“He who eats this bread will live forever”
In about 30 minutes time we will all receive bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. Why do we do it? Partly because Jesus said we should. “Do this as oft as ye shall drink it.” We do it because we know it is Jesus Christ our Lord and we want to be as close to Him as possible. We receive Christ into ourselves so that we may be strengthened physically and spiritually by His presence within us. We know that we need to grow, as Christians, to grow in love, in joy, in faith and in hope. These are the essential virtues of Christian life and we need them more and more. Only Jesus can give them. Today’s Gospel, however, gives us another reason to receive Holy Communion, one we don’t often think of: “he who eats me will live because of me…He who eats this bread will live forever.” Christian life is focussed beyond death, to eternal life. Jesus did not come to earth and die on a Cross just to give us a better life on earth. He came to open the door to life with his father. He changed death from being a door into despair and emptiness to a door into life and hope. If we don’t think of that we are missing the main point of being a Christian. We don’t become Christians just so that we can enjoy singing hymns in Church, or enjoy meeting fellow Christians. We hope that our Christian life will make us better, more hopeful, more loving people, but that is not our final hope. Our final hope is beyond death, in God. This is not something we are encouraged to think about today, even in the Church. Our society does not like to face up to death. It pretends we shall live forever. Every death is seen as a tragedy, even one of an old sick person who longs to die. What was the message of our Church during the dark times of Covid lock down? “Stay safe.” Since when was that a Christian message? If the apostles had stayed safe they would never have preached the Gospel to the world. If the early church had stayed safe they would never have taken over the Roman Empire. If the 19th Century missionaries had stayed safe they would never have taken the Christian faith to a world which is now bursting with Christian life. Christianity would have stayed the safe middle class faith of a dying West. The Christian message is one of love, and life; of joy and hope in a dark and violent world. It can only be such a faith if it is focussed beyond death. It does not ignore this world. It is not pie in the sky. It looks at the love and joy that God wants to give us for eternity and it allows that love and joy to come into the world where we live today.
So, let’s face it, there are a number of us in the church today who will very likely be facing death quite soon. What will it be like to die? What will we find on the other side? I don’t know the answer to either of those questions. From the deaths I have witnessed it seems dying is quite easy – it really is a kind of falling asleep. But eternal life? What will that be like? If it is just like life on earth going on forever I’m not sure I would want it. It would get boring after a few hundred years. The Gospels sometimes present eternal life as a banquet. Much as I love eating and drinking, the idea of doing that for eternity is really rather gross. Even floating round the universe as a disembodied spirit looking at planets and stars would be rather boring after a thousand years. Of course we don’t know if eternal life will be anything like that. What we do know is that it will be life with Christ. Jesus said “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” Jesus promised that he would return and take us to our dwelling place in the Kingdom of heaven, with the Father. Our brother Robert once said “I don’t know what heaven will be like, but I’m sure it will be enormous fun! That’s a good place to start. Life with Jesus in heaven can only be good. When we look at Jesus in the Gospels what do we see? People found him fascinating. They crowded round him. They listened to him, talked to him, argued with him, loved him, hated him, followed him and, in the end, crucified him. They were never bored by him. We shall never be bored living eternally with Christ before our heavenly father.
We call ourselves the Community of the Resurrection yet it is sometimes hard to say what resurrection is about. It does not simply mean coming back from the dead. When Jesus came back from the dead he was clearly living in two worlds. Maybe we shall do that too, somehow. But again the important thing about Resurrection is that it is rising with Christ. It is his resurrection we are involved in. From the moment we receive him in Holy Communion we are on this journey to God. It is sometimes an alarming journey. We don’t know where we are going; we don’t know how we shall travel. But St Peter catches it for us when Jesus asks him whether he and the other disciples will go away from him. “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Actually, Jesus does not just have the words of eternal life. He is the Word of life. That is the word of eternal life we shall receive in bread and wine in just a few minutes time. Let us give ourselves with all our hearts to this Jesus who comes to take us into himself. Amen