The Eucharist and Celebration

            When we first went to seminary in 1972, we didn’t really have a church to attend every week.  Christmas season came and we wanted very much to find a place to celebrate this wonderful holiday.  We looked in the paper and found a parish in Washington, DC called St. Stephen and the Incarnation that advertised: Everyone is Welcome, so we went there on Christmas Eve to celebrate the birth of our Lord.

            The place was in a celebratory mood.  When it came time to bring up the elements for consecration into the bread and wine of the Eucharist, there was a popping of corks around us and we discovered that several of the people in the parish had brought cold duck to use for communion.  The bottles were taken up to the altar and the rector, a wonderful man named Bill Wendt, came forward with Christmas lights on his chasuble to receive them.  The people all gathered around the altar for the prayer of consecration of the elements.  A sweet roll was on the altar to use as the bread for communion, and the cold duck was poured into a large vessel that looked a little bit like a martini glass.  .  The people were all elated and ready for a wonderful time.  There was nothing wrong with all of this.  There was a measure of solemnity in all of it.  There was simply a wonderful mood of celebration. 

            This was the seventies and this was one of the more liberal parishes in the Diocese of Washington; but the beauty of that Christmas Eve and the way that those people welcomed the newborn Christ has never left me. I learned more about liturgy in that evening than in all of my three years in seminary.  I loved what it said about the Eucharist that we celebrate every Sunday.  Celebration is certainly the right word.

            The scripture in John’s Gospel about the wedding feast at Cana is a magnificent story.  Jesus has gone with his mother and his disciples to a wedding feast in the small town of Cana, a few miles northeast of Nazareth.  During the feast, the wine ran out and they didn’t have any more.  Mary asked Jesus to do something about it.  He told her that he couldn’t because it wasn’t his time.  Mary ignored that and told the servants around them to do whatever Jesus told them to do.  There were a number of large vats in the back of the hall which were used for Jewish purification rites.  This was a desert community and feet were constantly covered with dirt and sand. When people came indoors, they needed to wash their feet and their hands before they could interact with the people.  Jesus told the servants to fill those vats to the brim with water, then to draw some off and take it to the steward of the feast.

            They did that and discovered that the water had been changed into wine.  The steward sampled it and told the bridegroom that most people save the good wine until last because the guests will have become drunk; but you have saved the good wine until last.  This was high praise for the bridegroom.

             Theologians have looked at the wedding feast at Cana as the origin of the Eucharist; the creating of the celebratory moment when bread and wine were consumed and the changing of the water into wine became a model for the way that we celebrate communion to this day.  We don’t change the water into wine, but in the words of the Eucharistic prayer, the wine and the bread become the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus to feed our faith and to carry us on our way in this world becoming models of the Lord’s love that has been so graciously shared with us in communion.  That model of celebration that we discovered at that church in Washington is a perfect way to look at our major sacrament.  We are celebrating the presence of our Lord in our lives as we go about our daily lives. 

            There is another moment in the Gospels when the same thing happens.  After Jesus’ resurrection, he encounters two men on their way to Emmaus and joins them.  They talk about the amazing thing that has happened over the last several days, how this Jesus who was crucified has apparently risen from the grave, or at least some people say that.  When they got to their destination, they invited Jesus to come to eat with them.  When they were at the table, Jesus took some bread, broke it and all of a sudden the eyes of the men were opened and they knew that Jesus was with them.  He then disappeared.

            What is true here each week in our celebration of the Eucharist is that we are fed with the body and blood of our Lord.  Jesus gave his life for us all and the church has never forgotten that.  His gift to us of himself is what we share each week in this profound ceremony.  I am always in awe when I pray over the bread and the wine that you bring forward and watch as it becomes the sacrament of our Lord’s presence in this place and in our lives.  Jesus presence in our lives is what we have in this faith of ours; Jesus presence in everything that we do and in everything that happens to us.  We have God’s assurance that we are never alone no matter what happens.  I have seen this countless times in this world.  No matter how bad it gets, we are never alone.  Remember that Jesus suffered a horrible death on the cross, cried out and asked why God had forsaken him, but yet was given new life by God who loved him and who loves us.  We never need fear.  God loves us always.