August 18,
2024
John 6.51-58
+ Forty years ago, I saw a film that has stuck
with me through the decades.
It was a well-known film, Places in the Heart.
The story takes place in west Texas in the
1930s, during the truly terrible, darkest days of the Depression.
Sally Field plays a housewife, whose husband
is the sheriff of their local town.
At the beginning of the film, her husband is
just sitting down to eat with his family when he is called away to deal with a
young drunk black man wielding a gun.
As he gets up from the table, he puts the
dinner rolls in his pockets.
While he is confronting the young man on the
railroad tracks (who is, incidentally drinking wine), the young man’s gun
accidentally goes off and kills the sheriff.
The young man is eventually horribly lynched
for the murder.
Sally Field’s character then takes over her
husband’s cotton farm. Hardships endure.
But she overcomes, with the help of her hired hand and a blind man who comes to
live with her.
At the end of the film, we find Sally Field,
Danny Glover, John Malcovitch and Sally Field’s children gathered at the
Baptist Church with the rest of the congregation.
As the old hymn “In the Garden” plays, there
is panning shot as the bread and the communion juice is passed along the pews
from one person to the other.
As we follow the bread and the drink being
passed from person to person, we suddenly start realizing that some of the
people are people we saw earlier in the film who have died.
For instance, we see a family who as died in
their car during a tornado.
Finally, the camera stops on Sally Field’s
husband and the young man who shot
him.
As the scene fades, they are seated side by
side, sharing Communion.
That film is haunting in many ways.
But it is also one of the most “eucharistic
films” I have ever seen.
For any of you who know me and know me well,
you know that the Eucharist is the center of my entire life.
It is everything to me.
Spiritually, of course.
But also it is the lens through which I see
this created world in which we live.
We are—all of us—fallible human beings
dependent on the sustenance we receive from God, which we find most clearly and
visually experienced in the Eucharist.
And, in this Eucharist, those of us who are
alive and well are joined, for one moment, with those who now participate
without end in the celestial worship.
I believe this with every ounce of my being.
I have experienced this again and again.
And for me, the Eucharist is not symbol, not
some quaint dinner party we participate in here.
For me, the Eucharist is a truly mystical
experience.
It is an instance in which we and God are
joined together, and fed, and sustained, and strengthened to go out and do the
work we have been called to do as Christians.
Today, in our scripture readings, for the
third week in a row, we have heard Jesus expand on his image of seeing himself
as the Bread of Life.
Now, for some preachers, this might be
downright daunting.
After all, how many times can one preach about
the Bread of Life?
Well, I’ll be honest, I actually don’t have a
problem with this.
If I could preach about the connections
between Jesus’ message that he is the Bread of Life and the holy Eucharist
every Sunday I probably could do it.
You probably wouldn’t enjoy it that much.
I realize sometimes that I don’t think I have
even scarped the surface on understanding the mystery of the Eucharist or the
mystery of Jesus’ message to us concerning this Bread of Life.
But, I think it’s important that, on occasion,
we look a bit at what it is the we Episcopalians actually believe about the
Eucharist.
And
it’s important for us to be reminded sometimes of this event we come together
to share every week.
And because the Eucharist is so important to
us, its’ vital to remind ourselves of its importance because, since we do it
every week, we might easily become somewhat complacent about what we are doing.
Habits are easy for us to fall into.
And sometimes we simply go through the motions
of the Eucharist, without considering the importance of our actions.
It is also good for us, as we hear this
somewhat blunt language about flesh and blood to actually consider for a moment
what we believe happens in this Eucharist we celebrate each Sunday and each
Wednesday at this altar.
Over the years, Anglicans have debated about
what actually happens in our Eucharist.
Some have been uncomfortable with the idea of
the so-called “real Presence” of Jesus in the Bread and Wine of Holy Communion.
And to some extent, we still do debate these
issues.
The Anglican view has taken a decided (and
characteristically) middle road between the definitions maintained by the Roman
church—which believed in Transubstantiation—and the various Protestant
denominations—which ranged from the Lutheran “in, with and under” view to the
Calvinist belief that Christ is not present at all in the Eucharist—it’s purely
symbolic.
I think one of the best Anglican summaries of
how Christ might be present in the Bread and the Wine was written by Charles
Price and Louis Weil in their book Liturgy
for Living:
“…in the
question of how Christ is present, Anglican churches have maintained their
characteristic agnosticism.”
