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Sermon - Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (B) - 16th August 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7am
Readings: 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14, Psalm 111, Ephesians 5:11-21, John 6:51-58
In Eucharist, as in Baptism, simple elements reveal to us important truths about the things that are important to our life together as members of the Body of Christ. This is what the bread and wine, and water and oil, seek to express. He dwells in us, and we in him.
From the very moment we are baptized, Life is lived together with Christ. We are renewed and reawakened each time we take bread, eat it and say, "Amen". We are renewed and reawakened each time we look into the chalice and say, "Yes, I will share this cup with others as they share it with me as Christ shares his very life with me".
On the night before his execution, something that Jesus and his disciples had done together many times before, breaking bread and sharing wine, suddenly and quite unexpectedly became a new and extraordinary experience. It was surprising when he said, "This is my body. This is my blood. Whoever eats this bread will live forever!” Suddenly, table fellowship took on a whole new meaning. Although we will never really know what happened or just how it happened that night, we do know it was as surprising and new to those present.
As we come to this table week in and week out, it is not easy to come to it as something new, renewing and reawakening. We come and we go. Fundamentally, life continues the same as when we arrived here this morning.
Solomon asks God for wisdom, saying that in God's presence he is as a dependant child. He asks for an understanding mind. The Psalmist also notes that those who fear the Lord will receive food. Those who fear the Lord begin to obtain wisdom. We are to participate in this holy meal knowing that in some special way God will bless us.
We all come here loaded down with everything that we have been taught to believe about the sacrament of Christ's body and blood. In our Prayer Book we have no fewer than eleven Eucharistic prayers that rehearse all the cogent teachings and details of Eucharistic theology throughout the ages. That does not include the seasonal additions! Even so, they are still limited in what they can say because the workings of God are mysterious.
Because of this mystery, much cannot be said. Which is why Jesus chose simple elements of every day life to be signs and sacraments of what he is all about and what kind of life he calls us to live. He knew words alone would not do it.
We are to arrive expectant. We should let go of what we "think" this is all about, and experience Eucharist as if for the very first time every time. We must be open to whatever surprises our God has in store because if our God is anything, our God is the God who is full of surprises. Just remember the empty tomb! Talk about the unexpected! For when we think we know all about what the Eucharist is all about, then we are in trouble.
When parents worry about when to let their children begin taking communion, at the heart of their quandary always lies the concern: I don't think they understand it yet. ON the other hand, what about people who suffer dementia or are brain damaged? Do they understand? Should they be refused the sacrament? The question for all of us, though, is, "Do we understand it? Can we explain the sacrament? How is this bread body? How is this wine blood? Should we receive it we do not fully understand the mystery of the sacrament?"
If the only reason to receive the sacrament is because Jesus commands us to then we must. There is no other service of worship that in which Jesus commands us to participate. If only because there is some hidden and surprising chance that this time when we see the bread we may come to a whole new awareness of what it means to be a member of this community of Christ's Body! Sometimes the light reflects in the chalice in some new and different way, and in that glimmer of light, a new revelation may be born. All our stale and old understandings of Eucharist are washed away in one sip of new wine. If we try to fix that moment in time then we could, inadvertently, be creating new baggage to carry in the next time we come to this table. It is so hard to come childlike and expectant every time!
The sacrament of Jesus' body and blood points us to a whole new understanding of ourselves, a new understanding of church, and a new understanding of the world in which we live. As one liturgist has put it: "His broken body is my broken body upon which others feed. His blood spilled is my bloodshed to rejoice the hearts of all. His tomb is mine and in it others die to rise again. I have become him, the Stranger and through me he beats the bushes, herding everyone into dinner by creation's fireside." To say, "yes" to the bread and the common cup is to say, "yes" to such a new understanding of who we are.
This bread that comes down from heaven to be the life of the world is, ultimately, not ours. Christ is not confined to the Eucharist or the church. He will not be held prisoner in a box. Through his death he becomes one with the earth and all therein.
When we allow ourselves to come to this table, then we find an abundance of life that can be experienced in no other way, at no other time, and in no other place. It is food for the expectant, for our life, food for life lived together in the Body of Christ. It is surprising new life. Every time we look at his Body and drink his Blood and say, "Yes, I will share this cup with others just as he shares his very life with me!"