Lent 2025 finale: The New Covenant

Readings: Hebrews 10.11-25, Jn 6.53-69

When, in January, I was conceiving this sequence of talks I was thinking of there being five sessions, finishing with the word faith. Yet after I had begun, and especially after week two on skandal, I realised that there was a very natural way to bring the five words together by discussing the nature of the new covenant and that it would be perfectly fitting to conclude the sequence by sharing together in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ. So tonight I want to give a brief survey of the nature of the new covenant, and what it means for our worship and our salvation.

Remember that the first word was grace, and that the greek word was charis – and so the official, ecumenical word for the Lord's Supper is Eucharist, which simply means the great thanksgiving. Here is where we say thank you to God. Our saying thank you to God is inseparable from an acknowledgement of what we are thanking God for, so this prayer of thanksgiving is, at heart, a re-telling of the story of Jesus in the context of a shared ritual meal. Jesus said: Do this to remember me. So we do this in obedience to our Lord's command, and, to use St Paul's language, when we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

What this ritual action accomplishes is the same as what was accomplished by the ritual actions of the old covenant in the Temple. That is, all the ways in which the people of Israel were estranged from God, and were caught up in sin – in the rite of Atonement in the temple in Jerusalem, God acts, God takes the initiative, to forgive and heal the people of God. Central to that rite of atonement was an action when the High Priest enters into the holy of holies and sprinkles the blood of the lamb, the lamb without spot or blemish, upon the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat, between two cherubim. When we gather to celebrate our eucharist, we too come into the holy of holies, and we stand before the mercy seat, and we are cleansed by the blood of the lamb. The evolution of this rite I find fascinating, and it flows directly from the experience of the resurrection. Ancient altars were cubes – as with the Qabah in Mecca. The Christian altar is extended, representing where Jesus was laid. Instead of two angels, we have two candles, in just the same way that after the resurrection there were two angels, one at the head and one at the foot. Most importantly of all, of course, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews has it, we do not have a sacrifice that is repeated, rather what happens is that we share in the sacrifice of God that was given once for all, that cannot be repeated and does not need to be repeated. In Christ God acted to reconcile us to himself, and when we say yes to the invitation, then we share in the salvation. By the blood we enter his brightness.

This teaching about the Eucharist is, in the majority of Christian circles across time and space, not controversial. I do not intend it to be controversial. Yet in some circles it has become so, and so I shall say something now that might also be considered controversial in those same circles. The Eucharist makes the church. The Eucharist is the heart beat of the church, and the idea that we might take supremely seriously Jesus' teaching that 'unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you' may be difficult for some to accept. It may – as indeed it was at Jesus' time – be considered offensive. Yet I hope you are now alert to how that language of offense, or skandal, or stumbling is used in Scripture. It is a sign that the enemy is at work.

Communion shares in the skandal of the cross. It cannot be understood by a worldly mind. It resists being captured by our intellects. It can only be entered into at the level of symbolism and with religious devotion. If we try and analyse it, if we try to intellectually explain it, we are highly likely to go wrong. That is what happened in the twelfth century when the doctrine of transubstantiation was invented, and the feast of Corpus Christi was started, and Christians started to take the physical bread and wine as religiously important – I may say more about that another time. So much havoc has followed on from those changes. In particular, those denominations that moved away from a eucharistic focus are the ones that have died away. It is not an accident that those societies most strongly influenced by a non-sacramental form of Christianity are the ones that have become most secular. The sacraments, these primary mysteries of our faith, these are our spiritual shield, these are our medicine against the onslaughts of the world. The eucharist makes the church, and where there is no Eucharist then the church isn't fed, and so the flock leaves or dies.

Let me tease out one aspect in particular, linking back to my five words. The divine action comes first, that's the priority of grace. The world seeks to capture us, and incorporate us into a life without grace, a rivalrous contest with winners and losers where only the most ruthless survive but we all die in the end. And the engine for that worldliness is skandal and offense-taking, the generation of scapegoats the punishment of which leads to a temporary sense of unity. In this situation the Lord teaches us to forgive, for the measure that we give is the measure that we shall receive. In other words we are to live in the realm of 'forgiving and being forgiven' and move out of the worldly realm of tit-for-tat. Our faith is simply our conviction, our hope, our trust that this is the real truth of the world, the real truth about who God is and therefore how the creation is structured. When we forgive each other we receive forgiveness in turn, and as we are forgiven so we too freely forgive.

Which is the meaning of this Eucharist. Lord I am not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but only say the word, and I shall be healed. When we share the bread and wine in the context of telling the story of Jesus we are caught up in the reconciliation that Jesus accomplishes on the cross. Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidd'st me come to thee – O Lamb of God I come.

To say that the Eucharist makes the church is not to say that it is the only valid form of Christian worship – it isn't – but it is to say that it is the defining form of Christian worship, that it is the keystone of the arch, it is the cornerstone of the temple, it is the stumbling block for Jews and folly for the gentiles but for we who believe it is the very medicine of the gospel. There are as many different styles of celebrating the Eucharist as there are different communities in the world, but style is not theologically important. Sacraments are theologically important, indeed, the sacraments are the one thing needful. We come to God as repentant sinners, seeking to hide in the wounds of Christ, forgiving our neighbours as we seek that same forgiveness for ourselves, and here we come into the presence of our Lord... and here we are healed.

Which is why we say thank you. In the end it is all about grace, and our response to grace, and Eucharist follows grace as thunder follows lightning (Barth).

Jesus said: This is my body, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this to remember me.

And so we shall.

Amen.