Sermon preached by The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The 11th Sunday after Pentecost
One day two travelers took adjoining seats on an airplane. One was an Episcopal priest, the other a fundamentalist Christian. After take-off, the flight attendant came taking drink orders. The priest, as bright as his clerical collar, said, “Oh, I’d like a gin and tonic.” Immediately his horrified seat-mate frowned and blurted out, “Well, since I’m a real Christian, I’ll have ginger ale.”
Later, after they had begun sipping their drinks, the priest, still feeling waves of self-righteous indignation from his neighbor, said, “Sir, you seem really uncomfortable about my having a drink—I wonder what’s wrong.” The man hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, yes…I guess I’m irritated that you, a Christian and a minister, would drink alcohol, especially in front of those for whom you should be setting an example.”
The priest replied, “Gee, I’m sorry you feel that way, but you remember scripture where our Lord changed water into wine at Cana—enough, in fact, to keep the reception going for days.”
The man, now looking flushed and frustrated, retorted, “Yes, and I would have thought a lot more of him if he hadn’t.”
That man’s sentiments about Jesus doing something of which he did not approve must have been similar to the thoughts of those who heard Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” These words sound understandable enough to us, for we know Jesus was speaking of the mass, but his hearers had no such understanding. In fact, they must have been repulsed by the idea. Their response was, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
A hard saying indeed! For a Jew to drink blood of any kind was anathema. Orthodox Jews to this day soak meat in water for 30 minutes, salt it, let it stand for an hour, and then wash it again to draw out any residual blood in the tissues before cooking it. The Jews believed that the life of a being was contained in the blood. God is the giver of life and, therefore, that which contains life belongs to God. Those who heard Jesus say, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him,” must have thought something like, “I’d have thought a lot more of him if he hadn’t said that!” In fact, what happened as a result of that sermon was the nightmare of every vestry. St. John tells us that after Jesus preached that sermon many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.
The time was 2000 years ago. The topic was the Real Presence. The result was controversy. Have a discussion of the Real Presence today, at least among Anglicans, and you’ll get the same result. And that seems to be the case within Anglicanism since the Protestant Reformation. In the very first Book of Common Prayer, printed in 1549, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, author of that first Prayer Book, had this for the words of administration as communicants were handed the elements of Holy Communion: “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life….The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” There wasn’t any doubt about it, it would seem, in that first Prayer Book. What one was receiving in Holy Communion was the Body and Blood of Christ.
Yet that Prayer Book didn’t last very long. The second Book of Common Prayer was printed only three years later. In that Prayer Book the words said when one received Communion were, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving….Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for thee and be thankful.” Eat this, drink this. In other words, whatever this is eat this and drink this and remember Christ’s sacrifice for you.
In the first case, the Protestant Anglicans weren’t happy because it sounded too much like transubstantiation. In the second case, the Catholic Anglicans weren’t happy because the plain words of Jesus were ignored, and besides, they didn’t have any problem with the concept of transubstantiation.
Not to worry, it wouldn’t be long before a third Prayer Book would be published in 1559 when Elizabeth I became queen. This Prayer Book tried to make everybody happy. Guess what the words of administration became? “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving….The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.” This was part of the Elizabethan settlement. Anglicans would just have to live with the ambiguity of not agreeing on this important element of the faith. From then on, one could be an Anglican and hold a very Protestant or a very Catholic understanding of the mass, and both could support their positions with the words of the liturgy itself.
And so, today we have basically the same situation. There are Anglicans that have no concept of the Real Presence and who would find the teaching of that doctrine to be very foreign indeed. And there are Anglicans who hold a doctrine of the Real Presence that is basically indistinguishable from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views. The latter is basically what has been taught by the clergy of this parish for the past 45 years or so. This doctrine is the ancient belief springing from our Lord’s teachings found in Holy Scripture, held by the Early Church, affirmed by the Church fathers of the first several centuries of the Church, and affirmed by ecumenical dialogues between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Communions in our own day.
It is the doctrine that is implicit in the architecture of this building. For instance, the sanctuary lamp which burns constantly in the chapel is there because of the tabernacle set in the wall and which contains the Body of Christ, reserved for taking communion to the sick. The candle signifies the belief that this room is never empty when the Reserved Sacrament is present, for when it is present, Jesus himself is here in an objective way. You simply will not find such a tabernacle in a Protestant Anglican church.
The other element in our architecture that tells where we stand with regard to Jesus’ words about his Body and Blood is in the Altar Guild Sacristy. In that room there is what is called a piscina. It is a special sink with a drain that goes directly into the ground. When the communion vessels are rinsed for the first time after they are used in communion, that first rinse is poured into the piscina, so that nothing of our Lord’s Body and Blood goes into the sewer system. That simply would not have happened if we did not believe in the Real Presence.
All of this is to say that while you might find any number of ideas regarding the Sacrament within Anglicanism, what you will find taught, and hopefully believed by most, in this parish is a doctrine of the Real Presence, based on Jesus’ own words, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” What a great comfort it is to know that each time we receive Holy Communion we are receiving God himself anew into our lives in a tangible, objective way. May we be steadfast in this faith and thankful for this inestimable gift.