Holy Things for Holy People

Classical Eastern Orthodox liturgy brings the worshipping assembly to a focus in the invitation offered to the people over the gifts prepared for communion: “Holy things for holy people.” It’s the equivalent of our “The gifts of God for the people of God.”

Immediately, in the Orthodox service, the response reverberates back from the gathered congregation: “One alone is holy: Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Holy things for holy people.” “One alone is holy: Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In a sense, the congregation is rebuking the priest and in this rebuke we hear both the profound tensions of our faith and the profound tensions within our faith.

Within the Christian faith, we, an unholy people, discover holiness in God. We are made holy through God. Awe-struck, awe-inspired, awe-ful, we confront the sublime, the terrible, the tremendous, the amazing holy one, only to discover that somehow we have been made holy ourselves in this very confrontation with and through the holy power of God.

In the Orthodox tradition, the gathered congregation stands in the symbolic marketplace. The holy things are prepared in the holy place by holy go-betweens who then cross the threshold of the sanctuary to enter the marketplace and offer holy things for people about to be made holy through their participation in Christ. (and indeed already made holy through their participation in Christ’s baptism)

Holy things for holy people
One alone is holy: Jesus Christ our Lord.

The rebuke of the congregation focuses the attention of the worship on Christ. It highlights the transformational focus of the sacrament, and firmly places the gathered congregation as Christ and with Christ in the world.

“Hey priest don’t get too carried away. You may live and act in this ethereal world on our behalf, but we know that that world is not the world we live in daily. When you get carried away with the ordinary beauty of holiness, we are here to remind you that the holy is extraordinarily aweful.

“We may be a holy people, but if we are it is only because of Christ. We receive these gifts because Christ makes us worthy to receive them. And if we are worthy because of Christ, we are worthy as we are, where we are, in the world in Christ.”

[Shift material to doorways of chapel.]

Within the Reformed tradition, the gathered congregation is gathered as a holy people on holy ground: a priestly people who no longer require priests; a holy people who no longer require other holy people to prepare the meal for them; a holy people who gather to share a meal in order that they may enter the marketplace as a priestly people for the world.

Occasionally, and perhaps even more than occasionally though, something is lost in the translation. In our Reformed joy at claiming our place as holy people we forget the rebuke “One alone is holy: Jesus Christ our Lord”. And in forgetting the rebuke we cross the threshold to the holy in the opposite direction not in humble service but in petulant invasion.

We are holy people and we demand holy things.

The rebuke is especially important for us then: “One alone is holy: Jesus Christ our Lord.” And yet sadly it is often lost to our tradition at least at this point in the worship service.

So let us ponder a moment on the orthodox rite. Ordinary people have been set apart for holy tasks. This setting apart makes them holy. They participate in the holy on our behalf. They confront the holy, a frightening thing, on our behalf, and they bring the holy to us in a form that we can confront ourselves: holy things for holy people.

When all is prepared they bring the holy gifts to us, crossing into the ordinariness of our world just as Jesus did in order to make the holy available to us.

The priests do what they do in order to bring the holy things to the people: a sobering lesson for our tradition that claims such a mission orientation.

If we, in our Reformed tradition, maintain that we as the people of Christ are holy and participate in holy things, then it is incumbent upon us to participate in the holy in order to make that holy available to others: to dare to confront the holy in order to mediate the holy beyond ourselves.

We may be a holy people, but if we are it is only because of Christ. We receive these gifts because Christ makes us worthy to receive them. And if we are worthy because of Christ and in Christ, then we are called to Christ’s mission in the world.

The invitation to participate fully in worship—to take up holy things as holy people—is implicit, if not explicit, in every worship experience. But this is not a simple invitation to be accepted blithely, and it is not just an invitation for the length of the worship time. It has implications.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts
The whole earth is full of God’s glory.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Blessed are we who come in the name of the Lord;
and what a responsibility we bear.

Confronted by the holiness of God in a vision, Isaiah confesses his unworthiness, only to discover that the holy one continues forward bearing live coals and a commission to take a holy message with a profound sting in its tale. The prophecy assigned Isaiah is not one which the people will receive with joy. God’s message through Isaiah is: “Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.”

Nicodemus approaches Jesus with troubling questions of meaning and purpose. “What must I do to be holy?” And that answer is not easy either and perhaps does not even make sense. “You must be born again.”

[Throw material into air and leave as heap beneath communion table.]

More recent theologies concerned with questions of ecology, justice, the dignity of all people (Christian or not) ask us not simply to confront the making holy of ordinary things and ordinary people in the power of Christ, but the being holy of the whole of creation in the totality of God.

Here it is not simply about bearing holy things out, but baring (uncovering) the holy things that are already out there. We, the holy people of God, dare to move beyond our holy community, beyond our holy ground to a place where, in the past we have believed the holy not to be. Unexpectedly, we find the holy in that place.

Even as we have chosen to utter the invitation at the threshold of both holies, “Holy things for holy people”, the cosmos, the material, the whole of humanity and creation itself rebukes us with “One alone is holy”.

Looking back over our shoulders, we may hesitate in confusion. If God is holy and God is one, and God is here and God is there, what on earth are we doing?

This new birth, this birth into holiness from holiness, is not new. It is experienced anew a myriad of times as we both affirm that we are holy and discover we are not, discover the holiness in others where we thought it not to be, experience the presence of God in that which we were told was God-bereft, discover that we are holy when we thought we were not.

Unpalatable, confusing, confounding, awe-ful, amazing, impossible—as unpalatable as live coals, as confounding as bitter prophecy, as impossible as being born again, as unimaginable as a triune singular God, as amazing as the call to mission of an unholy, holy people. The holiness of God confronts us in Christ Jesus on our own turf wherever that may be, here in the midst of the muck, the mess, the ordinary, the unholy—the holy. Holy things for holy people. One alone is holy. And the experience of the holy impels us out to mediate the holy beyond this place, and to discover the holy anew outside what we had assumed was the holy ground, and even within our very selves.

Holy things for holy people. One alone is holy.
Even yet Jesus Christ; and we together, in the great miracle of re-birth, are the body of Christ. May we share holy gifts be found in Christ and Christ in us.