Sermon For Communion Service

This Is My Body, Given For You

A Homily For The Holy Eucharist

We come to this Table carrying the ordinary weight of ordinary days. Some of us arrive this morning with gratitude near the surface, ready to sing. Others come quieter, carrying something we have not yet named, a grief, a weariness, a question that will not resolve itself. And then there are those among us who are still finding their way, still deciding what they believe about this Jesus and this bread and this cup. The remarkable thing about what we are about to do is that it was designed to hold all of that. The Lord's Supper was not instituted for the spiritually polished. It was given on the night of betrayal, in a borrowed room, to men who were about to scatter.

That is where we begin.

The Night It Was Given

The Apostle Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter eleven, beginning at verse twenty-three: "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'"

Notice how Paul frames this. He does not say he invented it or reasoned his way to it. He says he received it from the Lord. This is handed-down, traditioned truth, the kind that is passed from one generation to the next with the care you give to something irreplaceable. And it begins with a date stamp: the night he was betrayed.

Luke's Gospel fills in the scene. Jesus reclines at table with his apostles and says, "I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." There is longing in those words. The eternal Son of God, on the eve of his crucifixion, desires to share a meal. He takes the cup and gives thanks. He takes the bread and breaks it and says, "This is my body, which is given for you." Then, after supper, he takes the cup again: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."

This is the text that stands beneath every communion service the Church has ever held. This is the ground on which we stand this morning. So let us take it seriously, and let us take it slowly.

The Central Claim: What This Table Actually Is

The doctrine of the Lord's Supper can be stated in one sentence, and then it must be unpacked carefully: This Table is a divinely appointed act of remembrance, proclamation, and participation in the grace of the new covenant.

That sentence has three parts, and each one matters.

Remembrance. Proclamation. Participation.

Let us take them in order.

Remembrance: Do This In Memory Of Me

The first thing Jesus says after breaking the bread is, "Do this in remembrance of me." He says it again after the cup. The Greek word translated remembrance is anamnesis, and it carries more weight than the English word suggests. It does not mean merely to recall a fact, the way you might remember a date from a history lesson. In the biblical and liturgical sense, anamnesis means to make present again, to bring a past event into living contact with the present moment.

This is exactly what the Passover meal was designed to do. When Israel gathered to eat the lamb and the unleavened bread, they were not simply commemorating something that had happened to their ancestors. They were participating in the exodus. The liturgy of the Passover says, in every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he personally went out from Egypt. The past event was made present through the meal.

When Jesus takes the Passover cup and says, "This is the new covenant in my blood," he is doing something of the same order, but infinitely greater. He is placing his own body and blood at the center of a new memorial meal. When we gather at this Table and do what he commanded, we are not merely recalling a crucifixion that happened two thousand years ago. We are, by his grace and appointment, brought into living contact with the one who was crucified and who rose.

This is why the Church has always treated this meal with reverence. We are not performing a ritual in honor of a dead teacher. We are meeting a risen Lord.

Proclamation: You Proclaim The Lord's Death

Paul adds something that is easy to miss. In verse twenty-six he writes: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

The Table is not only an inward, private act of personal devotion. It is a public proclamation. Every time this congregation gathers to break bread and share the cup, we are making an announcement to the world, and to the principalities and powers, that Jesus Christ died, that his death was not a tragedy but an atoning sacrifice, and that he is coming again.

This is the via media of Anglican theology at its clearest. The Eucharist is neither a bare memorial stripped of all mystery, nor a re-sacrifice of Christ. It is a proclamation and a participation. The once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary is not repeated here. It is shown forth. It is declared. The bread broken and the wine poured are a visible word, a sermon preached not in syllables but in bread and cup and the gathered body of Christ.

The Book of Common Prayer has always understood this. The prayer of consecration does not ask God to create a new sacrifice. It asks that we may receive these gifts in remembrance of Christ's death and passion, and be made partakers of his most blessed body and blood. The language is careful because the theology is careful.

