Episcopal Church of the Messiah
Worship Service Sermons
August 16, 2009
The Reverend Carolyn Estrada
Pentecost Proper 15B
Proverbs 9:1 – 6 Psalm 34:9 – 14 Ephesians 5:15 – 20 ; John 6:51 – 58
"Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."
No wonder the Jews disputed among themselves, confused: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?!!"
Not only do early Christians have the scandal of the cross to contend with – their leader executed as a common criminal, treasonous to Rome – and, according to Jewish tradition, accursed because he was "hung from a tree," they have to make sense of his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
By the middle of the second century Christians were defending themselves against accusations of cannibalism, even being accused by such well-respected scholars as Fronto, the tutor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, of orgies culminating in the killing babies in order to eat their flesh and drink their blood.
(Today we talk about "extreme sports;" then, it was "extreme religion"!)
The words are familiar to us, today, after a lifetime of Sundays, and having grown up in a culture that has made Christianity – and communion – normative:
"This is my body," Jesus says, breaking the bread.
And, "The body of Christ…" the priest says, putting the wafer in our hands…
But do we really hear what is being said?
The BODY of Christ – his FLESH?
The BLOOD of Christ – his – BLOOD?
What can that possibly mean?
What are we doing?
The Jews haven’t been the only group to dispute among themselves what Jesus meant. One of the "great divides" between Roman Catholics and Protestants has been that of the nature of the bread and wine at communion.
Transubstantiation? Are the bread and the wine really converted into the Body and Blood of Christ, with only the outward appearance remaining the same?
Consubstantiation? Perhaps it is that the bread and the wine are both bread and wine AND the Body and Blood of Christ…
Symbolism? Maybe it’s just a memorial to Jesus, a remembrance of that Last Supper with his disciples…
Much controversy has been generated around these varying opinions, and in the resulting conflict churches have been made and broken.
So, too, has been the response of individuals struggling with their faith.
I’ve heard children in the First Communion classes respond with "Oh, gross!" at the thought of consuming the body and blood of Christ.
I’ve seen adults be afraid to touch the "sacred elements" for fear of defiling them.
I’ve known people who expected to be miraculously transformed themselves after partaking of communion – a kind of presto! change-o! transformation!
And I’ve known skeptics who can’t allow themselves to participate in a sacrament that doesn’t make sense to them, that they can’t "understand." They are looking for a Christianity reminiscent of the one short story writer Flannery O’Conner describes in Wise Blood, which caricatures the notion of practicing a "reasonable" religion. Street-corner evangelist Onnie Jay Holy, interested only in making a buck, presents to the public: "The Holy Church of Christ Without Christ." The preacher explains: "You don’t have to believe nothing you don’t understand and approve of. If you don’t understand it, it ain’t true, and that’s all there is to it."
If we don’t understand it, it ain’t true.
That’s a sad fallacy in the legacy of our Enlightenment mindset which somehow has felt the need to shut out mystery, in all its manifestations.
And yet, as we do so often in Christianity, I think we are arguing about the wrong thing:
we argue about sex when we should be talking about justice;
we argue about property when we should be addressing issues of poverty;
we talk about change in the bread and wine when we should be talking about change in ourselves;
we debate the "real Presence" of Jesus in the elements, when what we should be concerned with is the real Presence of Jesus within us.
For I believe that what is important is NOT what happens to the bread and the wine, but what happens to the person who consumes them.
I can’t tell you what happens to the bread and wine.
But I can tell you what I have seen happen to people who have consumed them.
I have seen people locked in the prison of dementia respond, come alive, when they take communion.
I have seen people bring their pain and their brokenness to the altar rail and leave with a sense of peace and healing.
I have seen people open their hands and their hearts to receive the body and blood of Christ and leave strengthened for the challenges of the week ahead.
The Table of our Lord is an enigma, a mystery. We aren’t going to understand or explain it. It entails a consuming that speaks to us beyond words. It is a consuming that in effect undoes and remakes us from within.
"Take me inside you," Jesus says.
Make me a part of you.
Allow me to live in you.
Let me give life to your thoughts, your actions.
And we open ourselves to receive the Holy.
It is both gift – and mandate.
Gift, because it is freely given: the table is God’s, and it is to be shared. There are no requirements except an openness to receive the love which is offered.
And mandate, because, having taken into ourselves that gift of God’s love, we are charged to so-live that it SHOWS in us, that we share it with others.
In the words of Frank Weston, the 19th Century bishop of Zanzibar, "When you come out from before your tabernacles, you must walk with Christ, mystically present in you, through the streets of this country and find the same Christ in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle if you do not pity Jesus in the slum… It is folly, it is madness, to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the sacrament and Jesus on the throne of glory when you are sweating him in the bodies and souls of his children… Now go out into the highways and hedges, and look for Jesus in the ragged and the naked, in the oppressed and the sweated, in those who have lost hope and in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them, and, when you find him, gird yourselves with his towel of fellowship, and wash his feet in the person of his brethren."
Even as Jesus lived, so too, having taken him into ourselves, we are to live.
We are remade to do Jesus’ work in the world.
This is the life he gives us.
And it is the life that we, in turn, give to the world.
Amen.