Be with us, O Lord, for if you are with us, nothing
else matters; and if you are not with us, nothing else matters. Amen.
At
the center of who we are, what we believe, and why we gather on Sunday morning
is the Holy Eucharist. As we gather to share in the Lord’s Supper, we enter
into a rich and deep story and set of symbols which point us towards the
majesty and salvation of God. It has been said that "the Church makes the
Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church,” and indeed, coming together to share
in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup is not only our
identity, but also our purpose. Put another way, others have said that the
Eucharist is the “source and summit” of the Christian life. Everything that we
do as Christians flows out of the Eucharist and returns back to this Great
Thanksgiving.
Over
the next four Sundays, the sermons will focus on the Eucharist – what it means
about God and us, how it embodies and expresses the Christian faith, and why it
is so central in our worship life. What I’ll say in these four sermons will be
drawn from the Catechism, which serves as an outline of the faith. The
Catechism is found at the back of the Prayer
Book, and I’d highly commend it to all for reading and reflection.
As
you know, one of the other names that this sacrament goes by is “Holy
Communion.” The Eucharist is all about being in community with God. Certainly, as we
gather to hear Scripture read, to make music together, to kneel at the altar
and receive bread and drink from the same chalice, we are united to each other,
and that is important. But what makes the Eucharist so sacred and special is
that Jesus is present when we gather in his name to share in the bread and
wine.
In
Eucharistic Prayer A, we proclaim the mystery of faith, that “Christ has died.
Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” And mystery is the right
word for this. What happened in the tomb on Easter morning, we can’t say for
sure – we know that Jesus was dead when he went in and walked out in
Resurrection life. What matters about Easter isn’t the mechanics, but rather
the power and the love that make Resurrection a new reality for us all. And the
same is true of the Eucharist. You can find volumes and volumes of books and
arguments on the topic of how it is that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. And
if you find that sort of dialogue interesting, by all means, dive in.
The
most that we can definitively say is that it is a mystery of faith – just as
Christ is risen, Christ is present in the Eucharist, not figuratively, not metaphorically, but he is really and truly sacramentally. My goal in these sermons is not to have us
paradoxically understand the mystery, but rather to appreciate the mystery, and
this morning’s Gospel passage from John helps us to see how Jesus is present in
our lives and through the Eucharist.
It all begins on Easter
evening. The disciples are terrified out of their minds – Mary Magdalene had,
earlier that day, come to them and shared the Good News that she saw the risen
Lord. But they have more questions than they do answers. Will Jesus be angry at
them for their betrayal? Will the Romans send soldiers to silence his
followers? So they lock the doors of the house.
But those locked doors do
not stop Jesus from coming to them. Their fears are not too much for him. Their
doubts are not too much for him. Their betrayal is not too much for him. Jesus
comes and meets us where we are. We can lock the doors of our minds and of our
hearts, but Jesus comes anyway and says “peace be with you.” Jesus comes not in
the name of giving us what we deserve, or in telling us what we could do
better, but rather he comes with a word of peace on his lips.
That’s the beauty of the
Eucharist, there’s nothing that we have to do in order to deserve it. The
former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes “The Eucharist is not a
reward for good behavior. It is the food we need to prevent ourselves from
starving as a result of our own self-enclosure and self-absorption… We take
Holy Communion not because we are doing well, but because we are doing badly.”
Just as Jesus came to the disciples in their fear and uncertainty, Jesus comes
to us in the Eucharist to meet us where we are.
The
thing about the Eucharist is that, although it may look like it is our meal, in
actuality it is Jesus who is the host and we who are the guests. So we can
always be confident that Jesus is with us when we celebrate the Eucharist
because without him, there is no Eucharist. We gather in his name, in his
temple, as his Church to receive his body. Through and through, the Eucharist
is about Jesus. And so Jesus breathes on the disciples, giving them his own
Holy Spirit. He gives himself to them, and so the breath that animates his
risen life is now the breath that fills them. In the Eucharist, the same is
true. Jesus gives himself to us in this sacred meal so that we participate in
his risen life.
Thomas,
though, wasn’t there when Jesus appeared to them and bestowed the Holy Spirit
on the disciples. Thomas says, “Unless I see the mark in his hands, I will not
believe.” For Thomas, Jesus’ presence is all about body and blood. This is what
the Holy Eucharist is all about. It is not as if the Eucharist is about
thinking that Jesus is among us, instead it is about receiving his very body
and blood in the form of bread and wine.
