Fr. John Allison
Proper 16B.2
Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
August 25, 2024
Christ Church, Hudson
Over the last few weeks our Gospel readings have been from chapter 6 of John, Jesus’ bread discourse, where he quite meticulously presents the idea that his flesh and blood are food and that whoever eats this food will live forever. It’s a challenging teaching, especially for his followers who don’t have the benefit of two thousand years of theological analysis to make sense of it. In fact, it remains challenging but over this past month that we’ve been reading it I’ve found it quite appropriate as Mother Kathleen and I prepare to take our leave from you.
I say it’s appropriate because what Jesus describes here is the foundation for the relationship that we have built together over the four years or so that we have been here at Christ Church. Aside from our weekly gathering for Eucharist, where we share in Christ’s Body and Blood, together, as a parish family, we’ve sought to live more fully into God’s love as it is present in the Bread and the Wine as we are sent out beyond these walls. Last week I talked about how we are called to live Eucharistically, to take the unique gifts of Self that God gives each of us, and offer them up to be transformed, sanctified, so that we may share them with others as we seek to more perfectly reflect God’s love. In fact, if you were to summarize my sermons week after week that’s always the essence of what I hope to communicate. Beyond that, I say it’s appropriate that we have been dwelling in the discussion of the Bread and Wine as the Body and Blood of Christ over these final weeks of our time together because it points us to another aspect of our life together: In Christ and through Christ we are made one and in our sharing of the Bread and Wine we experience that reality; we experience Holy Communion.
Today’s Gospel reading is perhaps familiar to some of you if you’ve ever been ill and I’ve brought Communion to you at your home or when you’ve been in the hospital. The beginning portion of it is one of the passages our Prayer Book recommends to be read when taking Communion to those who are unable to attend church. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” The obvious reason this passage may be offered in such a situation is that points to the nurturance and strength that we receive in taking the Bread and Wine. But I think there’s more.
The word that we translate as “abide” shares a common root with the word “abode”—home. I like to think of it as, in Communion we make a home in Christ and Christ makes a home in us. Together, in Communion, we dwell with Christ. It doesn’t matter if we are necessarily physically present with one another, together we dwell in Christ. I feel that palpably when I take Communion to someone, and it’s something that I find comfort in as we prepare to leave you. When we share in Christ’s Body and Blood it is not bound by time and space but unites us with an eternal present that originates in God’s love—that same love that we are sent out to share with others. All of us gathered here are called to that common mission.
When we step to the rail, when we reach out our hand and receive Christ’s body and blood we are filled. The 13th century German priest and mystic Meister Eckhart said, “The bodily food we take is changed into us, but the spiritual food we receive changes us into itself.” Come forward and be changed. Receive the body and blood of Christ and be taken into God’s love, made one with God. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” That’s God’s will for us and it’s right here, right now and it’s something that doesn’t go away.
At the conclusion of his teaching about his Body and Blood, sensing their lack of understanding and seeing how many others had left, Jesus asks his disciples, “Do you also wish to go away?” It’s a question for us all because not only is the teaching hard but, also, the task that Jesus places before us—to be bearers of his love, no matter what. Indeed, each time we make Eucharist together Mother Kathleen and I recite the Offertory sentence that exhorts you to “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and sacrifice to God.” Likewise, in our post-Communion prayer, after giving thanks for the most precious Body and Blood of Christ, we pray together to be sent out to do the work God has given us to do, to love and serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ. That means feeding the poor, welcoming the stranger, and loving our enemies. All great tasks that we cannot do alone but that we do as expressions of the unique gifts God has given each and every one of us. It is hard but it is precisely through this path that we are led to the joy of God’s love.
There are many times in our lives when we turn away from God’s love, when we seek to follow our own ego rather than discern God’s will for us. Much of the time, we are unaware of this turning away, until we notice we are quite far from any sense of God’s peace. We attempt to fill ourselves with the bread that perishes and think that the stuff of this world is enough. But a yearning hunger remains. St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” To allow ourselves to rest in God, to make space in your heart for Christ to abide is to return home. Jesus says that it is the spirit that gives life and that the flesh is useless. Another way to translate that is that the spirit animates our flesh, brings our flesh to true life. That’s what happened in the Incarnation and it’s what’s happens when we come to this rail and receive Holy Communion.
In just a bit, when Mother Kathleen says, “the gifts of God for the people of God”, it’s an invitation to be part of Christ’s divine body, to be the Incarnation of Christ, the Incarnation of God’s love in the world. We accept that invitation together, no matter where we may be, and it grows from God’s love that is not bound in space or time. Amen.