Sermon of June 18, 2009 ~ Corpus Christi

Today, we are celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi…the Body of Christ. He is the Great High Priest who makes sacrifice for sin, and at the same time, He is the Sacrifice. The Giver and the One Who is Given.

Every feast needs to have food to be a feast. The context of our Gospel reading tonight comes right after Jesus gave a feast for 5,000 in such a miraculous way. The people were so taken by what he had done, that they wanted to seize him and make him their king.

Their reasoning really doesn’t seem too far off base. But Jesus would have us know that it is. [Read John 6:24-27]

At first glance the zeal of the crowd could be an example of great faith. They piled into boats and crossed the Sea of Galilee to get close to Jesus. They had needs, they had questions, and so they sought out the man sent from God. This seems rather commendable, but Jesus gave no commendation. He gave only rebuke. He pierced to the innermost intents of their hearts and laid bare their deepest motives. Their main desire was to fill their stomachs. They stood in the presence of holiness, yet all they wanted was another meal. The Ancient of Days had come, the hope of the ages, and all they could see was a means to another loaf of bread, another piece of fish. They were “so close, yet so far away.” They weren’t coming to give their thanks….they just wanted to say, “Do it again, Jesus!”

In verse 16 of Luke 9, it says that Jesus “looked up into heaven, and blessed, and broke the loaves.”

Now the Greek word for “blessed” here is “eulogeo”, or “gave the good word”. St Matthew uses that term, as does St Mark. But St John, dear blessed, St John the Beloved, says that Jesus “gave thanks.” This is more specific about what kind of “good word” Jesus offered. The others say that He “blessed”, but St John tells us how He blessed: He gave thanks.

In the prayer book, in the Daily Office, there is a place where it says, “Let us bless the Lord!” and the people respond “Thanks be to God!” See, this is how we bless the Lord, by giving thanks.

But my point here is this: John says that Jesus had given thanks, he broke the loaves and distributed them to the disciples. The word here is “eucharisto”. It’s what we are going to do in a few minutes at this altar...we are going to “give thanks”, to “eucharisto” to God, just as Jesus did here.

May I suggest to you that this story is a prefigure, a foreshadowing of the Eucharist celebration? May I suggest to you that Jesus, Who had told the people that they would have to eat His flesh and drink His blood, and that Jesus, Who had called Himself the Bread of Heaven, deliberately performed this miracle to say to the people “FEED ON ME IN THE MIRACULOUS”? And may I suggest to you that teaching, which is what Jesus was doing here, and miraculous feeding go hand in hand? May I suggest to you that the doctrine of Christ is incomplete without the Eucharist of Christ?

“Now Father Mark, I have to object here. I don’t see where the giving of thanks is a central part of this story. It seems to me that it’s just a comment about the procedure that Jesus used, and not a significant part.” Ok, I understand. In St John’s account of this miracle in John 6, he tells us that the people wanted to make Him king, so He took off for the hills to pray, while the disciples headed for Capernaum across the Sea of Galilee. At night He came to them, walking on the water. St Peter walked on the water too. Pretty heady stuff.

But notice in verse 23 John writes, “However, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks”!!! Do you see the emphasis placed on the giving of thanks here? Do you see that after the incredible experience of seeing Jesus and St Peter walk on the water, what sticks out in St John’s mind about the feeding of the 5,000 is NOT the miraculous feeding, and not the wonderful teaching, and not the fact that there were 12 baskets full of bread left -- but what sticks out in his mind is that this was “where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks”.

Now I want you to see this one thing before we partake of the table together.

Jesus, the Bread of Heaven, teaching in His words and His actions that the learning that we do must be accompanied by the feeding that He does, shows us that the partaking of the Body of Christ that we do is intimately bound up with who we are in Him and Who He is in us.

St Paul echoes that theme when he says in 1 Cor 10: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.”

When we approach the Lord’s Table today, we are not just receiving symbols, as I am sure you know. We are receiving the Real Presence of Christ in the Host and the Chalice. We are receiving within ourselves His body and His blood, His essential nature, into ourselves. We are receiving His heavenly DNA...His glorious, divine nature. St Peter says that we are “partakers of the divine nature”, and it is through THIS SACRAMENT that that happens.

