PROVERBS 9:1-6

PSALM 34:9-14

EPHESIANS 5:15-20

JOHN 6:53-59

Sermon – August 20, 2006

These words of Jesus from today’s Gospel are stunning, even shocking. Three times Jesus talks about believers “eating my flesh”; it sounds offensively literal at first, almost cannibalistic! And this indeed was an accusation which was made by anti-Christian propagandists in the early years of the church.

So what does Jesus mean, and why did he speak like this? Jesus is talking about the importance of believers participating in the Holy Eucharist. Belief must be connected to action; Jesus was not satisfied with belief in him remaining ethereal, un-incarnated. Just as in him “the Word [of God] became flesh and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), so our words of belief need to be incarnated in action – including not just personal ethical action but participating as part of a community in the most characteristically Christian kind of worship: the Holy Eucharist.

By participating in the Holy Eucharist, believers affirm not only that we believe in God – so does the devil! – but we worship God, subordinate ourselves to God, admit our need to be fed, literally, and cared for by God.

If we accept Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel – that his body (received by us in the Holy Eucharist) gives life – potentially even eternal life – this means we understand we cannot gain eternal life through our own efforts apart from God’s gift. Receiving communion is an act of joyful humility.

If we accept Jesus’ words, we also affirm that he came in the flesh on earth, and that this material world is important and is the place in which God reveals God’s self and offers believers new life. As much as eternal life comes to fruition in heaven and in the Kingdom of God, the seeds of eternal life can be planted in us now in this mortal life. All this is in sharp contrast to the ancient heretics who denied that Christ became incarnate as flesh and blood and who tried to seduce believers into seeking some “hidden, esoteric wisdom” which spoke of salvation as a purely other-worldly experience. The seeds of eternal life can be planted in us now as we hear the Holy Scriptures and receive Christ’s mysterious, physical gift of himself to us in a very simple sacred meal of bread and wine.

Some people would try to tell us we can only experience the divine after years of study, or by traveling to exotic locales, or perhaps only after death. Jesus says we can experience his presence in our lives by believing his words and receiving him tangibly in consecrated bread and wine. Simple – and profound.

The Holy Eucharist is a mystery at the same time that it is a self-revelation of God. We do not pretend to be able to define exactly how it is that Christ is present in the consecrated bread and wine; the Episcopal Church speaks simply of
”the real presence” of Christ in the sacrament. And so we treat consecrated bread and wine differently from bread and wine before it has been consecrated: leftovers either go into the reserved sacrament in the tabernacle behind the altar (to be taken to the sick or shut-in) or are consumed right after the service, or (in the case of wine left in the chalice) poured down the piscina in the sacristy, a drain which goes directly into the ground, because consecrated elements are too holy to go into the sewer system.

Consecrated bread and wine are holy and are treated with special respect – but are not themselves worshiped. They are tangible gifts by Christ of Christ’s own self to believers in him who have been baptized – of whatever age. The sanctuary lamp reminds us of the presence of Christ (the Light of the World) in the reserved sacrament. The reserved sacrament is kept in the tabernacle and the lamp is kept lit 364 days a year; only on Good Friday is the reserved sacrament moved from the tabernacle into the sacristy and the lamp extinguished, to remind us of Christ’s death.

In the Holy Eucharist we remember Christ’s four-fold action at the Last Supper: he took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave to the disciples. Christ’s own body also was taken, blessed, broken and given for the sake of the world which God so loved. His body being broken on Good Friday did not prevent him from giving himself for the sake of the world: that was part of his giving himself for the sake of the world. If he hadn’t been broken, his self-giving would have been incomplete.

We, too, can be taken, blessed, broken and given. Of these, only being broken is automatic! Sometimes we may experience “brokenness” thanks to events in our lives. Life can hurt a lot, and life always ends with the brokenness of death. That is inevitable. We don’t have a choice about whether or not we experience pain in life, sometime, somehow.

What we can realize, which makes all the difference, is that we also have been taken in God’s hands and blessed by God and given to the world God so loved that he gave his only Son. We’re going to experience brokenness anyway – that’s life – why not experience joy and generosity along with it?

Whoever we are and whatever our circumstances, God has taken each of us in God’s hands and blessed us. God invites us to see whatever brokenness we experience as an opportunity for giving; without that, it is just brokenness!

My father has lost most of the vision in one eye. Some people would bathe themselves in self-pity with much less of a disability; that would be wallowing in one’s own brokenness. Instead, he uses his good eye to read aloud to a friend who is legally blind in both eyes and cannot read at all.

Cancer patients can join support groups – not only for themselves but for others, and their words of wisdom and encouragement have special power coming from someone who is experiencing brokenness. Part of recovery from addiction involves both facing one’s own brokenness and reaching out to others with the life-saving and life-transforming news that acknowledging one’s own brokenness can lead to new life. Those who have experienced the unique, excruciating pain of the death of a child can give themselves to others through the support group Compassionate Friends.

Being broken – and given. It’s a lot better than just being broken!

And when we give ourselves in our brokenness, the act of giving reminds us that we have been blessed, and our act of self-giving reminds us whose hands took hold of us originally and whose hands will hold us at the hours of our death.

The Eucharist reminds us of Jesus’ self-offering to believers so that we may have life. And we can begin to experience that new life not by running away from ways in which we feel our brokenness, our wounds, our pain, but by remembering that it is God who originally took us and blessed us at our baptisms and who invites us to find opportunities to give of ourselves in the midst of our brokenness. And while we are learning to live and give, Christ is sustaining us along the way with the gift of his own self to believers.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church