C4CC(17): The New Covenant (3)

Sorry - forgot to mention I was going to be away for a fortnight…

This one is all about how “The Eucharist heals the world”. I really believe that.

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The most extensive discussion of the importance of sharing communion comes in John's gospel. Chapter 6 begins with the feeding of the 5,000, then there is a little break and movement and then Jesus gives a sermon in Capernaum. This is where Jesus says, “Unless you eat the bread which is my flesh you have no life in you.” Is this a reference to the Eucharist or is this to be understood symbolically? Is it, for example, a question of beliefs, that eating the flesh means coming to him, and drinking his blood, drinking wine is about believing in him?

Generally, when Jesus realises that he is being misunderstood, He is not an incompetent teacher! He does correct people when they get it wrong. For example with Nicodemus, Christ says “Unless you are born again then you don’t enter the Kingdom” and Nicodemus says, “How can you be born again, can you come again from your mother’s womb?” So Jesus goes on and says, “Unless you are born from above” and He clarifies what he means. When the disciples ask Him 'what do you mean avoid the leaven of the Pharisees?', again He unpacks what He means, that here He was speaking figuratively. However, there are other occasions when He is at first understood to be saying something literally and people take offence. For example, in John 8 when He says, “Before Abraham, I am” – He was there, He was saying he is ancient and the Jews object, they take offence. Jesus sees that they take offence but He re-emphasises it to drive home the point, which is when He then says, “Before Abraham was, I am,” which is such a bold and provocative and virtually blasphemous thing for Him to say in the context, because He is expressing His identity with the Father. When Moses says to God, “What shall I say to the people so that they know I come from you?”, God says, “Tell them I am.” This is the name of God and so when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am,” He is expressing something powerful, He is emphasising. When Jesus is misunderstood as being literal when in fact He is being figurative, He corrects the mistake; but when He is understood as being literal and people take offence because He is telling the truth, then He redoubles the point, emphasising and escalating it.

So what is going on in John 6? Is it that He is being misunderstood and then He corrects, or is it that He is being understood rightly, the people take offence and then He redoubles his emphasis? After the feeding of the 5,000, after all the themes have been set in motion and when the Hebrew people take offence (as have some of His disciples) Jesus repeats and redoubles the emphasis on what He is teaching. He says four times, “Eat my flesh”, and as He is re-emphasising it, he changes His language. In Greek the word for eat is phago, and as He is re-emphasising He changes the word to use the Greek trogo, which means chew. He does not just say “Unless you eat my flesh”, He says, “Unless you chew my flesh.”

There is another factor to consider, in that the figurative language of 'eat my flesh' did have an existing meaning at the time – as it still does – and it meant something very hostile. To say to someone “I will eat your flesh,” is to say to someone, “I will kill you.” This is an existing figurative meaning that is in Scripture, for example in Micah 3. The Hebrew people take offence because in Leviticus it says, “You shall not drink the blood because the blood has the life.” That is even for animals, let alone a human being. So it is doubly offensive, and those who take offence at it fall away. This is the only example in Scripture when disciples turn away from Christ over a matter of doctrine. Jesus is teaching them and they find it impossible to cope with. (It is also where Judas turns – there are all sorts of messages embedded in this narrative!)

When we take part in the Eucharist our minds are changed and we are taught to see differently. One of the wonderful things about the Eucharist is that it cannot be fully rationally justified, and it is a scandal to the world. The beauty is that it is not something that allows the rational intellect to become dominant. This is a process, a ritual, which we have received, and we carry it on by command – Jesus said “Do this is in remembrance of me”, and that phrase could be translated – 'do this to invoke me'. Do this in order that I might be present with you and renew you. This is why the Eucharist is so essential, why it is at the heart of what we do. It is sharing in the risen life of Christ, for the Eucharist would make no sense without the resurrection. The three days, the Last Supper, the crucifixion, the resurrection – the Eucharist is tying all those things together and it is the locus for Christian proclamation of the Lord's death until he comes. This is when we are most ourselves, and this is when the church is most itself, when it is breaking bread and wine in remembrance of Christ.

The core of the Eucharist is about being united with Christ. When we are taking part in this process our own desires get reformed and reshaped, we are renewed, we come into Christ's real presence and take Him into us, and so Christ lives in us. In this process we are united with Christ and then we become ourselves the Body. As such we go out and live as Christ in the world. What feeds us and sustains us and what forms us is this process of sharing the bread and the wine. May we who eat His body live His risen life. We who drink this cup bring life to others. We whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. It is about us embodying what Jesus was doing, it is not simply an act of repetition, not just a mental process of agreeing to something. We are acting out an embodied process which incorporates us into the Body of Christ. This is the priesthood of all believers, that just as Christ is the one reconciling the world, so, in a cosmic sense, the role of the Christian is to act out that process in their lives. Each Christian becomes one who brings out the atonement wherever they live, who acts to reconcile the world to God, reconcile neighbour to neighbour, and all Christians are called to this ministry.

The Eucharistic liturgy begins with the exchange of peace, and that is very important because that is what stops the scapegoating, the human wrath. It establishes and affirms that you are at peace with your neighbour. We are not at peace because we are all righteous. No, we come to communion as sinners, as people in need of forgiveness. We cannot get that forgiveness by our own merit, we are relying on that benign God coming out to us, and therefore, because we don’t have any righteousness of our own, we are not expelling anyone else who is unrighteous, because we are none of us righteous. This is a core element of sharing the bread and wine, that we don’t expel beforehand. This is what Jesus is accomplishing, this New Covenant. It begins with the exchange of peace and so we receive the forgiveness and we give thanks for it.

To be the children of God in the world is precisely to be the ones who live righteously, the ones who act according to God's intentions, who are in tune with God's desires. This is the reality behind the language of being born again, or being salt in the world, or the yeast in the dough, which is transforming the wider world. This is the task of the faithful, it is a process which is being accomplished and which will find its fulfilment in the Kingdom at the end of time and it is our role, our task, to take part in that process which is building to completion. At the end is a great feast, and when we are sharing the bread and the wine we are sharing in that feast of the Kingdom – we are getting a little foretaste of heaven.

The point is to remember what the first Christians did. How did they operate? What was the shape of their belief and worship? The Apostles surely had something of an awareness of what Jesus was trying to do. They were the people who were at the Last Supper, and they taught the different church communities as time went on. Their pattern as it settled was to break bread together on the first day of the week (the equivalent of their 'Monday morning'). It is a feast, a celebration. The outer reflects the inner, this is why we begin with getting it right with God. This is the centre of Christian faith, this is the heart and soul of it, this is where it all hangs together. If we get the worship right we will be led to live and behave externally in the world in the right way, so this is where the healing, the atonement takes place. As we allow Christ to live in us and form our understandings, then the whole creation will be healed, and this is the process which has begun and which will be brought to completion.

Spiritually, this is the answer to the predicament which our civilisation faces. This is where we learn the wisdom that is the antidote to the poisonous asophism which afflicts our culture. The Church Fathers said 'The Eucharist makes the Church'. I want to add 'The Eucharist heals the world'.