Sermons
7th June 2007 - Corpus Christi
A little boy comes home from school delighted with his progress and saying Mummy Mummy I can do subtraction listen….if you have three oranges and you take away two…there is one left’. And the mother is thrilled and wanting to reinforce how well the boy has done says ‘ok, so if you had four apples and you took away three, how many would you have left? But the boy gives her a scornful look and says ‘how should I know? we haven’t done apples yet’.
There is something just beyond the reach of the child’s mind, something just outside his grasp. The philosophers, I think, call this sort of thing a category error, the information cannot be processed without utilising a new way of thinking, the boy needs to ‘see’ the concept of numbers, to get a feel or image for how the thing works, rather than being tied to apples and oranges. And the very best mathematicians are those who can take an intuitive leap in understanding.
Instead of apples and oranges think bread and wine, basic elements to a meal, common food and drink almost throughout the world to those lucky enough to have them. I think in order to begin to understand what the church believes to occur when we bring these common elements into the midst of the Christian community and through the liturgical activity of priest and people to know these elements to be utterly transformed, we need a similar shift in understanding, we need to develop an intuition about what is going on at every Mass, we need to make a leap of thought if we are not to remain at the level of the little boy’s understanding, for the little boy unless instructed would describe these elements as bread and wine and nothing more. But the little boy proceeds by instruction as well as intuition in his maths, so what might some information add to our understanding?
Well, first we do well to listen to what the church teaches about this great mystery.
The church teaches that through the eucharist we enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that we do this by receiving him bodily in the bread and wine. The church teaches that although these elements of bread and wine will remain exactly the same to our senses after they have been consecrated, yet they have been utterly and completely transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, this is no mere re-enactment of the Last Supper, no mere memorial meal, but the very body and blood of Christ. Jesus does not say to his followers, ‘this will stand as a sign and symbol for me’, or ‘by this you are to be reminded of me’, he says ‘this is my body, this my blood’. The actions of the Mass are certainly symbolic but they are not for that reason only representative. This sign effects what it signifies, this is not a sign that points somewhere else like a road sign saying ‘this way to Jesus’, this sign is Jesus.
And that, of course, is why we surround the celebration of Mass with so much care and love, we are not out for a picnic, or a casual meal when we bring to mind what Jesus did, rather, we are bringing God physically into the heart of our community once more. That is why we surround the altar with light and incense, why we handle the consecrated elements with such great care, why we always consume what remains, it is why you will see people genuflect before approaching the altar and before leaving the altar, it is why we should approach the altar with awe and reverence, why we describe this place as a place of sacrifice, the sanctified centre of all our Christian activity.
But we are faced with understanding afresh in each generation how to approach what the church means when it makes this confident claim, with her Lord, that ‘this is my body’. And at the heart of understanding this mystery is action, we gain an understanding of what is happening at every Mass partly through information, but much more through participation. By eating the body of Christ we become the body of Christ. Wherever the church gathers this central sacramental action of priest and people takes place to form the Christian community, to bring it to life and to nourish it through its journey of witness. But there is a sense in which we will always be unable to comprehend the great depths of this mystery. Always a sense in which we will remain this side of understanding what is going on, always a sense in which we are like the little boy unable to make the leap of understanding unaided. And we might be tempted to slip back into the boy’s shoes, wouldn’t it be easier if this action were simply a symbol, a re-enactment of something to remind us of Jesus’ fellowship with his disciples before his death. The temptation to say ‘we haven’t done apples yet’.
That temptation needs to be resisted very firmly and with the knowledge and faith that we will never fully make that leap of understanding until this foretaste of the heavenly banquet is received at the Lord’s right hand in his Heavenly kingdom. This bread of life, this bread of heaven, is our nourishment in our journey towards that kingdom. This bread of life is nothing less than the body of Christ in our midst.
(Quote from John Chrysostom, PG 61, 204-205)