Becoming More Sacramental

My sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ,

I want to begin by apologizing for how long it has been since I last wrote for this website. This has been a difficult year for me, both personally and professionally.

Earlier this year, a family member was hospitalized, and the continuing care and concern surrounding that situation required considerable time and energy. At the same time, I have taken on a number of additional responsibilities at work. Many evenings, I arrive home without the energy to complete much of anything else.

I recently had the opportunity to take three days away from work—the first vacation time I have taken this year. I am grateful for those few quiet days, but I also recognize that the coming months will probably remain demanding. I am sorry that I have not been more available to respond to requests, emails, and other needs. I deeply appreciate your understanding, patience, and prayers.

During those days away, I was able to spend more time reading, praying, and thinking. One idea kept returning to me: the importance of sacramental imagination.

Roman Catholic writers such as Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy understood something about grace that can be difficult to express in theological language alone. In their stories, grace does not always arrive gently or predictably. It may come through tragedy, failure, violence, humor, humiliation, or the strange circumstances of ordinary life. Grace interrupts people. It exposes them. It shakes them to the core.

Their characters often discover that the world is not as simple as they imagined. The people they dismissed possess a dignity they failed to recognize. The lives they believed they controlled are suddenly opened to mystery. God is encountered not by escaping the material world but through it.

This is part of what it means to possess a sacramental imagination.

A sacramental imagination sees the created world as more than a collection of objects to be used. It recognizes that ordinary things can reveal extraordinary grace. Water can become the sign and instrument of new birth. Bread and wine can become communion with Christ. Oil can become healing and consecration. Human touch, spoken words, shared meals, promises, forgiveness, and service can become places of divine encounter.

If the Independent Sacramental Movement is going to thrive, we must become more deeply sacramental.

This does not simply mean offering more sacramental services. It does not mean that we merely need more clergy with valid orders who are willing to celebrate baptisms, weddings, Eucharists, confirmations, ordinations, or anointings. These things matter, but sacramental life cannot be reduced to the availability of ceremonies.

We must help people see the world through the sacraments themselves.

Much of modern life encourages us to think primarily in terms of usefulness. We value objects according to what they can do for us. We sometimes treat the natural world as valuable only when it can be consumed, developed, sold, or transformed into profit.

Unfortunately, we can begin to treat people in the same way.

We may value someone because of the service they provide, the position they hold, the influence they possess, or the benefit they bring to our lives. The employee becomes a function. The caregiver becomes a service. The poor person becomes a problem. The prisoner becomes a crime. The immigrant becomes a political category. Even clergy and parishioners may begin to see one another primarily in terms of what they can provide.

The distinction between relating to another as an “I–It” and relating to another as an “I–Thou” is helpful here. An “It” is something we observe, classify, manage, or use. A “Thou” is someone we truly encounter.

The person standing before us is always more than the function they perform. They possess a value that transcends their usefulness to us. They bear a mystery that we cannot completely understand or control. A sacramental imagination teaches us to approach that person not merely as an object within our world but as someone through whom God may be addressing us.

This is why sacramental theology must have consequences beyond the sanctuary.

If we believe that water, oil, bread, wine, bodies, words, and human relationships can become bearers of grace, then we cannot treat the material world as disposable. We cannot speak reverently about the Eucharistic bread while ignoring those who are hungry. We cannot pour baptismal water over someone’s head while remaining indifferent to polluted rivers and poisoned communities. We cannot proclaim the dignity of the human body while disregarding people who are abused, imprisoned, exploited, displaced, or forgotten.

The Church’s sacramental life should train us to recognize holiness where the world sees only usefulness—or uselessness.

The Independent Sacramental Movement therefore needs more than caring clergy and valid lines of apostolic succession. We need communities of clergy and laity who value the sacraments, participate in them, and allow those sacraments to reshape the way they see the world.

We need people who recognize creation itself as a gift offered to God. We need communities willing to stand against injustice of every kind because every human being bears a dignity that cannot be measured by wealth, productivity, social status, nationality, ability, or usefulness. We need churches that understand worship not as an escape from the suffering of the world but as the place where we learn to encounter that suffering truthfully and respond to it faithfully.

A truly sacramental movement will care about how the Eucharist is celebrated, but it will also care about whether people have food.

It will care about baptism, but it will also care about clean water.

It will care about holy orders, but it will also care about whether authority is exercised with humility and accountability.

It will care about marriage, but it will also care about the safety and dignity of families.

It will care about anointing the sick, but it will also care about those who cannot obtain adequate medical care or who suffer without companionship.

It will care about reconciliation, but it will also work to repair relationships, communities, and institutions damaged by injustice.

The sacraments are not possessions that prove our legitimacy. They are gifts entrusted to the Church for the life of the world. They reveal what God is doing: taking what is ordinary, wounded, and overlooked and opening it to grace.

Perhaps the future of the Independent Sacramental Movement will not be secured by becoming larger, more impressive, or more institutionally powerful. Perhaps our future depends upon becoming more attentive—more capable of recognizing Christ in ordinary matter, ordinary lives, and ordinary acts of faithfulness.

The world does not simply need us to offer sacraments.

It needs us to become a sacramental people.

Peace,

Rev. Ben