Skip to main content

A reflection on our understanding of Holy Communion


Sunday 19th August, 2012
John 6.51-58

Jesus said to the Jews:  

‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’.


The passages that John’s Gospel contain about Jesus as the bread of life are pretty radical and would have really shocked his Jewish listeners. The early Christians were thought of as cannibals because of the fact that they met together and ate the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The story of the Last Supper and Jesus’ commandment to his disciples to remember him when eating and drinking, along with these passages from John (that we have been following in the lectionary) lay the foundation for the Church’s worship and in particular for the tradition of meeting together and eating together to remember Jesus. This is of course what we do in a more formal way in our church, week by week. We come together and remember Jesus’ words at the Last Supper and we share in that Last Supper through the ritualised eating of bread and wine (As described by the Synoptic Gospel writers and by St Paul). 

If we think too long and too literally about what we do as Christians in the Eucharist we can entertain some extreme thoughts on the whole thing and the Church through history has had to ensure that fanaticism does not overtake our understanding of the Eucharist. So, what is happening here? What does it mean to inherit eternal life through the body and blood of Jesus Christ? What does it mean to say that we must eat the flesh and blood of the Son of Man?

Well, there are many ways that we can think about this. One thing that certainly emerges from our Gospel reading today, is that such an understanding facilitates real and actual communion with God: ‘those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me’. Certainly, this ritual that we celebrate is not an empty one; it is instituted by God to enable our greater communion and union with him, through His son.

Moreover, this physical connection with Jesus’ sacrifice is not simply a reminder of what he has done for us; it is so much more than that. We participate in the new life that comes from this sacrifice, and are actually changed by this worship. Christian spirituality is as much about how we change as persons on earth as it is about our eternal identities. So, we change now through our worship, through our real and actual sharing in Christ’s body and blood, and we are being changed for the future, too, we are being transformed into eternal beings who will be raised on the last day.

We may wish to reflect upon how in our normal lives, what we eat and how we spend our time has an actual physical impact upon who we are. If we eat only chocolate we may indeed get fat and unhealthy; similarly if we exercise and eat a balanced diet we are likely to be more healthy.  Likewise, if we come to church for spiritual food, there will be an impact upon our very nature, our personalities, our identities.  Taking part in this ritual of the Eucharist, eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ we are actually changed. It is not just something intellectual that we agree to in Church, in worship, it is something much more than that. In this ritual God gives us a way for actual and real communion with Him through His son: we are united with God; we are transformed; we become inheritors of eternal life. The focus on our real bodies should encourage us to remember that we will be raised again with real bodies, as Jesus was, recognisable but different, but in some sense still in the flesh. We will not just become spiritual entities in the after life; we will remain in some senses actual and bodily.

Jesus said to the Jews: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’.

We come into this place then for something very real, through this common act of eating and drinking, for communion with God and with one another. It is not esoteric, but fundamentally reflective of our physical realities: God knows we need to eat and drink to live and so he gives us a spiritual food for eternal live.









Comments

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Radical Story-telling?

Public Domain   The Flight into Egypt  File: Adam Elsheimer - Die Flucht nach Ägypten (Alte Pinakothek) 2.jpg Created: 31 December 1608 Which of the Gospel writers include an account of the birth of Jesus? When were they writing, for what audience? Mark’s Gospel is almost universally considered to be the earliest Gospel and it’s understood that both Matthew and Luke used it as a source text. But Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus, he begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Only Matthew and Luke have birth narratives and they are different whilst sharing some common features: Mary and Joseph are to be married and there’s a miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem. But that’s about it. Jesus is born in a house in Matthew’s account whilst he is placed in a manger in Luke’s because there’s ‘no room at the inn’. Mary’s thoughts and feelings are not mentioned in Matthew at all, whilst from Luke we get the story of the Visitation, Annunciation and the wonderfu...
2 comments
Read more

Silence

Lent Study Group One of my top 10 books of the last 10 years has to be: 'A Book of Silence' by Sara Maitland. I first heard Sara talk at Greenbelt many years ago and I was fascinated then by who she was - an eccentric woman, speaking with intensity and insight, offering an alternative and captivating viewpoint on the human experience. In this book she explores silence in all sorts of ways: by living on her own; by visiting the desert; through analysing the desert traditions within early Christianity; and through attending to what happens to the body and the mind in and through extended silence and isolation. Her book begins: I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn't know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obvious...
1 comment
Read more

Christmas Video Message

Text version- Hello from St Andrew’s Church in Rugby , where once again I’m surrounded by Christmas trees. This year there are a couple that pick up the WW1 remembrance theme using poppies as decorations. 2014 has been a significant year for the UK and for Europe as we’ve reflected on the significance of the first and the second world wars. The not uncontroversial Sainsbury’s advert reminded the nation that the story of Christmas can do extraordinary things; even in war it can unite enemies, as in the famous Christmas Day truce in 1914. At Christmas we do enter a mystical moment, a moment of opportunity, where the message of God’s love and care for each one of us comes really close. The vulnerable child, the nativity scenes, the bringing of gifts, they tell us that we can still believe in the power of love to transform human experience. At Christmas 1914 on the Western front, some soldiers dared to look their enemies in the face and wish them happy Christmas. In our soci...
1 comment
Read more