Coming to the Table

Sermon for Ames

8/19/12

John 6:51-58

 I went through a period when I was becoming Catholic where I just couldn't understand transubstantiation, this is the Catholic belief that the elements become the actual body and the actual blood of Christ and it is a mystical moment. All of communion is supposed to be mystical. I just couldn't buy it. I was a science major, I knew science, and transubstantiation was not possible.  I had prayed about it for several months as I was getting ready for my confirmation and refused to be confirmed if I couldn't get my head around this idea. Then I went to a church service across the Hudson River in this large church and I prayed that God help me to understand. As the priest raised his hands and asked Jesus into the elements, I felt a feeling of God's presence so large, overwhelming, yet all encompassing and loving that it is beyond words. Tears poured out of my eyes and I felt so awed I had difficulty raising myself to go to the altar for a blessing. I did go through with becoming Catholic. I was not sure if that was transubstantiation but God's presence was there and that was good enough for me.

As I have come to understand more about the protestant stands on communion and in particular the United Methodist stance, I have come to understand my experience a bit more. For us the scientific fact of it actually turning into God's flesh and blood is not the case. It is the out pouring of the spirit on those elements, God's presence in that space and our choosing to come to the table. Grace is beyond our choice. God's pull on our lives is always there, but we do have the choice to accept it. To come to the table in eager anticipation of being filled with God's love and in that love trying to walk God's path out of love. As our communion service say - "Make them be for us the body of Christ that we may be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by his blood." (UMH p. 10).

When Jesus used the metaphor of becoming the bread and blood of salvation he meant to be shocking. Some may have understood him to be literal but he was playing off a cultural experience of the time to ingest portions of Holy scrolls to remind oneself of how to live. To take in the Holy in such a way that it becomes part of you and you must live it out. To suggest that he was the Holy was truly shocking, but ingesting the Holy wasn't completely novel.

Jesus calls his flesh and blood to be true food or true spiritual fulfillment, and compares it to the Manna that left you wanting. He is promising here that the new covenant that includes him is going to be different to wandering lost in the desert and being given just enough to sustain life but not really satisfy. Jesus will satisfy our hunger if we choose to accept the grace that is offered us, that is constantly pulling us, causing us to be hungry for something. That restless feeling of needing more spiritually is a call to come to the communion table, to choose to be fed.

The absolute miracle of communion is that when you choose to come to the table truly seeking Christ, truly wanting to be spiritually fed, Jesus has promised to meet you there. Not only has
Jesus promised to meet you there, but he promised to help you live out that life.

So how do you choose to come to the communion table? Is it a process devoid of any real commitment, or are you truly expecting to meet Christ? Are you coming feeling hungry and dissatisfied with your spiritual life or do you not have time to think of such things? What kind of life are choosing to have? A life without Christ, or an eternal life? Are you choosing to have Christ live in you, to answer that pull? To truly believe that Christ came to rewrite our covenant with God, no matter how outrageous it seemed at the time or even today? How do you come to the table?