'Is this it?' A sermon about the Church

A sermon give at St Matthew's, Oxford on 16th February 2020

Readings: 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31; John 15: 1-17.

My sermon today is really just a continuation from my sermon two-weeks ago.  My main message then was that the Holy Communion is not a rehearsal.   I tried to explain what I meant by that.   Today my main message is that the Church is not a rehearsal either.  Look around you.  This is it. 

 

I have always been intrigued by a poster that was outside a church I passed on my way to work for a while.  The poster posed the question: ‘Is this it?’   It was something like this poster [left].  I guess the originators of the poster expected the passer-by to say ‘no’ but I wanted to say ‘yes’.  But of course the question depends on what you mean by ‘this’.  If by this you mean the church, outside which the poster stood, then I think the answer to this question is definitely yes.

In this sermon I will try and explain what I mean by saying that the Church is not a rehearsal.  In this it is helpful to think about what Paul meant by saying to the Corinthians, in the epistle reading we heard just now, ‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’ [12: 27]. But of all the verse in today’s epistle reading I want to concentrate on his contention ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one members is honoured, all rejoice together.’ [12: 26]

In our gospel reading Jesus talks about himself and the Church – not as a body – but as a vine.   And I want to look at that passage too in the light of my contention that the Church is not a rehearsal 

But to begin with I thought I would re-cap on some of the things I said in my sermon two weeks ago.  My sermon then was on 1 Corinthians 11 and this week we are thinking about 1 Corinthians 12.  Now the subject matter of the two chapters is clearly connected.  1 Corinthians 11 is about how the Corinthians should celebrate Holy Communion: 1 Corinthians 12 is about how the members of the Church should behave towards one another. 

In Chapter 11 Paul talks about the bread we eat at Holy Communion as being the Body of Christ.  In Chapter 12 Paul talks about the church as being the Body of Christ.  In other words, as Pope Benedict put it: ‘The Church is the celebration of the Eucharist, the Eucharist is the Church, they do no simply stand side by side, they are one and the same thing.’  So if Holy Communion is not a rehearsal, then then it follows the Church is not a rehearsal either. 

I hope I said enough two weeks ago to convince you that Holy Communion is not a rehearsal.  A rehearsal is for a final performance and I hope you can see that celebrating Holy Communion is not just a foretaste of a heavenly banquet but somehow that actual banquet itself.  Because as T S Elliott puts it:

               ‘Time present and time past

               Are both perhaps present in time future? 

               And time future contained in time past.

But my saying that the Church is not a rehearsal may seem to you a step too far.  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews describes the Church, in the present tense, as ‘the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven’ and ‘the spirits of the righteous made perfect’ who ‘have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, … and to God the judge of all … and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant.’ [12: 22-24]

But if we think of the Church as we experience it, we might be tempted to see it merely as a rather old fashioned institution, whose leaders dress rather oddly, with buildings which are cold and with leaky roofs, but where you can get to chat with some of your friends over a cup of instant coffee on a Sunday morning.   And of course I do not mean St Matthew’s here: the coffee is real for a start.   Surely the Church as we experience it just a foreshadowing, a rather unimpressive foreshadowing - of something a lot better.  I know we all think St Matthew’s is something different, but is it really it? Well yes I think it is: it is the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.

It may seem what it seems but Paul assures us that the Church is the Body of Christ.   The Body of Christ is already perfect, made perfect by suffering on the cross and still bearing the marks of that suffering.  And note that Paul says that Church is the actual body, not just like a body.  Paul frequently describes the Church as the ‘Body of Christ’ so, for example, in his letter to the Romans he says ‘For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.[12: 4-5]

It is difficult not to see Paul’s saying that the Church is Christ’s body as him merely suggesting that the Church is like a body: a metaphor in other words.   And at times he encourages this metaphorical reading: in today’s reading, for example, by dwelling upon the physical parts of a human body: the hands, feet, etc.  And indeed, let’s be clear, if it were just a metaphor it would be a good one.

The reasons why Paul restates his view that the Church is Christ’s body in  I Corinthians 12 is because he has heard, as he says, in Chapter 11 [18], that there are divisions and factions amongst the members of the Corinthian church.  These divisions and factions seem to take various forms.

