The Broken Body of Christ: Living as a Eucharistic People

Acts 10.25-26, 34-35, 44-48 Psalm 98 1 John 4.7-10 John 15.9-17

Sometimes I think we get off too easy. To be a good Christian, we say, all you have to do is do the best you can to be a good person – a nice person – a loving person. And, of course, we know that we’re not perfect – we’re sinners, we’re human – and so, when we fail, when we’re not nice or not loving, we ask for forgiveness, and we try again. And as long as we come to church, be a good person, perhaps say a prayer or two every once in a while – well, then everything will be okay. It seems awfully easy to be a good Christian. It doesn’t cost us much of anything. I’m okay – you’re okay – we’re doing the best we can, after all – who can expect us to be perfect?

You might call it apathy, or indifference, or being satisfied with being mediocre. And since God loves us all the time – since God is good all the time – then God loves the half-way Christian just as much as the fully-committed Christian. And it’s true, God does love each of us, no matter what we’re like. But that love comes with a responsibility – it comes with a challenge. Jesus had only one commandment – “love one another, as I love you” (John 15.12). And boy, can that be hard. Most of us do pretty well if we look at how much we love the people who love us. We do pretty well when we’re among like-minded friends, we do pretty well with the way we act around people who are generous and respectful and warm and loving toward us. But what about everyone else? What about the people who avoid us or whom we try to avoid? What about the people we harbor resentments against, or the people we just don’t like? What about the people whose presence leads us toward anger or fear or suspicion or just plain indifference, people who have hurt us or excluded us? It’s one thing to love someone who adores you, it’s quite another to love someone who would rather you didn’t exist. Love one another, as Jesus loves us. Jesus was well known for eating with tax collectors and prostitutes; he gravitated toward the adulterers, the thieves, the unwanted foreigners, and the people who wanted him dead. And he loved them all – he loves us all. If we are supposed to love as Jesus loves, then we must love everyone – but especially the people it is hardest to love. The true measure of a Christian is in how well we love the people who hate us, ignore us, hurt us, betray us, and refuse to forgive us. And there is nothing about that kind of love that is easy.

In the Church, we like to say that we’re all part of the Body of Christ – all of God’s children, no matter what we’re like and how we act. But when we come to the Eucharist, we see what it really means to be the Body of Christ. The bread that we share here is a broken bread, a broken body, broken for us, so that we may be one. The cup that we share is blood that has been shed, a life and unity that has been lost, so that others may live. There is no doubt that we are a broken people, a hurting people, a divided people. It is only though the love of Christ that we can be one – it is only though the love of Christ that we can break free from our daily patterns of brokenness, and love not just our friends, but our enemies, too. Look around, if you can – unless you have changed parishes or Masses to avoid someone, or unless you’re new to our community, there is probably someone here in this church who has hurt you, or avoided you; someone you are resentful of or just dislike. If nothing else, there are people here who you don’t know, who are strangers to you. We are a broken community. And yet, when we come forward to the table of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are one – we share in the same Eucharist as someone we hate or someone who hates us. We receive the same grace as the person whose actions however long ago ruptured our friendship. We come before the same God, sinful and sorrowful, as does the stranger, the enemy, the friend, the person whose lifestyle we judge. We are sinners, we are broken, we are all part of the Body of Christ. But here, is this school of the Eucharist, we can learn to love. We can learn to set aside whatever divides us and recognize Christ in each person, not just in a few. Here, in the presence of the God who died for us and rose from the dead so that we may have life – here, we learn to be like Christ, who loves us all to the end. This is Christ’s body, we are Christ’s body, broken and made whole.