Of Body and Blood

 “This is my body which is given for you...” “This is my blood which is shed for you...” Sunday by Sunday, I repeat Jesus’ words over bread and wine in the principal act of Christian worship, the Holy Eucharist (also known as the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, Mass, and more.) And then, most of the people present do as Jesus directed his first disciples: they consume the bread and wine in remembrance of him. “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” “The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” Sometimes I omit the body and blood clauses when I deliver these “elements” to children.

The Church’s sacramental language has caused us trouble almost from the beginning, with much of the fuel for persecution coming from accusations of cannibalism. During the Reformation, whether and how bread and wine might be Christ’s body and blood were divisive issues. In my own branch of the Church, English Christians hotly disputed what was to be said over and done with the bread and wine at the altar and communion rail. For instance, do you or do you not elevate them and ring bells in conjunction with Jesus’ words of institution (his declarations about the bread and wine at the Last Supper)? Queen Elizabeth I is said to have settled the matter when she told her arguing prelates, “He was the Word that spake it, he took the bread and brake it, and what that Word did make it, I do believe and take it.”

Alas, we don’t have a queen who is “Supreme Head of the Church” and can bring the powers of the state to resolve such conflicts * or to at least put them on a back burner. Anglicans, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics may have reached agreed statements on the Eucharist a decade or so ago, but that was at a theological level dealing with such concepts as Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation not exactly layperson’s terms. So, the matter still looms for many as a perplexity at best and an absolute turnoff at worst.

For persons such as these, how can the Church interpret its language of body and blood so that it’s more inviting and less an obstacle? We can say that it is the language of sacrificial love. Albeit in stark and ultimate terms, it gets down to the cost of life; it recognizes the price paid both once and for all (as Christians believe) and also daily in order that the created enterprise might continue. This is what the resurrection’s coming on the heels of the crucifixion reveals and signifies. But we can also perceive the cost of life in such daily incidents as a parent’s missing a day’s income to stay home with an ill child. It’s apparent in various degrees anytime a person gives of her or his self for the sake of another. Christ’s body and blood reflect to us that our collective life simply does not continue, much less improve, without sacrifice.

Inuits express this when they apologize and give thanks to the seals they harpoon. Germany’s master hunters respect this when they lift their cups in a toast to the deer they slay. Christians reverence this when they lift another cup in a toast to Jesus. But, there’s more to this Christian cup of salvation: it is not an ultimate value according to which we would perpetuate sacrifice forever.

When Jesus lifted the cup, he said, “I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Mt. 26:29) With the cup of wine lifted in the Eucharist, the Church looks forward to a day when sacrifice will no longer be the cost of life -- when, in the poetry of Isaiah, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” (11:6) Jesus, once a little child and later a grown man who sacrificed himself and is now somehow undercover at our altars, leads us to such a destiny. And over the bread and wine, the priest says for all, “Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him.” Sacrifice is not the last word, but is a word that points us to life free of it.

Or, as the priest also prays over the bread and wine, “at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.” Only then and there, I suspect, will body and blood be seen as less about strife and more about life.