If someone were to ask us to sum up, in a few words, what it means to be a Christian, what would we say? We might think that’s quite a hard thing to do but I think we could do that very easily in just three sentences . First of all we must pay attention to those words spoken by the Father at Jesus’ Transfiguration and listen to Jesus. Next we must pay heed to Jesus’ own words and believe in him. And lastly, we must then follow Jesus, we must do our level best to live our lives in the way that he said we should. So we could sum up what it means to be a Christian very simply by saying it means listening to Jesus, believing in Jesus and following Jesus in the way we live.  

I don’t think anyone could dispute that these things are essential to anyone who wants to call themselves a Christian. Isn’t it ironic then that so many people who do call themselves Christians, don’t do these things. And they don’t. Like all people, people who call themselves Christians want to live their lives in their own way rather than in Jesus’ way, especially when Jesus’ way is difficult. And to do that and still call themselves Christians, they tend to listen only to those words of Jesus that suit them, and to believe only those teachings of Jesus that fit in with their own ideas and understanding of how things should be, and how life should be lived. And what’s even more ironic is that so many people who do these things are only too ready and willing to criticise others for not listening to Jesus, for not believing in Jesus and for not following Jesus, simply because those other people aren’t doing things their way. Very often, Jesus has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  

Over the last few Sundays we’ve been hearing Jesus’ words about the need to believe in him and about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood if we want to have eternal life. We also know, by listening to Jesus, that we eat his flesh and drink blood through receiving bread and wine in remembrance of him in the sacrament of Holy Communion. And yet this is one of the ways in which people who call themselves Christians most frequently fail to listen to Jesus, to believe in Jesus and to follow Jesus.  

In spite of Jesus’ words, and the most ancient belief of the Church, there are many people who simply cannot accept that the bread and wine we receive at Holy Communion is the body and blood of Jesus. And they can’t accept  that for many reasons.  

For some, what’s known as the real presence, the belief that the body and blood of Jesus are really present and really received in the sacrament of Holy Communion, is an invention of the medieval Catholic Church. They would argue that what Jesus really meant when he said the bread is his body and the wine is his blood wasn’t this is my body and blood, but this symbolises, my body and blood. But there are numerous problems with that interpretation. For one thing, if we start to change the words of scripture generally, and the especially the words of Jesus in scripture, to suit our own understanding, what are we left with? How can we be sure of anything? How do we know what to listen to, what to believe or what to follow? In fact, if we go down this road, we’re just left with a mess in which anything goes because everyone is free to make up their own mind about what Jesus said.  

Another problem with this interpretation is that the Greek words for ‘is’ and ‘symbol’ are completely different. So surely if Jesus meant ‘symbolises’, rather than ‘is’, that’s what it would say in scripture. We know that the Scriptures were written within living memory of the events of Jesus’ life, so these words of Jesus can’t be an invention of the medieval Catholic Church. In fact the very first mention of The Lord’s Supper, and the words Jesus spoke there are found in St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians which was written in the mid-50s AD. St Paul even says that he received this ‘from the Lord’, in other words, from Jesus himself. And we also find a clear belief in the real presence in the writings of the Church Fathers in the late 1^st and early 2^nd Century, so we know that this belief goes back to the very beginning of the Church. So, unless we’re going to change the words of scripture to suit ourselves, we must conclude that these words, and the Church’s belief in the real presence that stems from them, goes back to Jesus and the words he spoke at that last supper with his disciples on the eve of his death.  

I think what many people are doing when they say that belief in the real presence is a medieval invention is confusing that belief with the idea of transubstantiation. We first come across the idea of transubstantiation in the 11^th Century, so we could say that is a medieval invention. But although the real presence and transubstantiation are related, they’re completely different things. The doctrine of the real presence is the belief that the bread and wine we receive at Holy Communion are the body and blood of Jesus. Transubstantiation, on the other hand, is a philosophical attempt to explain how that bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Jesus. Transubstantiation isn’t where belief in the real presence comes from, it’s an attempt to explain a belief that had already existed for over a thousand years; from the very beginning of the Church.  