As
Jesus said earlier in John, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have
eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is
true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my
blood abide in me, and I in them.” Now, we have to acknowledge that this sounds
strange, it did when Jesus said it, too. Cannibalism was no more acceptable then than it is today. But just as God fed the people in the wilderness with
manna from heaven, so too does God feed us with the bread of heaven made flesh.
In Leviticus, we read the prohibition against eating any meat that still has
the blood in it, because “the life is in the blood.” But it is this very blood,
the life itself, that Jesus tells us to drink in remembrance of him.
What
we receive in the Eucharist is so much more than bread and wine. Yes, the
physical elements are bread and wine – I am not claiming that we are given a
piece of flesh and a sip of plasma. But it is by faith that we recognize that
the bread which Jesus gives for the life of the world is his flesh. By faith,
we trust that as we drink of the wine, that it is the very life of Jesus that
we receive. And so it is not a stretch to say that when we celebrate the
Eucharist that Jesus is really and truly with us. By the grace and power of the
Holy Spirit, the bread and the wine are Jesus’ own body and blood. They do not
cease to be bread and wine, but they become much more than simply baked grains
and fermented grape juice. The “how” of this transformation is not what matters,
rather God gives us the faith to perceive that Jesus is really with us in this
sacred meal.
When
Jesus appears to Thomas he comes bearing those scars of his crucifixion. The
miracle of the Resurrection did not erase those wounds. The miracle of the
Eucharist does not erase the fact that the bread is bread, but it does give new
meaning to the bread just as Jesus’ Resurrection gives new meaning to his
wounds. The Eucharist is that holy meal in which our host, Jesus, comes to us
and gives us his own body and blood to nourish our souls.
And in coming face to
face with the living God, the Eucharist grounds us in humility. When you think
of all the people you’ve ever met, it’s likely that you’ve noticed that the
most humble and pure in heart people that you know are also some of the closest
to God. The Eucharist helps us with this humility by reminding us who we are
before God – people who are both wonderfully made by God and people who
desperately need the mercy of God. It’s when Thomas draws near to the Body of
Christ that a humble faith is sparked in him. Humility comes from nearness to
God, and the Eucharist draws us into this presence where we see both who God is
and who we are.
What
makes this Eucharistic presence so important is that we consume it. If God
wanted to be among us in worship, it could have happened differently. It could
have been more like Baptism, we could just sprinkle you each week to remind you
that God loves you, saves you, and is always with you. Or it could have been
that we’d turn on a big fan and pray that as the wind blows across our
church that it would be that same Holy Spirit which Jesus blew on the
disciples. But, no; God has chosen to show up in bread and wine – things that
we have to put inside us and digest. Through the Eucharist, God gets inside of
us.
And
so in a very real sense, we all become chalices that are walking around this
world carrying the very body and blood of Jesus Christ. The lifeblood of God
comingles with our own. His body gives nourishment to our very being. Never
forget that as you go forth from this church, you do so not only as yourself,
but you carry Jesus with you. You are made holy by what is inside you.
While
Jesus reliability is present in the celebration of the Eucharist, the fact that
Jesus comes to us in the simple elements of bread and wine show us that God can
come to us in all sorts of unexpected ways. Jesus shows up in acts of
forgiveness, in tears of agony and joy, in a helping hand, in a word of peace.
The Eucharist shows us that God wants to be with us and among us.
In
Revelation, we heard it said that God is the one “who is and who was and who is
to come.” The place where we encounter this eternal God is in the Eucharist.
Notice how Thomas reacts when he encounters the risen Jesus – he exclaims, “My
Lord and my God.” As you stretch forth your hands to receive the bread of
heaven and the cup of salvation, it’s quite okay for you to say the same thing,
either in your heart or with your lips: “my Lord and my God;” because that is
exactly what you are receiving.
You might know that the
word “Eucharist” comes from a Greek word meaning “good grace” or “good thanks.”
Thanksgiving is how we can respond to coming face to face with Jesus at the
altar. We give thanks. Our Psalm this morning did just that – “Hallelujah…
Praise God for his mighty acts; praise God for his excellent greatness.” Praise
God for the mystery of faith, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ
will come again. Praise God for giving us his very body and blood in Jesus.
Praise God for being our host and inviting us to partake of bread and wine.
Praise God for giving us this sacred meal so that we might be united to one
another. And most importantly, praise God for being known to us in the breaking
of the bread.
