Father Peter F. Hansen
Sermon for Maundy Thursday, March 24, 2005
"I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread..."
How many times I have seen and heard people entering our church, where the Body of Christ is reserved on the altar, and as they come in, their voices hush.... and they walk in a different way, reverently, humbly. The proud swagger of the world outside is suddenly gone. There is no doctrine able to deny what they feel: they feel the Presence of the Lord.
We hallow the altar, and all of this space, with the reserved consecrated bread of Holy Communion. We genuflect upon entering and leaving the pews. We make great and elaborate ceremony when entering the chancel and passing before the tabernacle. Christ is here, He is here right now. He is present. So we attend His presence, His real presence , in the sacrament of the altar.
It's a strange thing, nevertheless. This holy, tiny meal is the very earmark of the Christian faith. While everything else we say and do in here makes plausible sense as a mode of worship— songs, readings, sermons, prayers— yet this one things defies earthly description, or worldly examination. What is it? A small pile of white wafers of bread, a silver chalice of sweet wine mixed with water. And over these simple elements we make so much ado, much waving of arms, tracing crosses in the air, covering and uncovering and lifting up and ringing of bells. And then, lo and behold, we call it God and then we eat it.
A religion of great antiquity, Christianity become an institution: immobile and sedate, respectable and unimaginative. This isn't good, and thus we draw to ourselves those who would like to have a safe religion without demands. We should be neither safe nor without demands. The early Christians were not a group of safe individuals, rather they had to rely on each other with their very lives in the balance. And why? Because they leaned on this strange ritual action prescribed to them by their Lord and Master, and for that reason the Romans accused them of being, of all things, cannibals. To the Jews, they were a completely unruly cult of heretics, following a dead man.
Everyone knows the symbols of Holy Communion, the bread and wine. And yet nobody knows just what these things do to us and for us. I surely don't, and neither do you. Jesus said, "Take, eat," not "Take, and understand." He said, "This is my body," not "This represents my body—think about it." So this bread which we so boldly eat is Him , Christ Jesus given for us, and being presented with Him in a form He calls His Body, we don't talk to Him, nor make lengthy prayers to Him: we simply eat Him. And we are right to do so, for He commanded us to do this. And then we drink His very Blood.
Now, you can call it just an ancient ritual. You can classify it a religious action done in faith by adherents as a commemoration of a dead man. The world comforts itself as it excludes this Communion with God from what sensible people think about. If Communion were only the commemoration of a dead man, it would be beneath us all, a mystical relic, a slavish tie to antiquity.
We may at times fail to grasp the significance of what is happening here in this sanctuary? We may lose our train of thought, get caught up in outside concerns, and then it's over, we cross ourselves perfunctorily, and arrive at our pews unmoved, unthinking, unchanged. This is a quiet little mystery that opens the door to eternity, but you can miss it, you can be looking the other way and never see it happen, never feel a thing.
Jesus commanded it, five times in the Bible. His command is very clear. Many important doctrines of the Church have been founded on slimmer scriptural warrant than this central act of all worship.
Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever." John 6:53-58
The Apostles, Church Fathers, the Great Councils, great saints, the entire Church for 2,000 years have established it, sustained it, debated it, examined it, and defended it. And why? Because we were made for this kind of relationship with God. This was how we were created by Him. We have body and we have blood, and we eat and we drink. We need frequent nourishment, and we also crave a relationship with our creator who remains unseen by earthly eyes. Thus, we were made for this sacramental encounter, both by nature and desire. We can eat God for He made us this way. He gave us knees in order to kneel, and hands in order to reach out, and lips in order to sip, and hearts upon which to make a cross. Then that little meal goes to every part of our bodies, our physical and spiritual being, and it travels through our blood .
This action is repeated hundreds of time at this altar, millions of times every day all over the world, billions of times throughout history, and yet every time, it is one communion. Although our fellowship is sundered from other Christians due to time, or distance, or circumstance: our intimate connection with them is real, present , as we all become present to Christ Jesus, by His Body and His Blood. We enter eternity, the eternal transfixed in time, like thousands of spokes on one wheel, with one center, through one source we are in Him.
But what is all of this for, this strange and holy meal? Why should our Savior connect with us in this baffling manner? Who can understand it?
There is a union with our God that is coming, a union that we cannot begin to imagine. It's like witnessing the most beautiful scene, a landscape, the Grand Canyon, a magnificent sunset, a breathtaking waterfall, a gorgeous person, the image of beauty you have never seen in all your life. And instead of fading away, aging and deteriorating, as all things in this world do, leaving you out of the beauty again—instead you discover that the vision is you, your own life that has become the beauty, the eternal, ageless beauty is God in you and you inside of Him. That image, that likeness is not a vision, not a cut flower for a moment lovely, but that fades. This beauty goes on living, creating, fulfilling all your desires, making all things new.
Taking a little supper with Jesus now is a glimpse of that world which lies ahead for you, a world where you feed continuously only on your direct relationship with God Himself.
As we receive His Body and His Blood into ourselves tonight, and every time we receive this Blessed Sacrament, into the very fabric of our bodies, souls, hearts, and minds, we become more like Him. We grow towards Him. And if we will always keep the sacrifice of a beloved body broken, precious blood shed for our sakes, we go out into the world as His ambassadors, as members of His mystical Body. We in Him, and He in us, we encounter others, and may find the grace to meet their needs for this same interaction with the Lord.We may be all the Jesus they will ever know.
We lift up the wafer and pray the Holy Spirit and the Word of God come down on this simple element, endowing it mysteriously with what Christ called His Body . We elevate the cup, and recite His words of institution, "Drink ye all of this, for this is my Blood of the New Covenant which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sin. Do this as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of me," and we believe His word to be true. We are drinking, somehow, spiritually realized, but practical and real, His Blood, His life within my life. And we leave the communion rail, Christ within us, His life within my life. Our altar is blessed with the Real Presence of our Lord's Body in this living Church, His life within our lives.
See the faces of those who enter here. Know that they are sensing, perhaps without understanding, the Presence of Him who hallows this place. At the end of this service, we will take the reserve sacrament from the tabernacle to a place of repose. This altar will, for three days, be empty of that Real Presence, as Christ was taken from us by death for three days. We commemorate His death before His resurrection. But since His return from the grave this Saviour has never departed from His people, His life within our lives, a Real Presence within us, God incarnate, God with us, God as food, God the lifegiver and sustainer, God—whose own Son gives us His Body to eat and His Blood to drink—that we may be in Him and by Him be eternally in God.