by The Rev. Dr. Max Lynn
SCRIPTURE READINGS John 6, Exodus 12:3-14, Isaiah 1, 10-20, Hebrews 9:11-151 Corinthians 11:23-26
Transcribed from the sermon preached on AUGUST 7, 2022
Now think of a time when you were not invited to the party, not invited to share the food, when you were hungry or left out. Perhaps this has happened in our own family, but I suspect most of us have memories of a certain group of cool or popular kids closing shoulders to let us know we were not welcome. Maybe if was a business meeting or a faculty meeting where the highly respected had their little click. God help us, but perhaps it was even at a church.
Since food is both necessary for life and limited, if you share it with someone, it must mean you care for them. And if someone shares food with you, it must mean they care for you. Food is not a given. Nothing says that when you are born you will have enough food to stay alive. Somebody, usually your mother or someone else who chooses to love and care for you, chooses to feed you. Shortly after you come out of the womb and take a breath, your mother says, “This is my body which is for you, take and eat.” Groups that cooperate in food acquisition and protection do better. So, when you are ready to eat solid food, others get into the mix. People go out and work to get food and then they bring it back to you so you can eat. Others protect food. Since food is a limited resource and not a given, who you decide to share it with is a big deal.
There is something about our biology that leads us to want to share food with those we are related to through blood. Beyond that we are either forced to share or we decide to cooperate.
Culture the world over has always been about a system of cooperation to produce and protect food. From there culture becomes a definition and justification for who our group is with whom we cooperate and who gets what food, when and where. Culture also defines who doesn’t get food, and who is the enemy against whom we fight to protect our food, and who we are free to steal food from.
We Protestant Christians have two sacraments, both using one of the most important ingredients to life. Water for baptism and food for communion. The Catholics have seven sacraments, but Protestants cut it down to the two instituted by Jesus himself. They are symbolic representations of who Jesus and God are for us. They are rituals, or visible words, events we act out as a community and discover together the presence of God.
It is helpful and important to have an understanding of theology and doctrine, a rational literary explanation for what it is we are doing. Yet the sacraments are communal events that become real and are made known in the process of enacting and celebrating them. In other words, the event of sharing communion is more important than the words that explain the event. We come to understand what communion means by doing it.
Jesus says, “This is my body, this is my blood, take and eat. Do this in remembrance of me. What does that mean?
Daniel Migliore does a great job explaining communion in his book, Faith Seeking Understanding, so I will use him extensively for this content.
The Roman Catholic doctrine uses a big word called transubstantiation. According to this view, the substance of the bread and wine is transformed by the power of God into the substance of the body and blood of Christ. Lutherans propose the doctrine of consubstantiation. Christ is present in, with and under the elements of bread and wine, as fire permeates wood.
For those of us who are Reformed or Presbyterian, who follow in the line of John Calvin and John Knox, Christ is received by faith through the uniting power of the Holy Spirit. Christ is present in the whole community action of sharing communion rather than in the bread and wine on their own. The important emphasis for Calvin is placed on the presence and action of the Holy Spirit. So, it is not just an idea but the actual spiritual presence of God and Christ.
Still another interpretation of communion is that it is a memorial of what Christ did for human salvation in his passion, death, and resurrection. Sustaining memory replaces the language of real presence.
Another historical rub on what is happening in communion is between sacrifice and a meal. Some Catholics and Anglicans have interpreted communion as a sacrifice, a repetition of the sacrifice at Calvary. Protestants emphasize the once and for all nature of Christ sacrifice, so we emphasize communion as a meal.
You may here it called the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, or the Eucharist (Greek for Thanksgiving), by whatever name it is a meal. We give thanks to God, we receive and share it with Christ, while our body and vision of the presence of Christ with us and uniting us are empowered by the Holy Spirit.
But if we take it back to that elemental understanding of food, we can deduce the meaning. Due to stratification of society, usually the powerful take food from the poor and have meals with their families and others they and the culture have decided are important. But Jesus invites everybody, the poor, the lame, the marginalized, people who are not cool or popular or perfect according to the rules and norms of the culture and religion. There is an element of grace here for all of us. For we know we are less than perfect, how dare we think we can come and sit down at the table with the son of God? And yet we are invited.
It goes against conventional biological wisdom to give food out to just anyone. It is survival of the fittest, so we feed and protect our own. But Jesus breaks with this conventional wisdom and says, come, take, and eat. Like a mother to all of us, he says, “This is my body. Take and eat.”
Now with the wine he says, this is my blood. Now this is a remembrance that he gives his body and blood on the cross. But in another sense when we take his blood into us, we become one with him, family. So rather than the sexual act and biological drive defining who he and we give to, he expands it to those around us, to those in community. By faith, by the blood of sacrifice, not sex, we become heirs, coheirs with Christ.
The next thing that happens when we take the body and blood of Christ within us is that by the power of the Holy Spirit, as Children of God and coheirs with Christ, we are nourished and sustained to go out and live like Christ. We are to give ourselves for love, peace, and justice beyond our blood line, even when it takes a sacrifice to do so. We are to invite and break bread with others. We are to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us.
Now one of the reasons why people are excluded is that when a dominant popular person or group is mean or dislikes someone, we are afraid to associate with them in case their unpopularity might rub off on us. When we include someone, the dominant intend to exclude, we also question their authority and risk-taking abuse and being excluded for that too. But if we are invited to the great banquet of God, if God is for us, who can be against us? By grace we are included, and by grace we are empowered to include others. By grace the focus goes off you and onto who else could use a bite to eat, who else could stand to be included? Try it, if you are feeling down, if you are feeling low in self-esteem, try including or helping someone else.
Rather than using our authority and proximity and relation to God and power to take from the blood and sweat of others to feed ourselves, we are to help and serve others. The religious creation stories of the stratified societies like Egypt and Babylon tell a story that requires the lesser gods to give to the greater gods and in turn those rulers and priests who are closer to god get to be served by the common people. But Jesus flips it. The son of God comes to serve. So, then we ourselves who have been invited and served by him, are to do likewise. We are to invite and serve others. When we are outside of worship, we are to live this meal out. If we are not being kind, inviting and helpful to others out in the world, then we share communion with Jesus in vain. If we are helping ourselves without consideration of others, if we are taking, oppressing, exploiting, and excluding, we take communion as a judgement on ourselves. So, we have to check ourselves. We have to confess our sins and repent before we sit down with Christ to eat. You are forgiven, and the meal itself will nourish and empower us with gratitude necessary to become more loving.
So, the Lord’s supper is both a remembrance of who Jesus was and what he did, a live enactment of who God is and what God does with us now in the present, and foretaste of the future banquet of heaven.
Communion is a foretaste, the symbolic sampling before the main course of heaven, when God’s liberating and reconciling action is complete. So, communion connects us with the past, defines our relationship with God in the present, and gives us a vision and hope for the future. We are welcomed and invited, fed, nourished, and sustained, connected with community, made a part of a giant family, and empowered to go out and serve others as Christ has served us.