Eucharist and Identity

March 11, 2018

Cate Thorn

Lent 4     Ephesians 2:1-10     John 3:14-21

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This fourth Sunday in our Lenten consideration of liturgy and identity, we are to consider the words, the enacting of our eucharist, the last supper of Jesus with his disciples, bread and wine, sharing and being sent. Some years ago when I was in parish ministry I was asked whether I would host a parishioner’s Girl Guides troop and talk to them about the church, religious symbolism and so forth, as a part of one of their badges. That sounds like fun, I thought to myself, a group of youngsters, a bit of an exploration of the church, talk about the things I thought I knew. Things began well enough once the shock that I was female and not grey haired had worn off. Then we went up to the altar area, I showed them a few of the vestments, had to negotiate a curly one about how I could be priest when one young lady told me her Catholic priest had told her the bible said women couldn’t be, and then there was the young lady, I’d guess 12-13 year old, sitting a little way back, separate from the bright eyed younger ones. With that wonderful dark scowl only girls of that age can perfect. This delightful crossed arm sceptic spoke up, “What is it with the bread and wine, the body and blood stuff, what’s so important about it? I mean it seems like it’s the main thing, the most important thing, how can eating the body and drinking the blood of a dead person be so important, it’s like celebrating cannibalism, it’s gross.”

Yay, I thought weakly to myself, I love questions, what on earth could I say? How could I translate, what would I translate, had I considered it deeply enough so I knew myself in that embedded way you need to so you can make simple sense of it? Did I really know quite why it was so important? Where do you begin when a young person says something like this, especially when you’re trying to give some context of religion and the importance of religion or its significance? I honestly am not sure what I said but I’m pretty sure it was a stumbling half complete response. You know it’s kind of plagued me. I’m still not sure what to say. Partly because I suspect she had a vested interest in disruption rather than enquiry, partly because it’s really hard to explain something, for it to make any sense without a shared context.

From her perspective how is what I’m saying important, how is it credible unless we have a shared context to speak within, an agreed story from which we make meaning or seek understanding? For this ritual we enact stands in the context of and continuity with a specific narrative. One that says God’s threaded through time, is agent in history in a particular way. A narrative that interprets the world and history and what has and is taking place in a way that makes meaning for those who share it. Not just know and tell the narrative but also assent that what it speaks of is real. Without such context, story, backdrop then the kind of ritual we’re engaged with is challenging, potentially meaningless, full of wrong meaning, well, meaning which isn’t helpful.

So where do you begin? Without context, without a longer story, a deeper narrative a greater understanding of what we do and why, I think words will be just that. Of course a good story well told is always engaging but we claim this story is different, this story is about a different way of living and being, this is a story, as John puts it in today’s gospel of light in darkness that we can choose for. We can with words teach the story so it can become known but how have we ingested it? How do we embody and live, communicate the story that we have taken into ourselves, live as if it is true?

On this fourth Sunday in Lent in our exploration of liturgy expressing identity we’ve arrived at the sharing of the Peace - in times gone by the kiss of peace, but we may want to pass on that. It’s time to make up, to greet one another as people reconciled, a community of common identity gathered as one. We turn our focus to the altar, the open table of God’s hospitality. We bring and offer ourselves, we bring and offer gifts of bread and wine, a share of our abundant resource for our Mission neighbours. The table is laid for our shared meal, bread and wine are placed upon the altar and all is made ready. We gather and hear spoken our story, the story of God’s blessing, provision and presence throughout history and we give thanks and praise. We hear told the story of Jesus’ last supper with his gathered friends, we give thanks and praise for what has been, what is now and for the hope and promise of what is yet to come. We pray God’s blessing upon us and upon the offerings we bring as we remember, re-enact, we name and know God present with us in this moment. We break bread and pour wine, share the food and drink of divine sustenance with all who find place and welcome at this table.

