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.
No comments:
Post a Comment