Proper 15: Communication and Being Together - Part Three of a series of sermons on Law, Love & Language

Proper 15: John 6:51-58

Jesus said, those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and i will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink

If you are hearing our verses from John's gospel for the first time, being sick might be the natural response, what with all the eating flesh and drinking blood references. Christians are quick to claim that what Jesus is getting at is something "symbolic" and not the actual cannibalism that jumps off the page at you. We say, roughly speaking, that Jesus' reference to his body and blood are understood in light of the story of Israel's covenant experiences with God. So, in the symbolism of the wine of communion we have the covenant significance of the blood that was sprinkled over the people as the ratification of the covenant that we read about in Exodus 24. It is in this that Israel recognizes the establishment or restoration of the covenant between humanity and God. The symbolism of the bread of communion brings us to the formation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai, the restoration of the relationship between people which is the communion aspect of our actions. Bread and wine, body and blood, communion with God, communion with each other, it all seems like good poetry or if nothing else, strange eating habits.

The language of communion is central to Jesus' message in the 6th chapter of John. Communion, in the sense of 'being together', and what we would later use to refer to the actions of sharing in the bread and wine in church, is an unavoidable concept in the gospel. "Whoever eats me will live because of me", Jesus says to the crowd. It is the sense of communion as 'being together' that strikes me as almost mysterious as the bread and wine being for us, Christ's body and blood. This morning, I would like to take a few moments to reflect on what 'being together' might mean.

The place to begin is with our bodies. We all have them, which is great. What role do they play in togetherness? Well, we might say that our bodies are normally experienced as a medium of communication. That is, at a very basic level, our place in the world and the first way we occupy space with people, rocks and turnips is in being a physical being. Before we can speak, and even later when we can use Twitter or telephones, our body is the source of communication. We are present to each other in the very fact that we are alive in the flesh. Someone without a physical body can only be absent from us—this is what bereavement means. To be present to another person we have either to be in the same place, where we can see and hear and touch each other, or else to be linked indirectly by some means involving our bodies, by a phone call or an email.

So, the first thing to say is that 'belonging together' begins with having a body. But, of course, communication can be good and bad, for we can just as easily praise someone as we can ridicule them. What we communicate as living bodies is the next thing to consider. Here we can consider the crudest of communications like hitting someone, but also the more complicated forms of communication like love and friendship. We can maintain love and friendship from a distance (unlike hitting someone) , but when our beloved is away for too long we desire more direct forms of presence. It's really hard to truly love someone without literally being with them. Human love and friendship are parts of our bodily life. Unfortunately, so is hitting someone or the use of unmanned attack drones. But these I will leave alone today. For what it's worth, I understand friendship and love to be the definition of life lived as creatures of a living God, and unmanned attack drones as signs of sin and death; both requiring the human body, but only one reflects our divine purpose.

Back to 'being together'. In sum, it requires human bodies being present to each other, communicating in their presence and by means of acts of friendship and love, something of God's plan for us. The last part about God's plan I tacked on, not simply to make this whole idea of togetherness sound religious, but in anticipation of what comes next. Communion, being together, is not just a fun way to pass time, but is, in fact, the way God desires for us to live. We are created social animals, and we learn what it means to live humanly well in contact with each other, being present to each other, as living bodies.

Now, when we consider that being together is bodily and includes the possibility of friendship and love, we are more prepared, i think, to hear Jesus' words about his body being the source of life. It is Christ's body and blood that establishes the people of God. We become one people – a holy people, a just people - in so far as our bodies are linked with Christ’s. The gospel seems clear: since Christ is the Word made flesh, and since he was bodily raised on the third day, it is only possible to be present to him in a human way by physical bodily presence. If Christ were not a living body he would be humanly absent from us, if he were dead we could remember him but we could not be in his human presence. It is precisely because he is raised from the dead that he is with us, and being with us, he offers his body as how we commune with God.

All the talk of eating flesh and drink blood takes our normal practice of eating food for our sustenance and indeed, life, and links that action with our sharing in Christ's life, his divinely human and humanly divine body as food and drink for our transformation, our healing, and our redemption. In his body, we are made present to God, and present to each other in a way that goes far deeper than what is possible in our own bodily life. We might even say that our desire to be together, to share our life with others, becomes actual in so far as we are linked with Christ's humanity. By his glorified body that we share in through the bread and wine of communion, that we encounter in the face of the stranger, who we hear in the Scriptures proclaimed, and who we feed when we do so with the hungry, community is created. Christ is not some ghostly spiritual aberration who haunts our private souls; Christ is the wounded, murdered, and raised Son of God who is present to us and in whose life, we can be present to each other in friendship and love.

The kind of communion that I’m speaking of is, in the Christian vision of the world, what makes our gathering as God's people to be a sign of true human togetherness. I don't mean that our being together is utopia, some fantasy where everyone gets along and is nice to each other. Sharing a common life, being with others, is what it means for us to be human. Nevertheless, we often settle for something less human, even sometimes inhumane, when our commitments to each other resemble a financial transaction (I’ll only be with you if you give me what i want) or worse, domination, whereby the real concern is with who has power and who is in control. When the church lacks the signs of belonging to one other, then the presence of Christ is diminished, his humanity absent. We become, as it were, something less than truly human.

It is because our bodies are united with the risen body of Christ that we have eternal life, the life of God. As those who belong together in Christ, our bodies, as our source of communication in the world, are strengthened to act with love and friendship even in the midst of all the inhumane ways of greed, violence and domination that defines so much of our society, even our relationships. What we offer is not bland spiritual guidance or holy platitudes; what we offer is what Christ offered: his life for the sake of the world. We offer, that is, our bodies to be a source of healing and love for others. In such acts, we display what it means to belong to Christ, to share in his body, to live present to God and each other. In being together, we learn what it means to abide in Christ.