In the first part of Chapter 12 Paul seems to be responding to a controversy about spiritual gifts and which of those gifts are most important.  It is difficult to pin down the precise issue Paul is addressing and in any case I think many of us have difficulty in relating to the whole concept of spiritual gifts and therefore understanding why they might be divisive.   Certainly this is the case at St Matthew’s if not elsewhere. 

On the other hand we are well aware that there can be divisions in a church over many issues ranging from the arrangement of the pews to the appropriateness of gay people marrying.

In my Bible the section of the 1 Corinthians 12 that is our reading today is headed ‘Unity in diversity’.   I am not sure that is a particularly good tittle. To my mind ‘Mutual dependence’ would be a better summary of what Paul is saying.  Of course unity is better than division and diversity does not preclude unity. But surely Paul is saying a lot more than that.

Paul does emphasise, in Chapter 12 verse 13, that, in any church, you will find people with different backgrounds (e.g. Jews and Greeks) and of different status in the outside society (e.g. slaves and free) because all are baptised into one body by one spirit.   And this brings me back to something I said two weeks ago.

I said that the message of 1 Corinthians 11, and indeed elsewhere in the Bible, is that all should be invited to the meal that we call Holy Communion.   All should be invited, all are already invited by God, regardless of wealth, income, age, gender, sexuality, physical and mental abilities, even beliefs.   I should perhaps have elaborated on what I meant by all are invited regardless of beliefs.    It is my view that the invitation is made regardless of our desire to attend and even our beliefs about the inviter and the invitation.  So for example, I personally think that children should be invited regardless of what they yet know about Jesus and old people should be invited regardless of what they have forgotten or indeed ever known.  It is not for us to judge who is worthy to come.   And of course, even if a person is invited, it’s up to them whether they come.  They may not come for a variety of reasons including beliefs.  And all of what I have just said about Holy Communion also applies to the Church.   All should be and in fact are invited to be a member.

Paul also points out, in 1 Corinthians 12, that in any church there will be people with different skills and therefore different jobs to do.   He makes this latter point by joking about feet, hands, head, eyes, ears, nose, etc. and how ludicrous it would be for any one part of the body to claim that it is more useful or indeed more important than the others.  

But he also, and in my view more importantly, says that no one part can survive without the others: Chapter 12 verse 21: ‘The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 

Commentators point out that Paul is here making a similar point to the ancient parable of the stomach as told, for example, by the Roman historian Livy in around 30BC.  This goes something like this:  “One day various part of the body got fed up with the stomach taking all the food but apparently doing nothing in return, so they conspired together.  They agreed that the hands would not carry food to the mouth, nor the mouth accept what was given it, nor the teeth grind up what they received, in order to starve the stomach into submission.  But of course they found that they themselves and the body as a whole were reduced to the utmost weakness. And they and the other members of the body were forced to recognise that the stomach makes a crucial contribution”.  And in similar vein this is what Paul means when he says in 1 Corinthians Chapter 12 verse 22 ‘On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.'

So our passage from 1 Corinthians today may be about unity in diversity but it is also about mutual dependence.   And it is not just that within the Church we need one another, with our diverse backgrounds and skills, it also the case – as Chapter 12 verse 26 says:  ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.’   Here, I think, Paul is no longer thinking just about the Church being like a body but about the Church as the actual Body of Christ.

So as members of the Church we are to share in one another’s suffering but also in one another’s joys.   This is simple to say but what does it mean?  I think we begin to understand when those that we love suffer.  At that point we too suffer and perhaps the suffering of the one who suffers is lessened by our suffering.  And when someone we love has something happened to them that causes them joy – is honoured perhaps – then we too feel joy.  The key here is of course love.   Without love it is impossible to share suffering or joy.  And love not just as feeling but as a practice.   If we practice love in the shape of taking time to be with the sufferer or the one who is experiencing joy, we are more able to share their suffering or their joy.

Of course Jesus is our example here.  He not only shared our suffering with us but suffered on our behalf.  He not only came to share our joy but to bring us joy.   He says, as recorded by John in his gospel:  ‘I came so that they may have life, and have it abundantly’ [10: 10]

In the gospels, Jesus does not say, in so many words, that the Church is or even will be his body.   But he does, like Paul, often talk about his friends and disciples being somehow in him and his being in them.  In today’s reading from John’s gospel Jesus talks a lot about abiding in him and him abiding in us.  He urges his disciples at Chapter 14 verse 4 ‘Abide in me and I in you’ and ‘you cannot bear fruit’ i. e. fulfil your purpose in life ‘unless you abide in me’.

