Precious Chalice, precious metal [Lent 2; St. Matthew 15:21-28]

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Jesus spoke to us today and said,

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.”

I have always wanted to teach about and give a defense for the Common Cup or Chalice, in Communion. It started when I heard the synod’s reason for using the individual cups, that is, health reasons with no other explanation given. This is no reason to change practices as it has no basis in the Bible. That doesn’t mean its wrong or that you don’t receive the same blood of Christ. It does beg the question: why change, then?

For today, though, since the wonderful witness of faith is about eating scraps that fall from the Lord’s table, we will only focus on the positive aspect of the Chalice. 

Now even though the bank account hates it, up front the Chalice is special because it is made of or plated in a precious metal. This is not to say that Jesus’ Cup which He used at the Last Supper was made of a precious metal, though it may have been. And we also do not want to go so far into the weeds as to say that Jesus had a wooden cup or clay cup so we should be using that.

No, in the first place, faith will not let us doubt that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Christ and therefore, faith will not let us house the precious Blood of Christ in anything less than the best. We need to see with our eyes, just as much as taste to see, that the Lord is good. Imagine Communion being offered in plastic or styrofoam. Would that make you see it as less valuable or more, if served in those “use once and throw away” things? 

Now you can say that you would treat it reverently no matter what, but the truth is we are simple creatures. We can distinguish, just by sight, the importance of something. So when we couch the Body and Blood of Jesus in precious metal, it screams holiness and reverence. This matters!

Now for the fun part. Gold is a noble metal and is inert; meaning it won’t react to or tolerate any organisms on its surface. Silver is a bit different in that it is self-sanitizing. Its ions react to organisms and basically poison them. This is why silver is labeled as a heavy metal, along with lead. Take too much and it poisons the body due to it being unable to be absorbed by the digestive system.

Gold and silver do not exhaust this list, but join Aluminium, Antimony, Arsenic, Barium, Bismuth, Boron, Copper, Lead, Mercury, Nickel, Thallium, Tin, and Zinc. For some obvious reasons, only silver has been shown to be safer and more effective than most of this bunch.

This unique, medical characteristic of silver should change our view of silver, from a ‘harmful heavy metal’ to a “purifying precious metal” because of what’s called the Oligodynamic effect (from Greek oligos "few", and dynamis "force"). It refers to the biocidal effect of metals, especially heavy metals, that occurs even in low concentrations.

The oligodynamic affect works as follows: when the precious metal is ionized, or gives off ions of itself, those become attracted to the membranes and nuclei of the cells of bacteria such as E.coli, Hep B, HIV, etc. These ions then, attach and disrupt the cells’ processes so severely that they fall apart. The ion, however, remains afterwards, and is able to continue its work, going from cell to cell, thus sanitizing whatever it is attached to.

Apart from this, there is the very clear research done that saliva is a poor medium for these bacterium and viruses. In fact, research tells that viruses such as Herpes and HIV are not transferred by saliva at all. So, if direct transmission is impossible, then indirect transmission by Chalice is impossible also. They also show that using a purificator to wipe the Chalice between communicants greatly aids the silver’s fight.

It takes a great amount of effort to infect a human being with something. You have skin and mucus for a reason: to protect you from these things. Even contact with these viruses and bacterium do not indicate inoculation. It just means you’ve been exposed.

But this knowledge has been around for millennia. That silver greatly reduces the spread of viral and bacterial infections, both inside and outside the body, is not new. But since in our modern times we trust in our own theories and discoveries, instead of God’s Creation, we have turned to our current medical knowledge to save us and in doing so become the arrogant acolytes who march to their own doom.

We trade God’s creation for what we can create ourselves and it is failing. Today, we turn to plastic and lab created things and they disappoint, not in the price department, and yet we keep going down this path. We have done this with time as well. The reason for Daylight Saving time and the Leap Year is because we are imposing our arrogance of human time-keeping upon the universe instead of living with the universe that God made for us.

As it turns out, silver and gold are still not enough for true purity and health in this world or the next. Because while it may outwit viruses and bacterium, it will not stave off old age and it will not disassemble death. So much so that our Lord even says that though you possess gold or silver, it must still be tossed into the furnace.

“But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver” (Mal. 3:2-3).

Gold and silver are the name of the game for God’s Temple in the Old Testament which covered everything there. That means they are going to be the name of the game for us. Not just that we make everything we use gilded, but that we remind ourselves that the Temple is God’s own Body so that when we think purity, we think the Body and Blood of Christ, not just gold or silver.

“The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace… purified seven times” (Ps. 12:6). Now there’s a twist that the Canaanite woman was not expecting. Though she was being treated roughly and she was the one begging, the Scriptures teach that it is the Word of the Lord Who will be mistreated, begging, and refined like precious metal in a furnace.

The fire of scourge, thorn, and cross refine the Word, Jesus Christ. Not so that He gets better, but in order that we be able to be baptized with His baptism and eat His food. He became one of us so that we could be as He is. So we keep those precious metals around church to remind ourselves that the true temple is the Body of Christ and true purity is hearing His Word and believing it.

And since we are baptized into that same Body, and eat of it, what Job says will be true for us, that the Lord “…knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold” (Job 23:10). We now share in this holiness, this purity that the precious metals we keep in front of us show. 

The Lord has said that when He comes, “…instead of bronze He will bring gold, and instead of iron He will bring silver; instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron. He will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness” (Isa. 60:17). 

For though our gold grows dim and fades, though our bodies fail, Jesus, our Great Physician and Healer, is the one precious treasure needful and even if we had to eat and drink from tableware made of mud, His Body and Blood would still be given for us. But as we are able to make Church important and since we are to fear nothing but God, not even poison or disease, let us eat, drink and be merry.

For the Lord promises that “…the young women shall rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow” (Jer. 31:13) in my Holy Supper, in My Church, says the Lord.