Another reason people sometimes give for their refusal to believe in the real presence is that it was, in fact, the early Church who invented this doctrine. They claim that Jesus would never have said such things, no Jew would have said them given the strict prohibitions in the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy on consuming blood. But doesn’t this morning’s Gospel deal with that very problem? Jesus had just spoken about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and we’re told, 

‘When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”’ 

The Gospel openly admits that what Jesus was saying was abhorrent to the Jews; it was sacrilegious, and, as a result, 

‘After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.’ 

In fact, what Jesus said was so hard to accept, he even asked the twelve if they wanted to leave too.  

We have to remember that the early Church was a Messianic sect within mainstream Judaism. The early Christians were Jews themselves and they were called to proclaim the Gospel to other Jews. It would have made no sense whatsoever then, for them to have made something like this up because it would simply have made their task that much harder. In fact, if they were going to change anything in this case, it would have made more sense for them not to say anything at all about eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood. The fact that they did can only mean that these words were so important that they had to say them. And what possible reason could there be for these very difficult and controversial words being so important other than that they were the words of Jesus?  

Another problem people have with accepting the real presence in the Eucharist is that it goes against common sense. What I mean by that is that the bread and wine we receive at Holy Communion don’t appear to have changed at all from what they originally were. The bread still looks and tastes like bread. I’m sure none of us have ever tasted human flesh but I believe it tastes like pork. Well the bread of Holy Communion doesn’t taste like pork or any other meat either. I’m sure we all do know what blood tastes like though, because we’ll all have had blood in our mouths at some time in our lives, perhaps because of a cut or dental work . And the wine we receive at Holy Communion certainly doesn’t taste like that. It doesn’t look like blood either. But this is where belief is so important. Common sense tells us that a man can’t change water into wine, he can’t walk on water, he can’t feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. A man can’t raise people from the dead and neither can he be raised from the dead either. And yet we believe all these things about Jesus. Why then can’t some people believe Jesus when he says that this bread is his body, and this wine is his blood? The Holy Communion hymn, Now, my tongue, the mystery telling  puts it very well, I think, when it says; 

‘faith, our outward sense befriending,  
makes our inward vision clear.  

It is a matter of faith. We’ve listened to Jesus, we believe in Jesus, and we want to follow Jesus. So when it comes to the sacrament of Holy Communion, no matter how difficult it is for us to understand, no matter what our senses tell us, faith tells us that this bread is Jesus’ body and faith tells us that this wine is his blood. And faith tells us these things simply because this is what Jesus said they are, and we have faith in him.  

Amen.  

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Propers for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 13) 25th August 2024

Entrance Antiphon 
Listen Lord, and answer me. 
Save your servant who trusts in you. 
I call to you all day long. Have mercy on me ,O Lord. 

The Collect 
Almighty God, 
who called your Church to bear witness 
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself: 
help us to proclaim the good news of your love, 
that all who hear it may be drawn to you; 
through him who was lifted up on the cross, 
and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God, now and for ever. 
Amen. 

The Readings 
Missal (St Mark’s)
Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18 
Psalm 34:2-3, 16-23 
Ephesians 5:21-32 
John 6:60-69 

RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18 
Psalm 34:15-22 
Ephesians 6:10-20 
John 6:56-69 

I’m sure that anyone who’s read the Gospels will have noticed that the fourth Gospel, St John’s Gospel, is quite different to the other three. The Gospels of Ss Matthew, Mark and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they tell much the same stories and, taken together, they form a synopsis, a general summary of the life and earthly ministry of Jesus. St John’s Gospel though, stands apart from that because it tells many different stories and is much more theological in its portrayal of Jesus. There’s no uncertainty about who Jesus is in John’s Gospel, as there often is in the other Gospels. It begins by clearly stating that Jesus is the incarnate Word of God and ends by saying that the Gospel has been written so that the reader may believe in him.  

