Grant us, O Lord, in the Eucharist to remember what
we are and become what we receive. Amen.
Have
you ever walked into the kitchen only to forget why you were there? Or maybe
you’ve started an email and then forgotten what you needed to say. Perhaps
you’ve forgotten something more important – someone’s name, a family member’s
birthday, a meeting that you were supposed to attend. We all know what it is to
forget things. One of the reasons why the Church celebrates the Eucharist with
such intentionality and so often is because it reminds us of some very
important things.
For
one, the Eucharist reminds us that we have not been forgotten. The Eucharist
reminds us of things that are good, beautiful, and true, things like unity,
forgiveness, hope, and love. In this sacred meal, we are connected to the
source of these blessings and as we are invited to be God’s guest at the
Eucharist, we come to trust that God has not forgotten us. We are reminded that
God lovingly created all things, that God rectified our relationship through
the blood of Christ, that God is among us and within us through the Holy
Spirit. As you reach forth your hands to receive the Eucharist, know that God
is reaching towards you. The Eucharist reminds us that we are not forgotten.
You’ve
heard of amnesia – the condition where you lose your memory; sometimes it’s so
bad that you can’t even remember who you are. Even if you’ve not had a
concussion or medical condition that effects your memory, we all suffer from
spiritual amnesia. Sometimes we forget that we are God’s people. Sometimes we
forget that we have been Baptized into the Death and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Sometimes we forget that we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit to
be holy people in this world. The world has a way of making us forget who we
are. We forget that we are God’s beloved sons and daughters, we forget that our
neighbors are not problems to solve but people through whom we serve God, we
forget that we are a part of God’s eternal and unfolding story of salvation.
God
has, therefore, given us the Holy Eucharist to help with this amnesia; the
Eucharist is a vehicle of grace that feeds your Baptismal identity and calling.
The theological word for this is “anamnesis,” coming from a Greek word which
means “to remember.” Specifically, in the Eucharistic prayer, the anamnesis is
the part that recalls the life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. And
this idea of remembering isn’t simply recalling certain things to mind, the Biblical
idea of remembering is about making those events of the past alive again in our
own time. Our Eucharistic liturgy reminds us of who we are in God as we are
united in this Sacrament of grace, praise, and thanksgiving.
That
prayer that I used to open the sermon comes from paraphrase of one of St.
Augustine’s sermons on the Eucharist – Behold what you are; become what you
receive. That first part, “behold what you are” is in the invitation to
remembrance. Remember that you are enough, that you are forgiven, that you are
loved, that you are given the Holy Spirit to be God’s presence in this world. Remember
what you are – a royal jewel in the crown of the God who loves you deeply, and
fully, and eternally.
The
reason why God has given the Eucharist to the Church is so that just as the
bread and the wine are transformed by the mystery of God’s grace into the Body
and Blood of Christ, so too are we transformed into becoming the Body of Christ
in this world. In other words, you become what you receive. This story of God’s
loving creation, merciful saving, and abiding presence among us shapes us into
what we are to become.
Based
on the feeding miracles of Jesus, and indeed of his entire life, it has been
noted that there is a four-fold pattern to the Eucharist: take, bless, break,
give; and this shape is what we are to become as we are formed by the
Eucharist. The Eucharist not only unites us to Christ and others, it not only
nourishes us, it not only gives us hope, but is also shapes us by reminding us
who we are and what we are to be.
First, the wheat is taken
from creation, from the good gifts given to us by God and is shaped into the
bread we need to survive. The Eucharist shows us the holy interplay between God
and Creation. St. Augustine once said that “Without God, we cannot; without us,
God will not,” and we see this in the Eucharist that God comes in the
collaborative work of making wheat into bread into Christ’s Body.
Sometimes, though, what
God gives us to take is a challenge. Consider what St. Peter experienced in
this morning’s reading from Acts. His entire life, he had kept kosher laws,
never having eaten those things which were forbidden by Jewish custom. And yet,
it is exactly those unclean things which God sets before Peter in a vision and tells
him to eat. Peter resists and a voice from heaven counters, “What God has made
clean, you must not call profane.”
