Eat this bread, drink this cup

This weekend’s song from Sing Praise is another communion song: “Eat this bread, drink this cup”. It’s a chant from the Taize community.  I was familiar with the chorus (“Eat this bread, drink this cup, come to him and never be hungry. Eat this bread, drink this cup, trust in him and you will not thirst”) but the five verses for cantor are new to me, as is the alternative wording of the chorus presumably intended for an occasion other than a communion service, with “eat this bread / drink this cup” replaced by an invocation of Jesus as “bread of life / risen Lord”.

The text is based on John’s gospel chapter 6, John’s account of Jesus’ teaching about himself as the bread of life which starts with the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread. The verses of the song meditate on what it means to have Jesus as the bread of life within us, and the eternal life that he promises.  It’s easy, in churches such as the one I attend that have a weekly communion service, just to get into a routine of saying the familiar words and eating he bread or wafer without much thought.  But really, we should pause and ponder again each time what this miracle might mean, that by sharing the bread we become part of the body of Christ as he becomes part of us.

Jesus calls us here to meet him

group of people with diverse ages and ethnicities in church
Source : PNG Of People In Church

This weekend’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Jesus calls us here to meet him” by John Bell. The overall theme seems to be that in all the different aspects of the Christian life it is he who makes the first call, and we respond.  As many preachers and writers have put it, it is not we who search for God but God who searches for us.

The first verse is about affirming God’s presence, particularly when people gather in his name.  I’ve attended services in many churches over the years, and there’s a very different atmosphere between those where people come out of habit, treating church as a social club where they sing familiar songs and meet friends over a cup of coffee  (not that there’s anything wrong with those things), and those churches where you can tell people are responding to Jesus’ call by setting aside time from their daily lives to come to a place where they expect to encounter God, as the hymn puts it, “through word and song and prayer”. A good way of knowing which it is, is whether the minutes before the service starts are filled with nattering, or with the silence of anticipation as God’s people prepare for what could be a life-changing encounter.

The second verse is about confessing Jesus (confessing here meaning not repenting of sin, but telling other people that we are Jesus’ disciples). Again, this is a response to his call as we “tell his holy human story”.  The third is about the call to belong to each other, mixing freely and as equals with those of different “creed and colour, class and gender, age and youth”.  We may not often find those of other creeds in our churches, though there will hopefully be seekers coming in among us on their journey towards faith. But in practice, it’s harder than it looks to overcome differences of culture, whether that’s ethnic culture, social class or generational differences.  We believe we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, but truly accepting each other and mixing as freely as we would in our natural families takes a conscious effort. Jesus is the matchmaker here, the perfect party host who introduces people who would otherwise not have spoken to each other.

The last verse is a communion one, and where the call of Christ is perhaps most obvious. It is he who told his disciples to remember him in the breaking of bread.  This is also, as the hymn reminds us, “where the Church in earth and heaven find a common meeting place”. For we, the church of 2021, are only the most recent of the countless disciples who have responded to Jesus’ call over the last 2000 years.

Body broken for our good

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is, as will be the pattern for the next few months, a communion hymn. “Body broken for our good” by Alan Gaunt is a traditional four-verse hymn that takes as its theme way in which Jesus’ death reconciles us to God. The text is available online here https://hymnary.org/text/body_broken_for_our_good  

This is not a celebration of victory on the cross (though there is a place for that), rather the mood is penitential, as it is only because of our sinfulness that the cross had to happen.  So it is that we ‘receive the body and blood to our shame’. The author didn’t shy away from telling the uncomfortable truth of human life: “Where earth’s children bleed and die, it is Christ we crucify”. So it’s not surprising that the suggested tune is in a minor key – the well-known Welsh tune Aberystwyth.

The failings of humanity are not just general – “every day more blood is shed” – but personal. The second verse acknowledges the singer’s own unworthiness. For that reason there is a long-standing tradition in many churches of receiving communion in a kneeling posture, unless infirmity prevents that. But the later verses offer hope – “in communion with this Lord, faith, hope, love are all restored”. The Christian hope is that however had we are as individuals or as a society, there is both forgiveness and restoration – at a price.

Behold the lamb who bears our sins away

A chalice (shared cup) and paten (plate for the broken bread)

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Behold the lamb who bears our sins away” by Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend. Unlike many of their hymns, this is a straightforward four-verse hymn with no chorus or bridge. The opening words are of course from the traditional communion prayer “Agnus Dei” (O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us).

