Body & Blood of Christ • Exodus 24:3–8 • Hebrews 9:11–15 • Mark 14:12–16, 22–26 • 6/2/24
Welcome to the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. There are many layers of meaning to savor here: the meanings of blood familiar to original hearers of the texts… the challenge of reading Hebrews… the Gospel… and the Eucharist.
I’ll start with the meanings of blood. Some are covenant-related – beginning with the ancient history of covenants, when people made ceremonial cuts and mingled their blood to declare themselves blood relatives, pledging to support and protect each other with their very lives. When Moses delivered the covenant of the law, he sealed it by splashing animal blood on the altar, representing the Divine Presence, and on the people, so both parties were joined to the same blood, pledged to each other as family.
Blood also had other meanings. Since God alone had the power to create life, the blood of living things came to represent God’s power to create anything – even a clean slate. Thus, priestly ceremonies used animal blood to wash away sin or ritual impurity. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would do this in the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies. And, in a third role for blood, Passover commemorates the use of lamb’s blood on doorposts to ward off the plagues visited on the Egyptians, the oppressors. Here, blood was an identifying sign, offering protection from death.
The author of Hebrews (who was not Paul) blends all these rituals and meanings into one. For the only time in the Christian scriptures, Christ is described as the ultimate high priest, and Jesus’ death is described as the perfect sacrifice, whose blood accomplishes the three different functions of forging a covenant, atoning for sin, and saving from death (eternal death in this case). [Here I’m indebted to scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler.] Thus, for the author of Hebrews, Jesus and his death single-handedly fulfill and replace multiple elements of Jewish tradition. This new Christology was intended to inspire and fortify the flagging commitment of early Jewish Christians – Christian Jews – but it has the effect of implying that all other Jews are clinging to an obsolete religion, instead of acknowledging that there could be different perspectives on what that fulfillment would look like. As a result, it’s contributed to centuries of misunderstanding and anti-Semitism. Yet in many ways Hebrews is a beautiful work. It’s written with eloquence, ingenuity, and – at times – captivating insight. For better and worse, its influence is deeply woven into our tradition.
This brings us to the Gospel. Where today’s passage is situated in the narrative, Jesus is acutely aware of his imminent betrayal and execution. That makes his forethought and attention to the disciples’ needs remarkable, both in Passover planning and in his words at the supper. In Matthew and Mark, when he says “This is my blood of the covenant,” he doesn’t say “new covenant.” So I wonder whether he might have meant that he was honoring the original covenant with his life, just as people promised to do if necessary in the ancient blood-sharing covenants. He was honoring it by remaining faithful to God, the people, and his message of love, no matter the cost. And by giving his death this covenant frame in advance, he prepared the disciples to receive it not just as a loss but also as a gift.
This gift has become what we now call the Eucharist. Here, we are gathered from many traditions, each with its own take on what is actually happening with the bread and wine we share. Is it a memorial? Is it a symbol? Is it somehow really Christ’s body and blood? Why do we eat it? Do we become what we eat?
C. S. Lewis writes that any religion, in order not to collapse into psychology, ethics, philosophy, or culture, needs some share of what he calls magic. Not superstition, that craven attempt to control the unknowable, but recognition of a power, an efficacy, that is beyond our understanding, not just today or by chance but of its very nature. A power that invites, not calculation, but wonder and awe.
Lewis reminds us that Jesus’ command was not Take, understand, but Take, eat. Perhaps Lewis was more credulous than some of us. Nevertheless, the concept of sacrament – of intangible grace made tangible – exists for a reason. We may each have different sacraments, different experiences that make the Holy vivid and alive for us. For Lewis, the Eucharist was one of them. “Here,” he wrote, “a hand from the hidden country touches not only my soul but my body.”
When I hear that – “a hand from the hidden country” – I feel a tingle of excitement. Do you? I don’t understand it, and I can quickly dismiss it if I choose. But the part of me that works by feel rather than by thought recognizes an invitation, a call. That call brought me here. It brought you here.
I don’t know what’s true about the Eucharist, about sacrifice, about covenant or atonement or saving from death. But I do know, because I feel it sometimes, that there is more to reality than we can process with logic and calculation. We may not be able to put our finger on it. It may always be mystery for us. But it is real, and sometimes it reaches out and touches us. I mean that touching literally, in a way. Our response to great mystery or stupefying beauty is visceral. Our senses take in the message, and it resonates in our bodies as well as our spirits even as our minds stumble over the translation. The concepts of sacraments, of Incarnation, of Eucharist give this union of body and spirit its due.
Come to the feast. Take and eat. Here a hand from the hidden country touches not only your soul but your body.