Holy Communion Sermon

This Is My Body, Given For You

A Homily For Holy Communion

We come to this Table often enough that we can begin to move through the motions without truly moving at all. We extend our hands, we receive the bread, we sip from the cup, and we return to our seats. The liturgy carries us forward, and that is one of its great gifts. But there are moments when the familiar words break open like light through a window, and we see again what has always been here, waiting to be received not merely with our hands but with our whole selves.

This is one of those moments. Let us stay with it.

The two passages appointed for our reflection this morning meet us at the same table, separated by decades of history but united by the same night, the same bread, the same cup, and the same Lord.

In Luke's Gospel, chapter twenty-two, we are in the upper room. The Passover meal has been prepared. Jesus reclines at table with his apostles, and he says something that must have arrested them: "I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." Fervently desired. The Greek behind Luke's words carries a sense of longing, of deep yearning. Jesus is not merely fulfilling a religious obligation. He wants to be at this table with these people, on this night, before everything changes.

He takes the cup and gives thanks. He takes the bread, breaks it, and says, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Then, after supper, he takes the cup again: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."

Decades later, the Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth. He has received this account, he says, "from the Lord." He passes it on. The words are almost identical to Luke's, and that is not accidental. Paul is handing on what was handed to him, a living tradition, a chain of witness stretching from that upper room across the years to every congregation that has ever gathered around bread and wine in the name of Jesus Christ.

Including this one, on this morning.

So let us open these texts carefully, because they carry more than we sometimes realize.

What Remembrance Actually Means

"Do this in remembrance of me." We hear those words every time we gather at the Table, and we might assume that remembrance is simply a mental exercise, a kind of pious recollection. We call Jesus to mind the way we might remember a beloved teacher or a departed friend. We think about what he did. We feel grateful. We move on.

But the word for remembrance in the New Testament, and behind it the Hebrew concept of memorial in the Passover itself, carries a far more active meaning. When Israel kept the Passover, they were not simply recalling an ancient event. They were participating in it. The Exodus was made present to them again through the meal. The deliverance was not merely remembered; it was re-entered.

When Jesus says, "Do this in remembrance of me," he is not asking us to think about him the way we think about someone who is absent. He is the risen Lord. He is present. The remembrance he calls us to is a living, active, participatory act. We proclaim him. We receive him. We are shaped by him.

Paul makes this explicit: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Every time we gather at this Table, we are making an announcement. Not with words alone, but with our bodies, our presence, our willingness to come forward and receive. We are saying to the world, and to one another, and perhaps most importantly to ourselves: the Lord died, the Lord rose, and the Lord is coming again. This meal is set between the cross and the kingdom, and every celebration of it is a proclamation.

That is a remarkable thing to be doing on an ordinary Sunday morning.

The New Covenant In His Blood

Jesus calls the cup "the new covenant in my blood." Those words would have landed with tremendous weight on Jewish ears. A covenant is not simply an agreement. It is a binding relationship, sealed with sacrifice, carrying obligations and promises on both sides. The old covenant at Sinai was sealed with the blood of animals. Moses sprinkled it on the people and said, "This is the blood of the covenant."

Now Jesus says: this cup is the new covenant. His blood is the sealing of a new relationship between God and humanity. The prophet Jeremiah had spoken of this covenant, the one written not on stone tablets but on human hearts, the one in which God would say, "I will be their God and they will be my people," and would forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

That covenant is what we enter and re-enter every time we come to this Table. We are not earning our way into it. We are not proving ourselves worthy of it. We are receiving it, as a gift, from the hands of the one who purchased it with his own life.

The bread is his body, given for us. The cup is his blood, poured out for us. The prepositions matter. For us. Not in spite of us, not around us, but for us, on our behalf, in our place, for our sake. The Communion we share is not a celebration of our devotion to Christ. It is a celebration of his devotion to us.

