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This morning's sermon
Jan. 28th, 2007 07:55 pmI preached at St. John's again this morning. It was the 12th anniversary of the parish's daily Eucharist. Note to non-Brits: Bernard Matthews is to UK turkey what Frank Perdue was to US chicken, and Hovis is a brand of bread.
28 January 2007 12th Anniversary of Daily Communion
Sermon delivered at St. John’s Larcom Street
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
The Archbishop of Canterbury stood up to give his Presidential Address to General Synod. He began: “Colleagues, I have good news, and I have bad news. A few weeks ago a man named Bernard Matthews came to Lambeth Palace and told me that he needed to change the marketing strategy for his product. He said, ‘I want you to change the Lord’s Prayer to say: “Give us this day our daily turkey.” rather than “Give us this day our daily bread.” I’ll give the church one hundred million pounds if you do that.’
“Of course, I was shocked. I said, ‘I couldn’t consider taking such an offer.’ He looked at me and said, ‘OK, I’ll raise the price to two hundred million pounds.’ I told him that it was still out of the question. He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘What if I gave the church five hundred million pounds?’ That made me pause to consider, and I finally agreed. From next Advent, the Lord’s Prayer will read: ‘Give us this day our daily turkey.’”
The members of Synod cheered (especially the people responsible for church finances), but one member spoke up: “If that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?” he asked.
The archbishop replied: “We’ve lost the Hovis bakery account.”
Give us this day our daily bread. Many of us say this prayer every day once if not more than once. Generally we interpret this phrase as meaning “Give us what we need to stay alive,” but perhaps we can see a deeper meaning in it.
Bread was a dietary staple in much of the ancient world. It was a cheap source of the calories that labourers needed to earn money and feed their families. Protein (meat and fish) was enormously expensive, so what filled the bellies of the poor was usually bread.
The Romans kept their rabble satisfied by promising them “Bread and circuses”. We think of Egypt nowadays, when we think of it at all, as the land of mummies and the Pyramids, and the only food we associate with Egypt is the date. The ancients saw Egypt as the granary of the world; ships laden to bursting with grain sailed from Egypt to Rome and other population centres at the time of Christ, all to feed those who would otherwise revolt against the might of the Empire.
The Jews held bread in high regard. At Passover Jews baked flatbread (today we call it matzoh bread) without yeast or any raising agent, and ate it as a reminder of the haste with which the Jews left Egypt: they didn’t even have time to allow their bread to rise. The first Eucharist, during Passover, must have been celebrated with some form of matzoh bread, probably more like a pita bread than a cracker.
In the Middle Ages, you daily bread was likely to be some form of sourdough bread, hollowed out and used as your plate, while you used the pieces of crumb to pick up the meat and sop up the sauce. Then you ate your “plate” as well.
Today when we go to Tesco’s to pick up some bread, we have choices ranging from wholemeal bagels to Hovis white bread, and everything in between. I like to go to the Jewish bakery at the upper end of Brick Lane and buy a loaf of real Jewish rye. It costs a pound, but reminds me of what real bread tastes like.
As Christians, we can see our daily bread in another way. We draw parallels between ordinary bread that sustains our bodies and the Eucharist, which sustains our souls. Scripture abounds with such allegories: “I am the Bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The story of the feeding of the five thousand with just five loaves and two fish is another allegory. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” These all come from a few chapters in John, and we could go on and on.
There is still in the Book of Common Prayer an exhortation pronounced by the priest the week before celebrating Holy Communion. It was, in former years, not the custom of the Church of England to celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday, much less every day. Communion was often celebrated once a month in certain parishes; in others, only 4 times a year. The ordinary service in your parish church would be Mattins, choral and wonderful perhaps, but prayer only, and no sacrament to be had.
