The Gift of Eucharist

​This morning we continue our five-week march through John six, that long meditation on Christ as the bread of life. We have heard a lot about the bread of life, and today we get yet another remarkable series of claims about it.
 
“Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” “Whoever eats me will live because of me.”
“The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
 
The language in our passage can be a little disturbing, but still, this is bread we want!
 
Last week, Terry wisely noted that we can encounter the bread of life in many ways, including in each other. But I want to focus this morning specifically on the bread of life available to us in the Eucharist.
 
I start with the big picture.
 
God is everywhere. God created and sustains all things. There is no place in all of creation that is not holy.
 
And yet some places are more obviously holy than others. In some places, holiness is closer to the surface. In some places, we feel holiness more strongly than we typically feel it elsewhere.
 
One of those places is our Church building, where we gather for worship and prayer, where we encounter God, where we are more likely to focus on God’s presence than, probably, is true for most of us at our homes, on most days.
 
The same is true for time. Christ is with us always. There is no moment that is not holy. And yet some times are more obviously holy than others. Some times we are more aware of Christ who may be present always, but who we don’t always notice.
 
One of those more obviously holy times is Sunday morning, when we gather—physically and virtually—for worship. That’s because, when two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, Christ is present to and with us more even than at most other times.
 
Finally, the same is true for material things. God made it all. Everything that exists comes from God. Everything that exists can serve as reminders of God’s generosity and love. Everything is sacramental, meaning everything is both a sign of God’s grace and a means for us to experience God’s grace.
 
But the bread and wine of the Eucharist are special. Christ is more tangible in the consecrated bread and wine.
 
The God we meet in the Eucharist is available to us anytime, anyplace, and with anything. But Christ has promised that God’s presence is especially true, especially powerful, especially experience-able in the Eucharist.
 
As we gather, in this holy place, at this holy time, to share in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, we are touched by the Holy Spirit. We are nourished by Christ himself. We who consume the body of Christ are shaped into the body of Christ. We who eat this bread have Christ abiding in us. We who eat this bread have the promise of resurrection to eternal life.
 
Our awareness of Christ with us in the Eucharist, our awareness of God’s grace and love, our aware of the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us, can and should shape how we live our lives in every place and all the time and with whatever stuff happens to be present.
 
One of the gifts of being a priest is the opportunity and also the obligation to share Eucharist multiple times a week. I am especially grateful for the obligation, which pushes me to the sacrament even if I do not feel much like it.
 
Sharing Eucharist regularly takes more discipline for most of you. You have a choice about whether to attend worship.
 
That choice is a good reason to hear again the promises Jesus associates with consuming the bread of life. It’s also a good reason to ponder what life is like without the Eucharist.
 
We got a taste of life without the Eucharist during the first months of COVID, when our buildings were closed and we couldn’t come together physically for worship. Through that whole period, our Diocese sponsored meetings to talk about what we could and could not safely do, and how we could appropriately meet the longing of the people for Eucharist.
 
In response to that longing, a theologian consulting with us worried that people, including members of the clergy, might treat the Eucharist as something we have a right to, as yet another consumable, as something given to us for and at our convenience.
 
I didn’t entirely agree with him, but he helpfully reminded us that sharing Eucharist is a privilege. Eucharist is a gift given to us by God and so God’s to give or withhold.
 
On the other hand, we were keenly aware that in hard times—and the first months of the pandemic certainly qualified—people need the spiritual sustenance that the Eucharist provides better than almost anything else. Our job as pastors was to meet that need as best we could.
 
Both points matter. None of us have a right to demand the Eucharist. But all of us have a need for the sacramental grace of the Eucharist.
 
Thankfully, the days of closed buildings are behind us. But they are a helpful reminder from our own time.
 
I end with an image from another time.
 
I recently watched a movie called Silence about Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. It’s fictional, but based on a true story.
 
Catholic missionaries arrived in Japan in the 16th century and quickly won lots of converts. But in the early seventeenth-century, the new Japanese government outlawed Christianity and banished foreigners, specifically priests. The government killed the priests that wouldn’t leave and any Japanese Christians who wouldn’t abandon their faith.
 
Amazingly, some Japanese people continued to practice Christianity in secret. There emerged an underground Church that functioned without clergy.
 
In the film, a pair of Catholic priests snuck into Japan. In one dramatic scene, the priests were taking a boat to a Christian village. As their boat approached the shore, villagers rushed into the ocean and grabbed the side of the boat.
 
Initially the priests thought they were being attacked, either by the Japanese authorities themselves or else by villagers so terrified of what the authorities might do that they were determined to drive away any Christians who approached.
 
Then the priests realized that the people charging the boat were not attacking. They were begging. They were desperate to receive the Eucharist, which they hadn’t received in years.
 
Those people appreciated the value of the bread of life. They felt in a visceral way their need for sustenance in their ongoing Christian journey, especially since they lived under the constant threat of persecution.
 
In the film, the priests did what they could, but were eventually caught. In history, an underground Christianity persisted in Japan for the next two hundred years, until Christianity was legalized in the mid-nineteenth century. That means generations of Japanese Christians lived and died without ever receiving the Eucharist.
 
We are blessed. We can share Eucharist almost anytime. We will share Eucharist in just a minute.
 
And as we do, we should pause in gratitude to the God who gives us this gift, who touches us in this special way. And after receiving the Eucharist, I invite you thank God for the privilege of sharing in the bread of life in this way.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.