Discerning The Body

Paul's letter to the Corinthians does not only hand on the tradition. It also offers a searching pastoral word. The Corinthian church was gathering for the Lord's Supper, but something had gone deeply wrong. The wealthy were eating and drinking abundantly while the poor went hungry. The meal had become an occasion for social division rather than sacred unity. Paul is troubled, even alarmed.

He writes: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord." And then: "Let a person examine himself, and in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself."

These are serious words, and they have sometimes been used to frighten people away from the Table altogether. That is not Paul's intention. He is not saying that only the spiritually perfect should receive Communion. He is saying that we must come with awareness, with honesty, with a willingness to see what we are doing and who we are doing it with.

"Recognizing the body" carries a double meaning that Paul seems to intend. It means recognizing the body of Christ in the bread, taking seriously what this sacrament is and who is present in it. But it also means recognizing the body of Christ in the congregation, the people gathered around this Table with us. To receive the body of Christ while treating the people of Christ with contempt or indifference is a contradiction that Paul refuses to let pass without comment.

Self-examination before Communion, which our own tradition preserves in the invitation to confession before we approach the Table, is not meant to paralyze us with guilt. It is meant to open us. To ask: Am I carrying something I need to lay down? Is there someone I have wronged, or someone I am refusing to see? Am I coming to this Table as a person who belongs to a body, not just as an individual seeking a private spiritual experience?

The Book of Common Prayer has always understood this. The liturgy moves us through confession and absolution before we receive, not to make us earn the sacrament, but to prepare us to receive it with open hands and honest hearts.

What We Carry Away

So what do we do with all of this?

We come to this Table as people who need to be fed. That is the first and most honest thing to say. We are not here because we have achieved a sufficient level of spiritual maturity. We are here because we are hungry, and Christ has prepared a meal.

We come to proclaim. Every time we receive the bread and the cup, we are making a public statement about who we believe Jesus is and what we believe he has done. We are saying that his death was not a tragedy that ended in a tomb. We are saying that the cross was the place where the new covenant was sealed, where sin was dealt with, where death was defeated. We are saying that he is coming again, and that this meal is a foretaste of the feast that awaits.

We come to be examined and renewed. Not shamed, not frightened, but opened. The self-examination Paul calls for is a gift, not a burden. It is an invitation to come to the Table as our true selves, not our curated selves, and to receive grace precisely where we need it most.

And we come as a body. Not as a collection of individuals who happen to share a building on Sunday mornings, but as people who have been joined to one another through our joining to Christ. The person beside you, the person whose name you may not yet know, is someone for whom Christ also died. This Table is where that truth becomes visible and tangible.

A Prayerful Charge

In a few moments, we will move through the ancient words of the Eucharistic prayer. We will hear again that on the night he was betrayed, he took bread. We will come forward, or we will receive in our places, and we will hold in our hands what the Church has always held: the mystery of Christ's presence, given for us.

Come with your hunger. Come with your questions. Come with whatever weight you are carrying today. Come having examined yourself honestly and having received the absolution the liturgy offers. Come as part of this body, aware of the others who come with you.

And as you receive, hear again the words spoken over you: This is my body, given for you. This is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.

He fervently desired to eat this meal with his disciples. He desires to meet you here, at this Table, on this morning. That desire has not diminished. It is the same longing that brought him to the upper room, that carried him to the cross, that raised him from the dead, and that will bring him again in glory.

Until that day, we proclaim his death. We receive his life. We go out to bear his name.

Come to the Table.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. 1 Corinthians 11:23-29; Luke 22:14-20.

The Book of Common Prayer. Church Publishing, 1979. The Order for the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, including the Prayers of Consecration and the Invitation to Confession.

Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1987.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1997.

Cranmer, Thomas. "A Short Instruction into Christian Religion" and related eucharistic writings, in The Works of Thomas Cranmer. Parker Society edition, Cambridge University Press, 1844.

Wright, N. T. The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion. Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.