“THAT THEY MAY ALL BE ONE”

THE EUCHARIST  

 

There is universal agreement that the Eucharist was meant to be something that both symbolised and brought about the unity of the followers of Jesus.   And yet it has actually become both a cause and a symbol of disunity.  At the time of the Reformation fierce battles were fought over it. 

What would happen if we adopted the two principles of 1) abandoning the language of the Reformation on both sides and seeking a new language to express a common faith; and 2) limiting ourselves to seeking a statement concerning the Eucharist of those truths that are essential to the identity of the Christian church

The three gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke all give an account of the Last Supper.  There are some differences between them, but all three have Jesus taking bread and saying, “This is my body” [1] .  All three use the identical Greek words, “Touto estin to soma mou”.  Then all three have Jesus taking the cup.  Mark and Matthew have him saying,

“This is my blood” [2] , while Luke has, “This cup (is) the new covenant in my blood” [3] .  

 If we are to find a statement of the truth concerning the Eucharist that is essential to the identity of the Christian church, it seems that we must start with the phrases, “This is my body” and “This is my blood”.  They are the words of Jesus as recorded in three gospels and it would be very difficult to justify departing from them.

Before drawing any conclusions, however, we must also include chapter six of the gospel of John, which contains the great discourse on the “bread of life”. 

The chapter begins with two miraculous events, the multiplication of the loaves (1-15) and Jesus walking on the water (16-21).  John rarely repeats material from the earlier three gospels, so there must be a reason why he repeats these two stories here.  Surely it is significant that these two miracles show a) Jesus feeding a large crowd with a small amount of food and b) the body of Jesus not subject to the ordinary laws of nature.  They are a perfect preparation for the idea that the body of Jesus could itself become food for vast crowds of people.  In the light of what follows, it seems impossible to ignore these messages contained in the two stories.

The discourse that follows has Jesus at first speaking of himself as the “bread that gives life” and the primary meaning would appear to be that of the message and person of Jesus as spiritual food for people.  The objection raised by some of his hearers was that Jesus claimed that this bread had “come down from heaven” (v.42) and Jesus replied by reasserting his claim and saying that those who eat this bread “will never die” (vv.48-50).

In v.51 a distinct change comes over the passage, for the gospel tells us that Jesus then said,

            I myself am the living bread

            that came down from heaven.

            If anyone eats this bread,

            he will live forever.

            And the bread that I shall give

            is my own flesh for the life of the world.

 

This was much more concrete and down-to-earth language, so the objection was equally concrete and down-to-earth:

 

            How can he give us his flesh to eat?

 

If someone gives a speech and the questions that follow show that the audience has completely misunderstood what the speaker intended, the questions become the opportunity for the speaker to correct this false understanding.  That a speaker would not seize this opportunity with both hands and correct a false understanding of an essential and important matter is almost unconceivable.  So this was the perfect opportunity for Jesus to say, “Oh no, of course I don’t mean actually eating my flesh.  Let me explain the idea more clearly.”  Instead of this, over a period of five verses Jesus repeated the same message in the same concrete and graphic language.  If he believed that the people had misunderstood him, his words did nothing to correct that misunderstanding, but served only to reinforce it strongly.

 

Furthermore, between v.53 and v.54 there is a change of verb.  Up to v.53 Jesus is reported as using the verb phagein, meaning “to eat”, but in vv.54, 56, 57 and 58 he uses the word trogein, a graphic and down-to-earth word having overtones of “to munch, to chew, to gnaw, to masticate”.  In other words, rather than draw back from his statement, Jesus actually became more graphic.

 

There was a second objection in v.60, (This sort of talk is hard to take.  How can anyone pay attention to it?), but Jesus still did nothing to correct a misunderstanding.  The crowd then moved from words to actions,

At this many of his disciples broke away and would not accompany him any more.

These were not antagonists, but his own followers.  They were leaving him because of these graphic sayings about eating his flesh, and Jesus still did nothing to mitigate what he had said.  He would not retract or explain away a single word.  Instead, he turned to the twelve and said,

Do you also want to go away?

 

In the light of the significance of the two miracles of the loaves and the walking on water, and in the light of the manner in which the discourse develops, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that John is here strongly reinforcing the “is” of the accounts of the Last Supper in the other three gospels.  

                        The Essential Truth     

My conclusion is that, in relation to the Eucharist, the truth “essential to the identity of the Christian church” must contain the word “is” and must reject the words “is not”.  To say that the bread reminds us of the actions of Jesus at the Last Supper or that our eating of the bread is a symbol of our receiving the spiritual food that Jesus represents would certainly seem to come under the heading of “is not” rather than “is”.  If Jesus had meant no more than this, we might confidently have expected him to correct the misunderstanding of his disciples.  After the words of the Last Supper have been spoken over the bread, we must in some manner be able to say and mean, “This is the body of Jesus”.

 

The question immediately arises, “In what manner is it the body of Jesus?”  My response to this question is to say, “I understand why people ask this question, but the fact is that we simply do not know, and cannot know, the exact manner in which the bread becomes the body of Jesus, and we must leave that to God.   Surely this is a place for a proper humility rather than a claim of knowledge of the divine.  Furthermore, is the answer to this question essential to the identity of the Christian church?  Is it not enough to say that the essential truth is that this ‘is’ the body of Jesus, and that everything else belongs to the field of the non-essential where freedom must prevail.  If this means that there will be some diversity of views, does this matter provide we agree on ‘is’ and reject ‘is not’?”

 

There is one further step we must take and it is best illustrated by a story.

 

A liberal-minded Catholic priest visited the island of Iona, where the Church of Scotland runs a retreat centre.  Being liberal, he attended a communion service.  He found that the celebrant was a woman, but being liberal, he was easily able to accommodate this.  The celebrant used an ordinary loaf of bread for the Eucharist, and again his liberal mind could accept this.  He later saw, however, that the portion of the loaf not consumed at communion was sliced up and put into the toaster for breakfast, and at that moment even his very liberal Catholic soul rebelled. [4]

 

His response was visceral before it was intellectual.  Even if we leave aside all questions about what the celebrant intended, a further question arises: Are there things that in a united Christian church we should not do because they would be seriously offensive to the sensitivities of others?

I am, of course, aware that many Protestants react in the same visceral manner to the word “transubstantiation”.  At best this word is an attempt to express a weak human understanding of a divine mystery in the words of a particular philosophy.There is a long and bitter history of conflict around this word. It seems quite impossible to claim that the word expresses an essential truth.

Must we reject both a purely symbolic understanding on the one hand and words such as “transubstantiation” on the other hand?  In rejecting these two extremes, can we not leave the rest to God?  Is there anything that it is truly essential to add to the words, “This is the body of Jesus”, provided we genuinely mean “is” rather than “is not”?