Friends, here we are. Finally and at last, we are here.
After fourteen long months we are able to gather together outside, to share in the Eucharist once again. I come to this day with the knowledge that this is the first time that I have seen some of you face to face. I come to this day with deep joy and deep anticipation of what God will do in this moment, and in our midst.
And so, I come to this day with gratitude. Gratitude for God’s grace that carries us through. Gratitude for the chance to be here in your midst, to serve with and amongst you in this place. At St. David’s. As a part of the Valhalla Parish community.
I hope that you’ve had the chance to look around you. I hope that you have taken the opportunity to look around, to see those gathered here today. Members of this community. Members of this local expression of Christ’s body. To offer smiling eyes. To dwell in the feeling of what it is like to be together again in this place. Even if we’re here outside.
I woke up this morning wondering if the skies would open, and we might find ourselves getting soaked. If it rains, we may very well get wet. My notes may get smudged. Whatever happens, we’ll have gathered as one body. We will have shared in the one bread. For me, today, that is more than enough.
Today we mark the feast of Corpus Christi, a time in the Church Year to focus on Jesus’ gift and institution of the Eucharist. How appropriate for a day like today when we are able to celebrate in this way once again. For it is in the Eucharistic Feast that we behold what we are. It is in the Eucharistic mystery that we become what we receive.
Joined together with Christ in this sacred meal, we are both fed, and become food for the life of the world. Not food to hoard as if it is for ourselves alone, but rather to share with all who hunger in any way. The Eucharist is not a meal of exclusion, but one of embrace. A meal of simple elements that nourishes our spirits, sending us forth to bring life and nourishment to each other.
In today’s gospel reading we meet Jesus and the disciples. It’s Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus’ condemnation and unjustified execution. Jesus and his friends have gathered together to mark the Passover, the story of their people’s liberation from generational slavery, trauma, and death under an oppressive regime.
They’ve gathered together to tell and retell the story of YHWH, the God who liberates. They’ve gathered to rehearse the stories of the God who provides food in the wilderness and clean drinking water for all who are thirsty.
Above all, they’ve gathered to tell and retell the story of YHWH, the God who brings release to the captives. Freedom to the oppressed. And Jesus, telling this story, under the shadow of all that is to come—betrayal and execution—offers his friends a way forward. Taking the bread, he blesses it. Blessing the bread, he breaks it. Breaking the bread he shares it. Sent out, we find ourselves called to do the same.
What do we do then, in light of a week like this? What do we do in a week when we have been forced to confront, yet again, the conspiracy of religious and political power to create Residential Schools? What do we do in these days when we are reminded that our church—along with others—operated schools for the purpose of separating Aboriginal children from their families, and destroying their family ties and culture?
This has weighed heavily upon me this week. We come to celebrate the Eucharist and its gift of collective liberation. But we do so under the shadow of our church’s own oppressive practice. This week I’ve found myself wondering what it is the Eucharist says and does when the church looks more like the oppressor than the oppressed. More like Pharaoh than Moses. More like Pilate than Jesus.
I notice in myself the desire to skip over these questions. To put them aside. To focus only on the meal, and not the context in which Jesus shared it. I don’t want to deal with the tension in that upper room, the anxiety that Jesus and his friends must have felt at that time. I don’t want to deal with the fraught emotions these things bring up—even as I long to be gathered with you around the table.
And yet, what I notice in today’s gospel story is this. Even in the shadow of all that is happening around him, and all that is to happen, Jesus gathers his friends together to tell and to retell the story.
The story of God’s faithfulness. The story of God’s covenant—with us and with all Creation. A covenant that God establishes with the people in the very beginning, renews through Noah, through Abraham, through Moses, and that Jesus renews with us each time we participate in this meal.
God’s covenant remains the same from the beginning—a covenant of faithfulness. A covenant that says you are all my beloved people. You are enough. Remember that you are enough as you are. Not greater than any other, not less than any other. You are enough. You are my people. And you are beloved.
And in this covenant, God calls on the people to enact this reality. To bless the world with God’s self-giving love. To ensure that all have enough. To ensure that all know that they are enough. We are called to live this way as individuals, to be sure. But also, to live in such a way that transforms whole communities and systems from exclusion to embrace.
God’s covenant remains the same from the beginning. And God’s faithfulness never wavers. And for us, this meal and this table are at the centre.
One of my favourite hymns of recent years is written by Shirley Erena Murray. The first verse goes like this:
For everyone born, a place at the table
For everyone born, clean water and bread
A shelter a space, a safe place for growing,
For everyone born, a star overheadand God will delight when we are creators
of justice and joy compassion and peace
yes God will delight when we are creators
of justice, justice and joy.
And so, we come together around this table to re-immerse ourselves in the ancient stories that tell us of a God who created all things, all people, in and for love. To re-immerse ourselves in the practice of the Eucharist, in which Jesus embodies and invite us on to the way of justice and joy. To re-immerse ourselves in these stories and to live in their light. Not to skip over the messy bits, but to carry them with us, seeking redemption, seeking transformation, seeking a new relationship, seeking God’s delight.
Today I have come here looking for Jesus. In community. In sacrament. But this week I have also come looking for Jesus in and amongst the children who died at Residential School. And this has weighed heavily. In the midst of it all, these words from National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop Mark MacDonald strike me as profoundly challenging. Profoundly challenging and true. Archbishop Mark wrote this week:
“I once heard someone say that Jesus, who died on the Cross, also died in the Holocaust. If that is true, they will find him among those children. But we who have seen him die on the Cross and suffer with us, know that this is not the end of the story. He came back to us whole and sound, in a Resurrection body, from the World to Come. A World that he said we could start living in now, through love, through prayer, through the Sacred Circle, and through his Body and Blood. His justice, his truth, his love is walking in us and through us towards the day and we have seen it. It will rise, is rising, with those children and with a truth that could not be hidden.”
May it be so.
Amen, and amen.
