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The Body and Blood of Christ

June 14, 2009

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

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            On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”  He sent two of his disciples and said to the, “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water.  Follow him.  Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”  Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.  Make preparations for us there.”  The disciples went off, entered the city, and found it just as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover.

        While they were eating, he took bread, said a blessing, broke it, gave it them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.”  Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it.  He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.  Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”  Than, after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

        I guess in many respects we could say that June is a wonderful month to be alive.  Not that any month isn’t, but there seems to be something special about the month of June.  The kids are out of school, the summer is bursting with possibilities, and the air is sweet with flowers in bloom and the trees and the grass, all in green; the taste of summer fruit explodes on our taste buds; we have packed the winter coats away and taken out the summer clothes; the kids are now splashing in swimming pools, or if you live in the country such as I, than they are swimming the creeks; we are also looking forward to vacation time, but due to the cost of gasoline these days, we might have put that on hold till next year, or maybe just not going so far away from home.

        All these sensual experiences of summer delight us because there is new life around us.  We are embodied, enfleshed, in touch with God’s great creation through our senses.  If Christmas, celebrates God’s embodiment in Jesus, why not, through the understanding of this reading which talks about the Body of Christ, be a time to honor the spark of the divine in our own bodies?  Religion has often been accused of being too “spiritual” in general, that is, of emphasizing the spirit over the body so that the body is demeaned, desacralized, cut off from meaning and value.

        But we do not experience ourselves as hunks of flesh with some kind of an armored pilot-house on the deck of a warship as a blob of body with a secret chamber inside.  We live as whole persons, flesh and blood, body and soul, human beings, persons made in the Masters own image, as the Genesis creation story describes.  That is the biblical root of the Christian principle dignity of the human person.  We are endowed with human dignity by God, not by anything we do or earn or say.  That dignity cannot be forfeited, or stripped away.  In a sense, Jesus’ words, “This is my body, this is my blood,” are true not only of the consecrated bread and wine but also of the dignity and sacredness of ourselves, our bodies, and our blood, our persons.

        While God assures us that we have human dignity just by being human, we see much abuse of the human persons around us, if not have been ourselves:  neglect, poverty, homelessness, exploitation, greed, power, money – the list could go on and on.  When isolated, folks get messed over and messed up badly.  It is only when we see ourselves as a people in community with others that we have a chance to protect human dignity.  In community with each other, we can stand up together, not only for our own rights and responsibilities, but also those of others.  Isn’t that why we continue to oppose those wanting to take prayer and God out of our schools, our government, and our lives?

        This body of community takes care of the human bodies – our own and others – because of the dignity in each pair of eyes, the gift of each pair of hands, the love, and intelligence in our hearts and heads.  To worship this living God personally perhaps means we nurture our own life, caring for the health of our minds and bodies, shunning self-destructive acts, and giving thanks for the beauty of our divine spark.  So, perhaps this day we honor our body and our dignity.  We eat our self full of the one who gives life.  We drink deep of God’s creative fire, the wealth of beauty and possibility open to us through our senses.  If nothing else, we might come to know that we are part of the body of Christ, alive on earth today.  That is what we admit each time we approach the altar of God and say “Amen.”  In our lively bodies, the body lives – with dignity, with hope, with the promise of divine life for each human being.  That is a reason to celebrate on this fresh sweet Sunday summer June day!

Deacon Steve!

© June 13, 2009