Corpus Christi, COVID-19 and the Presence and Blessing of God

Today in the Church calendar is sometimes kept as the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (also known as Corpus Christi), which this year falls at a time when Holy Communion and all public worship is still suspended due to COVID-19. Holy Communion was of course instituted at the Last Supper on what we now know as Maundy Thursday, but the events of Jesus' death and resurrection often, rightly, are our focus that day, and so the wonderful gift of Holy Communion is overlooked. This Day of Thanksgiving gives us the opportunity to celebrate this gift.

Jesus' Last Supper was a Passover meal. The Passover celebrated the Israelites being spared from God's judgements and also them being set free from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12) and the start of their journey to freedom in the Promised Land. While on the journey, God told them that if they sinned they had to sacrifice certain animals before they could be forgiven. The Passover meal reminds them of these things. Jesus used the Passover meal, and in particular the bread and wine, to illustrate that his death would be the real way that sins can be forgiven. Now we can be set free from the desire to sin ('slavery to sin') and be free to live as God wants us to live. Holy Communion, which Jesus commanded his followers to celebrate (1 Corinthians 11:23-26), reminds us of these things.

At the Last Supper Jesus gathered with his disciples and shared the bread and wine with them. But at the moment we are prevented from physically gathering and sharing, which is why we cannot celebrate Holy Communion. For a lot of people this is a painful deprivation, but perhaps its absence will help us to look beyond the ceremony to the deeper truths it reveals, particularly about presence and blessing.

Holy Communion is a Sacrament, which according to the Book of Common Prayer is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, so by partaking of the bread and wine with faith we are spiritually partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. God knows that we are physical creatures who often struggle with spiritual things because they are intangible, so he gave us the physical act of eating bread and drinking wine so that we can enact our receiving of Jesus' presence and feel his presence in us. However, before Jesus ascended back to his Father, he promised us: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) – we can't have more of the presence of Jesus! Just because we celebrate Communion doesn't make Jesus more present with us than he is at any other time of our life. Jesus is with us always and completely. The Communion service gives us that visual and physical aid to remember Jesus' presence with us, but it is only an aid. He is always present with us and we can always receive him afresh into our lives. Not being able to take Communion doesn't diminish his presence with us – if anything it makes us remember that reality to which Communion points, and helps us not to rely on the physical aid but instead to rely on Jesus' promise: “I am with you always”.

The BCP also teaches that those who receive Communion with faith receive God's grace and heavenly blessing, but it also teaches that all the benefits of Jesus' death and resurrection (i.e. the forgiveness of our sins and new life in the Holy Spirit) we receive by faith, not by taking the bread and wine. St Paul reminds us that God “has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). There is no more that can be gained from receiving Communion, that God has not already given us through the Holy Spirit. We have received every blessing in Christ, and we don't need bread and wine to give us more, because there is no more we can receive. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.

So in this time where we can't gather together, when we can't share bread and wine together, we can still give thanks for the spiritual truths that Holy Communion points us to. That Jesus is always present with us and we can receive him into our lives any time; and that Jesus has given us every spiritual blessing to get us through our life and onto eternal life with him.

How do we stop being afraid of each other?

This is my magazine article for June:

Those of you on social media will have probably seen posts that say that people want to keep socially distancing after the threat of the virus has gone, not for health reasons but just because they don't like talking with people! However, although some people are enjoying not having to interact with others, a lot of people, including introverts, are finding that they are really missing being with people. But as I write this (and I'm aware it may all have changed by the time you read this!), there is a growing sense that the restrictions we face at the moment will gradually lift. The questions then are how? and when?.

Aside from the practicalities there is another problem we have to solve as we move towards normality: how do we stop being afraid of each other? One of my strangest experiences at the start of this crisis was talking to someone and thinking “this person may have Coronavirus; they may be passing it to me; this person might be killing me!” The precautions that we are encouraged to take also make us cautious about other people. We stay two metres away from people because we might infect them, but also because they might infect us. We want trolleys and door handles to be sanitised; we want deliveries left on doorsteps; we wear gloves to bring in the bins, all to prevent contamination from others. COVID-19 might be the enemy but the people around us are its agents.

It seems to me that there are two ways in which we can re-learn how to be with other people. The first is to re-assess how we view life. The Government mantra reminds us that we should 'save lives' but why should we? This pandemic could have been used to aid 'social Darwinism' – killing off those who were weakest in society, which would have helped solve the problems of an over-stretched NHS and a pensions crisis. The fact that this would have been unacceptable is due to the deep Christian roots of our society: life is sacred not simply some evolutionary accident, and life is only sacred because we are made in the image and likeness of God himself (Genesis 1 and 2) and because he loves us enough to die for us (1 John 4:9-10).

The second is to re-assess how we view death. We fear COVID-19, and therefore others, because we fear death itself. Christianity, with the death and resurrection of Jesus at its heart, has the antidote to this fear – death has been destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). This is why in the Plague of Cyprian (249–262 AD) that, at its height, caused upwards of 5,000 deaths a day in Rome, Christians stayed in Rome to tend the sick. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, reported that in doing so they often died 'serenely happy' unlike the other Romans who “deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends. They shunned any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape.” (Eusebius 'Ecclestiastical Histories' 7.22.7–10). The Romans died in fear but the Christians died cheerfully, knowing that “that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

So as we ease ourselves out of this lockdown, let's learn again not to fear people (because the worst they can do to us is kill us and death is not to be feared) and to love them as God's beloved image-bearers (and that includes you!).