One of the great differences between St John’s Gospel and the others is that St John doesn’t give an account of the Last Supper. There’s a scene in the Upper Room at supper where Jesus washes his disciples feet but rather than an account of the meal itself there’s a long speech by Jesus that we know as The Farewell Discourse, the final teaching that Jesus gave his disciples. But what we do have in John’s Gospel is the teaching that we’re reading in our Sunday Gospels at the moment, Jesus’ teaching that his body and blood are given for the life of the world and that we must eat his body and drink his blood if we wish to have life. So, while St John gives us no account of the Last Supper itself, no account of the institution of the Eucharist, what he does give us is this very explicit explanation of the meaning of the that meal and of the Eucharist.  

Later in John’s Gospel, in The Farewell Discourse, Jesus tells us that his Church should be one, and we see the Eucharist as a symbol of that unity because through sharing bread and wine at the Eucharist, we unite our lives to his, and he unites his life to ours. We become one with him as he is one with the Father and in him we become one with each other. That’s why the well-known hymn O Thou, who at thy Eucharist didst pray speaks of the Eucharist as ‘…this blessed sacrament of unity.’ But we know that, in spite of Jesus’ prayer for unity and in spite of the fact that Christians throughout the world share in the Eucharist, the Church is not one, it’s divided and Christians throughout the world seem to spend as much time arguing and falling out with each other as they do in being about the business of being disciples of Christ. And this morning’s Gospel tells us, in passing, why that is.  

At the beginning of this morning’s Gospel we read this: 

‘…the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 

The bone of contention between ‘the Jews’ and Jesus here was his statement that he’d come down from heaven and that’s understandable. I’m sure if we met someone who told us that, we’d be reluctant to accept it too. But the real problem seems to have been not what Jesus said but who he was. These people knew Jesus; they knew his family. And their objection to what he said wasn’t put in terms of ‘How can anyone make such a claim?’ but rather in terms of ‘He’s just a carpenter’s son. Who does he think he is?’  

And this is the root cause of our disunity; the way we treat other people because of who and what they are, or simply who and what we think they are. The lack of respect we show for them and what they say because of who and what they are, or we think they are. Our intolerance of others because they don’t think like we do. Our dismissive attitude towards others because, if they don’t think and act like we do, they must be wrong.  

And how often do we come across situations like that in the Church? How often do we treat other people in the Church like that? Very often we treat newcomers to the Church in that way. I’m sure we’ve all seen it and heard it, and perhaps even been guilty of doing it. Someone new comes to our church, they point out something that’s not right, perhaps the way some people are behaving, and the response is a very indignant, ‘Who do they think they are? I’ve been coming to this church all my life; they’ve only been coming here for five minutes. What right have they got to tell us what to do? ‘ And so what that person says is ignored. But what they’ve said might very well be true. Just because they’ve only been coming to our church for ‘five minutes’ is neither here nor there. They may have been going to another church for just as long or perhaps even longer than we’ve been going to our church. And even if they are new to the Church, that’s no reason to dismiss what they say. One of the great things about people who are new to anything is that, because it is so new to them, they’re full of enthusiasm, they want to see things done in the right way. Because they’re new to it, they haven’t become jaded in any way by long exposure to problems and difficulties, and that means bitter experience hasn’t tempered their ideals.  

Another group of people who’re often treated in that way are younger people and children. Our problem with what they might try to tell us is usually put in terms of ‘What do they know? They’re just kids.’ But even ‘kids’ can teach us a thing or two because they tend to look at things in a very idealistic way – this is what Jesus said so this is the way it should be and if we’re not doing it that way, we’re doing it wrong.   

But we can also dismiss people and what they say because of their background. If we think someone has a bit of a shady past or has perhaps come from ‘a bad family’ we might not even want them in the Church. That’s the ‘We don’t want their sort here’ scenario. But that doesn’t allow for people’s willingness and ability to change, to put the past behind them and be different and better in the future. And what that kind of attitude most certainly does do is stop us from following Christ’s example of seeking out and saving the lost. But, as Christians, isn’t that exactly what we’re called to do?  

