On my 5th birthday my father took me to the theatre. I have only vague memories of this day but I do remember that the play was geared towards children. Before the performance one of the actors encouraged all the children to come on to the stage and be part of the play. On a given cue all the children would make the sound of animals and each child could choose what animal they wished to be. I refused to take part because I think I felt it was embarrassing and well, childish. But I also remember realising part way through the performance that I was the only child in the audience. My peer group were all on stage being cows or monkeys or whatever it was. I suddenly felt that I didn’t belong and this memory is so powerful because the desire that we each have to belong is so strong that times when we don’t can seem very significant. It is part of human nature to want to be part of a group, to find a sense of unity with those around us. We might sometimes have an ambivalent relationship to the group in which we find ourselves and some people prefer to be alone but mostly, most of us want to part of a social group in which we feel safe, contained and where we have a sense of identity.
The ways in which groups form and gain a sense of coherence and unity is an issue that comes up in the bible. Throughout the Old Testament we find God’s chosen people, the Israelites, identifying themselves as a group different to their neighbouring nations and tribes. Their status as God’s chosen people is something that they show forth in every aspect of their lives. The laws that God gives them determine what foods they can eat for example but these laws are also important because they are one of the ways that the Israelites are distinct from their neighbours.
It is quite normal for social groups to gain a sense of unity against someone else; to isolate someone or some other group not only as different but as deserving of blame and condemnation. We find communion within the group by identifying a common enemy outside the group. This scape goating occurs in the Old Testament when Aaron, the brother of Moses, confesses the sins of the Israelites over a goat which was then sent out into the wilderness. Scapegoating isn’t normally a ritual practice like this; more often we hold other people to blame for the problems that exist within our society but which we find difficult to resolve or acknowledge ourselves. Western civilization is full of examples where innocent people have become the victims of scapegoating. In the 1930s Jewish Europeans were made to carry the blame for the social and economic problems that existed in Germany. The German people forgot the underlying cause for their discontent and gained a sense of unity and identity at the expense of the lives of 6 million Jews.
This is an extreme example but it seems to be a fundamental aspect of social organisation that the unity of a particular group is often gained at the cost of another. We need only think of the unifying effects of condemning terrorists or immigrants to recognise this. Or on a more local level what might seem harmless gossip can still have the same effect of excluding those who don’t obviously fit- and serves the same function of unifying those participating in the conversation. Gossip may seem harmless but it can also quickly get out of control because it feeds on such fundamental human desires and the human cost can be very high.
So how do the ways in which we form as a church, as a community of Christians, differ?
Well, the central rite which forms us a group is that of Holy Communion. If we think about this term it can seem paradoxical: ‘Holy’ carries with it the sense of being set apart and special whilst communion refers to coming together and finding unity. So in this service we are people brought together but set apart.
Today’s gospel reading is helpful as we consider our coming together. Jesus, in describing himself as the true bread and the true wine is talking about himself in a way similar to the way he talks about himself at the last supper when he identifies the bread and the wine as his body and blood which the disciples shall eat.
“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. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink”.
This is actually a rather tame interpretation of the Greek original. The Greek word used for ‘eat’ here carries with it the sense of chewing, or gnawing as animals might eat their food. Heard like this we can hear how shocking and offensive it would have sounded to Jesus’ contemporaries. ‘Those who gnaw and munch my flesh … have eternal life’.
Jesus seems to be asking people to participate in a form of cannibalism. Later in this chapter in John’s gospel we hear that “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went him” (6.66). They are no doubt profoundly unsettled by what Jesus is saying.
So how should we understand Jesus’ words at this point and what bearing might this have for how understand the holy communion we celebrate today? Some commentators have suggested that Jesus was being deliberately provocative as a way of shocking his listeners and making them think about the type of communion that had always existed. Jesus wanted them to examine how they gained their sense of unity. In offering himself as the true bread to be gnawed upon he was urging people to give up a false self-regard where they failed to see the cost of a human communion based on excluding or victimizing others. The methods sinful human beings rely upon – creating systems with human scapegoats- are redundant in the Kingdom of God because Christ subverts our human system and offers himself up as the victim.
No longer do we find our sense of belonging through isolating a person or group of persons who don’t belong and making them a victim of the system that works for most people most of the time. Instead Jesus offers himself as the victim of this human tendency. The Son of God allows himself to be handed over to the sacrificial ways in which human beings find solidarity. In feeding on the one who let himself be consumed by the civilization around him we become part of an alternative sacrificial system. An unholy communion is based on the sacrifice of others while Holy Communion is based on the self-sacrifice of Christ. Rather than unity gained through collective violence against others we find unity based on solidarity with the victims of this collective violence.
Jesus paradoxically is both a victim and he is exalted. He is lifted high on the cross as the Christ who is crucified and the Christ who is exalted. It is in his self-sacrifice that we find our redemption and a new way of being in relationship with those with whom we share with Holy Communion.
This also brings us into a critical relationship with the larger society of which we are a part. We will have naturally have a concern and a sense of solidarity with those who are the victims of our social and economic systems. The church, if she is truly witnessing to the self-sacrificial love of Christ, will be seeking to model a different way of being in communion to the world around it. In learning how to be a holy communion of people we have to receive Christ in the sacrament of the bread and wine. In being alert to the full range of meanings the original disciples saw in the last supper and Jesus’ sacrificial offering of himself, we gain a deeper sense of what it means to live as witnesses to Christ’s love and so be a holy communion of people. Amen