This is an excerpt of this past Sunday’s sermon (re-formatted for the journal) that discusses how the liturgy of the Eucharist transforms our imagination for the Church to embody a “culture of peace” by the practice of “eating” a shared meal.
The lectionary passages from Sunday, July 18th, 2021 (Year B) were Ephesians 2:11-22 and Mark 6:30-44. From these readings, the sermon sought to explore how the themes of “peace” and “eating” are brought together in the Eucharist.
THE EUCHARIST: A LITURGY TOWARD EMBODYING PEACE
by Andrew Preston, Ministry Resident
Approaching the Table
As we prepare to approach the Eucharistic Table, our imaginations are primed to see this meal as a means of forming us into a culture of peace.
We begin our preparation in silence. We kneel or sit as we reflect on our need to be fed by grace. Our hunger grows as our hearts confess together. Confession is at once a profoundly personal and yet corporate act. As we hear the assurance of forgiveness pronounced over us, we receive and rest in the peace of God we have through Christ. Shalom is restored between God and man through the God-man, Jesus Christ.
The peace we receive from the Lord then flows towards our neighbor. We are invited to stand and extend “the peace of Christ” to those around us. Through this simple gesture we are reminded that divided walls of hostility are broken down by Christ, who is our Peace.
Take, Bless, Break, Give
Our participation in the Eucharist meal every Sunday is a kingdom feast that celebrates Christ’s sacrifice as our new exodus (cf. Mk 6:30-44; 14:20-24) and is a foretaste of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:6-10). We learn to re-imagine our everyday lives shaped around this Eucharistic reality as we take, bless, break, and give at the Table.
As we take our offerings and present them at the Table, Christ takes them up—“All things come from you, O Lord” and “of your own have we given you.” It is at the Table where we bring ourselves and the world before the Lord.
We bless the Lord for the gift of himself. As the Lord takes up our offerings, we lift up our hearts and give him thanks and praise. We “join our voices with Angels and Archangels” as we sing the Sanctus, the hymn where we proclaim together: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty” and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” We remember (anamnesis) the sacrifice of Christ, who is our Peace, and who brought reconciliation. We call upon the Spirit (epiclesis) to sanctify the bread and wine. The mundane things of creation (like grain and grapes) are again affirmed as ‘very good.’ With the Lord’s prayer we are reminded that our daily bread is met with daily graces. The seemingly everydayness of a meal is made sacred and a means of grace.
As the celebrant stands and holds the bread before us, it is broken in half (liturgically, this is also called the fracture). Here we gaze upon the gospel proclaimed in the sacrament: “Christ our Passover Lamb is sacrificed for us.” We heartily affirm: “Therefore, let us keep the feast. Alleluia!” Christ has been broken for our brokenness, that by his wounds we may be healed. We bring our brokeness to the Table; we bring the brokeness of the Church to the Table; we bring the brokenness of our world to the Table, and we behold in the broken bread how Christ takes in himself our wounds as his own. Moreover, in the breaking of bread we are reminded that we come from one body. Our common life is in Christ, who is our Peace—the Broken One, who brings healing to our brokenness.
Finally, the sacrament of the bread and wine are lifted high, and we see “the gifts of God for the people of God.” In the bread and wine we are to behold Christ’s gift of himself. We walk to the table together and “feed on him in [our] hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.” With folded hands and humbled hearts we bow and feast upon the most precious gift: “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven” and “the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” It is in the bread and the wine that we see the world in microcosm taken up in Christ, who is our Peace—creation in grain and grapes, culture-making in the baking and bottling, life sustained in the eating and drinking—all is redeemed and made new. All of life is gift, given and received as a participatory act of shalom. In this way gratitude is inculcated in our imagination—we learn how to give as we have been given much.
Post-Communion Prayer, Blessing & Dismissal
As we conclude the Eucharistic liturgy, we learn that meals are missional as a way of embodying a culture of peace.
During our post-communion prayer eating and peace are explicitly linked together. We give thanks to the Father that he has “fed us with spiritual food in the most precious Sacrament of [Christ’s] Body and Blood”—and the nourishment of this meal is to fill us for mission: “send us now into the world in peace.”
As we are sent off to embody this peace, we receive a final blessing: that “The peace of God, which passes all understanding” would keep us as we are blessed in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our liturgy ends with the dismissal—the call to mission: ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’ We are fed to be sent forth.
FROM THE EUCHARIST TABLE TO OUR EVERDAY TABLES
The Eucharist Table shapes our imagination through these embodied practices of standing, lifting our hands, singing, bowing, and of course, eating and drinking. It is at the Eucharist Table where we learn, then, to re-imagine our everyday tables as sacred spaces where we might invite others to encounter the presence of Christ, who is our Peace.
What if our common places could be offered as a holy space centered around a shared meal, open to sacred moments and means of grace for peace-making? The Eucharist teaches us that the Church can be a radically ordinary witness as a culture of peace through the simple act of shared meals. Radical hospitality comes through a hot-dish. In this way, our ordinary meals become a profoundly sacramental act—a means of grace by which others may encounter the peace, love, and reconciliation of God, which our culture so desperately hungers and thirsts for.
