Today's Sermon
May. 25th, 2008 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrishansenhomeToday at St. John's they observed the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, commemorating the Eucharist. Here is my sermon, behind a cut for those who aren't into such things...
May 25, 2008 Feast of Corpus Christi
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: Deut. 8:2-3, 14-16; Ps. 147; I Cor 10:16-17; John 6:51-58
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
One of the highest-rated programs on TV recently was a show called “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?” The object of the show was to, week-by-week, whittle down a number of possible actresses for the part of Maria in a West End production of “The Sound of Music” to just one, who would be given that starring role.
Of course, this show spawned another for a production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”, also successful. The third show in this series has now been unveiled: “I’ll Do Anything”.
This time, the lucky winner will star in a production of “Oliver!” When I was in high school, we put on a production of “Oliver!” and, if I say so myself, it was very good indeed—and we didn’t need a TV show to cast our star, either.
One of the musical numbers that brought down the show every time was “Food, Glorious Food”. The script calls for the boys in the orphanage to be absolutely delighted that they would be eating their gruel for dinner, as little as they got. I remember them capering around in the dining room, laughing and singing as they ate their inadequate dinners. Really great fun, it was.
And then little Oliver Twist finishes his dinner and takes his bowl up to the Master and says, plaintively, “Please can I have some more?” Pandemonium breaks out. “More?” asks the Master, “You want more?”
Well, yes. Today is the feast of Corpus Christi, transferred from last Thursday. Corpus Christi means “The Body of Christ”, so it is the Eucharist we are celebrating today.
We often use the opportunity of having a meal to celebrate something. Friendship, for example. Friends of ours are coming over from the US to spend a few days with us, before flying to Africa for a safari tour. After Eucharist today I shall be going to the restaurant with several other friends to honour them with a meal.
When a head of state visits the United Kingdom, he or she is honoured with a State Banquet, toasts are drunk to each country and the finest food and the best wines are laid on.
What we often don’t realise is that, every day there is a banquet laid on for us here at St. John’s. Those who eat at lavish state banquets eat seafood, meat, potatoes, greens, and they eat very well indeed. These foods, and others too, nourish our bodies only. We see them on our plates, elegantly prepared, and after we eat them, they keep our bodies alive, sometimes put a few pounds on our middles, and make us the people we are today.
What of those who eat at the Lord’s table, what do they get from the food the Lord has prepared for us?
Jesus said “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.”
The food that you eat at a worldly banquet might keep you alive for a day, until you’ve used all the protein and energy.
The food you eat a the heavenly banquet keeps us believers alive not just for a day, but forever.
In that earthly banquet, we may eat or not, as we please. There will always be something else to eat.
In that heavenly banquet, Jesus tells us that if we don’t partake, we will not live at all.
St. John’s Gospel was written years, perhaps decades after the other three Gospels we possess. So the theology around the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was a bit more developed than it was in the other Gospels. We hear Jesus saying that, just as he draws life from the Father, so those who eat his flesh draw life from him. Not just life from the elements in the bread and the wine, but life from Jesus himself.
For the Jews, the manna in the wilderness was food of the highest order. For forty years the Hebrews who wandered in the wilderness of the Sinai Desert had been fed by this miraculous bread that appeared each morning while they slept. I suppose that I would have gotten rather tired of eating the same thing every day for forty years, but the lesson that the manna is meant to teach us, that we do not live by bread alone, but by the word of God. Note that the Scriptures do not say that we should live by the word of God alone—they acknowledge that we have bodily needs for food and drink, but tell us that the spiritual needs of our souls are just as important as the bodily needs. If we ignore nourishing our souls we risk becoming a church full of people who are well-fed in body, but who think of nothing except the next great banquet. We will be people who appreciate fine wines and liquors, but who do not care to partake of the wine that goes not to our heads, but to our souls.
For, indeed, we are about to partake of glorious food. Who would not receive the Body and Blood of Christ if they really understood why we remember his sacrifice two thousand years ago? We come to Christ’s table as equals, the one loaf from which we eat symbolising the unity that we must share with each other. We have often divided Christendom up into various factions, Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Baptists, all are divided by history, theology, and circumstance. However, when we remember that we all eat that same bread that lives forever in all of us, we are united in a way that outside of the Lord’s Supper we are divided.
I’d like to leave you with the lyrics of the last stanza of the song “Food, glorious food!” But instead of applying them to the menu of a typical orphanage or workhouse of the mid to late 1800’s, let’s apply them to that food that gives us eternal life:
“Food, glorious food!
