The great fifth century African bishop, St. Augustine, would hold up the host and say, “Behold who you are. Become who you receive.”

THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (CORPUS CHRISTI) – A

Deuteronomy 8:2-3,14-16

2 Corinthians 10:17-17

John 6:51-58

At the time for Holy Communion our new communicants will come forward and the priest will hold up the host and say, “the Body of Christ.” “Amen,” they will answer. Then the minister will hold up the cup and say, “the Blood of Christ.” “Amen.” This ritual is one that they will repeat for the rest of their lives. It is one that all us partake in every time we come to Church, Sunday after Sunday, year after year. We are so accustomed to doing so that the nature of what we are doing has lost its shock value. Receiving the body and blood of Christ! As St. John reports in the gospel Jesus’ contemporaries were shocked. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Fifty years ago, when I was newly ordained, the Church where I was assigned had a parish school and I did the mass to open the school year. I went over to the school after the Mass to talk with the children. In the first-grade classroom I asked the children if they had any questions after going to Mass. One little boy said, “You said ‘this is my blood.’ Is that really blood?” Since the seminary did not equip me to find a six-year-old version of transubstantiation I looked longingly as Sister Cecelia and said that Jesus’ body and blood were present on the altar. “Yuck,” was his response. He was shocked. Sister, I’ll be leaving now. She doubtless did a better job than I did after I left.

Today the Church celebrates the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, better known by its old Latin title, Corpus Christi. We should, perhaps, use today as the opportunity to be shocked a little when speaking of the Body of Christ. What are we actually saying, what do we actually believe invoking that image of a body into our spiritual life? The first, and most obvious, referent to the body of Christ was carried in the womb of Mary for nine months, ate and drank and learned and laughed and cried, eventually he did stuff like preaching and teaching and forgiving. In the fullness of time, that body was battered and bruised and bloodied and, alas, died. In other words, the body of Christ was a body much like ours – fragile and finite (as I found out last week.) The one we confess as Son of God chose to save the world by sharing a human body. That tells us that being embodied is a necessary part of the plan of God for us. While we talk about the spiritual life, following Jesus requires a spirit embodied in this world. The importance of sharing a body like Jesus is highlighted in our creeds when we confess that even eternal life is not about an immortal soul but embodied – “I believe is the resurrection of the body.”  All of which says that we honor the body of Christ in caring for the bodily needs all around us – feeding the hungry, providing health care, helping children to grow and develop, work to eliminate violence, honoring all the stages of life, youth to old age.

When we say “the Body of Christ” at Communion time we are not referencing the historical body of Jesus who lived two thousand years ago but the real presence of Jesus in our midst today as we gather around this altar. Before his death, Jesus promised that he would be with them always. The way to do that was through the Holy Eucharist. At the Last Supper he picked up bread and said, “This is my body.” He lifted a glass of wine and said, “This is my blood.” Since that moment, Christians have repeated those words and actions as a means of staying connected with Jesus.  We don’t just remember Jesus. We don’t just think about Jesus. We don’t just learn about Jesus. We share life with Jesus. St. Paul puts it in the epistle that we “participate” in the body and blood of Jesus whenever we partake of the Eucharist. That is why the image of eating is so appropriate as the real presence of Christ in our midst. When we eat something we take it into ourselves. The food we eat becomes a part of us. In the Holy Eucharist we are taking Jesus into ourselves, into our very being. Our lives are merged together. His body and our bodies participate in a common life. As St. Paul puts it in another place, “It is now no longer I that live but Christ the lives in me.”  Because we consume the body of Christ we are consumed as the body of Christ.

Which leads us to the third way we use the term “Body of Christ.” It refers to us, to the Church. We are the Body of Christ. We might not look like it at times. We might not act like it at times. But by God’s favor we are what we are. The Holy Eucharist plays an essential role in making us the Body of Christ. The great fifth century African bishop, St. Augustine, would hold up the host and say, “Behold who you are. Become who you receive.”  We are the body of Christ while we are also becoming the body of Christ. Isn’t that the nature of bodies? A five year old body is not the same as a twelve-year-old body which is not the same as a thirty-year-old body and most certainly not the same as a seventy-seven-year-old body. The same body becomes something more over time. So with us as the body of Christ, the Church. We are challenged to become more like Christ – more compassionate, more forgiving, more generous, more loving. The body of Jesus of Nazareth showed us, the body of Christ in the Eucharist sustains us, the body of Christ the Church challenges us. That is the meaning of Corpus Christi.