What an awesome thing it is that God has chosen to reduce himself to a piece of bread for us! The Creator of all placed on an altar table, upon our hands for us to eat and into a box for us to adore? I believe it as surely as the shepherds knelt believing before God veiled in flesh in a stable. Christ’s presence in the world brings all that is to a point. There is an intersection of the macroscopic and the microscopic. Over the last century scientific research has illuminated this revealing a similarity in the patterns of movement within atoms and among galaxies. All that is, come to a point, in a piece of bread this morning in St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill. It goes beyond belief and reason.
This is the second Sunday I’m covering for Fr David’s leave over which I’m focusing on two aspects of Christian life we need to keep central to our lives – Christ’s Sacrifice and Presence in the Eucharist. Consideration of these aspects flows from our Gospel readings from Saint John Chapter 6 used in July and August of Year B to supplement St Mark’s Gospel which is too short to provide 52 Sunday readings.
Keeping the main things as the main things is as necessary to living eternal life as it is of living life and the two main things are Christ’s Sacrifice and Presence. Last Sunday we focused on the first and today it’s to be the second though they’re inseparable. Both sermons will be available online from today at Twisleton.co.uk.
Coming regularly to Mass helps us keep the main things as the main things necessary to living eternal life, namely entering and re-entering again and again Christ’s Sacrifice and Presence, ‘through whom we offer the Father, our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice… to live and work to God’s praise and glory’. In the Eucharist we enter the movement of Christ’s self offering, his Sacrifice. At the end of the Eucharist we are able to receive Holy Communion under the sign of Bread and Wine. This is a special welcoming of God’s presence into our lives, taking Christ at his word in today’s Gospel: ‘This is the bread that came down from heaven… the one who eats this bread will live for ever’ (John 6:58). Earlier in that passage Our Lord is emphatic: ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them’ (v54-56). Each Eucharist pleads Calvary. Pleads, note, not repeats. Christ died once for all. His death cannot be repeated but his Sacrifice abides for ever. It is that sacrifice he renews before us as he blesses bread and wine through the priest. “This is my Body…this is my Blood” offered for you to the Father, given to you in Communion.
It is good Anglican practice to bow or bend the knee as we come into Church or leave Church, or as we approach or leave the Altar, a practice that marks the so-called Real Presence of Christ. Outside the eucharist, it is believed Christ is present, truly present, under the veil of the Aumbry also known as Tabernacle, in St John’s on the wall to the right of the High Altar. Even when the altar lights are blown out the light by the Aumbry burns on where the Sacrament is reserved for Communion of the housebound or for our corporate devotion as in the Benediction or blessing given from the consecrated Host at times. To honour that perpetual presence by bowing or bending the knee when coming and going from before the Tabernacle does not deny that presence elsewhere through the reading of Scripture, in Christian Fellowship, in the beauty of nature, in holy people and so on.
What a mystery it is that God has chosen to reduce himself to a piece of bread for us? The Creator of all placed on an altar table, upon our hands for us to eat and into a box for us to adore? We should believe it, believe it as surely as the shepherds knelt in faith before baby Jesus in the stable. Christ’s presence in the world brings all that is to a point. There is an intersection of the macroscopic and the microscopic. Over the last century scientific research has illuminated this revealing a similarity in the patterns of movement within atoms and among galaxies. All that is, come to a point, in a piece of bread this morning in St John the Evangelist, Burgess Hill. It goes beyond belief and reason and is a stumbling block for unbelievers.
The French love their bread and compliment a good person saying they are ‘as good as a piece of bread’. You and I, brothers and sisters, are to be made this morning as good as a piece of Bread, even the holy bread of eternal life and the chalice of everlasting salvation. Receiving this Food brings a few demands with it. To be as fully repentant of our sins as we can be. To believe what we are doing in receiving, which is expressed by our saying a clear, loud ‘Amen’ when the minister says to us ‘The body of Christ’. It is also widespread practice to fast for an hour before the moment of receiving Holy Communion as a sign to us that this Food stands apart from any other food.
In Holy Communion we welcome the presence of Christ afresh into our hearts. Of course, God is wholly present in all things. God sees and knows and fills all beings by means of Himself and belongs to everything he has made. God doesn’t as it were fill you with a part of himself and me with another part of himself. In him we all live and move and have our being. The doctrinal expression is to talk of God’s essence being present in different modes. God is essentially present in a tree according to the capacity of a plant. God is present in a dog according to the capacity of a sentient creature. God is present in human beings, personally present, as we bear his image. God is present in the Church as his mystical body and in the bread and wine as his sacramental body. Though we talk about this as the Real Presence in the Bread and Wine it shouldn’t be seen as just a local presence though we kneel before the Bread in a way we would not kneel before anything else on earth! The whole of God is present in Holy Communion, entering our hearts, bringing us the Love that stretches across the cosmos and for all eternity! ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day’ (v54)
What an awesome thing it is to receive Holy Communion! How can we make more of this action? I practise what’s been called ‘centering prayer’ which can be used to build from receiving Holy Communion. I close my eyes, settle my mind using sentences like ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ to ward off distractions like thoughts of breakfast or whatever, and reach out with eager longing to the Lord for half an hour. Whilst other forms of prayer build from a bible passage or looking at a cross or candle, centering prayer, with your eyes closed, builds from belief that Christ’s divinity indwells you. ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life …abide in me as I abide in you’ Jesus says and receiving Holy Communion is a regular laying hold of this gift which we can return to in heart and mind during the week. All prayer is an act of will, a reaching of heart, mind and soul into the outpouring of God’s love so evident in the gift of Holy Communion. ‘Christ is in us the hope of glory’ states Colossians 1:27. We can make more of Christ’s Sacrifice and Presence by preparing beforehand things, matters and people to offer up at the Eucharist on a Saturday and also by ongoing prayer after Sunday Mass recalling how Christ’s Presence has been renewed in our hearts through Holy Communion. Coming into Church and sitting or kneeling by the Tabernacle with its everlasting light also helps us return to those precious minutes we keep after receiving Holy Communion at the Eucharist. Whatever you feel in prayer is less important than giving your attention to God for a length of time day by day. In the short time we offer, God is able to refresh his presence within us and engage with us and implant his eternal perspective in the hours ahead. When we miss saying our prayers the pressing things that day seem to eclipse the important things. When we do offer our 10 minutes, half an hour or whatever the day ahead finds us better equipped to sift the important things from things, dare I say it, that are merely urgent! All such prayer flows to and from the Eucharist, the summit of Christian life.
Blessed, praised and hallowed, then, be our Lord Jesus Christ, in his word, especially today through St John, in the Sacrifice and Presence of the Eucharist and in the hearts of all his faithful people, yours and mine, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.
