John 6:51-58
The Episcopal Church uses the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year lectionary. The Scripture readings that are prescribed for Sunday mornings follow a three-year cycle. Each year the Gospel readings focus on one of the three synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. This is Mark’s year. But Mark’s Gospel is short. So in the middle of the summer we take a break from Mark and read from the 6th chapter of John. (We also always read John during Easter season.)
The sixth chapter of John is often called “The Bread of Life” chapter. It includes the familiar language where Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” In this morning’s passage, Jesus describes his flesh as true food and his blood as true drink.
This is the portion of John’s Gospel that we look to to reflect on what we have come to know and experience as Holy Communion. It’s an interesting contrast and complement to what we find in the synoptic Gospels. The “words of institution” that we hear each Sunday as part of the great Eucharistic prayer come from the account of the Last Supper in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus breaks bread and shares the cup and says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
John’s Gospel includes an account of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples but the focus is on the foot washing. There is no mention of bread or cup. But Jesus talks a lot about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in this sixth chapter of John. The language is stark. You can imagine why his followers were startled.
As we look at this chapter with respect to Communion, it’s worth noting that it takes place in the middle of Jesus’ life and ministry. It is not a memorial. Not something to do “in remembrance of me” after I’m gone. More something to do “with me” now. Eat. Jesus says. Eat. And receive eternal life.
One commentator said that the main temptation for preachers this Sunday will be to try to EXPLAIN the Eucharist. But that is a temptation to be avoided. This is not the time to try to help people understand consubstantiation, or transubstantiation. Or memorialism…
His eagerness is not that they understand how or why it works, just that they EAT. He offers to share himself with them. Just eat.
Thinking about this reminded me of something written by Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, an author someone who has been very active in children’s Christian formation in the Episcopal Church. When I was growing up, children weren’t “admitted” to Communion in the Episcopal Church until after Confirmation. (Have you ever considered how weird that language is!?)
In her book, Offering the Gospel to Children, Pritchard writes:
Imagine if, until your child was six, you never kissed her, but only let her watch older people kissing each other. Then when she had learned to read and write, (and incidentally, had already passed the age when her imagination was most eager to grasp non-verbal expression and make it a part of her deepest self) suppose you sat her down with a special curriculum entitled “Kisses and hugs: signs of love.” She would color pictures of people hugging and kissing and read exemplary stories about families and answer questions about why we choose this way to express our love. Finally, on a special day when you were sure she understood enough about hugging and kissing to be truly “ready” you would hug and kiss her for the very first time. She would wear a new party dress, and Grandma would come to lunch and bring a present, and she would feel so proud and special.
Or would she?
Sacramental actions work directly on our emotions and imaginations: the intellect is only a supplement, important in its own turn for full integration of the experience, but secondary in its contribution to our understanding.
My main point today is not to talk about children receiving Communion (although I do agree with Pritchard). It is to encourage adults to EXPERIENCE communion with childlike imagination. Don’t worry about what it means or how it happens or which description of the sacramental transformation of bread to body is right. Approach Communion as an experience. Open your emotions and imagination to that experience. The experience of Jesus sharing himself with us. Right now. In this life.
As you undoubtedly know it is common in many strands of Christianity to speak of whether or not someone has “accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.” It’s often asked in a challenging tone of voice. Have YOU accepted Jesus Christ as your PERSONAL Lord and Savior? The focus of that question is on the act, the choice, to bring Jesus into your life. Most Episcopalians are uncomfortable with such brazen evangelicalism… but there are several ways we might respond.
One is to recognize and say that every time we willfully and joyfully receive communion… we quite literally accept Jesus into our bodies and into our lives. We choose, we act, to receive Jesus into our lives. We consume the real presence of Jesus.
“Real presence” is a good Episcopal term. But do we mean it? In Communion we consume the real presence of Christ.
Jesus promises that when we eat his body and drink his blood we will receive life. We will receive eternal life. We will share in his eternal life. And I will raise them up on the last day, he says in today’s Gospel, but that seems almost an afterthought. When Jesus offers himself, he offers his life, eternal life, shared with ours. The experience of Holy Communion is taking Jesus into our lives.
As one of the old prayers in the Prayer Book says, “Grant us gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of… Jesus Christ and to drink the blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.”
Martin Copenhaver is a preacher and professor from the UCC tradition. In a published sermon on this morning’s Gospel, he writes:
So what's going on here? Well, for one, the imagery employed by Jesus in this passage forces a kind of "in-your-face" confrontation with the incarnation. Gone are the abstract, almost disembodied terms about "abiding" in him that Jesus used earlier. Now he uses such starkly corporeal images that we cannot escape the implications of incarnation. Jesus was not a disembodied spirit. To encounter Jesus is, in part, to encounter the flesh and blood of him. The startling images he uses are meant to get our attention in that way.
In this passage, however, language is pressed to its limits to express the indissoluble participation of one life in another. For those who receive Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from a believer's life than last Tuesday's breakfast can be plucked from one's body. It is the ultimate communion--the coming together, the union of the Savior and the saved.
