The Sermons at Calvary
By Father Richard Humke
THE EUCHARIST FORMS A COMMUNITY
March 30, 3002, 4 Lent B, Calvary
Church
"On
the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took
bread..." Those are the words you
hear on many Sundays as we move into that part of the Eucharist called
"The Great Thanksgiving."
If
you are paying attention at that time, your mind may be taken back in one way
or another to the Last Supper on the night before Jesus was crucified, when he
gathered with his disciples and took bread and wine and spoke of his life being
given up. He said at that time that his
life was his body and his blood, being given to them in the bread and
wine. And so the Holy Communion is always
tied in our liturgies and in our minds to the Last Supper. Most of you could tell me that if I were to
ask.
So
it may come as some surprise to you to learn that the early Christians, at
their simple table Communions, not only recalled the Last Supper but also, we
believe, they recalled Jesus' feeding the large crowds by the lakeside with
five loaves and two fish, our Gospel today.
That is not a connection we make very easily, for some reason, but early
Christians saw the story of the feeding of the multitude as a "type,"
an event that foreshowed and dramatized in some way that future, more
important, event.
That
is why we find in church windows and elsewhere the symbols for the Holy
Communion to be bread and fish. Strange
to us, and usually not apparent to most people until it is pointed out, but to
an early Christian it did not have to be explained. They knew what was behind the symbol of the bread and fish,
namely the bread and wine, the Body and Blood, of Christ.
I
think it might change the whole tone of what we do on a Sunday morning if we
were sometimes to view the Eucharist as a kind of "picnic on the
green," a time of being fed as a community after hearing the teachings of
Jesus, just as those picnicers were also fed after hearing his teachings. In this act of feeding Jesus was beginning
to shape a community of followers, people whom he taught and then whom he fed,
people who shared a common experience as well as a common meal.
Such a view of the Holy Communion as a meal
together, a picnic on the green, would not, for me, be sufficient if that were
the sum total of our understanding of the Eucharist because the Eucharist has
become so much more than that. It is multi-faceted, we might say, and one facet
is important to us at one time and another facet at another time. At one time we may see it as a solemn
liturgical act filled with mystery.
But it is also a sacrifice of our souls and bodies, as the Liturgy
says. It is a means of spiritual
nourishment. It is a meeting with the
Lord. It is a recalling of the Last
Supper. It is that repeated act that
ties us to fellow Christians around the world today and back 2000 years to the
very beginnings of the Faith.
When
we gather at the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist, as we do here at Calvary
Church each Sunday, we are being fed with the life of Christ himself. In the eating and the drinking Christ's life
enters our lives, and when we do it all with faith, believing in his presence
among and within us, then we leave refreshed and renewed. That is, without doubt, the central and most
important understanding of the Eucharist.
But
it is not the only one. There are those
other dimensions, or facets, to it that I have just mentioned, and the one that
the Church for so many centuries overlooked was the understanding that it was
also a community meal, a meal of sharing, of which the Gospel today reminds
us. Once we talked about Communion in a
very individualized way -- don't you remember learning such phrases as
"making my Communion" and being taught to stay on your knees and not
to look around but to go inward? When
we talked about Communion only in that way, it was not possible to see it as a
community meal. There was nothing
actually wrong with those teachings, but they allowed only one facet, one
meaning, of the Eucharist to be known.
It
is wrong when we do not also see the Meal as a time when the community is
strengthened and bound together by the very human act of eating and drinking
together. As we gather together, and
eat together, not only are we helped individually, but we are strengthened in
our community life as well. I have to
tell you that there was a time when I felt guilty about watching the parade of
people coming and going at the time of Communion because I thought I needed to
be doing something more spiritual. I no
longer feel that way, and I hope I can relieve any of you who may have those
lingering guilts that were instilled within you by well-meaing priests and
Sunday School teachers so long ago.
I
certainly still believe it is important to prepare myself in prayer to receive
the Sacrament, and after receiving it, to give thanks for it. But then often, when I am in a congregation,
I sit back to look at my faith community parading by, to reflect on this
community to which I belong. An
occasional exotic bit of clothing or a wacko hairdo may distract me momentarily
-- but that's what I love about the Church -- it's kind of messy.
But
here's what goes on in my head when I know the people in the congregation: "There's Donna. I haven't seen her since she had
surgery. I'm glad she's
back." "There's Bill. What would this parish do without
him?" "It's good to see
Elaine. I really need to give her a
call, and I'm going to do it when I get home." "There's Bob. He
looked so bad after his wife died last year, but he looks great now, and I
think he has a new lady friend with him.
I hope so." "I guess I
was rude to Beth at a party the other night so I need to call her and
apologize. But she still is a
pain." (You see, I don't want to
get too unrealisitc about it.) Those
are the sorts of things that go through my mind.
But
even if I don't know the people because I'm sitting in the congregation of a
strange parish that morning, I can still do the same thing because, in a sense,
it is still my community, even though I am a visitor. So watching the elderly woman make her way up to the altar, when
I know what an effort it must be, inspires me.
Watching the young couple holding hands as they go up to the altar fills
me with hope. Seeing the young child
approach the altar with expectation reminds me that I might have more
expectation myself. Looking over a
diverse congregation, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight, people of
color and people like me, makes me happy to be a part of such a community.
Well,
you get the point, and I don't need to belabor it any longer. I don't want to trivialize what we do by
suggesting that it is a display for the purpose of seeing and being seen. If it were only that, we could each Sunday
parade everyone up and down the aisle.
What I am suggesting is that, in the context of the Lord's Supper, where
we all come knowing that none of us is perfect and that each of us has failed,
that all of us need forgiveness, something good happens in our life as a
community when we notice the people around us.
In
a day like ours in America when, as we know all too well, so many bonds of
community have been lost, the parish church can still be that place for many
people where one is known and cared about, where one can know that he or she is
an important part of something greater.
But that doesn't always happen, and when it doesn't happen, one feels a
deep sense of betryal -- betrayal because the Church has talked one way about
being a community but has acted another way.
I
find that Calvary is a real community for many people and that there is an
intense loyalty in Calvary members to their parish. You have come through good times and through trying times, and
you are still here. But you have a
challenge ahead of you, and that challenge is to bring more people into this
community of faith. That may appear to
be easy to do, but churches find it more difficult than they had ever thought.
You
see, the challenge is not only to bring more people into the community, hard
enough in itself, but the challenge is also to recognize that new people will
inevitably mean new and disturbing ideas, challenges to existing leadership,
and new and different ways of doing things.
When new people enter your faith community, they are not your
guests. They are members of the family
as fully as those who have been here for generations.
You
may think that I have ambled down some side road during this sermon, but I
would remind you that I began with the Gospel of the Feeding of the Multitude,
tying it to the Eucharist as a community meal, and then speaking of that
community that is formed and nourished by the Sacrament of Christ's Body and
Blood, by a meal that is a community meal.
Do
I believe any of this makes a real difference?
Well, Mark Twain was once asked if he believed in infant baptism, and he
replied in a typical Twainian fashion, "Believe in it? I've seen it." I believe in the power
of the community of the faithful because I've seen it. And so have you. I saw it often at St. Matthew's Church in the many years I was
there; and I've seen it here at Calvary as well. It is a great and wonderful thing.
When
you come to the Lord's Table, remember that that is the heart of your community
life. Other things are important,
yes. But nothing is more important than
the Meal that nourishes and sustains the community in all of its rich
diversity.
Richard
H. Humke