“A sharing in the body and blood of Christ”
Introduction:
• I want to start with a question; it is a question to which we need a crystal clear answer, but more than that, a question whose answer is found with crystal clarity in the ordinary business of our lives. I think it may be the most important question in the Christian life. The question is this – what is that nature of our connection to Jesus?
– It may be that you see your connection to Jesus in terms primarily of the mind. For you, Jesus is one who teaches, he speaks words about God and the world and yourself that have a depth and substance that are compelling life-changing. Your connection with them is rational and intellectual.
– It may be that your see your connection to Jesus primarily in terms of the will. Jesus is Lord – this is the great Christian announcement, this world has a ruler, he is just and gracious and wise, the Lord Jesus Christ. He sets out the path for life, and for you, connection with Jesus is all about conforming your will to his, you pray to know his will, to have the strength to obey his will, the prayer that comes most easily to your lips, echoing Jesus, is ‘Not my will Lord, but yours be done’.
– It may be that you see your connection to Jesus as a recipient of the things he gives. Jesus offers you forgiveness and hope and resurrection, he is always giving and so you are always receiving, and appropriately that fills you with thankfulness for those gifts,
– Perhaps you see your connection to Jesus as an emotional thing – it’s not so much that the gives you things as he meets your needs – for love, for security, for friendship, one who overcomes fear and insecurity and loneliness, the connection of a friend, or perhaps a lover.
– Or it maybe that you see your connection to Jesus in primarily spiritual terms, that Jesus is one in whom we lose ourselves and are taken to something transcendent and better, perhaps like the way we connect with all transcendent things – sport, drugs.
• in fact, I want to suggest that the way Jesus and the Apostles speak of our connection to Jesus is all of these things and more, and I want to challenge you this morning to make sure that you are not living an emaciated Christian life. Listen to how they put it:
– Paul’s anxiety and anguish for the Galatian church, who he fears are being led terribly astray, so much so that he speaks of himself as again in the pains of childbirth, is because what he hopes for them is that Christ would be formed in them;
– In the less crisis-mode letter of Ephesians, Paul has the same hope, this time described as Christ dwelling in their hearts through faith
– To the Philippians, he puts it the other way round, and says that the ambition of his life is to found in Christ, and to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.
– To the Colossians his summary of the riches of the glory of the gospel is simply this: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
– • this is a connection of the most profound and complete nature, that it can only be described as the Christ in us, dwelling in us, his life, his way, his rule thoroughly invading every corner of our being.
• now this is remarkable stuff – as you get a sense of the intensity of what Jesus and his Apostles speak of, it’s important to reflect for yourself – to what extent is it true that the connection I have with Jesus is one that could be described as he in me and me in him? How would you know whether that was true of you. As we unpack it a little, notice 3 things:
a) first, this is entirely consistent with what we saw about baptism 2 weeks ago; I wonder whether when I asked you that question, the instantaneous thing that came to mind was, ‘yes, of course, I am in Christ, united to Christ in his death and his resurrection, I have been baptized’; if it’s not, then what was the alternative? My guess is that a question like that almost always provokes a turn inwards, and the problem with the turn inwards is that you can’t look at yourself and look at Jesus at the same time, and in these matters, Jesus is always more attractive to look at, always capable of giving you far more assurance than you can for yourself.
b) But second, notice that although there is a decisive moment of inclusion in Christ, of being baptized into Christ, that’s not the end of the matter. The connection is a dynamic one, one that grows – Christ is formed in us, as branches of the vine, God prunes us and works on us to bear fruit and then more fruit; we are increasingly conformed to the death of Jesus, dying to self and sin and living in the power of his resurrection.
c) So what has this got to do with the Lord’s supper – precisely this – just as baptism is the means of the grace of entry to Christ, given to us by our Lord himself, a divine meeting place of the sinner with his Saviour, and Jesus is not the kind of person to stand you up; so the Lord’s Supper is the means of grace of growing in Christ, given to us by our Lord himself, a divine feeding place to nurture and strengthen you. The apostle Paul’s word for it is koinonia, which we have in English, a sharing. Listen to how he puts it, 1 Cor 10.14:
1. “I speak as to sensible people” – 1 Cor 10.14–22
1Cor. 10:14 Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols. 15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say..
• the context for this instruction s quite bizarre to us –the Christians at Corinth had been rank pagans, worshippers of idols, engaged in pagan religious ceremonies in the temples of Corinth, which were central to the life of the city. Some of them had heard the gospel of Jesus and believed and been baptized, and found in Christ a glorious freedom from the slavery and fear and superstition of idol worship. They had the zeal of the convert, and for some, this meant realizing that there was no such thing a another God; and that meant they drew the conclusion that they could still go with their friends to the temple and participate in the idol ceremonies, but as long as they were doing something else in their own heads, say singing Christian hymns, while all the pagan stuff was going on, then there would be no problem. However, some others in the church were joining them, but finding that it meant in fact that they were slipping back into pagan worship as Christians; and so the issue is, is it OK for the strong minded, strong conscienced Corinthian Christians to still go to the pagan temples. And the Apostle says, flee from the worship of idols; don’t even think about it. Of course, there’s no such thing as idols really, he agrees with them on that, v. 19:
19 What do I imply then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.
• and therefore, as an objective fact, to engage in the worship of idols is to share , not with some other god – there is no such thing – but to share with demons, v. 21:
I do not want you to be partners with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
- that’s the conclusion, but what’s fascinating is how he gets there; you see, he takes something that we all know, namely that the equivalent Christian meal, the bread and the cup, is equally an objective sharing in Christ, v. 16:
16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread
• Paul is not arguing that the cup and the bread are a koinonia, a sharing, a participation in the blood and body of Christ, that is his death, he’s assuming it, all sensible people know it; it’s a well known and understand reality that when you engage in a worship service, you are connected to the God you worship – not merely intellectually, not merely emotionally, not merely volitionally, not merely spiritually, all of those things and more. And consequently, by sharing in that bread, we who are many are one body, precisely because we share in this one bread; we are one body, and that means we can’t be part of another body, the body that shares the table of demons.
• Paul gives another example, this time from Israel, v. 19:
18 Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?
• again, this is not something Paul is trying to persuade us of, it is what everyone knows, it’s obvious, says Paul if you eat the sacrifice you are a partner in the altar, everyone understands that!
• 3 points of clarification
– first, notice that the whole point Paul is making is that this sharing is an objective reality. At one level, it doesn’t matter what you are thinking when you are partaking, it doesn’t matter if you are a Christian person at a pagan temple and while the pagan ceremony is going on you are singing Christian hymns, the fact is that to be there is a sharing, a fellowship with the one whose table it is – if it’s the table of demons, then that’s who you participate in; if it’s the table of the Lord, then that’s who you participate in. Every sensible person knows that, at least as far as Paul is concerned.
– Second, objective, but not automatic. That is, it is possible to be objectively baptized and objectively partake of the Supper, and still to fall under the judgment of God. That’s the point Paul makes at the start of this chapter, 1 Cor 10.1: I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. In other words, God is not mocked!
– and finally, the big question – if you’re with this so far, you may well be asking, how does this happen? Is there an explanation of how this objective sharing works, say in terms of the presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord’s supper, whether they are transubstantiated into the substance of Christ’s literal flesh and blood; or perhaps whether Christ is rather present in the Supper spiritually? I want to suggest that all of those answers are a foolish turn up a dead end. The fact is, we are simply not told how the bread and the cup are a sharing in the death of Christ. At the one point where Paul speaks of the nature of the connection we have Christ, he says it’s a great mystery – Eph 5.32, and I think it’s best left at that, rather than trying to unravel it. But it makes sense doesn’t it – it makes sense to bring together eating and drinking as the way of expressing this kind of profound koinonia connection. When you eat and drink, that’s what you are doing, sharing in something at the deepest level. I suspect that’s why Jesus gives us this language.
