The Common Sacrifice

Our gospel readings last week and for the next few weeks are a series wherein Jesus talks repeatedly about bread and meals.  Last week we had the miracle of the loaves and fishes feeding the five thousand; today we have him talking abut true bread from heaven; next week he says I am the bread of life; the following week’s gospel is he who eats this bread will live forever; then one on the crumbs under the table.

Jesus talked a lot about food.  And his teachings were so often made around the table or before or after a meal — think of the fish being cooked on the seaside on the Road to Emmaus, or the Last Supper, the supreme example.

We talk a lot about food here, and plan around it.  Before service there were croissants and coffee in the garden.  Following the service we will have coffee, juice, more pastries and watermelon.  And at the announcements I will mention that following this service a number of us go down the street to the Quirinale Hotel for lunch together.  The Latino Community who gather for the 12.00 Eucharist except during the month of August, almost always have a Community meal downstairs.  And intersperse many festivals. They usually cook for about 100 people and have a wonderful sense of community.

Many of you in the parish have been or are about to go on vacation. A number of you here are visitors among us today and we welcome you. I suspect you, on your vacations, have eaten some great meals and have thought about and planned your meals. Maybe reservations at special places. Family meals together. Thinking about and planning meals together is special.

I suggest that, perhaps, Jesus did the same!…  So can you imagine having a meal with Jesus?  That would have been a special meal.  Very memorable.  Here was this young rabbi rapidly gaining notoriety.  His ministry only lasted three years but look at the impact on the world — then and now.  Consider the stories of Jesus dining in the house of Mary and Martha, His calling Zaccheus out of the tree, going to the house of the mother-in-law of Peter.  Breaking of bread and the fish cooked over a charcoal fire on the Road to Emmaus after the Resurrection.  And of course the Last Supper.  Memorable, special meals.

What is it that makes meals special?  It may be the occasion, it may be the special food, it may be the company.  Or…?  Jesus knew that we need sustenance.  That our bodies require food and drink.  That we need to eat three or so times a day.  In his overview, in his planning, in his looking at the big picture, I think he planned to use meals strategically for our instruction, and inspiration, and faith.  In the book Commentary on the American Prayer Book by Marion Hatchett, he writes, ‘The common sacrifice and the common meal, shared by the community at certain intervals, are a part of every culture, even the most primitive.  Such sharing reinforces the cohesion of family, clan, group, and community.  Those who eat together share ideas, values, actions, beliefs, and loyalties as well as traditions and sacred history.  Sacrifices and meals center on three elements: meat, bread, and alcohol.’  He goes on to point out that bread is basic to existence and that some form of grain food has been a part of human diet in every culture.  And it is cultural.  We all have our different diets and our different breads.  The English have their crumpets and toast, the French baguettes and croissants, the Indians nam.  Italian bread.  Special bread in your own country of origin.  Each culture has its own ‘take’ on bread.  So food is a part of what makes meals special.

But there is more to it.  Jesus, I submit, knew that we need sustenance for our physical bodies, but that we also need sustenance for our souls.  And I think in his teaching over meals he links the two, especially in the Holy Eucharist.  In the Lord’s Prayer, he taught us ‘Give us this day our daily bread…’ just before, ‘forgive us and lead us not into temptation…’  He ties the two together.  Sustenance for our bodies and for our souls.  We have to eat several times a day.  How novel to link our eating with a prompt to remind us to think of God, and to give thanks.  But he did something else. 

When Jesus instituted the Last Supper, our Holy Communion, or the Holy Eucharist, he was not just having a happenstance dinner together.  He was, rather, calling us to gather together in a new way.  A new intentional way.  This Eucharist, this meal, is not just symbolic; it is sacred.  Something mystical happens when we gather around this table.  Why else would you come back here Sunday after Sunday, or be here while you are traveling on vacation?  Why do you repeatedly come for a tiny piece of bread that gives you no caloric value, and a sip of wine that doest’ quench your thirst or make you happy like at a party. 

This Eucharist is not just some commemoration of Jesus’ last dinner with is friends.  We are not just replicating earlier actions of Jesus and the Jewish community.  There is something more.  There was something more on that day of the feeding of the five thousand.  It didn’t just happen that they ‘had as much as they wanted…and were satisfied.’  Five loaves and two fish for five thousand?  Thomas Aquinas says the Eucharist is called communion because, ‘through it we communicate with Christ…and through it we communicate and are united with one another.’  That’s what Jesus did then with the loaves and fishes, and a that’s what Jesus still does today every time we are around this table.  It is him and us … and us and us.  It is vertical and horizontal.

Jesus knew what he was doing when he instituted the Last Supper.  For gathering around the table is what we do as humans beings.  We have to sustain our bodies.  And our souls.  Gather around the table my friends.  For that is what we are about, as human beings and as Christians.  Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.

Amen.