This week we explore our sacramental life as we think about the ways in which we discover God in our worship life together. How does our worship, particularly our sacraments, point us toward God and unite us ever more to one another.
Our readings from Ephesians and John help us reflect on baptism and communion in the life of the church and how these elements of our worship life together join us together and help us to discover God's will for our lives (see Ephesians 5:15-20 and John 6:51-58).
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In our readings today, we continue the two themes we have been exploring over the last few weeks. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we continue reading about Paul’s understanding of the Christian life. What does it mean to be a member of the Christian community? What should it look like?
In the Gospel of John, we continue to read Jesus’ exposition on the Bread of Life. Today’s reading from John is very carnal as Jesus doubles down on his talk of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. No wonder some outsiders during the days of the early church thought Christians were cannibals and vampires.
On the surface, these readings don’t seem to have much to do with each other, but as we dig into them, we find that both of them are reflections on the sacramental worship practices of the early Christian communities. For the gospel writer, a thorough understanding of Holy Communion is obviously on his mind as he relates this story of Jesus. For several weeks now in our readings, ever since the story of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus has been arguing with detractors about what it means to consume the bread that is his body and the wine that is his blood. It doesn’t take much for us to see the underlying connection to our celebrations of communion here. Our participation in Holy Communion is about participating in the same reality that Jesus is talking about here. It is about sharing and eating the bread from heaven. It is about receiving and drinking from the cup of blessing filled with the blood of Christ.
Every time we come to this table, we are reminded of the meals that Jesus shared with his disciples, with his friends, and even with his enemies. He ate with all sorts. We also call to mind the heavenly banquet that we anticipate upon our arrival in heaven, a banquet laid out for all to take part in. As Jesus does throughout the passages that we have been reading, we are also reminded of the manna in the wilderness, bread provided by God to feed the Israelites as they fled captivity.
All of these scenes are called to mind as we gather at the table to share in the bread and the cup. Our prayers and our memories bring these other meals to mind, allowing us to imagine our own participation in all of these other meals. In the words of the well known hymn, we receive a “foretaste of glory divine.” (“Blessed Assurance,” UMH 369)
I want you to take a moment now to call to mind your most profound experiences of Holy Communion. Maybe it was a meal celebrated at the table in your current place of worship. Maybe it was an intimate gathering while on a retreat. Maybe it is your earliest memory of communion.
Now I want you to take a moment to think about other meals -- family dinners, birthday celebrations, working lunches. How are these meals similar? What makes them different?
One of the things I suspect we will begin to discover as we consider our memories is how difficult it can be to remain angry and disconnected from one another when we share food together. Food has the ability to unite us and connect us, just as surely as blood or shared interests can.
What happens when we taste the food together? Even better, what happens when we share the food together?
I touched on this some last week. I told you about the woman from San Francisco who was completely changed by her participation in Holy Communion.¹ Non-religious her entire life, her first time receiving the bread and cup completely changed her life and had a positive effect on the community around her as she lived into the changes in her own life.
What do we discover when we eat together, share together, work together?
As we have seen in the letter to the Ephesians over the last few weeks, this is exactly the kind of question that Paul is wrestling with. The section of Paul’s letter that we are reading today is a reflection on the ways that we are changed after our participation in our other primary sacrament in the church -- Baptism. In the preceding verses, Paul tells us that we have been changed by our experience, clothed in new garments, awakened into a new world. We have been claimed by Christ. These are all obvious allusions to our understanding of the changes that take place in us through our celebration of Baptism.
In Baptism, we are claimed by God, made into new people. We pass through the waters, calling to mind Jesus' own baptism and his words about being washed and cleaned. We remember how Jesus washed the disciples' feet and how Peter demanded to be washed all over. As we pray over the waters, we are reminded of Jesus’ passage through the tomb and the parted waters that the ancient Israelites passed through on their way to freedom.
All of these images come into play as we celebrate the sacrament and as we read this passage from Paul today. Our passage immediately follows the reminder of our baptism. We could read it as, “because you have been baptized, be careful to live wisely” and so on. Because we have been redeemed, we should take care in how we live. Because we have been cleansed, we should take care in how we think. Because we have been claimed, we should take care in how we act. Being a Christian is both about being claimed by Christ, which is God’s act, as well as our claim to right and faithful living in response, which is our act.
Paul makes it clear that this is about our whole selves -- body, mind, and soul. It is about how we think, how we feel, how we act, and how we treat others. We are to act wisely instead of foolishly. Rather than remaining ignorant, we are called to “understand the Lord’s will” (Ephesians 5:17, CEB). Instead of getting drunk on wine, we should allow ourselves to be filled with the Spirit.
On the one hand, these are things we do on our own. We take the time to study God’s word, seeking God's will, to make sure we are not acting foolishly. We do our best to make sure our drinking does not lead to drunkenness. We seek out the Spirit’s guidance in our decisions and actions.
But these are also things that we do together. We look to each other for support when we are unsure how to act. We seek to discern and discover God’s will together so that we are not misled by our own willful thoughts. We seek to share in God’s Spirit together, both in our times of worship and in other times of our lives together.
This is why Paul reminds us to speak to each other. He says specifically “speak to each other in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19, CEB). While not officially a sacrament like Communion and Baptism, our singing together can also call to mind and allow us to participate both mentally and emotionally in those things that have come before and in those things that are yet to be. “Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” remind us of the breadth of poetry that we find in the book of Psalms. Through the various Psalms, we find all manner of human experience on display and lifted up before God. We find joy, sorrow, vengeance, despair, grace. Almost any emotion or feeling we can have as a human we can find in our scriptures lifted up to God.
We are reminded of the choirs of angels that announced the birth of Jesus to the world.
We are reminded of all the times that Hebrew people sang in celebration -- of Miriam who sang as the Israelites passed through the waters of the Red Sea, of David who danced and made music before the Lord, of the songs of praise we find in Psalms and in other scriptures.
We are reminded of the angelic voices that continue to sing in heaven even now.
Through Paul’s words, all of these things are brought to mind. We are reminded to sing and make music before God and to always give thanks as we do. Again, these are things we might do on our own. But I think most of us recognize from experience how much sweeter it is when we do them together.
Of course, this reminder comes at a time when we must celebrate both together and apart. On the one hand, times like this remind us of the importance of our lives together -- the connections we feel when we are in the same spaces, the joy of singing together, the holiness of our sharing together at the table.
At the same time, the present realities of our world and community make gathering together physically perhaps unwise. How do we best show our love for one another and our communities in a time when being in physical proximity may be unhealthy or even dangerous? How do we continue to “speak to each other in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” when the very act of singing together can make others sick?
In the midst of an ongoing global health crisis, what are the ways that we as the church, as the Body of Christ still present in the world, can model both wisdom and understanding to the rest of the world?
What do we discover about God when we worship together?
What do we discover about ourselves?
How do we carry what we learn together out into the other days of our lives?
To help us think about what all of this continues to mean for us today, we closed our worship service with a hymn that I think may be familiar to many of you. I think at times, we may think of it as a song for kids, but “We Are the Church” is a reminder that, well, we are the church together.
May we continue to seek out God's will together.
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¹ See Sara Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion