Living Flesh, Life-Giving Wine: The Spiritual Practice of Communion Rev. Debra Bowman, Ryerson United Church, Oct. 6, 2013 Some things in our lives serve as icons as signs or symbols of a much deeper meaning than what first meets the eye. As soon as we see them, hear them, smell them, we know and remember and are aware of something that far transcends the physical limits of that one sign or symbol. Some examples: birthday balloon, pretty teacup and saucer, red Olympic mittens, yellow card, when you hear ready, set what is the next word? And then what will happen. And when someone says once upon a time? And when you hear (Here Comes the Bride, Christmas carol). When you smell turkey? What do you anticipate happening? What do you remember? What experience is evoked in you? These things are iconic something often small but particular that wakes up within us a world of memory, experience and expectation. And just so when this happened in the early days of the Christian story (take bread, bless, break and offer) the gathered community saw much more than a meal being served. They remembered times at the table with Jesus. They remembered his stories and his actions; his attempts to wash their feet, his impatience with them and his simultaneous deep compassion and love for them. They remembered too their last meal together, and his warning that someone amongst them would betray him. This happened so often (take, bless, break and give) that it became iconic, so that even after his death, even when all hope had been abandoned and the community of Jesus followers dispersed disheartened into the country side, when two of 1
them gathered at a table with a stranger and the stranger told them stories of their faith and then took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them a much larger experience was evoked, a much deeper truth became evident. They remembered a past that was precious and realized that a promised future was breaking into their very present moment. Today is the second Sunday of our sermon series entitled Day by Day Spiritual Practices that Sustain Us. Today we are focusing on communion. For some Christians communion, or Eucharist, is a very regular practice, an every Sunday practice. A couple of Sundays ago two Anglican women were worshiping with us and as they left at the end of the service I apologized for sending them away hungry that sacred ritual, that sustains some in ways beyond our knowing, was not offered here that morning. For some others communion is a very irregular practice; at Ryerson we have communion maybe 4-5 times a year although we are trying to develop a regular practice of offering it after worship in the chapel once a month. But just because we do not regularly partake in the traditional understanding of communion, does not mean we cannot develop communion as a regular day-by-day life sustaining practice. Communion as an icon, as a sacred symbol of something else, is not limited to this place and this moment. Communion is about so much more than a rather formal ritual in front of the church. It is about remembering the gift of God s creation, remembering the life and stories and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is about confessing those times when we have turned away from God s intentions, when we have blocked our ears and our hearts to Christ s call to us. Communion is about belonging, about knowing that we are all in this 2
together the people in this room, those who are not here but whom we know and remember with gratitude and grief, the people who are not here and will never be here but are united with us through God s common desire that we all know God s love and just future. Communion is about our common shared humanity, our common shared life in creation. Day by day we can be sustained by the practice of all this remembering, confessing, gratitude, anticipation. Communion is of course rooted in the word common common, communion, community. The word is rooted in our rootedness in each other and in creation. To be in communion is to be at-one-with, in communion with each other, at-one-with with creation. Commons is a concept I ve been talking about a lot as we consider our redevelopment I have been wondering how we are in communion with each other, our neighbourhood, the context in which we serve. How can we offer commons space were people can feel they belong. Because of course community reflects a sense of belonging. Peter Bloc has written Community is about the experience of belonging: we are in community each time we find a place where we belong where we relate to and are a part of something.to know, even in the middle of the night, that I am among friends. (Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block) Belonging also reflects a longing to be. A longing to be part of something, part of a deeper purpose, part of something that really matters. In communion our longing to be encounters God s longing for us and we, the community, the common enterprise, are transformed. If even just for a second, communion, being part of something, transcends the daily rather 3
unconscious existence and moves us into a sacred and sustaining experience of something holy and hope-filled. And again, these moments are not restricted to the very seldom times in which we gather at this particular table. Last weekend I performed a marriage ceremony for two people who are friends of my sons. The event was beautiful and it was poignant the bride s mother was very recently diagnosed with a virulent and fast moving cancer and the wedding was planned quickly to ensure that she would be able to attend. My big burly middle son was a groom s attendant and he told me he could hardly breathe during the ceremony situated as he was in front of the gathered guests he could not help but watch as the parents of the bride sat side by side, the mother in a wheel chair, the father with tears on his cheeks. The day of the wedding also marked the 18 th birthday of the groom s cousin, who had died at six years old from cancer. And yet, and yet, there was so much joy in the room! It was after all a wedding, and the couple has a wee baby who the groom carried down the aisle with such pride and happiness. During the reception the speeches were alternatively hilarious and heart breaking. Tears of laughter mixed readily with tears of empathy and sorrow. At table together we were in a communion of hearts opened with joy and while open, so terribly vulnerable to searing sorrow. For that time we belonged together, and we longed to be in communion with all life has to offer love and loss, babies and dying parents, strangers joined together at table in our common humanity, a community longing to love and hold all the loss in the room. It was beautiful, it was communion, and its raw reality will sustain me day by day for many days to come. 4
Each one of you knows those moments of communion. Those moments when the veil between the kingdom of God and us is very, very thin. Each one of us is blessed with belonging and each one of us knows the intense yearning of longing to be. May we all be fed and sustained through the ongoing taking, blessing, breaking and offering of our lives lived as one with the life of Christ. Amen 5