Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion
(Corpus Christi, Jun 7)

Living Bread

Gen. 14:18—20 Melchizedek brought bread and wine; Ps. 116:12—19 The cup of salvation; 1 Cor. 11:23—26 The Last Supper; John 6:51—58 Living bread

'[Jesus said,] "l am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that l will give for the life of the world is my flesh."' John 6:51

'You are what you eat'

Ludwig Feuerbach was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. The only thing he's famed for is saying `You are what you eat,' which is a pun in German but falls rather flat when translated into English. Recently it became the title of a series of television programmes. On the physical level it's obviously true: the cells of our bodies are made up of molecules from the food we consume. It also seems that people who pick at their food have a different personality from those who eat a daily roast; those who eat frogs' legs are culturally different from those who eat Yorkshire pudding! Jesus says that in a spiritual sense, our souls are formed by what we absorb as spiritual nourishment.

Corpus Christi

This is highlighted by his words at the Last Supper, which we commemorate on Maundy Thursday. It was felt, however, that there's so much else happening in Holy Week, that the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, Eucharist or Mass – call it what you like – when we commemorate and re-enact the Last Supper, didn't receive enough attention. So a new feast was instituted, when the Easter season was over, on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and called Corpus Christi, which means the Body of Christ. St Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth-century theologian, wrote a complete set of hymns and prayers to be used on this day. They express in beautiful poetry his devotion to the sacrament of the Eucharist. The spirituality and the language are timeless; unfortunately the philosophy of Aristotle on which they are based is now seen by many as rather dated. There's no time to go into the complicated issue of transubstantiation; Queen Elizabeth I wrote a piece of appalling verse, which is sound common sense, saying that she was willing to leave it to Jesus to decide what he meant by the words `This is my body':

'Twas God the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it; And what the word did make it; That I believe, and take it.

Spiritual food

So, like her, we can leave others to argue over what the bread and wine actually are; Jesus himself said that it's their spiritual symbol-ism that matters. A few verses after the passage set as today's Gospel he says, `It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.' The symbolism of eating's very helpful in this way. To receive the power of Jesus for ourselves, we must feed on him – there's no other word which expresses it so well – we must absorb his teaching, his character, his mir. 4, his ways. Ask yourself constantly, `What would Jesus do in my place?' and do it; allow Jesus to love other people through you. Then Jesus will be in you and you in him, just as closely as the food we eat becomes a part of us. Jesus is our spiritual food. Without him dwelling in us we are powerless. When Jesus is in us we are transformed. A great Scottish preacher said he first really believed that Jesus is alive today when he saw the expression on his father's face as he returned from receiving Holy Communion.

The Church, the Body of Christ

Perhaps it was when the first Christians repeated the words of Jesus, `This is my body', as they gathered together to worship, that it dawned on them that they themselves were becoming the Body of Christ. St Paul frequently appeals to this metaphor: we're like limbs and organs in Christ's body, each of us different, but each with a part to play in doing Christ's work in the world. St Paul appeals to this, to teach his divided congregations to be tolerant of each other. However much you reverence the bread and wine in the sacrament, you should reverence your fellow-worshippers as much. It would be a little impractical to genuflect to each other as we leave the church, but really we ought to! For all the other communicants have now absorbed Christ into themselves, and each of them has become the Body of Christ, just as truly as the bread is; `you are what you eat'. Even the church members whom you resent, despise or ignore: Christ is in them. They have become, for you, the Body of Christ, and will remain so all week. Treat them with reverence and respect, for if you don't, you'll be blaspheming the Body of Christ.

Suggested hymns

God is here! As we his people; I am the bread of life; Now, my tongue, the mystery telling; The church of God a kingdom is.