The things that this prayer book exhortation says about the Eucharist are wonderful: “Wherefore it is our duty to render most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty God our heavenly Father, for that he hath given his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in that holy Sacrament.” Today we might well wonder why, if the Eucharist was that wonderful a sustenance, many members of the Church of England partook of it only four times a year! Holy Communion was often seen as an unapproachable sacrament; as the exhortation goes on to say: “…being likewise ready to forgive others that have offended you, as ye would have forgiveness of your offences at God’s hand: for otherwise the receiving of the holy Communion doth nothing else but increase your damnation. Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of his Word, an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime, repent you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table; lest, after the taking of that holy Sacrament, the devil enter into you, as he entered into Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to destruction both of body and soul.” These are strong words, and deterred some so much that there is an even sterner exhortation to be used by the priest if his congregation was put off by the first exhortation. I shan’t quote from that one—suffice it to say that the priest tries to shame people into coming to that Sacrament away from which he warned sinners in the previous week’s exhortation.
We still believe that those who are unrepentant when receiving the Eucharist eat and drink a judgment on themselves. But we are all sinners, and we all fall short of God’s expectations for us. We do our best, but still do not always measure up to what God wants for us. In these days, instead of concentrating on the awful perils for receiving the Sacrament unworthily (for, indeed, who is worthy to receive the body and blood of Christ Jesus?), we believe that the Sacrament is a sign of unity among all the baptised; a signal that not only do we consume the body of Christ, we are the body of Christ through receiving the same Sacrament.
Except in parishes of the Prayer Book Society, the exhortations I’ve referred to are no longer used, for most parishes celebrate the Eucharist each and every Sunday, at least. We approach the holy table and receive the body and blood of Christ to become his body here on earth, in common with Christians the whole world over.
St. John’s celebrates the Eucharist or the Mass of the Presanctified each day of the week, every week of the year. We have done so for the past twelve years. Each and every day the body of Christ here on earth, in this little patch of South London on Walworth Road, comes together for a while to recall Christ’s life, passion, death, and resurrection, commemorated in the Eucharist. We receive his body and blood in the certainty that he died for us, and that we receive it as members of his body, gaining strength for our souls that mere bread and wine cannot give. The words of the Lord’s Prayer come alive here: Give us this day our daily bread. With God’s help, the bread of heaven will continue to be available here, daily, as a continuing sign to the world that the Body of Christ lives in us, just as we live in him. AMEN
28 January 2007 12th Anniversary of Daily Communion
Sermon delivered at St. John’s Larcom Street
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
The Archbishop of Canterbury stood up to give his Presidential Address to General Synod. He began: “Colleagues, I have good news, and I have bad news. A few weeks ago a man named Bernard Matthews came to Lambeth Palace and told me that he needed to change the marketing strategy for his product. He said, ‘I want you to change the Lord’s Prayer to say: “Give us this day our daily turkey.” rather than “Give us this day our daily bread.” I’ll give the church one hundred million pounds if you do that.’
“Of course, I was shocked. I said, ‘I couldn’t consider taking such an offer.’ He looked at me and said, ‘OK, I’ll raise the price to two hundred million pounds.’ I told him that it was still out of the question. He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘What if I gave the church five hundred million pounds?’ That made me pause to consider, and I finally agreed. From next Advent, the Lord’s Prayer will read: ‘Give us this day our daily turkey.’”
The members of Synod cheered (especially the people responsible for church finances), but one member spoke up: “If that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?” he asked.
The archbishop replied: “We’ve lost the Hovis bakery account.”
Give us this day our daily bread. Many of us say this prayer every day once if not more than once. Generally we interpret this phrase as meaning “Give us what we need to stay alive,” but perhaps we can see a deeper meaning in it.
Bread was a dietary staple in much of the ancient world. It was a cheap source of the calories that labourers needed to earn money and feed their families. Protein (meat and fish) was enormously expensive, so what filled the bellies of the poor was usually bread.
The Romans kept their rabble satisfied by promising them “Bread and circuses”. We think of Egypt nowadays, when we think of it at all, as the land of mummies and the Pyramids, and the only food we associate with Egypt is the date. The ancients saw Egypt as the granary of the world; ships laden to bursting with grain sailed from Egypt to Rome and other population centres at the time of Christ, all to feed those who would otherwise revolt against the might of the Empire.