What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more—
That's all that we live for
Why should we be fated to
Do nothing but brood
On food,
Magical food,
Wonderful food,”
Marvellous food,
Fabulous food,
AMEN.
May 25, 2008 Feast of Corpus Christi
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: Deut. 8:2-3, 14-16; Ps. 147; I Cor 10:16-17; John 6:51-58
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
One of the highest-rated programs on TV recently was a show called “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?” The object of the show was to, week-by-week, whittle down a number of possible actresses for the part of Maria in a West End production of “The Sound of Music” to just one, who would be given that starring role.
Of course, this show spawned another for a production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”, also successful. The third show in this series has now been unveiled: “I’ll Do Anything”.
This time, the lucky winner will star in a production of “Oliver!” When I was in high school, we put on a production of “Oliver!” and, if I say so myself, it was very good indeed—and we didn’t need a TV show to cast our star, either.
One of the musical numbers that brought down the show every time was “Food, Glorious Food”. The script calls for the boys in the orphanage to be absolutely delighted that they would be eating their gruel for dinner, as little as they got. I remember them capering around in the dining room, laughing and singing as they ate their inadequate dinners. Really great fun, it was.
And then little Oliver Twist finishes his dinner and takes his bowl up to the Master and says, plaintively, “Please can I have some more?” Pandemonium breaks out. “More?” asks the Master, “You want more?”
Well, yes. Today is the feast of Corpus Christi, transferred from last Thursday. Corpus Christi means “The Body of Christ”, so it is the Eucharist we are celebrating today.
We often use the opportunity of having a meal to celebrate something. Friendship, for example. Friends of ours are coming over from the US to spend a few days with us, before flying to Africa for a safari tour. After Eucharist today I shall be going to the restaurant with several other friends to honour them with a meal.
When a head of state visits the United Kingdom, he or she is honoured with a State Banquet, toasts are drunk to each country and the finest food and the best wines are laid on.
What we often don’t realise is that, every day there is a banquet laid on for us here at St. John’s. Those who eat at lavish state banquets eat seafood, meat, potatoes, greens, and they eat very well indeed. These foods, and others too, nourish our bodies only. We see them on our plates, elegantly prepared, and after we eat them, they keep our bodies alive, sometimes put a few pounds on our middles, and make us the people we are today.
What of those who eat at the Lord’s table, what do they get from the food the Lord has prepared for us?
Jesus said “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.”
The food that you eat at a worldly banquet might keep you alive for a day, until you’ve used all the protein and energy.
The food you eat a the heavenly banquet keeps us believers alive not just for a day, but forever.
In that earthly banquet, we may eat or not, as we please. There will always be something else to eat.
In that heavenly banquet, Jesus tells us that if we don’t partake, we will not live at all.
St. John’s Gospel was written years, perhaps decades after the other three Gospels we possess. So the theology around the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was a bit more developed than it was in the other Gospels. We hear Jesus saying that, just as he draws life from the Father, so those who eat his flesh draw life from him. Not just life from the elements in the bread and the wine, but life from Jesus himself.
For the Jews, the manna in the wilderness was food of the highest order. For forty years the Hebrews who wandered in the wilderness of the Sinai Desert had been fed by this miraculous bread that appeared each morning while they slept. I suppose that I would have gotten rather tired of eating the same thing every day for forty years, but the lesson that the manna is meant to teach us, that we do not live by bread alone, but by the word of God. Note that the Scriptures do not say that we should live by the word of God alone—they acknowledge that we have bodily needs for food and drink, but tell us that the spiritual needs of our souls are just as important as the bodily needs. If we ignore nourishing our souls we risk becoming a church full of people who are well-fed in body, but who think of nothing except the next great banquet. We will be people who appreciate fine wines and liquors, but who do not care to partake of the wine that goes not to our heads, but to our souls.
For, indeed, we are about to partake of glorious food. Who would not receive the Body and Blood of Christ if they really understood why we remember his sacrifice two thousand years ago? We come to Christ’s table as equals, the one loaf from which we eat symbolising the unity that we must share with each other. We have often divided Christendom up into various factions, Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Baptists, all are divided by history, theology, and circumstance. However, when we remember that we all eat that same bread that lives forever in all of us, we are united in a way that outside of the Lord’s Supper we are divided.
I’d like to leave you with the lyrics of the last stanza of the song “Food, glorious food!” But instead of applying them to the menu of a typical orphanage or workhouse of the mid to late 1800’s, let’s apply them to that food that gives us eternal life:
“Food, glorious food!
What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more—
That's all that we live for
Why should we be fated to
Do nothing but brood
On food,
Magical food,
Wonderful food,”
Marvellous food,
Fabulous food,
AMEN.
