1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35
+ Several years ago, a friend of mine made the suggestion
of a book to me that somewhat changed my life. Now, my friend has not read the book
yet. I believe he saw a review of it in some publication. But he said something
like, “Have you heard about this book? It’s a kind of weird and eccentric book
about the Eucharist. I think you’d like it.” Well, I got it. And yes, I did
like it. I liked it a lot.
The book was Take This
Bread, by Sara Miles.
If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. Even if you
don’t agree with some of it, I still think it’s a good book to read. It’s an unusual book. In fact I had never read
anything quite like it before.
It’s a spiritual autobiography in which Miles, who was
raised essentially a Jewish atheist and is living this very secular life as
restaurant chef and writer, suddenly and without any real reason wanders into
St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. In that church. Sara Miles received Holy
Communion for the first time. And, in receiving the bread and the wine of the
Eucharist, she was transformed and converted. Or as she writes:
Early one winter morning….I walked
into St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church. I had no earthly reason to be there. I’d
never heard a Gospel reading, never said the Lord’s Prayer. I was certainly not
interested in becoming a Christian – or, as I thought of it a religious
nut….And then we gathered around the table. And there was more singing and
standing, and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands,
saying, ‘The Body of Christ,’ and handing me a goblet of sweet wine, saying
‘the blood of Christ,’ and then something outrageous and terrifying happened.
Jesus happened to me.”
Jesus happened to her.
Tonight we commemorate Jesus happening to us. We commemorate an event in our lives as
Christians that has changed us and affected us and transformed us and made our
spiritual lives better, just as it did for Sara Miles. Tonight, we commemorate that incredible and
amazing miracle—the institution of the Eucharist. Tonight, we remember the fact
that Jesus took bread, broke it, gave it and said, “This is my body,” and that
he did the same with the wine and said, “This is my blood,”
Every Sunday, in our two congregations of St. Stephen’s and
St. Mark’s, we participate in this incredible, holy event. We come together. We celebrate together this mystery.
We come forward and take this bread and
drink from this cup and, in doing so, we take the Body and Blood of Christ.
Every Sunday, our congregations celebrate a mystery, a
miracle and an incredible conduit in which God still continues to come to us in
this tangible, real way. In this bread
and wine we share, Jesus happens to us. He is present with us in a unique and
wonderful way. And recognizing this
presence, how can we be anything other than in awe of it. We should be blown away by what is happening
on our altars. And we should remind ourselves that, no matter what we believe, Jesus
is our spiritual food.
What I love about Sara Miles’ book is that people are still
being converted and changed and transformed by this holy event. I’m sure there
are people out there who see what we do as archaic. There are even some Christians out there who
say we don’t need Holy Communion every Sunday.
I disagree. We need Holy Communion every Sunday. One of the
reasons I came back to Church and have stayed in the Church as long as I have
is this one act of the Church. Even when I wandered away from the Church and
journeyed about in my own spiritual wasteland, I oftentimes found myself
craving what I had always experienced in the Eucharist. And it was this deep
desire for the Eucharist that brought me back to the Church in my twenties.
The reason we come to church is so we can experience
Christ’s presence. What better way than in in the Bread and the Wine and in one
another? The reason we come to church is to be strengthened in our everyday
faith life. We come to church to be fed spiritually, so that we can be
sustained spiritually. And the amazing fact is, people are still being
transformed by this event.
Each of us are transformed by what we do here. And so is
anyone who comes to our altars and experiences Jesus as he comes to us in this
bread and wine.
This is why Holy Communion is so important. This is why we
celebrate this miracle every Sunday. There is nothing else like this kind of
worship in the Church. It is one of the most intimate forms of worship we can
know. Jesus truly comes among us and feeds us with his very self. We form a bond with Jesus in Communion that is
so strong and so vital to our spiritual lives.
But Jesus tells us tonight, on the eve of his death, on the
eve of his leaving us, that he will not leave us without something. Rather, he
will leave us with a sign of his love for us.
As John tells us tonight, “Having loved his own who were in
the world, he loved them to the end.”
He loved us even at the end so that he could leave us
something to nourish us and sustain us until he comes to us again. He does so in this bread that is his Body and
this cup that is his Blood. But Holy Communion is more than just being fed in
our bodies. What we learn at these altars
of ours, when celebrate the Eucharist together and we share Holy Communion
together is that, Jesus is our Bread of Life, our cup of Salvation, that Jesus is the Body given for us and the
Blood shed for us, whenever we are starving or thirsting spiritually.
When we feel empty and lost, Jesus comes to us and refreshes
us. Jesus feeds our spirit with that presence of absolute love in our lives.
In other words, what Jesus is saying to us is: I am what
will fulfill you.
Jesus then becomes the very staple of our spiritual lives. Jesus
is the one who feeds that hunger we have deep within us, who quenches that
seemingly unquenchable thirst that drives us and provokes us. Jesus fills the voids of our lives with his
life-giving Presence.
But it’s more than just a “Jesus and me” moment. This love
that we experience in this Communion, is love that we can’t just hug to ourselves
and bask in privately. This love we experience in this Eucharist is a love that
is meant, like the Bread and the Cup, to be shared with others.
“Love one another,” is Jesus’ commandment to us in those
moments before he is betrayed, in those hours before he is tortured, on the eve
of his brutal murder.
“Just as I have loved you, you should love one another. By this
everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.”
Communion—and the love we experience in it—is not just
something we do here in church on Sunday mornings or on Maundy Thursday. It is something we take with us when we go
from here. It is something we take out into the world from here. As Christians,
we are to share the Body and the Blood of Christ wherever we go because we
carry those elements within us. And
because we carry those elements within us, we are to feed those who are not
just hungry of body, but are hungry of mind and spirit as well.
We are to share the Body and Blood of Jesus with all of
those we encounter in the world. And we
do it simply by loving. By loving and accepting fully and completely. That is how we live this Eucharist in our
lives in joyful thanksgiving.
So, as we go from here this evening, during the rest of this
Holy Week and especially during the holy season of Easter, let us go out into
the world remembering what we carry within us. Let us remember WHO we are carrying
within us. Let us remember what
nourishes us, what sustains us, what quenches our own spiritual hunger and
thirst. Let us go out, refreshed and
filled with life-giving bread and life-refreshing cup—with Jesus, who feeds us
with his very self. But let us go out also into the world ready to share that
bread and cup that gives such life to us. Let us show it in your actions and show
it in our words. Let us show it by
living out that commandment of love to all. Let that Presence of Jesus within us
nourish those around us just as it nourishes us.
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