2. “I am the bread of life” – Jn 6
• you see, this vision of what it is to be a Christian, to be koinonia-ed to Jesus, goes all the way back to Jesus himself:
– in John’s account of the night before Jesus died, we hear Jesus say that he is the true vine, and that we are the braches, and if we abide in him as he abides in us, then we will bear much fruit.
– And then in what we now call his high priestly prayer, Jesus heart for his disciples laid bare before the Father, he asks that as the Father is in him and he is in the Father, so we may be in the Father and the Son, and he in us.
• but it’s with the speech of John 6 that Jesus brings together eating and drinking with this kind of connection – Jesus has just fed the 5000 in the desert, just like the Lord fed the Israelites in the desert, and when the crowds follow him, he says to them, Jn 6.35:
John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
• the people who have seen Jesus feed the masses start to complain, and so Jesus presses the point, v. 48:
48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
• suddenly Jesus gets specific – the bread that he gives for the life of the world is his flesh – that is, his death on the cross, his very life given up. The Jews misunderstand him, they think he means that Jesus is inviting people to literally eat his flesh. And so Jesus characteristically makes it easier to comprehend and accept what he’s saying, v. 53:
53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.
• do you see the logic – because the Father has sent the Son, and Jesus lives because of the Father, in the previous chapter Jesus has said the Father who has life in himself has granted the Son also to have life in himself, therefore if you eat Jesus, if you take the life of Jesus into your very self, you too will live because of Jesus. This is the kind of connection that Jesus offers us – not external, not partial, total.
Conclusion: “Feed on him in your hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving”
• over the past 3 weeks, we have been looking at these 2 commands of Christ, what we have come to call sacraments, actually a Latin word that translates the Greek word musterion. Partly that’s because at the vestry meeting, we are going to discuss admitting baptized but unconfirmed children to the Lord’s supper, and so it’s important to have a sense of what we’re talking about. How can we draw the threads together?
– First, we have seen that the connection we have with Jesus is the most wonderful and remarkable thing – Paul calls it a koinonia, a sharing, a participation in Christ, so that Christ is formed in us; it goes all the way back to Jesus, who spoke of himself as
– Second, eating and drinking are a perfect image of this participation. That’s why Jesus speaks in such graphic terms in Jn 6; he is speaking of this connection. He’s not speaking about the Lord’s Supper as such – rather he’s speaking about the thing that the Lord’s supper is speaking about, connection with him at the deepest level
– Third, that’s why the Lord’s supper services are constructed is in a fairly fixed form, which is a combination of words of institution from Jesus, and the feeding on language of John 6. The key is the invitation, which you’ll notice I say at every service: “Come let us take this holy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, ad feed on him in our hearts – yes, that’s where we feed on Christ, not our mouth, by faith, with thanksgiving. –
– and therefore finally, who belongs at the table of the Lord. It seems to me that the only answer we can give to that is that all who belong to Christ belong at his table; and how do you belong to Christ – by being baptized into Christ. That’s why I’m in favour of children who have not yet been confirmed nonetheless being admitted to the Lord’s supper – for you see, to exclude them is to say that we need to add a valuable but merely human idea like confirmation, to the gift from Jesus of baptism to say that someone really belongs to Christ. And that would be a mistake.
• but the challenge is not just at the level of how we do the Lord’s supper – the challenge of this series is how intense is your entrusting of yourself to Jesus? How is the dynamic of Christ being formed in you unfolding in your life? Are you eating his flesh and drinking his blood – the words in the original language are seriously graphic – munching, crunching – is your connection to him the transparent and dominating reality in your life? Or are you perhaps nibbling at Jesus, having put him to the side of the plate of your life, good for spiritual matters, but hardly the point and focus of life. Or even worse, sniffing, merely toying with the possibility?
• The invitation of Jesus is to find the entire of your life in him – find strength for this in the Lord’s Supper – that is a means of grace, divinely appointed. But there are others – read his word, bring your needs and thanks and sins to him in prayer day by day – these too are means of grace. And then offer the entire of your life – your work and your family and your relationships, your words and deeds, all of as a living sacrifice, through Jesus Christ our Lord, sent out in the power of the Spirit, to live and work to the praise and glory of God.
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