From Where I Sit                    Judith Lynch (Melbourne)             Judith's previous articles              Judith's website    


June 9, 2012    
                   BREAD AND WINE 

I have no memory of my first Communion, but my certificate tells me that I received it when I was seven. In the years since I must have prepared hundreds of children and quite a few adults for their first Communion and I am still awed by the mystery that is the Body and Blood of Jesus. Even though my head is able to put the theology of Eucharist into an understandable package, deep down I touch into mystery where words and explanations are powerless.

We expect mystery novels to have a solution in the final pages. Not so the things of God – Trinity, Incarnation, are mysterious. The institutional Church can be quite a mystery. Its leadership can vouch to speak for God, but trips up constantly on just being human and making mistakes. When I read of parishes  being thrown into turmoil and threats of excommunication being whispered, I wonder how important specific translations of words, or correct vestments are when what is at stake is a yearning to capture some of God’s mystery and make it relevant to who we are and when and where we are living. 

This mystery of bread and wine houses the sacred in common earthen gifts, proclaiming that the ordinary is a mask of the holy.  The last meal Jesus had with his disciples was so simple, yet Jesus’ words and actions invested the bread and wine with God’s power and mystery. Body was not a biological term to the Jews, but a personal one. A person was their body. When Jesus said: “This is my body” he meant,  “This is me, my person.”  Blood meant life. It had much the same sense to them that the word “heart” has for us today. His words, “This is my blood ….” were saying, “I love you with all my blood”, while we could say “I love you with my whole heart.”

The early Christians celebrated the Lord's Supper in ordinary homes, breaking the bread and sharing the wine in vessels used in their house­holds. Those who presided were dressed like everyone else. They grasped that Christ's words, "Do this in commemoration of me", implied also a commemoration of God becoming incarnate in ordinary everyday life, transforming the profane world by turning it upside down, ignoring temples because people themselves had become God's Temple.

Three hundred years later St Augustine wrote that there are three things to which we say amen / yes to when we receive communion. We say amen to the minister of communion because she/he recognises in each of us the body of Christ. We say amen to the Body of Christ which we receive. We say amen to the body of Christ into which the community is transformed. Receiving the Eucharist is not just a private act of faith. It is a public sign of commitment to our relationship with one another as Christ’s body. That’s why Augustine’s words are such a good reminder.

 

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