Counterpoints:

hatred - healing
fighting - forgiveness
intolerance - interfaith
indifference - integrity
fear - faith
torture - tolerance
terrorism - truce
betrayal - befriending
retaliation - reconciliation
provocation - peace
poverty - provision
war - world communion

One of my seminary professors, who was a writer and poet, Dan Berrigan penned these words:

“Peacemaking is hard, hard almost as war
The difference being one we can stake life upon and limb and thought and love.
I stake this poem out dead man to a dead stick to tempt an Easter chance if faith may be truth an evil chance penultimate at last not last. We are not lost.
When these lines gathered of no resource at all serenity and strength, it dawned upon me a man stood on his nails
an ash like dew, a sweat smelling of death and life.
Our evil Friday fled,
the blind face gently turned another way, toward life
a man walks in his shroud.”

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…….

Bread… It’s such a simple, common, ordinary symbol. Bread is something we just take for granted. But, on this World Communion Sunday, What is this bread all about? And what is this cup all about? This is a table we come to. We eat, we drink and are renewed and then we leave. The table has always been at the core of human relatedness. Each one of us can visualize a family table where meals and family gatherings are shared. Yet more than food is shared. We share in conversation. We check in with one another to see what has been going on – to see how life is going. Stories are shared: sometimes we share our sadness, our pain, our disappointments and our frustrations. And sometimes we share our happiness, our joys, the thankfulness we feel and the good things that have happened to us. And more often than not we share the little things that have been a part of our day. I would suggest that very often it is the little things that touch us most deeply: the little surprises and unexpected happenings, when we hear from or run into a friend we haven’t seen for some time and the brief renewal of friendship lifts our spirits, the little accomplishments which remind us that we do have something to contribute with our lives, and the little discouragements that open us to hearing a word of encouragement and support.

When we gather around our tables with others - it is then we know that someone cares to share food and time with us and that we are connected to them. But even the regular act of being connected with others through a meal is not all there is to eating. For eating is also sacred. It is so simple, yet so profound. Each time we eat, whether we recognize it or not we are physically tied to the creator, for we partake of that which has been created.

Now, some people spend so much time fussing about preparing food and making sure that it will be just right while others just take eating for granted. Both end up missing the deeper significance that each bite and each drink comes from the One who makes all life possible. Eating is sacred.

So let’s look now to the Lord’s Table. A sacrament is that which points beyond itself. We say it is the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. It is a sign, token, symbol or image of the sacred. Through the sacrament of bread and wine we most clearly express our relatedness to the sacred. What had been, but no longer is visible in Christ is passed on to us in the ritual of Holy Communion. Jesus Christ is the sacrament of God given to us. Consider the pelican, that noble bird who, returning exhausted to its nest from a long and fruitless search for food, sees its chicks crowding toward it to catch the fish it will disgorge. The pelican sees their gaping mouths, hears their frantic gabbling. There is no food. Its craw is empty. For a long moment the pelican stands as though listening to some secret inner command, then suddenly raises its great beak above the young, arching its neck backward for the strike. It is not its babes that it would harm, but itself. The pelican punctures its own breast, ripping open the flesh, until at last it stands astride the nest, offering its own flesh as food before it dies.

Such is the sacrificial love given to us in Jesus Christ. Only ours is not such a gruesome and morbid sense of eating. Ours is a symbolic eating which nourishes our deepest spiritual hungers far beyond the physical.

When Maria Theresa ruled the base Austro-Hungarian Empire, the court was the scene of luxury and wealth. At the wedding of her oldest son Joseph II, 300 people were invited to the wedding, not to eat, but just to stand and watch the royal family eat. And that was considered a great honor. How much greater then is the honor when the Lord of Hosts invites us to the heavenly table, not just to sit and watch, but to eat and drink. It would be a great honor if we were only invited to stand and watch, but we are invited to eat and drink at that table of God’s grace.

Hear the words anew as if they were spoken directly to you.

And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body,” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.

Living Sacraments! This bread, this cup are living elements which offer the potential of new and fuller life in Jesus Christ. They are a living sacrament of life in the spirit that can never be reduced to words. They point beyond themselves to our connectedness to God in Christ. But that is not the whole story. Receiving the gifts of bread and wine is not all there is to it. For just as we receive a living sacrament in Christ, so, too as Christ’s body are we to become living sacraments to others.

Hoover Rupert, a Methodist pastor, tells in one of the books he has written an account that comes out of the Second World War. On a cold winter day in 1945, an elderly missionary was marching with a company of miserable prisoners from one Japanese concentration camp to another. His long life of service to these people seemed now to be ending. His strength was ebbing away. Walking became difficult in his weakened condition with no food. He begged the young guard nearby to let him fall out of line and die in peace. “Walk on,” was the short reply. As the missionary continued on, it became increasingly difficult for him. He requested again permission to drop out into the ditch. “Walk on,” came the unfeeling command. But the third time the request was made, the guard came close to the old man and whispered, “for we are coming close to my grandmother’s house.” The old missionary stumbled on in puzzlement. Soon his section was halted by the young guard, who then disappeared into a small house, and returned holding something in his hands. He approached the aged missionary and told him to hold out his hands. Then slipping his hands inside the hands of the old man, he left there a warm potato. Bending close to the missionary’s ear, the guard, very deliberately, uttered two familiar words, “Take, eat.” Then stepping back, he raised his voice in the usual command, “Walk on!” One warm potato doesn’t usually meet the definition of a banquet. But when you have been without food, it can be a feast in itself.

What beautiful gifts to share: food for a moment and for a moment a life which was bread as well. His very life became the bread of faith. Take, eat!

Paul speaks of us as the body of Christ when he challenges us in this way.

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your real service.

Through his sacrifice Christ becomes a living sacrament to us and living as his sacraments we offer ourselves in service.

Living sacraments have the fundamental life flow of receiving and giving. We receive the bread and wine through the sacramental love of Christ and we become bread and wine as we share ourselves in love for others.

Bread is broken, reflecting pain, suffering and brokenness. And bread nourishes, giving strength and new life. Wine is poured out reflecting sacrifice, death, and tragedy. And wine is a symbol of joy, celebration, fullness, transformation and new life.

When we take these images of bread and wine and feed on them our identities can be shaped into the living sacraments we are called to be. Perhaps we can say with Henry Vaughan, “Look down, great Master of the feast; O Shine, And turn once more our water (our lives) into wine!”

True personhood, true identity is defined by sacrifice, not by what we have or even say. It is in giving as bread and wine that we gain. And it is in living for others that we are born to new life.

Bread and wine - such simple gifts.

Ignatius Salome once observed, “A society is renewed when it’s humblest element acquires a meaning.”

When the scope of our meaning includes both the receiving of bread and wine and the becoming of bread and wine our church community can be renewed as well as the world around us. Today’s table of transformation allows us to participate in World Communion Sunday as a symbol that all Christians are in Christ and thus to go forth as living sacraments. Amen.