Around this table we re-enact, make real in our time that which Jesus did with his disciples. It is this and more though. We say we take into ourselves in the bread and wine the body and blood, the life of this God made flesh in time human being. We who call ourselves the body of Christ in the world do this. There is something curiously more to this than simply action and word. When we engage in this drama we do so together, it is not an individual enterprise, we engage not just with our intellect, not to bear witness to magical things happening to the bread and wine over there on the altar. We gather around this table to hear a story of identity revealed in the person of Jesus and we choose whether to take this into ourselves, as if in doing so we are willing to be changed, to be and live this way. What do we know of this Jesus of whom we speak, what might be the outworking of ingesting such identity require of us?

Roger Haight boldly proposes, ”It is no less than God with whom we are confronted in Jesus.” “A profound faith statement,” Barbara Fiand expands, “by which we hold that the Holy One, the source of everything that is, emerged most fully in Jesus of Nazareth. We hold that in everything Jesus stood for, lived, proclaimed, he was and still is the clearest expression of God’s presence in our midst. Our faith proclaims God as the source of the perfection, goodness, compassion, mercy and love made manifest in Jesus. The divine in him graced and sanctified his humanity; allowed it to … manifest no less than God. And … even as Jesus embodied divinity in his humanity, he challenges us to follow him. … Since we are human too, we are … called to the truth and integrity and holiness of our humanity. The life of Jesus was the “presencing” of God. Ours is called to be that as well, as we embrace the fullness of our humanity and walk into the Christ story that becomes … a saving grace for all of us.” [1]

We might understand that in the Eucharist, through the Holy Spirit, two things are at work. Bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ and those who are gathered become more fully the Body of Christ. There is no visible change. The bread and wine retain their appearance and effects. Reference to those gathered as Christ’s Body is clearly symbolic. The effects will ultimately be visible only in the way we live our lives and embrace the new covenant to which once again at this eucharistic meal we have committed ourselves. Which makes sense for those of us who know the story but what does it look like to those without.

Take John’s confronting gospel today. Although it includes the much loved verse “for God so loved the world that he gave His only Son that whoever believed in him may not perish but have eternal life,” it continues that without belief in Jesus you’ll not receive eternal life - in or out, your choice. For someone without a context or back story there’s so much in this that’s not known. What does eternal life mean and do you even want it? If you’ve no context why would you put yourself in a story your likely to be excluded from because no one ever explained the rules much less the reason for the game?

But is this an exclusionary text? What if the writer of John is speaking of his lived experience? Eternal for the author of John is thought to be a way of describing life as lived in the unending presence of God. To have eternal life is to be given life as a child of God, it is near, it begins in the believers present. So for those with hearts willing, those open to receive the possibility that this is being made real in them in life, this indeed is made real, experienced. This is the experience of the one writing John’s gospel.

Equally though it’s the author’s observation that there are those like Nicodemus who came in darkness, (for this passage is a continuation of Jesus conversation with Nicodemus). Who want Jesus’ teaching to fit an existing system evolved with integrity and genuine faithfulness over centuries to express the human divine relationship as revealed, to preserve and keep it safe. Those who are curious, with deep love of God and care filled integrity who hear what Jesus speaks of, yet find his dangerously intimate familiarity incomprehensible, it makes no sense from their context, is perhaps a step too far. The author of John observes their retreat from the light of invitation into intimacy he sees revealed in Jesus.

Thinking we know what we’re doing and why, what we think we’re speaking is being made real in our time, made me think of my startled response to that young woman’s scepticism. What if her sceptical yet honest interrogation of this ritual we enact has a wisdom we need to be confronted with? What are we doing? Have we become fixed in our ways, insisting by this telling and enacting of story in this way that is faithful through time, we are revealing something of God made real in human form? While we yet struggle to recognise the intimate familiarity of God made present in our neighbour who suffers hunger and homelessness, injustice, rejection, racial, religious, gender and sexual orientation exclusion. For genuine hospitality of inclusion might be our undoing, might make us unfamiliar to ourselves, might transform us in ways that break us apart, pour us out for the life of the world.

[1] Barbara Fiand, Come, Drink “Deep” of Living Waters (The Crossroad Publishing Company: New York, 2016), 24-25.