Sermons from St Faith's
'One Body'
Dr Fred Nye, Reader Emeritus,
Sunday, August 9th, 2015
Words from St. Paul’s first letter to the
Corinthians: ‘We who are many are one body, because
we all share in the one bread’.
This Sunday our gospel reading continues the theme
of ‘the bread of life’. Because the bread of the
Eucharist is so central to us at St. Faith’s, it’s
worth taking a few minutes to think together about
what it means to us. And, because none of us are
strangers to estrangement, it’s worth re-visiting
St. Paul’s trust in the bread of the Eucharist as
the means of unity and transformation.
I came to baking bread rather late in life, well
after retirement in fact, and although I’m not much
good at it I only wish I had tried it earlier. There
is a sort of parable of the Kingdom, a parable of
unity, about baking: the simplicity of the raw
materials, the mixing together, the pounding and
kneading, the waiting while the dough miraculously
and of its own accord proves, rises, and grows; and
the transformation that then takes place, out of
sight in the oven. The separate ingredients become
inseparable in the finished loaf, which is greater,
and other, than the sum of its parts.
In St. John’s gospel, Jesus’s teaching on the bread
of life follows just the day after he fed the
multitude on the mountainside. Whatever the
Eucharistic implications, there can be little doubt
that the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand
was prompted by the crowd’s empty bellies, and
by Our Lord’s compassion for their hunger. So much
of his healing ministry was also a response to basic
physical needs: a response that included the healing
of embarrassing bodies and the ritually unclean:
lepers, Romans and sick women.
So I think we can safely take the bread of the
Eucharist as a sign of Our Lord’s concern, not just
for humanity’s spiritual welfare, but for its most
basic physical needs. Taken in this way the
Eucharist will save us from the piety that
undervalues the material world. It will also save us
from secularism: the sort of secularism that wants
the church to confine itself to so called
‘spiritual’ matters. Politics are a spiritual matter
too, especially when people’s fundamental welfare is
at stake.
I thank God that with your help and generosity the
Waterloo Partnership has been feeding the
quarantined and those left orphaned during the Ebola
epidemic, and can now provide treatment for
survivors whose sight has been damaged by the virus.
This is bread-of-life stuff, Eucharistic stuff. But
there are also bread-of-life issues nearer home:
child poverty, the social care of the elderly and
handicapped, the lack of affordable housing, tax
credits for poor working families. When we share the
bread of the Eucharist we cannot remain entirely at
ease with the world as we find it. We are brought
together and transformed into a community of
compassion.
Jesus said ‘The bread of God is that which comes
down from heaven and gives life to the world’. What
did he mean: was it mere metaphysics, perhaps just a
bit of comforting poetry? The manna in the
wilderness wasn’t mere metaphysics to the starving
Israelites. To the exhausted Elijah, trying to put a
distance between himself and Jezebel’s hit-men, the
food God provided wasn’t just a way of speaking.
And so it is for us: Jesus provides real food for
our journey, our pilgrimage. Our Lord commissions us
to find him, to follow him and to join him in his
work of self-giving love: ‘This is my commandment:
that you shall love one another as I have loved
you’. And the food that he gives to sustain us in
this task is himself. He is our constant companion
along the Way, our leader, guide, example,
inspiration and friend.
We must never forget the purpose of Our Lord’s
heavenly food: he gives us the power, the energy, to
bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to
the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. If we eat
only for ourselves, if we don’t burn this energy off
so to speak in following Christ, then we become
spiritually flabby and weak. Sometimes we say,
rather wistfully, that what the church needs is
‘bums on seats’. Maybe, but God’s call is more like
‘on your feet!’ If we receive the Sacrament
standing, we express this readiness, this
preparedness, to follow Christ. When we eat the
bread of the Eucharist, we pledge ourselves to live
and work to God’s praise and glory. We are brought
together and transformed into a community that has
been given Christ’s commission.
Jesus said ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my
blood abide in me, and I in them’.
During his earthly ministry, Our Lord entertained at
his table the outcast, the sinner, and the unclean.
A motley crew no doubt, but all united in their
acceptance of Christ’s invitation, and a need to
know him better. Those who accept Christ and follow
him are offered an ever-closer relationship with
him. And if with him, then also with one another. As
St. Paul put it ‘The bread that we break, is it not
a sharing of the body of Christ?’ The mystery of it
all is that Christ’s broken body on the Cross, and
the broken bread of the Eucharist, become the sign
and the means of unity and reconciliation for us
all. We are the new Israel, the new creation, a
community of love.
But we are not quite there yet: we are still in the
process of becoming what we are. After the group of
Waterloo churches’ prayer service three weeks ago I
was disappointed to hear that some members of the
congregation felt uncomfortable because others
prayed for unity out loud. I even wondered what St.
Paul might have thought about it! There seemed to be
a disconnect between our sharing of the one bread,
and our embarrassment when we tried to pray
together.
But of course I shouldn’t have been disappointed;
because growing together is God’s work, not ours.
The Kingdom will come, as the wheat grain grows
hidden in the earth, as the invisible yeast leavens
the loaf. So please go on praying, silently or out
loud or in any way the Spirit moves you, that
together we may indeed become the Body of Christ in
this place. As we share the bread of the Eucharist,
we are brought together and transformed into members
of Christ’s community of love. Every time we eat
this bread, may we celebrate, with joy, the unity
with one another that we find in Him.
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