Parish priests can suffer because of these kinds of attitudes too. Every parish priest I know, and ever have known, can tell stories of moving to a new parish and having to endure tales of how much more wonderful the last parish priest was than they are. Problems of trying to change anything because ‘Fr so and so never did this’ and then being told just what Fr so and so did do and that they should do the same. In most cases that’s as far as it goes, and most priests have broad enough shoulders and thick enough skin to cope with that. But there is always a small minority of people who are deeply resentful of the new parish priest and go out of their way to be awkward and obstructive, and at times deeply offensive towards them. They won’t even give the new priest a chance and for no other reason than they aren’t the last priest. But what this attitude shows an unwillingness to accept that we all have unique talents and just as the last priest had theirs, so the new one will have theirs, and they will have knowledge and skills that the last one didn’t. And just because the last priest did things a certain way, that doesn’t mean to say it was the best or only way to do them. Just because the last priest didn’t do something doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done, perhaps they should have been doing it.  

These are problems that affect parishes and parish churches but the problems that affect the wider Church are simply these problem writ large; an unwillingness to accept that others may have a valid point of view, an inability to see that our way is not the only way, that others are not wrong simply because they don’t think and act the way we do. Perhaps above all, an uncharitable attitude towards others based on nothing more than who and what they are. 

During my sabbatical I was studying mission and evangelism, especially in early medieval England, how the Church manged to convert the pagan Anglo Saxons to Christianity in a relatively short time span. One of the things that helped them do this was that Christianity was a centralised faith with clearly defined core beliefs that all Christians held to, wherever they were in the world. Paganism, on the other hand, was emotive and localised, it was about what the people in a particular place believed and their ways of doing things. For the Anglo Saxons, being part of that all-embracing faith and part of the Church meant greater cooperation with their neighbours and that led to greater security in a violent world. But, as we look at the Church today, even our own Anglican Church, don’t we see something more resembling medieval paganism than medieval Christianity? The Church splintering into self-interested groups who care more about their own ideas than the core teachings of the faith? And don’t we see Anglican parish churches acting more like independent local congregations than as part of an all-embracing, universal, Catholic Church which proclaims one Catholic faith in all places? Parish churches which act like local churches for local people who neither care what other churches are doing nor want outsiders joining their congregations.  

The greatest asset the Church has is its people because we all have unique gifts to bring to the Church. We all also have a unique story to tell because our faith journeys are all unique. Each and everyone of us has faced unique challenges in life and our own unique way of living out our faith through those challenges. So we all have something to contribute to the Church and to give to each other. But we all have to be willing to give everyone the chance to tell their story, to offer what they have, by being prepared to listen to what everyone has to say, no matter who and what they are. So let’s listen to what others have to tell us. To newcomers to the Church and to our church. To children and young people. To new priests as well as old. To other denominations of the Church and to other parish churches and congregations. That is the way to become more united as a Church and that is the way to become more united with Christ because that is the way he said it should be among his disciples.  

Amen.        

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Propers for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 11), 11th August 2024

Entrance Antiphon 
Lord, be true to your covenant,  
forget not the life of your poor ones forever. 
Rise up, O God, and defend your cause; 
do not ignore the shouts of your enemies.  

The Collect 
O God, you declare your almighty power 
most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: 
mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace, 
that we, running the way of your commandments, 
may receive your gracious promises, 
and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; 
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, 
who is alive and reigns with you, 
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God, now and for ever. 
Amen. 

The Readings 
Missal (St Mark’s)
1 Kings 19:4-8 
Psalm 34:2-9 
Ephesians 4:30-5:2 
John 6:41-51 

RCL (St Gabriel’s)
1 Kings 19:4-8 
Psalm 34:1-8 
Ephesians 4:25-5:2 
John 6:35, 41-51