fight this de-sacramentalizing impulse is prayer. Prayer is possible because of Christ (Heb. 4:16; Eph. 3:11-12). By His cleansing blood, we become the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21-22). As members of the Body of Christ, each of us makes up part of that temple in which God is reestablishing His relationship with—and bringing renewal to—all creation (1 Peter 2:5).
I’m unlearning the impulse to merely think my faith. I’m trying to become the kind of person who walks in faith, who lives my everyday in the presence of the God who is with me by grace.
The best way I know to do this is to pray. To cultivate awareness of God. To dwell in His ever-presence. To thank Him for the good; lament the bad to Him; ask Him when I’m confused and don’t understand.
If everything is sacramental, then everything is a means through which God reaches out to us in relationship. When I receive all things as the gift they are, then that gift places an expectation on me. I have to respond to God’s offer of relationship in every part of my life.
Everything that I see, hear, taste, touch, and feel comes with a question mark: “What do you have that you did not receive?” Everything is a God-initiated conversation. My response to the question makes all the difference. Treating all things as sacramental means responding simply, humbly, gratefully: “Nothing. All is grace. All is gift.”
Lewis Hyde, The Gift, xxxv.