Sacrament:
Sacraments are outward signs of inward grace, instituted by Christ for our sanctification. They use earthly things to signify and impart spiritual changes.
God created us - body and soul. We are not just a soul carried around in a body, and we certainly are not just a body without a soul. Our body is just as much US as our soul is. To deny this duality of our nature in either direction would put us at the risk of thinking our body doesn't MATTER, when it completely does. The physical world MATTERS. That may seem a paradox... we're not to become too attached to the things of this world, as we are citizens of the next.... and yet we Christians are profoundly aware of how sacred the physical world is - far more than those who are actually attached to it. It's why marriage matters. Why sex matters, having children matters. Why taking care of our bodies matters. The world is sacred. WE are temples of the Holy Spirit. We are sacred.
We are physical beings, and God uses the physical world as means of His grace. That water becomes not JUST water when it is used in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It becomes the means of grace by which we become the sons and daughters of God. That bread is not just bread - that wine is not just wine - once consecrated, it becomes the real, actual presence of our Savior, to dwell within us, bestowing His grace, transforming us.
Earthly things. Oil and the touch of others, heals (James 5:14-15). Tangible things that we can perceive with our senses conveys a deeper spiritual reality that we cannot perceive. God works THROUGH those earthly things. They are inert of themselves, until He animates them.
We were talking today at church about the Trinity. I imagine the Trinity like this....
God is the author of all, He is the living Reality. He has created, out of love, a story. We are the story. Humanity, all of creation, we are His book. As the story goes along (He is writing it, and He knows it's outcome before it is written, although He allows His characters to grow and develop as they will), His narration is the Holy Spirit - the omniscient hand that drives the story, steers it where the author intends. But there comes a time when God the Author decides to insert HIMSELF into His own book. He becomes a character in His own story. This is Jesus. God the Author becomes Jesus the human character, but is no less God the Author, and no less God the Narrating Holy Spirit. All are one and the same, but distinct from each other.
Jesus, then is the ultimate SACRAMENT - grace personified in an earthly thing, a man. God that we can perceive with our senses - that we can listen to, touch, speak to, see. And those things that Jesus instituted as means of His grace are no less physical, although in and of themselves they are nothing. Bread. Wine. Water. Oil. They MEAN something. They IMPART something far deeper than we can perceive.
