1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
In our Book of Common Prayer, in “Concerning the Service of the Church,” it says, “The Holy Eucharist is the principle act of Christian worship (p. 13).” Though this was not always the case in the Episcopal Church, the adoption of the 1979 prayer book established weekly communion as the standard for our Sunday worship. During the protestant reformation, churches had moved from the mysterious to the intellectual. The emphasis in worship in Protestant Churches was on the study of the Holy Scriptures through which the Holy Spirit would reveal God to the people. For some, more fundamental churches, music, testimonies, and highly charge preaching sought to stir up a deeply emotional personal response to the Holy Spirit that people might come to know Christ. Communion took a back seat to sermons; communion was an act of remembrance. The Anglican Church, however, stood between the Catholic Church that maintained its belief that in communion the people actually consumed the body and blood of Christ and the Calvinists, Anabaptists and others who believed communion to be symbolic. Our Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church continue to remain silent on the doctrine of transubstantiation – of the belief that the consecrated elements are literally transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ, but we do acknowledge the sacred nature of communion and the holy mystery through which we receive Christ in the breaking of the bread.
Even our liturgy suggests we have a foot in each camp. We begin our service with the liturgy of the word. We pray, we read scriptures, our preachers expound on the readings, we affirm our faith, pray, and then confess our sins. For many Protestant churches, prayer, scriptures, song, and sermons or testimonies, represent the elements of their worship. For us, this is the first half of our service and it might be considered the Protestant portion of our worship. For some Episcopalians this is enough, but for most of us, what follows is equally, if not more important. In the second half of our service – or what might be thought of as our Catholic side, we celebrate the Eucharist. We do this in all seriousness with great reverence – for it is more than mere symbolism. To receive communion is highly personal, it is to allow Christ to enter into us, to nourish us, to become a part of us. It is also something we do as a community. It is not only a part of our worship together at St. Andrew’s; it is a part of the worship we know is taking place across this nation and the world. Although there are variations in the actual prayers being used in different parishes in our Anglican Communion, we can walk into any Anglican Church and follow the service – without understanding the language. When we share in communion, we are participating in Christ’s Body, the Church.
I must admit, however, that when I read today’s Gospel, it makes me uncomfortable. This is now the fourth Sunday in row that Jesus says he is the bread of life, only this passage becomes explicit. Participating in communion is not, as early the Christian were accused of doing, cannibalism. But the graphic nature of what Jesus says here is unmistakable. The people ask each other, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus replied, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life . . . for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” It is even difficult to neatly tuck this passage away as part of what we say is the Holy Mystery in our faith. If Jesus is speaking in metaphors, as he usually does – what does he mean? His disciples have difficulty understanding him. The very next verse after our reading for today says, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’”
I myself had to turn to the scholars for this one – and when I did, I found it far it easier to comprehend than I expected. Like so many passages, it is one best read in context – in the context of the larger text (the Gospel of John), and in context of the time. Remember that Jesus was to offer himself as a sacrifice for us, an act we remember when we partake of communion. John does not include the references to communion in his portrayal of the Last Supper as found in the other Gospels. But the 6th Chapter of his Gospel is full of communal references. Christians had already begun celebrating communion when the Gospels were written – so when they were written, they provided references to help early Christians understand such practices. In the 6th chapter of John, references to communion began with the feeding of the five thousand where Jesus blessed the bread, broke it, and then served those gathered. After the people followed Jesus to the other side of the sea, in
Sacrifices were regularly offered to God to atone for sin. At a sacrifice, the people would make a burnt offering in which the best cut of meat was allowed to be completely consumed by fire as an offering to God. Some of the meat (or produce depending on what the people had to offer) was given to the priests to support them in their service to the church. But on high holy days, the rest of the meat was consumed by those gathered. To sacrifice to God was to participate in a feast – it might even be viewed as the origins of our church pot lucks. Everyone brought something and everyone would partake. An unblemished lamb was the gold standard of giving at a sacrifice and most especially at the Passover Feast.
The references in John by Jesus to people eating his flesh were a reference to him being offered up to God as a sacrificial lamb to atone for the sins of the people. It is no wonder the people had trouble understanding his words, for Jesus was talking about what would be, not what had been.
References to drinking his blood had yet another meaning. Blood was considered life itself. Jewish law prohibited people from consuming the blood of animals; it required them to drain the blood of animals being slaughtered into the ground. To drink the blood was, therefore, to take the life of Christ into a person’s very being. It was to make Christ apart of oneself.
Making Christ a part of us, as happens in the sacrament of Holy Communion, is the reason Eucharist is the principle act of our Christian worship. Jesus, in John, is making it clear to the people that he is our sacrificial lamb. He gives his life so that he might enter into our lives and we might have life in him.