Abide, meno in Greek, is not a word we use much to day. It means much more than just stay with but also to accept and act in accordance with.  And, in other words, we as members of the Church embody Christ when the body of Christ incorporates us.

In our gospel reading Jesus talks about himself and the Church – or at least the embryonic Church – not as a body – but as a vine.   He says that ‘He is the true vine’ [1] and urges his disciples to ’Abide in me as I abide in you’ [because] ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. [and] Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.’ [4 and 5]

So just as in Paul’s account of the Church as the Body of Christ, Jesus here, in the parable of the vine, is describing a mutually dependant relationship between the separate parts of the Church.  And also he claiming that he is that vine which is the Church.   

Now both a body and a vine are living beings with diverse parts but unified into one whole:  hands, feet, etc. for the human body; branches, roots, leaves, fruit for the vine.   The relationship between the diverse parts, of the one living being, is one of mutual dependence because when one part suffers so does the whole.   When one part feels joy so does the whole.

Just after the parable of the vine Jesus talks about the necessity for sharing suffering and joy if you are part of the vine/Church.  Verse 12: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’  So just as Jesus has suffered, we who are members of the his body the Church can expect to suffer and suffer on behalf of other members of the body.  But not just to suffer to experience joy as well. Jesus say, verse 11, ‘I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete ‘. 

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, just after talking about the Church as the Body of Christ, Paul breaks off proclaim the importance of love in his famous hymn to love beginning, ‘If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ‘ And Jesus in his parable of the vine points out that love is the glue that holds the vine/church together.  Self-sacrificial suffering is a result of love.   Joy comes with love.

At this point you might be saying: well this is all well and good but what is the Church for?  In his parable of the vine Jesus talks about some of the branches bearing fruit.  So what are these fruit?   I haven’t left myself any time to go into the purpose of the church today.   Sorry.   But suffice it to say that I think that just as Jesus saves his people in his Church, so the Church saves the world.

So finally to return to my contention that the Church is not a rehearsal: it’s clear that the Church may seem to be a weak human institution struggling to make headway in a world which pays it little regard, and that we can but wait until the true church –‘the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven’ as the writer to the Hebrews puts it meets on Zion.  But this is not the case. The world is already transfigured by the presence of the Church because the church is the resurrected body of Christ bearing the marks of the crucifixion.  Without the Church there is no past, present and future for humanity. To put in boldly. In us the Church, the universe has attained, attains and will attain its destiny.

The Lord's Supper

Readings: 1 Corinthians 11.17-34; Isaiah 25: 1-10; Luke 14: 12-14

 A sermon given at Stat Matthew's Church, Oxford, 2nd February 2020

My favourite sermon on this passage, we heard just now from 1 Corinthians was just seven words long.  It was delivered by Alan Garrow – a former member of St Matthew’s – and it was this:

“This Holy Communion is not a rehearsal.”

After which the Alan just sat down.  I am tempted, at this point, to do the same and let you reflect on those seven words: “This Holy Communion is not a rehearsal”.   But I suspect you may think you need a few more words if you are to feel you have got your money’s worth today. 

So today I would like to talk about why this Holy Communion is not a rehearsal by discussing the past, present and future dimensions of Holy Communion but in particular by thinking of Holy Communion as a future feast that mysteriously breaks though into the present.  I also want to think about that feast and how and why it’s a feast to which everyone is invited.  And in doing this I want to expand upon the idea that the Holy Communion is central to the Church: even that the Holy Communion and Church are one and the same. 

First the past, future and present dimensions of Holy Communion.

You may have noticed that I have already referred to the past by mentioning our reading from St Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth written in around 53 AD.  And I have also alluded to the history of this church of St Matthew’s by referring to a former member of our congregation who left about 15 years ago.  And any sermon on the Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper as it’s called in our reading, has surely to look back and in particularly to recall Jesus’ institution of Holy Communion on the Thursday before the Friday on which he was crucified.   

In today’s reading St Paul gives a mini-sermon on how the Corinthian church ought to be celebrating Holy Communion and in doing so he reminds his readers that, ‘The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me”’ (11: 23). So Jesus is saying here that the reason for sharing and consuming the bread and wine at Holy Communion is to remember him.  