The Jews held bread in high regard. At Passover Jews baked flatbread (today we call it matzoh bread) without yeast or any raising agent, and ate it as a reminder of the haste with which the Jews left Egypt: they didn’t even have time to allow their bread to rise. The first Eucharist, during Passover, must have been celebrated with some form of matzoh bread, probably more like a pita bread than a cracker.
In the Middle Ages, you daily bread was likely to be some form of sourdough bread, hollowed out and used as your plate, while you used the pieces of crumb to pick up the meat and sop up the sauce. Then you ate your “plate” as well.
Today when we go to Tesco’s to pick up some bread, we have choices ranging from wholemeal bagels to Hovis white bread, and everything in between. I like to go to the Jewish bakery at the upper end of Brick Lane and buy a loaf of real Jewish rye. It costs a pound, but reminds me of what real bread tastes like.
As Christians, we can see our daily bread in another way. We draw parallels between ordinary bread that sustains our bodies and the Eucharist, which sustains our souls. Scripture abounds with such allegories: “I am the Bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The story of the feeding of the five thousand with just five loaves and two fish is another allegory. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” These all come from a few chapters in John, and we could go on and on.
There is still in the Book of Common Prayer an exhortation pronounced by the priest the week before celebrating Holy Communion. It was, in former years, not the custom of the Church of England to celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday, much less every day. Communion was often celebrated once a month in certain parishes; in others, only 4 times a year. The ordinary service in your parish church would be Mattins, choral and wonderful perhaps, but prayer only, and no sacrament to be had.
The things that this prayer book exhortation says about the Eucharist are wonderful: “Wherefore it is our duty to render most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty God our heavenly Father, for that he hath given his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in that holy Sacrament.” Today we might well wonder why, if the Eucharist was that wonderful a sustenance, many members of the Church of England partook of it only four times a year! Holy Communion was often seen as an unapproachable sacrament; as the exhortation goes on to say: “…being likewise ready to forgive others that have offended you, as ye would have forgiveness of your offences at God’s hand: for otherwise the receiving of the holy Communion doth nothing else but increase your damnation. Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of his Word, an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime, repent you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table; lest, after the taking of that holy Sacrament, the devil enter into you, as he entered into Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to destruction both of body and soul.” These are strong words, and deterred some so much that there is an even sterner exhortation to be used by the priest if his congregation was put off by the first exhortation. I shan’t quote from that one—suffice it to say that the priest tries to shame people into coming to that Sacrament away from which he warned sinners in the previous week’s exhortation.
We still believe that those who are unrepentant when receiving the Eucharist eat and drink a judgment on themselves. But we are all sinners, and we all fall short of God’s expectations for us. We do our best, but still do not always measure up to what God wants for us. In these days, instead of concentrating on the awful perils for receiving the Sacrament unworthily (for, indeed, who is worthy to receive the body and blood of Christ Jesus?), we believe that the Sacrament is a sign of unity among all the baptised; a signal that not only do we consume the body of Christ, we are the body of Christ through receiving the same Sacrament.
Except in parishes of the Prayer Book Society, the exhortations I’ve referred to are no longer used, for most parishes celebrate the Eucharist each and every Sunday, at least. We approach the holy table and receive the body and blood of Christ to become his body here on earth, in common with Christians the whole world over.
St. John’s celebrates the Eucharist or the Mass of the Presanctified each day of the week, every week of the year. We have done so for the past twelve years. Each and every day the body of Christ here on earth, in this little patch of South London on Walworth Road, comes together for a while to recall Christ’s life, passion, death, and resurrection, commemorated in the Eucharist. We receive his body and blood in the certainty that he died for us, and that we receive it as members of his body, gaining strength for our souls that mere bread and wine cannot give. The words of the Lord’s Prayer come alive here: Give us this day our daily bread. With God’s help, the bread of heaven will continue to be available here, daily, as a continuing sign to the world that the Body of Christ lives in us, just as we live in him. AMEN
