In fact, Scottish commentator James Dow declared, "Deuteronomy is a glorious book, the most quoted of all Old Testament books in the New Testament.  Jesus was steeped in its teaching."

    Now, friends, our text this morning is one of these great moments of Deuteronomy.   Earlier the Lord, through the mouth of God's servant Moses, cries to his people, "Surely this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?'  Neither is it beyond the sea, so that you should say, 'Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?'  No, the word is very near to you,    IT IS IN YOUR MOUTH AND  IN YOUR HEART. . .!"

    Tell me why do we tend to make Christian faith and practice such a difficult thing?  Why do we seem to put Christianity way out of reach of the average person-something, in effect, up in the sky, totally beyond everyday life?  Something, perhaps, that we must STRETCH OUR MINDS DESPERATELY to grasp intellectually?

    Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist at Cambridge University, for years now, confined to his wheelchair with Lou Gehrig's disease, nevertheless has continued to dazzle the world by his brilliant mind.  In his bestseller of some years ago, A Brief History of Time, he notes that the size of the observable universe is one million million million million miles (that is, 1 with 24 zeros after it)! ---THAT BIG!

    Now must I be able to grasp intellectually this immensity in order to know the ALMIGHTY GOD who created it all? --"Who will go up to heaven for us, and get him for us?"
                                              
    And why do we tend to make Christianity so complicated and strange that it seems to be imported from beyond the sea - an exotic creed that only the initiated can understand?  Why do we think we can find God solely through deep and correct reasoning, as with the Greek philosophers?  Or only by retreat from the world, in strict meditation, as with the monastic orders-Buddhist, Christian, or otherwise?  Or only through violent revolution and the setting up of theocracy, as with the Islamic fundamentalists and some of the most extreme Christian sects?

    Friends, Biblical religion is MUCH MORE SIMPLE than that!  The God of Christians and of Jews has lovingly drawn CLOSE AT HAND.  Indeed, to quote our lesson, "The word is very near to you, IT IS IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART . . . !"

    God Himself IS the Word, you know.  John's Gospel puts it in a nutshell, as it describes the Christmas Miracle-greatest of all time:  "And the Word became FLESH and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth!"   (John 1:14)

    Yes, "the word (that is, Christ) is very near to you,  . . . IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART. . .!"   

    And, friends, God is never more near you and me than in the Lord's Supper (Eucharist, Holy Communon), the Sacrament that you and I celebrate today!  Don't get me WRONG.  We Presbyterians aren't Transubstantiationists, like our Roman Catholic friends.  We don't believe that the bread and the wine of the Sacrament literally and miraculously BECOME the Body and Blood of Christ, although maintaining the texture and taste of bread and wine.

    But neither are we like the Low-Church Zwinglians, either--and those other Christians who believe this ceremony is merely a symbol.  --Something, perhaps, that makes us think reverently and solemnly about what happened on a hill outside the walls of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago-but that's IT!
   
    No, although I'm afraid many Presbyterians, sadly, are Zwinglians without knowing it, the official position of our church has always been that the Lord is mysteriously really present at and in this ceremony!  Our Westminster Shorter Catechism says this about the Lord's Supper:  "By giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood . . . ."

    That is, when you and I, trusting solely in our Lord's love and forgiveness, come to the Sacrament, God nourishes us spiritually and mystically, binding us to Himself and to our brothers and sisters in the faith.   John Calvin, that Sorbonne and Orleans-educated lawyer, for all his intellect, could only marvel at the joyful mystery of the Eucharist.  And in his classic Institutes of the Christian Religion, he finally throws down his pen (figuratively speaking) and confesses, "it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare.  And to speak more plainly, I rather EXPERIENCE than UNDERSTAND it."

    Once someone posed a question to England's Queen Elizabeth I, at a time when the British Isles were ALL TORN UP and in CONFLICT between various kinds of Christians:  Roman Catholic and Protestant, Puritan and Anglican, Calvinist and Arminian, Independent and Separatist.   "Your Majesty," her interrogator asked,  "how do YOU explain the presence of Christ in the Holy Communion?"

    And the queen wisely replied with this little poem that she herself had composed (although some claim poet and divine John Donne first said it):.  How moving it is!-