Known in the bread

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread. That is one of my favorite liturgical statements and it gets to the heart of why we celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday. This story from the Gospel of Luke is such a wonderful telling of how we are blind to so many things, to so many people until we do come together with something in common. When we do that, they become known to us and in the connection we find Christ. Jesus may have instituted the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday but it is in this story that much of the theology takes shape.

I have a little book in my office that I’ve had since my class on liturgy in seminary and I forgot how good it is until working on this sermon. It is called Shaped by Images. Dr. Seth Adams talks about keeping rituals. We fall into a very particular category of church that does this. There are those churches that organize themselves around clear statements of doctrine like the Lutherans and their Augsburg Confession. Pentecostal Christians come together around common experiences of the Spirit. Then there’s us, we are identified by what we do – we worship together in a particular way, a way in which we create the postures and patterns of behavior through which we expect to encounter God. We may be known by the Book of Common Prayer but only as our guide to the precious rituals. If you look at our rituals, you will begin to glimpse what we believe. Dr. Adams says “In what we do and say, we express what we believe and what we believe is impressed back upon us.”

The ritual of Holy Communion is filled with imagery. This isn’t a magical rite in which I say abracadabra and this priests host and wine appear and disappear or turn into a dove. Although in an interesting side note to that – the magic formula hocus pocus is actually a mangled version of the Latin hoc es corpus “This is my body.” We reject our rituals being identified as magic while we resolutely encounter them as mystery. Ritual is corporate symbolic activity. It says something about what we believe and changes how we know ourselves. It transforms us from individuals into members of a body. We become linked and intertwined in a sacramental web.

We make the practice of breaking bread and sharing it in this ritualized way for several reasons. First, it is a foretaste of heaven. The more we consider this, the more nuances we will find in it. First it is not solitary activity. If none of you show up, I cannot celebrate the Eucharist. There must be someone with whom to share it. In this ritual we claim the image of heaven as a great banquet to which all are invited and no one is left out or turned away. Even the way we receive the bread which has been broken makes a statement. Episcopal practice is to come forward and put your hands out and allow them to be filled. I remember one woman who for two years at the Cathedral would grab the communion wafer out of my hand. Finally one day, as I realized that she was missing a big part of it, I stopped her by catching her hand and turning it over and then I placed the bread in her outstretched empty hand. The symbolism of how we do it is important. We come to the table trusting that we will be fed not pushing our way to the banquet table to get the tastiest things before they are gone. The Eucharist is a ritual of abundance and we practice it regularly so that hopefully, that sense of abundance will infuse all of the rest of our lives.

We practice the unity of the Eucharist. We call it the bread that makes us one. Regardless of how we differ in ideas and opinions, and even in how we understand this sacrament, it becomes a common denominator. I was given a real gift this week in an experience that was shared with me. I had made a hospital visit some months ago and brought communion into the ICU. It was as wonderful as it always is but the story got much better after I left. The nurse on duty happened to notice that after having received this sacrament all of the patient’s levels, blood pressure, heart rate and other things that had been too high, all came down following the ritual. I’d like to think that that was because having shared the bread that makes us one, that body that was struggling, drew strength from being knit into a larger, greater body. This is powerful stuff.

Ritual is faith enacted. In the doing we create physical memory which is more dependable than the memories in the mind. It’s why you never forget how to ride a bicycle. In the marriage rite, there are specific actions that involve the taking and loosing of hands. Dr. Adams claims that the marriage happens when the promise is made with the hands and that the words are merely an overlay necessitated by custom. This is tactile memory which is a means of faith so that by “the skin’s recognition….God is known in the marrow before being known in the mind.”

Thus the Eucharist, as we celebrate it, becomes a celebration of the Incarnation – the holiness that dwells in physical life. Jesus’ life – however understood as God coming to earth to dwell with us – demands that we honor our physical selves. If a human body was sufficient to hold the Lord of Life how can it not be worthy of honor and awe? Our bodies are the vehicles by which we encounter the world and all that is divine in it. We cannot take part in the ritual of the church without them.

Another reason we are a people of ritual is to remember. In the Eucharist we remember the sweep of time from creation until now, we remember Jesus’ instructions, in the broken bread we remember his broken body, we remember the prophet’s call to welcome the stranger, we remember all who have ever shared this meal and all who have kept the tradition of the church. Yet even as we remember, in the mystery of the Eucharist as a window on eternity, we anticipate those who have not yet come to join us at the table.

It makes me sad when I hear our worship dismissed as “empty ritual.” It makes me aware of the responsibility that I carry – to lead our ritual in a meaningful, creative and spirit filled way – as well as the responsibility to teach it. But I could do the most elegant celebration and write a critically acclaimed dissertation on the sacraments and it would mean nothing if those rituals did not inform the rest of my life and the life of this congregation.

Lastly ritual is stewardship of our common life. We have been given this community and the place in which to gather. In this place we come together as the church and the Eucharist is the ritual that claims the holiness of our relationship. This morning I invite you to find communion with each other and with the divine when you receive this meal. I further invite you to find the same mystery and divinity in every meal that you enjoy this week. Let the ritual impress itself on you and make you new again and again.

Adams, Seth; Shaped by Images; 1995; The Church Hymnal Corporation, New York NY