And because we all receive of that same Body and that same Blood at the Eucharist, at the “giving of thanks”, because we all are “partakers of that one bread”, we are one Body. THIS is what makes us a family -- we all share the same nature. It is not what we BELIEVE that makes us a family. It is Who we RECEIVE.

When we receive the Eucharist this evening, we receive the same Body and Blood here that they receive at St. George Cathedral in Wichita. We are receiving the same Body and Blood that they receive at St. Elijah’s. We are receiving the same Body and Blood that is given in every Orthodox Church around the world. It is the same Body and Blood that was received by the saints, martyrs, bishops, doctors, confessors and holy virgins of the Holy Orthodox Church.. It is the same Body and Blood that was received by Ignatius and Polycarp and Clement and Linus. The same Body and Blood that was received by Patrick and Columba. The same Body and Blood that was received by St Paul and St Peter.

Do you see? Do you understand? We are linked to one another throughout the world and throughout all time by our common participation in the divine nature of Christ in the Eucharist. THIS is what makes us a family.

God has made us partakers of the divine nature through our participation in the Eucharist. DO NOT miss the opportunity to understand the depth of the love that did that.

When Jesus was born and the Incarnation was complete, where was He born? In Bethlehem….which means “house of bread”. Now, he was laid in a manger, which is what? Is it not a feeding trough? He was showing us immediately that what He was all about was feeding us Himself.

The Feast of Corpus Christi, which we celebrate here today, is a celebration of the Church that has consistently marked for a thousand years. The Church marks this feast because of the vast and immeasurable importance of the Sacrament – to teach her people over and over the great truth that God Almighty desires to have with us such an intimate relationship, such a close fellowship that it can only be accomplished by His being inside us.

It is the eternal purpose of God the Father to adopt us into His family, to include us in the life and love and relationship of the Holy Trinity. His great desire is to share that life and love with us, His great and everlasting Self.

Every religion in the world begins with the premise that God is out there and we are here, separated from God, and every religion consists in the ways and means for us to get to Him. Every religion, that is, except one. In the Christian faith, we see something entirely different. We see in Christianity not the premise of separation, but the premise of inclusion.

In no other religion in the world do we see a God Who stoops. In no other religion in the world do we see a God Who crosses the line that separates Him from humanity by becoming one of us and leading us back to Himself.

In Christianity we are not presented with a God Who is angry and has to be appeased before He can accept us. In Christianity we are not presented with a God Who has to be persuaded to reluctantly stay His vengeful hand from wiping us out, Whose deepest desire is judgment and wrath. In Christianity we are not presented with a God Whose sense of justice is so strong that He has to make somebody bleed for sin before He will even be interested in accepting us.

The truth is that we have a God Whose overriding and underlying, eternal purpose is to love us and include us in His family; we have a God Whose response to our sin and selfishness is a great and cosmic, “NO!” – “I will not permit My love to be squandered, My creation to be stolen, or My purpose to be defeated! I created you to be Mine, you ARE Mine, and Mine You will be forever!”

And here at this Table is the proof of that great love and commitment God has made to us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son – and He continues to give Him every time we ask, in such intimacy and love that it can only be expressed in the act of ingesting Him into ourselves.

When the bread and the wine is put upon the altar this evening, as always, it is but just common bread and common wine. The Priest, as the representative of the body of Christ presents and offers the gifts that will become for us THE Body of Christ, which will then be returned to the people of God in an eternal circle of love. He in us, and we in Him.

Sin is the disease that has caused us to all become mortal. Our Great Physician, the Lord Jesus has come to heal us with the Gift of His Life. This is why St Ignatius could call the Eucharist the “medicine of immortality”. This is why St Paul would say that those who receive this supper without understanding that it is truly the Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, are in danger of their very lives.

It is this act of Eucharistic celebration that unites the Church to her Lover, God the Father Almighty, and makes us truly and eternally His.

And that is the Word of the Lord for this Church this evening.