A reflection on our understanding of Holy Communion

Sunday 19^th 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.