And notice that Paul adds a phrase that should lift every communion service out of solemnity into hope: "until he comes." We do not only look back to a cross. We look forward to a return. This Table is set between two advents, between the first coming of Christ in humility and his coming again in glory. Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, we are living in that holy interval, and we are declaring that the story is not finished.

Participation: Discerning The Body

Now we come to the passage that requires the most pastoral care, because it is the one most often misread. Paul writes in verse twenty-seven: "So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord." And in verse twenty-eight: "Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup."

This passage has sometimes been used to frighten people away from the Table entirely, as though the greatest danger were approaching too readily. But that is a misreading. The context in Corinth was specific. The wealthier members of the congregation were eating and drinking before the poorer members arrived, leaving them hungry and humiliated. Some were treating the Lord's Supper as a private dinner party. Paul's rebuke is not aimed at the person who comes with a tender conscience and a sense of unworthiness. It is aimed at those who have forgotten that the body of Christ includes the brother and sister sitting next to them.

To eat in an unworthy manner is to eat without discerning the body. And discerning the body means two things at once: it means recognizing the real presence of Christ in this meal, and it means recognizing the real presence of Christ in the congregation gathered around this Table.

You cannot receive the body of Christ and then treat the body of Christ with contempt. You cannot come to this Table for your own private spiritual benefit while ignoring the person beside you who is struggling, grieving, or hungry. The Eucharist is always both vertical and horizontal. It draws us upward to God and outward to one another.

So Paul's call to self-examination is not a call to despair. It is a call to honesty and to love. Examine yourself: Are you here with a genuine desire to receive grace? Are you willing to be reconciled to your neighbor? Are you ready to receive Christ not only in the bread and cup but in the faces of the people around you?

If the answer is yes, even a trembling yes, then come.

The Grace That Meets Us Here

There is a beautiful symmetry in what Jesus does on that night. He takes bread and gives thanks. The Greek word for giving thanks is eucharisteo, from which we get the word Eucharist. Even on the night of his betrayal, even knowing what the next twelve hours would bring, Jesus gives thanks. He does not begin with lament. He begins with gratitude.

That is the posture this Table invites. Not a false cheerfulness that pretends suffering does not exist. Not a grim endurance that reduces this meal to duty. But a genuine thanksgiving, rooted in the knowledge that the one who was broken for us is also the one who rose for us, and who will come again for us.

The new covenant he inaugurates in his blood is not a covenant of our making. We did not negotiate its terms. We did not qualify for its benefits. It is given. "This is my body, which is given for you." The preposition is everything. Not given because of you. Not given in exchange for you. Given for you.

That is grace. Unearned, undeserved, freely offered at a Table that was set before the foundation of the world.

A Charge To The Congregation

So we come this morning, whatever we are carrying. We come as a congregation that is still learning what it means to discern the body, to see Christ in one another, to hold the vertical and horizontal together. We come as people who live in the interval between the cross and the coming, proclaiming with every broken piece of bread that death has been defeated and that the Lord is coming again.

The invitation of this Table is not to the worthy. It is to the hungry.

Come, then, with honest hearts. Come with your questions and your grief and your gratitude. Come, examine yourself not in a spirit of paralysis but in a spirit of readiness. Come to receive what you could never earn, the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, given and shed for you.

Do this in remembrance of him.

And as you do, know that you are also proclaiming, to this room and to the watching world, that Jesus Christ died, that he rose, and that he is coming again.

Until he comes, we eat this bread and drink this cup.

Come to the Table.

Sources Consulted

Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible (CSB). Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. 1 Corinthians 11:23-29; Luke 22:14-20.

The Book of Common Prayer. Church Publishing, 1979. The Order for the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, including the Prayer of Consecration.

Gordon D. Fee. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1987.

N. T. Wright. Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

Richard Hooker. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V. (1597.) Chapters 67-68, on the nature of the Eucharist and the presence of Christ.

I. Howard Marshall. Last Supper and Lord's Supper. Eerdmans, 1980.