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| Given...for you. |
B Lectionary 20 – 16 August 2015
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas
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As of this morning, we are now most
of the way through what I call the “well-breaded section” of the Gospel of
John, chapter 6. John 6 includes the story of the feeding of the five thousand
and the story of Jesus walking on water, and then Jesus makes a long speech
about bread, part of which we hear today, and the rest of which we will hear
next week. It’s a lot of bread.
Except it’s not just any bread, as
Jesus says in today’s lesson – take a look at the reading. Right there – right
away – what kind of bread is it? (Living bread) And this idea of Jesus as the living bread is so important that in
this one little section, the words “living,” “life,” and “live” appear nine
times. Clearly, Jesus is not simply talking about sandwich bread that we grab
off the grocery store shelf - what he’s talking about is a matter of life and
death.
Before we can get to what Jesus
means here, we have to recognize that the words coming out of his mouth are
strange – he almost sounds cannibalistic, in a way, until we realize that when
he talks about giving up his flesh for the life of the word, he’s talking about
his death on a cross. And the flesh and blood that we are to eat and drink are
found in, with, and under the bread and the wine that we consume here together.
For centuries, Christians have
argued about the bread and the wine – do they actually become the body and blood of Christ? Are they just symbolic of Christ’s flesh and blood?
Or, as a sort of middle ground, is Christ present in the bread and wine – but
not on a molecular level?
This third conclusion is what
Martin Luther came to as he wrestled with this sacrament five hundred years
ago. By his lifetime, in the Church, Holy Communion had become a ritual that
was done to benefit those who had died. The living didn’t even get to eat or
drink! They would go, hear a service completely in Latin, and watch from afar
as the priest handled the elements. The more times they did this, the more
“credits” they got, which then benefited their loved ones who were stuck
suffering in Purgatory…and on and on it went.
Luther saw Holy Communion as “food
of the soul” because “it nourishes and strengthens the new creation”[1] –
the new creation that each of us becomes when we are baptized. Holy Communion
for us, then, is not a dead ritual in which you all stay removed from the
elements. Holy Communion for us is a living ritual – you participate in the eating
and the drinking of the body and blood of Christ.
Out of all the words we say on
Sunday mornings (or Wednesday evenings) as we celebrate the Holy Meal together
– there are two words that are some of the most important for us as we receive
the body and blood of Christ together. Two words: “for you.”
When you come forward for
Communion, you receive the bread as I say, “The Body of Christ, broken for
you.” You receive the wine (or grape juice) as someone else says, “The
Blood of Christ, shed for you.” By faith, we believe that
we are receiving the body and blood of Christ, which was given for
you…for each of you.
There’s an old prayer, found in
some of the oldest prayer books of the Anglican Church. It’s called the Prayer
of Humble Access. I grew up in the Episcopal Church praying this prayer before
Communion: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We
are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art
the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore,
gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink
his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”
This prayer reminded us on a weekly
basis that we are not invited to this table by our Lord because we are more
worthy than others, or because we are holier than others. We are invited
because God loves us, and God wants to give us heavenly food and drink. Through this food and drink, our lives in God are sustained.
The life contained in this Holy
Meal is one reason why we offer Holy Communion every week here at Our Redeemer,
and during the week on Wednesday evening, too. Our gathering on Sundays and
Wednesdays is not only a time for us to reconnect with one another and to
welcome guests as we all attend a righteous pep rally together that sends us
out feeling great for another week.
Our time together is a holy time.
It is certainly holy in the reconnecting and the welcoming, but it is holy in
our worship and praise of God, holy in our listening to Scripture, and holy as
we share in this meal, instituted by Jesus himself, and handed down to us
through centuries and centuries of men and women of God. We are connected to
them in this meal – not only to each other – but to centuries upon centuries of
the faithful, gathered in homes, in churches, in schools, in storefronts, in
auditoriums, under trees, and around campfires. And in every place and in every
time where the people of God have gathered, there is Christ, the living bread
from heaven, with us.
There is another Communion prayer
that I found, by a man named George MacLeod, founder of a religious community
called the Iona Community: “The morning is yours, rising to fullness; the
summer is yours, dipping into autumn; eternity is yours, dipping into time.”
In this Holy Meal of bread and wine
– the body and blood of Christ – the eternal love of God dips into our time and
our space. Together, we eat and drink, and are given life again by the Lord of
Life.
Amen.
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