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Celebrating the Body of Christ
Genesis 14:18-20
In those days, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine,
and being a priest of God Most High,
he blessed Abram with these words:
"Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
the creator of heaven and earth;
and blessed be God Most High,
who delivered your foes into your hand."
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Psalm 110: 1-3
The LORD said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand
till I make your enemies your footstool."
The scepter of your power the LORD will stretch forth from Zion:
"Rule in the midst of your enemies."
"Yours is princely power in the day of your birth, in holy splendor;
before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you."
The LORD has sworn, and he will not repent:
"You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek."
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me."
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
Sequence 'Lauda Sion'
Laud, O Zion, your salvation,
Laud with hymns of exultation,
Christ, your king and shepherd true:
Bring him all the praise you know,
He is more than you bestow.
Never can you reach his due.
Special theme for glad thanksgiving
Is the quick’ning and the living
Bread today before you set:
From his hands of old partaken,
As we know, by faith unshaken,
Where the Twelve at supper met.
Full and clear ring out your chanting,
Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting,
From your heart let praises burst:
For today the feast is holden,
When the institution olden
Of that supper was rehearsed.
Here the new law’s new oblation,
By the new king’s revelation,
Ends the form of ancient rite:
Now the new the old effaces,
Truth away the shadow chases,
Light dispels the gloom of night.
What he did at supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated,
His memorial ne’er to cease:
And his rule for guidance taking,
Bread and wine we hallow, making
Thus our sacrifice of peace.
This the truth each Christian learns,
Bread into his flesh he turns,
To his precious blood the wine:
Sight has fail’d, nor thought conceives,
But a dauntless faith believes,
Resting on a pow’r divine.
Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things are all we see:
Blood is poured and flesh is broken,
Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.
Whoso of this food partakes,
Does not rend the Lord nor breaks;
Christ is whole to all that taste:
Thousands are, as one, receivers,
One, as thousands of believers,
Eats of him who cannot waste.
Bad and good the feast are sharing,
Of what divers dooms preparing,
Endless death, or endless life.
Life to these, to those damnation,
See how like participation
Is with unlike issues rife.
When the sacrament is broken,
Doubt not, but believe ‘tis spoken,
That each sever’d outward token
doth the very whole contain.
Nought the precious gift divides,
Breaking but the sign betides
Jesus still the same abides,
still unbroken does remain.
The shorter form of the sequence begins here.
Lo! the angel’s food is given
To the pilgrim who has striven;
see the children’s bread from heaven,
which on dogs may not be spent.
Truth the ancient types fulfilling,
Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling,
manna to the fathers sent.
Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.
You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.
John 6:51
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven, says the Lord;
whoever eats this bread will live forever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Luke 9:11-17
Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God,
and he healed those who needed to be cured.
As the day was drawing to a close,
the Twelve approached him and said,
"Dismiss the crowd
so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms
and find lodging and provisions;
for we are in a deserted place here."
He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves."
They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have,
unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people."
Now the men there numbered about five thousand.
Then he said to his disciples,
"Have them sit down in groups of about fifty."
They did so and made them all sit down.
Then taking the five loaves and the two fish,
and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing over them, broke them,
and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
They all ate and were satisfied.
And when the leftover fragments were picked up,
they filled twelve wicker baskets.
Approaches to Eucharist
The Eucharist embodies the whole mystery of the Word being made into flesh so there is no end to what can be said about it. I'm simply going to make some comments on each of the three readings; if this gives you some leads for reflection that is enough; if it opens some avenues you have not explored before so much the better. Actually my thoughts are new to me too so I'm afraid I can't credit them to anyone else. Mine, for better or worse.
Melchisedek is extraordinary - literally. With the briefest of mentions in the Abraham narrative, he comes from nowhere and yet is recognised as a priest of the Most High. He offers not sacrifice but hospitality. You'd have expected him to demand Abraham make a pile of all the booty and burn it in holcaust to the Lord, but no. He simple gives Abraham a blessing. It was enough to induce the patriarch to offer one tenth, a tithe, of his victory spoils to this mysterious figure standing in for God at that moment.
In Psalm 110 the Christ is said to be a priest after the manner of Melchisedek, an issue closely examined in the letter to the Hebrews.
It is worth pausing here for a comment: the usual translation is 'according to the order of Melchizedek' but it may be more accurate to say 'according to the manner of Melchizedek', or simply 'like Melchizedek'. (1)
The point is that the temple priests were ordered in every way, and firstly that they were of the tribe of Levi and successors of Aaron. What everyone notes about Melchizedek is that he comes from nowhere with no genealogy, no credentials - that he is not in the order of priesthood and yet is 'priest of the Most High'. Jeshua is like that. He comes fom a no-where place and is a priest of God's making, not odained by some human authority.
