Meditation on the Gift of the Holy Eucharist

Maundy Thursday                                                               April 1, 2010   

Text: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26                                               The Rev. Dr. Ross M. Wright                                                                                              

Tonight, we gather to celebrate the incomparable gift of the Holy Eucharist.  How often you stop to think about what an amazing gift this service is for us?  If your answer is: Not that often, then you’re in good company.  It is easy to overlook the significance of the communion service.  Why is this?   I think that there are at least two reasons. 

For one thing, we tend to focus on the significance of the original Last Supper– Christ’s self-offering that night in the upper room.  And rightly so: without the historical event then and there we would have nothing to celebrate here and now. 

A second reason why we may underestimate the importance of the Eucharist has to do with our identity as Protestants – particularly, Protestants with a high view of the ministry of the word of God.  We may have an allergic reaction to anything that smacks of sacramentalism – the idea that the bread and wine are almost magically endowed with power. 

Some years ago, I spent a week at an Episcopal monastery in Durham, North Carolina.  And as the custom in many monastic houses, I attended the daily service of Holy Eucharist, as well as some of the other worship services.  One morning, one of the brothers said: “Hey, Ross: there’s an exposition this afternoon from 3:00 to 6:00 – why don’t you come?” I assumed he meant an exposition of the Holy Scripture.  But when I arrived, the brothers were sitting in silence, gazing at the altar, where the consecrated elements of bread and wine were on display.  For three hours, we gazed upon the elements in silence.  Now, I’m sure that the presence of God can be experienced in such an exposition. But there are good reasons why the Anglican Reformers (particularly Cranmer) rejected the notion that the elements should be “reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.”[1]

Okay, so, there are valid reasons for being suspicious of a crude sacramentalism, and we can thank God that the Reformation addressed the distorted Eucharistic the0logy of the Medieval Catholic Church.  Duly noted.

But there is also a danger of underestimating the power of the Eucharist and failing to recognize that something is really happening here.  By focusing exclusively on the past event of Calvary, we can miss the full reality of what is happening in the present.  Jesus Christ gave himself for us on that original Holy Week, humbling himself to the point of death on the cross.  Jesus Christ continues to give himself to us by showing up to meet with us, week after week, in the Eucharist – and this, too, is a sign of his humility. 

Do you think he ever finds us tedious? We know that we can grieve the Holy Spirit by the way we conduct ourselves in the communion service.  Case in point: the believers in Corinth were coming to the Eucharist drunk.  Even worse, the wealthy members of the congregation were arriving first and eating all the food before the poorer members, many of whom were slaves, arrived.  Consequently, the poor were marginalized.  Paul warns that receiving communion in an unworthy manner can actually be dangerous to your health:

Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.[2]

It is serious business to come into the presence of the Living God.

Something is really happening in this service.  Can we say what it is?  Can we open ourselves to it, or to him, more fully?   “This is my body . . . This is my blood.”  “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you.”[3]  What does that mean exactly?  As noted, neither Jesus nor Paul teaches transubstantiation.  Fair enough.  But what does Jesus mean here?  What an odd thing to say!  We are used to it, but how strange it must have sounded in the disciples’ ears when they first heard it.  I do not know of anything like it in rabbinical literature of the time. 

We know this: The night before he died, Jesus not only offered himself for the sins of the world, he also provided for a meal in which future generations of believers would be able to enjoy and experience the benefits of his sacrifice. 

There is a passage in Augustine’s Confessions that illuminates what is happening in the Eucharist.  The passage comes at the point when Augustine is narrating how far he wandered from God and the Church as a young man. 

I realized that I was far away from thee in the land of unlikeness, as if I heard thy voice from on high: “I am the food of strong men; grow and you shall feed on me; nor shall you change me, like the food of your flesh into yourself, but you shall be changed into my likeness.”[4]

In other words, the bread and wine of the Eucharist are not like other food, which we ingest and change to conform to our body’s needs.  Rather, food of the Eucharist changes us.  As we receive Christ, by faith, in the Eucharist, we are made into his likeness: “that he may dwell in us and we in him,” as the Rite One prayer of consecration expresses it.[5]  

            Additional light is shed on the mystery of the Eucharist from our experience of intimate human relationships.  If you are close to a person long enough, you begin to become like that person.  Don’t you know people who have been married long enough that they begin to take on some of the personality traits of their partner?  There is some truth in the old bromide: Be careful whom you marry, because you will end up like her or him. 

            In the Holy Eucharist, the risen Christ draws near, in and under the elements of bread and wine.  Christ becomes our contemporary.  How is this possible?  How does it happen?  These are not questions for us to ask, let alone answer.  Christ is present.  The question we are to ask is: Who are you, Lord, for us, tonight in this service?   More importantly, Jesus Christ is asking us the question: Who do you say that I am? 

            The service of Holy Communion bears witness to who Christ is for us.  He is the man, who is also God, who dons the towel and stoops to wash our dirty feet.  Most people’s feet are not their most attractive feature.  And even gorgeous people can have ugly feet.  It is one of the parts of our anatomy that we frequently prefer not to show in public.   When we hear Jesus say that he washes our feet, we are to hear the promise that he touches those areas of our lives that we are ashamed of and wish to hide from others, and cleanses us. 

            So, tonight, we celebrate the great gift of Christ present among us in the service of Holy Eucharist.  And this is not just about us, about our personal sins, or our congregation.  The gift of the Eucharist is given to us for sake of the world.  For as Paul reminds us, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim Christ’s death until he comes again.”