And in remembering him we are surely to remember what he has done for us through his life, death and resurrection.  Today I will focus on his life and in particular touch upon the meals he took part in – but that is of course, not to say, that his death and resurrection were unimportant: but perhaps not more so than his life.

There are, you’ll remember, many descriptions of meals in the Gospels besides the Last Supper.   Jesus’ ministry, as described in John’s gospel, begins with a wedding feast at Cana which had great wine, and ends with a celebratory breakfast of freshly cooked fish and bread on the beach of the Sea of Galilee, after his resurrection.   Along the way we have stories of many other meals which Jesus attends.  All of these meals are much more than occasions for the consumption of foods and drink.  In particular they involve peopled coming together to talk – to commune in other words – both with Jesus and with others.  Not that the food and drink is unimportant here: because without food and drink to share there cannot be a meal.

And at these meals things happen.  Things are done to Jesus: e.g. a women pours ointment over Jesus’s feet at a meal in Bethany.   And Jesus does things: e.g. Jesus heals a person of dropsy at a meal in the house of a Pharisee.   Jesus is recognised for who he is in the breaking of bread at a meal with two of his disciples in Emmaus.   The meals are extraordinary meals.  And the guests are often a strange bunch, prostitutes, tax collectors, friends yes but also enemies.   The meals that Jesus attends are radically inclusive.

Jesus also brings meals into his teaching about the Kingdom of God.  In particular, in one of his parables, Jesus’ takes up Isaiah’s prophecy of a heavenly banquet (that we heard as our first reading today, of which more in a moment) and tells the story of a great feast, in one version to celebrate a marriage.  The feast is organised by a king, or some other important person, and many are invited.  But the guests who are invited first give their excuses so that the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind end up coming instead.

Some of Jesus’ other preaching was about meals.  In today’s reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus seems to be giving some practical, if challenging, advice about hosting dinner parties. He tells the host of a banquet he is attending “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”   This advice is surely not just directed at his host for the meal that day but to us all.  And surely it applies to all meals including the Holy Communion. 

There is, I think, a danger on focusing on the Holy Communion as merely remembering past events.   History can often come to seem irrelevant to the present or indeed future.   And note that at the Last Supper, on the Thursday night before his crucifixion, Jesus had yet to suffer and die and indeed to rise again – that was to be three days later. 

So already, Jesus, in this first Holy Communion, is pointing forward to the future.  Remembrance is nothing if it doesn’t have an impact on the present and the future.   The whole point of remembering the Holocaust last Monday was to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.  The whole point of remembering Jesus is to have an impact on our lives today and tomorrow and for all time.

So the Holy Communion, as well as looking back, is for now and also points forward.  And in particular it points forward to a future heavenly feast mentioned by the prophets, in particular by Isaiah, by Jesus in his parables and sayings, and by St John in his Revelation.  This feast is sometimes called ‘The Messianic Banquet’

It’s called ‘Messianic’ because it is associated with the promise of a future Messiah in the Old Testament and we, of course, now know that Jesus was that promised Messiah.  And it’s a banquet because this is no ordinary meal. 

In our first reading today, Isaiah describes the food and drink that will be served at the banquet.  In the words of the translation just read to us, this description ran, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear” which really doesn’t sound very appealing.   Here is a better, if looser, translation: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts, will hold a feast for all people with cake and all sorts of delicious rich foods and excellent vintage wines.”

But a feast for what purpose?  Isiah tells us that it is to celebrate the end of death: ‘And he [the Lord of Hosts] will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever (25: 7).’  And this was accomplished by Jesus

It is also important to note from Isaiah’s description of the banquet that, besides delicious food to eat and good wine to drink, everyone is invited to celebrate the end of death.  It’s a feast for ‘all peoples’ and not just the people of Israel.  And also note that the mountain on which this banquet is to be held will be ‘a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress’.   So this party is to be radically inclusive.

But if Holy Communion points forward to a future heavenly banquet then isn’t it just a rehearsal for the real thing?  With Alan Garrow I do not accept that.  As I have just said the celebratory purpose of the Messianic Banquet has already been accomplished and so the Holy Communion, provides a foretaste of that heavenly feast.  But I am also of the view that given that time is meaningless to God, eternity is now. The past is already redeemed; the future is already realised.  This means that our present practice of Holy Communion can and should also anticipate the future and that we can expect our experience of Holy Communion to be heavenly.

