We bring gifts (Easter 3 C)

Note: during Easter season we are allowed to deviate at times from preaching on the scripture readings. The following addresses what gifts we bring to the altar.

Despite the fact that shopping for Christmas gifts can be stressful, and that choosing the right gift for a neighbor whom we may not know well enough causes a bit of anxiety, we like giving gifts.

We know that making or purchasing and wrapping a gift is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality: an appreciation of the person to whom it is given, a celebration of this person and what she or he means to us, a symbol —the gift and the giving—that not only expresses the love that we have for the person but that actually deepens that love, widens it, strengthens it, inspires it, invigorates it.

I give you a gift because I have come to know that you are a gift, a gift to me, a gift to the world; that no one ever or anywhere else is you, that no one gives me what you give me, means to me what you mean to me.

And thus, despite the anxiety that making or purchasing gifts for each other causes, we nonetheless enter into gift-giving with at least a modicum of enthusiasm, a bit of excitement, an ounce of hope that the love that we share is indeed what is ultimate.

And so it is in the assembly of the church.

And so it is when we—as individuals, yes, and more so, as a people— give our gifts to God.

But what do we give to a god?

What do we give to the Living God who made everything and has everything and needs nothing?

We offer the simple things of bread and wine, "which earth has given and human hands have made."

We used to call the point in the Mass when the bread and the wine are brought forward "the offertory."

But now we call it the preparation, because that's in fact what happens then:

We prepare the Lord's table and we prepare our gift of money for the poor and for the church, and we prepare our gifts of bread and wine to give to God. The offering of these gifts happens later, in the great eucharistic prayer.

So what is being offered under the sign of bread and wine?

What is the gift behind the gift?

We take our clue from what the priest says to begin the great prayer of thanksgiving: "Lift up your hearts."

That is what is invested in our bread and in our wine—our hearts, that lovely ancient metaphor for "all of me," for "all of us."

That, in fact, is the gift that we bring.

That is what we offer—our hearts, our very selves under the sign of bread and wine.

And that is what God accepts.

That is what the mighty Creator, the awesome Shekinah, the ultimate Mystery and holy Wisdom accepts from us.

And that is what the God of Jesus changes into Christ's body and blood to give back to us.

The offering in the great Eucharistic prayer becomes an exchange.

We give to God our hearts, under the sign of bread and wine.

In return God gives back to us the body and blood of Christ, under the same sign.

And so we have the old, lovely image in the Eucharistic prayer called "the Roman canon": "We pray that your angel may take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven. Then as we receive from this altar the sacred body and blood of your son, let us be filled with every grace and blessing."

We must not be stingy when we enter into this divine exchange of gifts. We must prepare to give God the full gift: our whole heart, as individuals and as a church.

We must see in this bread our successes and our struggles, and see in this wine our passion and our pain.

These experiences are given to God and changed and given back to us. And we are changed in the giving and in the receiving, changed for the sake of the world, changed for the sake of the reign of God that is now and not-yet, here and still-to-come.

We become a living sacrifice of praise, bread for the world, wine for the weary.

So when you come into church, stop by the gifts table.

Extend your hands over that bread.

Place onto that bread your accomplishments of this week, the job that you did well (the wall that you painted, the meal that you prepared), the simple acts of kindness that you performed, the work in which this par­ish engages (food delivered to the needy, children taught to read).

Then this is consecrated with the bread, returned to you as your life made holy, to us as our life made holy, so that this parish, this city, this world may be made holy: the mystical body of Christ.

Extend your hands over that wine.

Place in that carafe your struggles: the addiction you resisted, the harm you healed.

Place in that flagon this parish's struggles: halting steps toward being a more inclusive community, small attempts to be more faithful to the gospel.

Then this is consecrated with the wine, returned to us a cup of salvation: this blood poured out once and for all so that the blood of our children may never again stain our streets, so that the blood of the convict need not be shed in revenge, so that the blood of soldiers need never be wasted in far-away fields.

And when we are invited to lift up our hearts, let us—each of us and all of us—do so consciously, remembering what we have invested in these gifts, what it is in fact that we are bringing to God.

And let us pray without hesitation, with sincerity and with great devotion, "And so Father, we bring you these gifts. We ask you to bless them and to make them holy."