“Body and Blood; The Meanings of Communion”
Fourth In a Series: Uncovering Christianity’s Original Message
Date: February 5, 2012
Script: 1 Corinthians 11:17-34; Mark 2:13-17
Rev. William F. Meier ~ First United Methodist Church of the Saint Cloud Region, Minnesota
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Biblical scholar Marcus Borg grew up a good Lutheran boy on the prairies of eastern North Dakota. As a child, he says, Communion was a somewhat frightening experience. Done only quarterly (so as not to cheapen it as the Catholics did), one had to examine one’s moral purity before receiving it. Worthiness was the issue. To receive Communion in the wrong state was to bring judgment down upon yourself. Warned not to take this meal lightly, he got the message that you dared not receive it every time it was offered or you might hear comments like, “Look who thinks himself worthy…” With worthiness as the criteria, we can also assume that he probably felt as though moral purity “was an ever receding horizon” that he could never quite reach.
Perhaps you grew up with some of these messages too. When we can somehow turn down the volume on those old tapes long enough to make it to the Communion rail, we come forward, hands forming a cradle, and I or someone places the bread into it with these words, “The Body of Christ, for you.” The little glass cup filled with red liquid is given with the equally or more shocking, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.” Who hasn’t heard those words and felt a little uncomfortable?
How do we hear these words in a way that we can stomach? How are we to “discern the body” of Christ in this ritual without worrying about our “worthiness”? What can we uncover about Communion and body and blood language?
“Uncovering” is our task in this series—digging down to something closer to the original. When we do some of that digging we find Jesus using food as a lived-out parable of the Kingdom. Jesus used food and table fellowship often to communicate something of God’s will for us. As Gandhi said, “To a hungry person, God can only come as food.” Bread and wine are symbols of a ritual meal to us, but to those who lived in that time period, bread and wine were the staples—the basics—symbols of all that is sustaining and good.
More than that, bread and wine and meals themselves were microcosms of society. The intricate rules around eating reflected the larger realities, hierarchies, relationships and taboos that shaped society. Jesus’ meal practice has been called “open commensality.” He disregarded those intricate rules and ate with all types of people, forming an alternative map—and got some heat for it (as is indicated in our Gospel text today). By eating with “sinners” he was saying loudly (without words) that society ought to be re-ordered, that everyone should have enough, and that all should be welcomed at the table of life and community. Bread and wine was a way of preaching a new way of being together.
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).
“…We who are many are one body” Paul says, capturing the unity, the egalitarian unitive vision of Jesus’ table practices. In God’s kingdom, there is no hierarchy of value or importance, no head table, no servants’ quarters—for we are all servants of God, creation, and one another.
The Corinthian Christians had forgotten this basic vision, and had fallen into factions, divisions of rich and poor, servants and free, working folk who couldn’t make it to the Eucharistic feast on time because of work and those one-percenters who had it made. The rich arrived early, got hungry, impatient, and dug into the Communion meal without waiting for the whole church body. They saw themselves as superior.
They had forgotten the egalitarian unitive vision of Jesus’ table fellowship where all are welcomed, treated as full human beings, and all have enough and that is what it means to eat unworthily—they failed to see the Body of Christ! It has nothing to do with moral purity—nothing to do with understanding it correctly—nothing to do with believing correctly.
But what about those shocking words we hear when given the elements? How are we to hear them?
“This is my body…This is my blood” can be heard as a sacrifice—not as substitution, as we talked about last week—but as Jesus’ own self-giving. Self-giving in the sense that he was offering his life-force for us to receive (his spirit is manna for us in the wilderness—sustenance), and self-giving in the sense that he was willing to follow God’s way of being in this world, regardless of the consequences including death. To separate body and blood, as he did in these words, implies violence—Jesus knew his ministry would threaten those in power (both religious and political) and bring about his own death eventually.
“Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” Paul said (1 Corinthians 5:7). How do we hear this language? Let’s remember: the Passover lamb was not sacrificed for sin (see Exodus 12). The Passover was not about forgiveness. The blood of the lamb was smeared upon the door posts to mark the house and the angel of death would “pass-over” it. The lamb’s meat was eaten to give strength to those who were to journey to freedom soon. In this light to see Christ as a lamb of God is to understand that Christ frees us from fear of death, and is food for our journey in this life.
But how about that absolutely clear mention of sacrifice for sin in the Gospel of John, “Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)? “Uncovering” we find that in the theology of the Gospel of John, sin is singular, not plural, and is not related to wrong-doing, but rather, sin is ignorance of God. Taking away the sin…the ignorance of God’s true heart and will, Jesus gave himself. Indeed, we do know something of God because of Christ’s sacrifice. Christ does take away the sin…the ignorance…of the world.
“The Body of Christ for you. The Blood of Christ for you.” What this holy mystery means is indeed a mystery. Who knows all its variation and depths? In my first parish it was their practice to withhold Communion from their children until they were confirmed, believing that those children needed to “understand it.” My response to them was that I didn’t even understand what this meal means. I told them that I thought it was much more important that those children be included and know that they mattered and belonged as full members of that body, than any understanding that supposedly the rest of us had.
Years later, in another parish, the same question of children and understanding Communion was settled easily by asking if “Joseph” ought to receive Communion. Joseph was an adult in our body of Christ—our church—who was such a tender soul, who loved everyone, who nearly every Sunday asked how my dog “Boomer” was doing, but was mentally handicapped. Thinking about refusing Joseph Communion because he couldn’t “understand it” clarified the issue quickly. We all saw that his spirit was closer to the heart of Christ’s that ours.
Who knows what it all means? But we have a banquet of meanings we can swallow:
To eat this meal is to…
· Enter into and share the vision of Jesus for a unified, equal people where all are loved, welcomed, respected, and all have enough.
· Remove the “sin”…the ignorance of God, and God’s love for all.
· Is to discern…to see the body of Christ in this gathering.
· Claim our desire to be more Christ-like, remembering that “we are what we eat.”
· Meet something of the holiness of Christ, even if we cannot nail down exactly how.
This is our joyous meal with the risen Christ, in whose fellowship we receive the vision, direction, and energy to continue his kingdom in our day. This meal is the foretaste of God’s kingdom to come where we find that unity with God, with others and all God’s creatures, and our own true selves at the last.
