Preached on Sunday, August 19, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.
I can remember very well the very first Eucharist I ever attended. For the sixth grade, I was transferred from public school to St. John’s, a Roman Catholic parochial grade school. The new school was very strange. I had to wear a uniform, which included at tie, rather than my usual blue jeans and Ked’s tennis shoes. And we went to church at school. A lot.
At St. John’s, every student went to mass twice a week. On Mondays, the 8th and 1st grades went, on Tuesdays, the 7th and 2nd grades, on Wednesdays the 6th and 3rd grades, on Thursdays, the 5th and 4th grades, and on Fridays, all eight grades attended en masse.
Though Communion services in my Southern Baptist church were held periodically throughout the year, usually on Sunday nights, I had never attended one. Probably because, as far as my family was concerned, Sunday night was for the Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza, not more church.
On that first Wednesday at St. John’s, Father St. Charles invited us up to surround the altar during the Eucharistic prayer. There was another non-catholic student who had entered the school that year (that’s what they called us, ‘non-catholic’, not Baptists or Methodists and never, ever Protestants); she was a little girl in the third grade, a Baptist like me, whose name I can’t remember, but whose face I can still plainly see in my mind’s eye. She had red hair, and was going to be spending some time in the orthodontist’s chair in the not too distant future. I knew she was a flummoxed as I was as we gathered around the freestanding altar as Father Saint Charles began the prayer of consecration.
Before much was said, I noticed that the little red haired girl had moved up to the corner of the altar on which a candle burned – and she was trying to blow it out. Like me and the rest of our co-religionists, candles were things that appeared on birthday cakes, not altars, never altars. So, in her unsophisticated, third-grade way, she thought she ought to blow it out, I guess. Being a much more sophisticated sixth grader, I knew this was unwise. Though I didn’t, at that age, know what an inquisition was, I think I sensed what these Roman Catholics were capable of. I knew that if that little red haired girl blew out the altar candle, it was not going to be good for the ‘non-catholics’ at St. John’s, myself included. I caught her eye, and gave her a stern look and a shake of my head and mouthed the words, “Quit it!” She screwed up her mouth in frustration, but she yielded to her older, wiser fellow non-catholic’s will and stopped blowing at the candle.
I could then concentrate on what was going on on the altar. There was a gold cup and a gold plate with small white wafers on it. The gold of the vessels seemed to match the thick gold band on Father Saint Charles hairy knuckle, which I wondered about since I knew he wasn’t married, couldn’t be married like Brother Owens, my Baptist preacher, was. Father Saint Charles lifted the plate of wafers at one point, and bells rang, and he lifted the cup at another point, and the bells rang again. The words he spoke were English by this point, but they were a rather elevated, fancier English than the plainer, purposely less elevated language that Brother Owens used when he preached. “Do this for the remembrance of me…” Bells and candles and gold plates and white wafers… These were all very strange and interesting and impressive to my sixth grade self.
The rite of Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper arises in the earliest days of Christianity. In some of the earliest Christian literature, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, contains a description of the last Passover meal, and the special emphasis it was given by Jesus. Matthew, Mark and Luke all narrate this scene using the almost identical language and terms. “This is my body… this is my blood… take and eat… do this for the remembrance of me…”
Interestingly, John’s gospel contains no Last Supper. What it does contain, in typical Johannine style, is a discourse. John’s chapter 6, from which our gospel reading is taken this morning, is an extended discourse on Jesus as the true son of God, as the Word made flesh who comes to feed us with his body and blood, so that we might join him in eternal life. After the feeding of the multitudes which begins the chapter, a series of discussions ensues about bread from heaven, about Jesus’s coming into the world, and about his body and blood, and its meaning for those who eat and drink of it.
For those of us who participate in the Eucharist every Sunday, the basic idea behind it has become rather ordinary. But if you were me in the sixth grade, or the Galilean crowd listening to Jesus in the first century, they would have been maybe exciting and alluring, but also disturbing, unsettling and certainly unprecedented. And as we will see in our gospel reading next week, for some, they proved unbelievable.
Though John’s gospel contains no Last Supper, no first Eucharist, this sixth chapter of John, takes the same shape and form as our Sunday Eucharist. Jesus tells us to hear his declarations and to believe in him, then he tells us to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. Similarly, this morning, we will hear the word of God in our Scripture readings, we will declare our belief in the recitation of the ancient creed, we will bless wine and break bread, and share it with one another.
Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus makes his relationship to the Father quite clear, quite explicit. Jesus is the one sent from the Father; he is the bread come down from heaven. Jesus makes clear his relationship to us in our gospel passage this morning. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me… so whoever eats me will live because of me.” (6:56-57)
The word menein in Greek, which we translate here as "abides" appears dozens of times in the John’s gospel, more than in any of the other gospels. And it indicates a central point of John’s gospel. There is a mutual indwelling between Jesus and the Father, and that indwelling is shared by Jesus with his disciples, with all who eat of his body and drink of his blood. This is the Word made flesh becoming one with all flesh, all who eat and drink, all who share the body and blood. We are what we eat, and what we eat is the body of Christ himself. Nowhere in all of Scripture is the relationship between God and the children of God, the creator and the creation, the Son of God and those who follow him, described with greater intimacy.
A few years back, a popular historian wrote a book about medieval history called A World Lit Only By Fire. The title alone makes one of the book’s main points. The world was a treacherous place, dangerous, and when night descended, even more dangerous. The nighttime was filled with dangerous animals, pitfalls, uncertainty, destruction, death, annihilation. It was out of this world that the prescriptions for altar candles arose. Two candles on the altar to symbolize that something special takes place here, something that is certain, something that is sacred, something that preserves and restores life, something worth seeing, something worth hallowing. The candles burn to indicate that here is sustenance for this treacherous life, sustenance even unto the life eternal, the body and blood of Christ himself. Offered to us so that we might ever abide in him and he in us, not only now, but forever.
So, come to the altar of God, draw near. And whatever you do, don’t blow out the candles!
Rather, taste and see that the Lord is good. And "make a melody to the Lord in your hearts." (Eph 5:19) Sing again in your heart the words of our sequence hymn: “I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord; thou my great Father; thine own may I be; thou in me dwelling, and I one with thee…” (#488, The Hymnal 1982).
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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