Easter Sunday evensong (Monstrance) 16th April 2017

I’m ending my ministry as parish priest in a minute or two. The last thing I’ll do is for many Anglicans rather a strange thing to do. I mean not to this core gathering of the faithful who’ve worshipped with me over 8 years – but to place the consecrated bread in a container and make the sign of the Cross over us all in silence is something different, let alone doing it in clouds of incense!

The Holy Spirit works in different ways though. A close friend, a Methodist in fact, was staying with Anne and I a week or two back. She gave me a poem for my retirement called Monstrance which I’ve decided to read to you as part of my last sermon here. 

It’s about emptying yourself so God can fill us – Gill knows how much of me still is in me and how much Christ has to work on filling my life! 

As she writes:

We cannot stand in Jesus’ place

and look our Master in the face

if by thoughtless words or deeds

      we deny each other’s needs

   acting from ego, not from grace.

We empty ourselves for God to fill -

humbling ourselves before His will.

Before the waiting world we stand;

each is a monstrance, as He planned,

 lifted by God’s almighty hand.

In the rite of Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament the consecrated Bread is taken from its place of perpetual Reservation – here the Aumbry or wall safe in the sanctuary with its perpetual light.

It’s returned to the altar where it was blessed within an instrument of showing we call the Monstrance, from the Latin monstrare.

This throne we see upon the altar tonight, a decorated throne with rays indicating Christ’s glory shining out of the material element of the bread changed into Christ’s Body at the eucharist.

Not all Anglicans own that change, but it is in harmony with the Church of England’s belief in what our church calls the Real Presence, our faith that at Communion Jesus Christ the risen Lord comes among us through the consecrated Bread and Wine.

Our Easter devotion to the risen Lord, singing evensong before the Blessed Sacrament, ends with a silent blessing as if from the Lord, or actually from the Lord for the bread is his Body he has said so.

As Queen Elizabeth I said when asked how she say the presence of Christ in the eucharist: Christ was the word that spake it. He took the bread and break it; And what his words did make it. That I believe and take it.

As earthly bread in the monstrance blesses us this evening so we as Christians contain and show forth Christ. Through Holy Communion he is in our lives. This is the thrust of Gill’s poem which I read now to you and, of course, to myself:

For John on your retirement, with love from Gill.

Monstrance

Christ took and blessed a loaf of bread.

‘This is my body,’ Jesus said.

He took and blessed a cup of wine

Which, held aloft, became a sign

of sacrifice – of Love divine.

Christ puts his trust in you and me.

We are the ‘Jesus’ people see –

Silently, we seek his face.

Obediently, we take our place

As icons of God’s wondrous grace.

How do we represent him, though?

Which Jesus do we really know?

He is the Lord of everything:

a loving, selfless, humble King.

Which Jesus do our actions show?

We cannot stand in Jesus’ place

and look our Master in the face

if by thoughtless words or deeds

we deny each other’s needs

acting from ego, not from grace.

We empty ourselves for God to fill -

humbling ourselves before His will.

Before the waiting world we stand;

each is a monstrance, as He planned,

 lifted by God’s almighty hand.

As we keep silence before Benediction let’s ask that the risen Lord Jesus will make us a monstrance, through deepening our humility and sense of need for his mercy, so that people will see Jesus in us through our deeds and words. Amen.