Sermon: Sunday 22nd June 2025 (Corpus Christi)
The weirdness of the Eucharist
Corpus Christi, 22.06.2025
St George’s, Edgbaston – 8am BCP Communion
Christianity is weird. This may sound like an odd thing for a Christian priest to say, but it is true and undeniable. The Christian faith is unlike any other religion, spirituality, or philosophy in the entire history of human belief. And it is weird because of what lies at the heart of Christianity. For some religions, the focus is on laws – rules and regulations to govern the moral and religious life. These things exist in Christianity, but they are not the main focus. For other faiths, a holy text or set of texts is the most important thing; I’m thinking particularly of Islam, and the way in which Muslims venerate the Qur’an as the infallible and direct revelation of God. Christians also have a holy text, of course, and yet even that is not our focal point. No – Christianity is weird because it’s the only religion where the main focus is not a book, a set of laws, or a framework of rituals and devotions. The focus for Christians, for Christians of all denominations, is on a human being, Jesus Christ.
Now, we need to be very clear about what this means. It is undeniable that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person; we have more historical evidence for his existence than for many of the most well-known figures of ancient history. We know that he was a Jew who lived for around thirty years in the areas which are now Israel and the Palestinian Territories, spending most of his life in secular employment before a short ministry as a travelling preacher, teacher, and healer. We know that he was a radical, a harsh critic of the political and religious authorities, and we know that he was ultimately executed as a heretic. These facts are not up for debate. But as Christians, we believe that this is not the full story of Jesus. We make the incredible claim that this man was the messiah, the Word made flesh, God in human form. We believe that in the person of Jesus, God entered into the world in a specific time and place, and he did something truly world-changing. He died, but then he rose from the dead, not as a resuscitated corpse but as the first-fruits of resurrection life, the life that has conquered death and which is promised to us all. He therefore lives forever, and although he has ascended to the Father he has left for us not only his story and his example, but the gift of the Eucharist whereby we can truly receive his body and his blood today and every day. He is not simply a vague memory from the distant past, nor a remote deity reigning from on high – he is present to us, drawing us into communion with himself in the most intimate way imaginable.
You see, Christians are not ‘people of the book’ or ‘people of the law’ – we are ‘people of the incarnation’. We are disciples of Christ, believing that God has shown us his truest nature by becoming one of us. I love the way the Christian calendar unfolds in these weeks after Easter, reminding us that Jesus has risen from the dead, ascended to the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church. I love last week’s reminder that God is Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I love today’s feast of Corpus Christi, the end-point of these celebrations of the incarnation, reminding us that the one who died, rose, and ascended remains with us, his Spirit-filled Church, through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Contemporary Christians often contrast Eucharistic worship with charismatic worship, and the Eucharist is often somewhat marginalised within charismatic Evangelical churches. But surely there can be few things more charismatic, more filled with the Holy Spirit, than the transformation of simple bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord, which we are invited to receive. What could be more intimate, more spiritual, more life-giving than this?
And the Eucharist really is life-giving. It is not empty ritual, crude superstition, or mere symbolism; it is an act ordained by Jesus himself to breathe new life into ourselves and into the Church. It is the way in which Christ is made present to us, the way that we can recognise that he is alive. In Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus rises from the dead, he appears to two of his followers who are travelling to the village of Emmaus. He talks to them, he teaches the Scriptures to them, and yet they do not recognise him. It is only when they gather at a table, and Jesus takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and gives it to them, that ‘their eyes were opened and they recognised him’. Likewise, we can be blind to the reality of the risen Jesus, but we are called to this table to see him afresh in broken bread and wine outpoured.
For centuries, Christians have been bitterly divided over the nature of the Eucharist, resorting to intricate theological and philosophical debates about what, if anything, happens to the bread and wine at the moment of consecration. I am not going to bore you with a detailed overview of the various positions, but I simply want to point us to what Jesus himself says in Scripture. In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus talks of himself as ‘the living bread that came down from heaven’, and he declares that ‘whoever eats this bread will live forever’. His Jewish audience are scandalised, asking ‘how can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ At this point, you might expect Jesus to explain that he is talking in metaphor and symbol, but instead he doubles down: ‘very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’. The thought of eating human flesh and blood would have been even more horrifying for 1st Century Jews than it is for us today, and yet Jesus never wavers. We are to abide in Christ by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and in doing so we will live forever. Today, as we give thanks for the Eucharist, this gift of Christ to the Church, let us rejoice that we are invited to share in this moment of intimacy with Our Lord and Saviour, in all its weird, counter-cultural, unexpected beauty. Christ is alive, and he longs for us to receive him. So therefore let us take him at his word when he commands us to take and eat, for this is indeed his body, which is given for us all. Let us do this in remembrance of him.
Amen.