But our priests are, since the second century, 'ordered', ordained, marshalled into ranks within a strict hierarchical structure, just like the temple priests. Throughout the bible prophets are charismatic 'seers' sent by God, often to challenge the hierarchy as Jeshua did in his turn. They are necessarily outside the order - extra-ordinary.
I wonder whether the letter to the Hebrews, which itself has no known author, was written precisely to counter this 'ordering', this 'ordaining' of priests which was becoming the norm? Christian history is studded with charismatic seers, Benedict, Francis, Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, Dorothy Day of New York and Mary McKillop of Fitzroy. These were 'raised up by God' as they say; ministers of the Most High. People like this are found in every community and perhaps ought to be recognised as the leaders.
*****
In 1 Corithians Paul is reacting to reports that things were not going as well as they might among the brothers and sisters in Corinth. He is also replying to a letter they had sent him asking for guidance on a number of points. So the writing is not as closely composed and carefully phrased as a text of teaching doctrine might be, and some remarks will be seen as comments or examples such as we use in conversation. They should not be taken as definitive, the way we can take a carefully constructed doctrinal statement.
Dealing with questions arising out of some disorderly conduct in their community gatherings, at one point he sums up the Eucharist in a few lines:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
A couple of things I notice: 'my body that is for you'. If we place the emphasis on the last phrase we can see that for Jeshua this is his final, ultimate gift to them - the gift of his whole self given in a human, 'bodily' way to be eaten as nourishment. The gift of food flows through the history of Israel: two or three mentions in the Abraham narrative, manna in the desert in the Moses account, Jeshua feeding large crowds with a few loaves of bread, and at this last supper in which he gave them a ritual to keep them mindful of him through the years.
That's the second thing I notice: 'in remembrance of me'. There's an unfortunate attempt to write the word as 're-membering', explained to mean 'putting members back together'. While making unity is one of the main fruits of eucharist this way of saying it simply does not work for etymological reasons. (2) Remembering is 'keeping in mind', 'being mindful'.
When we have a memorial service the purpose is to leave us mindful of the person or event - our mind filled with memories of how it was at the time, as we try to understand what it meant then and what it means to us now. So we celebrate the Lord's supper to make us mindful again of his total gift of love.
Eucharist nourishes us with mindfulness of Jeshua's death, as Paul says. But what is it about that death that we should focus on? To me it was his self-giving, his ultimate act of giving everything to make a lasting impact on his disciples. He was so convinced of the importance of his message that he was ready to die for it. To give yourself in dying to convince your friends of your love for them is the ultimate gift.
The core of his message is that God loves the world and everyone - everything - in it. It is odd that we still fight against this message, preferring to think there is no god, or that we are beyond his reach, or just unworthy of his love.
One last thing to think about: Paul, like Luke (ch 22:20), clearly says the cup was the one after supper. I wonder is this significant? Are we correct in linking the bread and wine together as one thing, like tea-and-biscuits, or are there two distinct meanings to be discovered here?
The cup after supper was a final pledge putting the seal on the friendship forged or deepend in this meal. Jeshua called it the cup of the new covenant, of the new pledge binding God to his role as father/carer and us to being his people. It is this pledge that is sealed in the life-blood of Jeshua, sealed by the total 'pouring out' of his blood rather than with a token gesture as when two people cut their hands and mingle their blood.
I wonder should we take the cup at the moment of leaving the assembly rather than having it as a drink to accompany our eating.
*****
The wonder of magic still entrances us, proven by its power to draw audiences to shows on stage or TV. So it's no wonder we keep going back to the wonder of a 'miracle' in the multiplication of loaves of bread instead of seeing it as another instance of God's inviting us to a banquet. John recognised this, and in Chapter 6 follows up on the story with a dramatised confrontation between Jeshua and the pharisees.
Sufficient for me to say that I hope we have moved on from sharing our dissatisfaction with the theology of transubstantiation (which is squeezed for all it's worth in Aquinas' Lauda Sion, the sequence of today's Mass). John's commentary in Chapter 6 is required reading today. We might get the meaning better if we read 'eat my flesh' as to 'take on board my self, my whole being in all my familiar humanity, and entrust yourself to me'.
His interlocutors in protest chose to ridicule the idea of eating someone's flesh. Even today you can hear the same worn-out objection while more reflection will reveal deeper realities.
Footnotes:
(1) The word 'order' reflects the Greek Septuagint taxis = a regular arrangement, as in military ranks. But the Hebrew 'dibrah' means 'cause, reason or manner', so that the translation in some modern versions reads 'in the manner of Melchizedek', or 'in the style of Melkizedek', or just 'like Melchizedek' could be more to the point. See also https://biblehub.com/commentaries/psalms/110-4.htm
(2) While making unity to form community is one of the main fruits of eucharist, this way of saying it simply does not work. Memory, from Latin memor, means to be mindful, while member, from Latin membrum refers to parts of a whole - the members.