The vulnerability of God (a Corpus Christi sermon)

(an old sermon, preached at St John the Baptist, Ermine on 26/05/16)

When I celebrated my first Eucharist, I looked down at my hands. I couldn’t believe that my human hands – even blessed, even set apart, even still smelling of chrism – could be used by God to make Godself present.

How could God entrust Godself into my hands – my sinful, human hands?

And more and more, as I’ve been celebrating, I’ve been thinking about the Eucharist as God making Godself completely vulnerable.

Those of you who heard my Easter sermons will have heard my image of God as a baker – baking bread which will be taken and ripped apart. Bread which is ripped apart on Maundy Thursday – bread which is the body of Christ, ripped apart on Good Friday on the cross. That’s what Jesus’ words at the Last Supper tell his friends: this bread is my body. This wine is my blood. I am broken; I am poured out for you.

So the breaking of the body of Jesus on the cross is made present, made real for us in the breaking of the bread.

This is not new. Even if you didn’t hear it on Maundy Thursday, it’s right there in the words we use every time we meet to celebrate the Eucharist. Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you;

do this in remembrance of me. We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.

But on this day, as we meet to celebrate the great gift of the Eucharist, we need to stop and really think about what we’re saying.

Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup – every time we meet to celebrate the Eucharist – every time we receive, in our hands, the bread... we are receiving the body of Jesus, broken for us.

The body of Jesus which breaks on Good Friday; the body of Christ, the bread of life, which we break together in the Eucharist day by day.

God putting Godself in our hands.

God is putting the body of God – literally in our hands. God is giving Godself to us completely. God is entrusting Godself to us.

I’m saying Godself – a rather awkward construction, I know – because I really want to point out that God is not a human being. God is God. For a human being to entrust themselves to someone else, to another person – that’s a brave thing, and a special thing. When people do that in marriage, in civil partnerships, in adoption – we celebrate it. But when God entrusts God – the self of God, the body of God, the being of God – into human hands – that is something more than brave. Something more than special.

If a human being did that, we would call them stupid.

After all, Jesus entrusted his human body into human hands – he gave himself in friendship to his disciples, he gave his energy, who he was, to preaching and teaching and healing, he gave himself in love to the world. And those human hands betrayed him. A human mouth betrayed him with a lie and a kiss. Human voices mocked him. Human hands pulled off his clothes, beat him until he was bloody and bruised, pushed him along a long hard road, and nailed him to a cross. Human hands hammered in the nails. Human hands guided a spear into his side.

The body of Jesus. Broken by human hands.

That’s what happened when Jesus entrusted himself, his body, into human hands.

And yet, knowing all this that was to come, he sat at supper with his friends and entrusted his body into their hands – not once, but for ever.

This is my body, broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Break my body with your human hands.

And we believe that when we do this, in remembrance of him, Jesus entrusts himself once more into our hands.

Into my hands. My human hands.

Into your hands. Your human hands.

Is this a stupid thing to do?

It’s not something I would choose to do - to entrust my body into the hands of someone who could do whatever they chose with it.

But that’s what God does.

God makes Godself completely vulnerable. God puts Godself in our hands. God gives us all that God is, and lets us do whatever we choose with God.

I started thinking about this at the nursing homes; those of you who have come along to the communion services which we take every month will know that some of the residents there are not too sure any more what Communion is. Some of them have forgotten what you do with the host. Some of them have trouble swallowing. Some of them say yes to Communion – but then, with the unfamiliar feeling of the host placed in their mouths, get a bit upset or frightened, or they just don’t like it. Mostly, they receive with joy – just as we will this evening. But some people spit it out into their hand; or don’t quite manage to swallow it; or they take it out of their mouth to hide it.

I’m not saying this to make fun of that or to say they shouldn’t receive Communion – not at all. I’m saying this because, seeing that happen, I realised what God is risking. I realised the depth of vulnerability of God. If we truly believe that God is present, truly present, really present in the bread that we break together – then God is chewed. God is swallowed – or spat out.

God makes Godself vulnerable. The body of Christ is chewed and swallowed – or chewed and spat out. Bruised and rejected.

Why?

Because without being willing to be vulnerable, God couldn’t give Godself completely to us.

So if we choose to receive God, God gives Godself to us – utterly and completely. God offers us all that God is. God offers God’s own body, broken for us – to be received, to be chewed and swallowed, to become part of us. We are nourished by the Eucharist – God’s self, digested, becoming part of our fingers and hands, our lungs and heart. Closer to us than we are ourselves.

God becomes part of our human bodies, our human hands. And our human hands become part of God – drawn closer and closer into God’s life.

The body of Christ, truly given, truly broken. Broken once for all on the cross, given day after day to become part of us – to heal our broken lives, to make holy our human bodies.