Peter
had to rethink everything at this point, not only about food, but everything.
If unclean foods could be eaten, did that mean that people who were previously
considered unclean could be a part of God’s promise of salvation? Just as Jesus
took on human form in a way that seemed to be beneath God, Peter came to
realize that the distinctions that we make between holy and profane are
boundaries that do not exist for God. Sometimes what God will give us to take
is beyond our ability to comprehend, and so the Eucharist reminds us that we
are to have a humble posture. We don’t have all the answers, we are not the
gatekeepers of holiness, we are not the granters of salvation. What God has
given us is a love beyond measure, and we spend our entire lives doing our best
to take that in, even if we never fully understand it.
Next,
the bread is blessed, that is, it is offered to God. In the Rite I Eucharistic
prayer, we pray “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves,
our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”
We are asking that God sanctify us, that is, to make us holy, to grant that the
Spirit given to us at Baptism flourishes in our lives. By partaking of the Body
and Blood of Christ, having them within us, we become what we receive – the
Body of Christ. As the bread and wine are blessed to be used instruments of
God’s grace to the world, we are blessed in the Eucharist to be mirrors of God’s
grace.
Now, the bread and the
wine still look and taste like bread and wine, and you may not look or feel
different after being blessed by God. It’s not so much a transformation in
terms of substance as it is a transformation in meaning and purpose. The
Eucharist reminds us that truest and most original thing about us is that we
are loved and blessed by God, and in being blessed we are given our identity
and our mission. God has given you experiences, gifts, talents, quirks so that
God’s blessing might come through you. You are sanctified – blessed to be a
blessing.
After the bread is
blessed, it is broken. This brokenness reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus and
way that God’s Kingdom is breaking into our world even now. In Revelation, we
heard the one on the throne saying that he is “Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and the end.” The Lamb on the throne is in all things, through all things, and
with all things. There is nothing that is not redeemed by Christ. The way that
the Eucharist unfolds, it is a retelling of the entire story of faith from
Creation to Culmination. Eucharist reminds us of our place in this story.
As the bread is broken,
it becomes so much more than bread. On the Cross, Jesus did not simply die, he
was exalted as the Savior of the world. The breaking of the bread reminds us
that things are not always as they seem. The Eucharist reminds us that there is
always more to the story than we might recognize. Light can shine in darkness,
forgiveness can follow wrong-doing, division can be healed, new life can come
out of death. This is the story of God, that God is doing infinitely more than
we can ask or imagine. As the bread is broken, new possibilities are broken
open for God’s grace to be revealed.
The last movement of the
Eucharist is that it is given. As Jesus says in John, “The bread that I will
give for the life of the world is my flesh.” We are reminded that the movement
of the Christian story, of the Eucharist, and of our lives is always outward;
we are always moving towards the other. This orientation to the other is
exactly what Jesus speaks of in the passage we heard this morning: “Just as I
have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know
that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We are made holy by
this love so that this love might flow in and through us to be given to all the
world.
The Eucharist is a love
feast in which we see that the story of God is the story of love, from Alpha to
Omega, from beginning to end. Above all things, this love is what we need to
remember and the Eucharist not only reminds us about this love, but it also
allows us to experience this beloved communion with God and each other.
God gave Jesus to the
world in love, the Spirit was given to the world in love, you will be given the
Eucharist in love, and God gives you to the world in love. As we gather at the
altar in obedience to Jesus’ command to do this in remembrance of him, we
respond with our own sacrifice of thanksgiving as we enter into the story of
our salvation.
The Eucharist reminds us
who we are, the beloved children of God, and the Eucharist shapes us so that we
might see Communion in everything. By living a Eucharistically shaped life, a
life that is taken, blessed, broken, and given, we pray that we might become
what we receive – the love of God made known in the Body of Christ. O Lord,
grant us to remember what we are, that we might become what we receive. Amen.