So yes the Holy Communion is remembrance, a commemoration of things past but it’s also the breaking in of the future now. 

So turning to the idea that the celebration of Holy Communion is central to what it means to be Church.  I would even maintain that the Church is the celebration of Holy Communion: they don’t simply stand side-by-side, they are one and the same.

In our reading from I Corinthians today St Paul talks about the Body of Christ in two senses: as the bread eaten in the communion meal and as the Church. So when Jesus, as Paul records in 1 Corinthians 11: 24, takes a loaf of bread, breaks it and says ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me, Jesus and Paul clearly mean that the bread is Jesus’ body.   But when, 21 verses later, Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 12: 12, ‘For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ’ he is evidently thinking of the Church as Jesus’ body.  

And at one point Paul seems to muddle the two.  So when he warns the Corinthians against taking part in the Holy Communion in ways that are unworthy and says: ‘For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves (11: 29)’ is he saying that his readers are not discerning that the bread is really or symbolically the flesh of Jesus or are they are not seeing that the others around them who are sharing the bread are their fellow members of that mystical body that is the Church?  Or perhaps both?

And when as we distribute the bread and, say as we will later: ‘The body of Christ’ are we pointing to the bread or to the Church or to both?

There is an old communion prayer – from the Didache - written about 100 AD, which asks ‘As this broken bread, once dispersed over the hills, was brought together and became one loaf, so may thy Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.’  Here the mystery of the church being gathered from all nations into God’s kingdom is explicitly linked to the formation of the bread for Holy Communion where that mystery has its focal point.

Paul’s mini-sermon on the Lord’s Supper in his letter to the Corinthians is in response to things he has heard about ‘the divisions among them’.  He writes, ‘For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you (11: 18)’.   These divisions are manifest in the way they are conducting their Sunday Communion service.  It seems that the Holy Communion is no longer a coming together of the whole church community.  Instead: ‘When the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk (11:21)’.  And those who ‘have nothing’ are humiliated (11: 22).  It seems people who shouldn’t be are being excluded.

This message that all should be invited to the meal that we call Holy Communion is found in all of our readings today.   All should be invited, are already invited by God, regardless of wealth, income, age, gender, sexuality, physical and mental abilities, even beliefs.  All are invited, it’s up to them whether they come.  If they come they might experience something of heaven.  

It seems pertinent, at this point, to mention the controversy about inclusion in the Church of England today and not withstanding recent events it is worth pointing out, that in October 2018, as a contribution to the continuing debate within the Church of England about gender and sexuality the bishops of the Oxford Diocese: +Steven, +Andrew, +Alan and +Colin wrote a joint letter to everyone in the diocese setting out their expectations of inclusion and respect towards LGBTI+ people.  That letter is still worth reading.   In particular the letter notes that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York had recently called for “a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church founded in scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology and the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it”[i]. When we are told by scripture and reason to invite everyone to Holy Communion everyone means everyone.`

To end here is an account of a meal – a party really – by a Methodist Minister called Donald Eadie:

I was busy when he stopped me on a wind-swept corner off a street in the Golborne.  I recognised the face of a young Moroccan. ‘There is a party at four this afternoon under the motorway.  Come and bring a bottle and food.  And pass the word around!’  A spontaneous party? For whom?  For Cecile.  Sister Cecile was from the Sisters of the Assumption whose convent was situated in Notting Hill near to the motorway that passes over the North Kensington landscape.

Cecile was a community nurse shortly to return to the mother house in Paris and from there she was to be directed on to a health clinic in Tunisia.  She was the old nun reputed in anger and pity to have tucked up her habit, mounted her bike and gone off to the Imam in the magnificent new mosque at Regents Park.   She had made the journey in order to demand local provision for the seven thousand Moroccan’s, Muslims. She asked for a mosque for the people, a place to pray.

And people came to the party carrying with them bottles and biscuits, crisps and cakes, fruits and presents.  And they sat, their carved faces watching, Portuguese and Moroccan, Spanish and Afro-Caribbean, social workers, community workers, and a policeman, people who trade in the Portobello Market and people who wander in the backstreets. In the middle of them all Sister Cecile sat, pale and drawn, tired and stooping, looking even older, her eyes full of love and of tears!

It was a party with all the marks of a Gospel feast.  A eucharist under a motorway.

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[i] https://blogs.oxford.anglican.org/clothe-yourselves-with-love/