I’m going to pause there for a second.
I love that that Price and Weil reference our “characteristic
Anglican agnosticism.”
How many times over the years have I said that
ultimately, we are all agnostics to a large extend?
And there is nothing wrong with that.
Some day I want to write a book about holy
agnosticism.
But to return to Price and Weil:
“When the Christian community meets to do the
whole eucharistic action in obedience to the risen Lord, he comes. He gives
himself to us, again and again. It is part of the mystery of time.”[1]
Price and Weil then add a statement that
summarizes perfectly the Anglican stance on Anglican Eucharistic theology:
“To say
anything more than this in the name of the church would, we believe, transgress
Anglican restraint.”[2]
Or to quote Queen Elizabeth I, as was famously quoted by Dom Gregory Dix,
O.S.B.,
"He was the Word
that spake it;
He took the bread and
brake it;
And what that Word did
make it,
I do believe and take it."
Whatever the case might be, the fact is that
in the majority of Anglican churches, we believe in the Eucharistic Presence in
the Bread and Wine.
We reserve the Eucharist here in this
tabernacle, with a light always shining before it to remind us of the Divine Presence
in the Bread and the Wine that we reserve there.
In those cases in which it is not reserved, it
is a universal understanding in the Anglicanism, that left-over bread and/or
wine is reverently consumed or properly disposed of, rather than simply being
discarded or reused.
This reverence only goes to show that we do
believe Christ, in some way or form, is present in a distinctive way and that
the elements we have—the bread and the wine—are more than just ordinary bread
and wine.
Christ is somehow, in some very real way,
presence in this sacrament.
We don’t know why.
And we don’t know how.
And that is just fine.
But it can set us on slippery road we might
not want to travel.
If we think about it too much, we start
getting nit-picky.
We start worrying about little things, such as
dropped hosts or the crumbs from broken bread.
The important thing about the Eucharist is not
those nit-picky little things.
The importance of the Eucharist is that, at
this altar, we celebrate Christ’s presence.
We take Christ’s presence.
And we then share Christ’s presence with
others.
The is the real meaning of Eucharist and that
is what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel.
The Christ we encounter in the Eucharist
breaks down our barriers.
The Christ we encounter in the Eucharist binds
us all together.
In a sense, this is where our beliefs about
the Eucharist come together.
Sharing the Christ whose Presence sustains us
and feeds us also binds us together.
In the Eucharist, divisions are broken down.
Old wrongs are made right.
Whatever problems we might have with each
other out there have vanished because here, at this altar, we are sharing this
meal and partaking, in a real way, of Christ.
“I am the living bread that came down from
heaven,” Jesus, in today’s Gospel says.
“Whoever eats of this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
What we
eat here at this altar is the living Bread of heaven that has come down to us.
And in this bread and in this wine we have
found life.
We have the eternal life he talks about in
today’s Gospel.
What we do here at this altar is not a private
devotion.
It is not just some warm, sweet “Jesus and me”
moment.
Yes, it sustains and feeds us in our spirits
on an individual basis.
Yes, we experience Jesus on an individual
basis in the Eucharist
But what we do here is more than just for us
as individuals.
It is about us as a whole.
I, as a priest, cannot celebrate the Eucharist
alone.
What we do here, we do together.
We come together, we celebrate, we affirm, we
consent.
We come forward of to feed and then we go out,
fed, to feed.
Just as the Eucharist is not something we do
as individuals, it is also not something that just stops happening once we
leave this church building.
The Eucharist sustains us to do the work
Christ calls us to do as Christians.
The Eucharist gives us life so we can help
life to others.
What we share here isn’t just dead bread and
crushed, fermented grapes.
What we share here is living flesh, the living
Body of Christ.
And this living, holy Presence drives us and
provokes us and causes us to go out and share what we experience here with
others.
So, let us accept our characteristic Anglican
agnosticism in which we can accept that somehow, in some way more powerful and
mysterious than we can even possibly imagine, Christ does give himself to us
here at this altar again and again in a very real and living way.
Let us eat and drink.
And, fed, let us go out to feed others.
Let us embody Christ within us and be Christ
to those who need Christ in this world.
And, by doing so, let us be what we are called
to be now and always.
Amen.
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