The repeated words common across the four verses are ‘remember’ and ‘share’.  This is significant, because firstly in the communion we remember what Jesus has done for us: “we remember the promise made that all who come to faith find forgiveness at the cross … remember the wounds that heal, the death that brings us life … remember he drained death’s cup that all may enter in … remember our call to follow in the steps of Christ as his body here on earth”.

Secondly we share in the broken bread: communion by one person alone is not normally allowed (although in the Catholic church the priest can say mass alone on behalf of others in certain circumstances).  The chorus of the first three verses is “So we share in this bread of life, and we drink of his sacrifice, as a sign of our bonds … around the table of the King”.  But the ellipsis there represents differing phrases: the sharing is as a sign “of our bonds of peace”, “of our bonds of love”, “of our bonds of grace”. The fourth chorus is different, looking to Christ’s coming again.

The communion is a time to remember the past but also to acknowledge our shared life in Christ and to commit ourselves again to following him “until he comes again”.

Before I take the body of my Lord

First, a word of explanation to anyone else who is reading these in conjunction with joining in Morning Prayer from Eccleshill on YouTube. I went through the book before the start of the year allocating hymns to days and seasons, and it seemed sensible to have the many Communion hymns allocated to Sundays. So after going through the various church seasons from Christmas to Trinity, for the next few months, my blog posts on Sundays will be on hymns in the Sing Praise hymnbook that are set for the Communion / Mass / Eucharist.  As there are fewer hymns in the book (330) than days in the year (365) most Saturdays weren’t allocated a hymn What I didn’t know at that stage was that John would join the project by playing these hymns in Morning Prayer, which is set for six days a week excluding Sundays (or rather, Morning Prayer on Sundays has a different liturgy and set of readings). That explains why we end up with communion hymns on Saturdays, and sometimes (as today) I end up posting the ‘Sunday’ blog a day early.

A priest hears a boy’s confession informally.
Photo (c) paullew on Flickr; Creative Commons licence.

This one is “Before I take the body of my Lord” by John Bell and Graham Maule.  It’s about preparation for the Communion, which means taking time to put aside (or in the words of the last line of each verse, ‘lay down’) the things that distract us from prayer: sins we regret having committed, the self-centredness that stops us doing good for other people, failings in relationships. These are described in ore detail in the first three verses.

Verse four is about forgiving others and asking their forgivensss of ourselves. In the Communion service this is the intention of “sharing the peace” although in practice this is often reduced to merely a friendly greeting.  Verse five turns to Christ himself, coming with empty heart and open hands, recognising that our laying down of these things is only a poor response to his own laying down of his life for us.

Singing this on Saturday, and perhaps again on Sunday morning, gives time for reflection on how this applies to me personally before receiving the bread and wine in the service itself.

Great God, your love has called us here

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Great God, your love has called us here” by Brian Wren, which in the book is set for Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday).  I presume this is because of the first line of the fourth verse, “Then take the towel, and break the bread”, a reminder that Jesus demonstrated humble leadership by washing his disciples’ feet before declaring at the Last Supper that the act of sharing bread and wine was to be regarded by his followers after his resurrection as being equivalent in their level of commitment to each other and to him as if they had eaten his flesh and blood.

The hymn taken as a whole, however, is not really about Holy Week or Easter, but about God working in us through Christ, in many different ways.   It’s difficult to quote individual lines without the context of a whole verse, but the full words can be found on the publisher’s website here: where it is suggested as a communion hymn. Read as a whole, they certainly follow a pattern familiar in the communion service (or other Christian acts of worship) of praise, confession, absolution, call to service and going out in the power of the Spirit.

Gather us in

Today’s hymn is a modern one, but familiar to me: usually known as “Gather us in” as that phrase occurs three times, but the first line is “Here in this place new light is streaming”, which keeps us on the Epiphany season theme of light coming into the world.  The theme of light recurs in the final verse – “Here in this place the new light is shining, now is the kingdom, and now is the day”. 

The overall theme, though, is indeed that of being gathered in.  The composer, Marty Haugen, is very much in the liberal / inclusive tradition of contemporary Christianity, and makes the point well here: in Christ everyone is gathered together: “the lost and forsaken, the blind and the lame … the young and the old … the rich and the haughty, the proud and the strong”. The light of Christ banishes the differences that have set people apart. 

The third verse diverges from these themes of gathering and light, and is appropriate to include for the communion service or celebration of mass – something that many of us are missing at present in the Covid pandemic with its lockdowns and social distancing. At best we might be allowed to remove our masks for a moment to slip a consecrated wafer, dropped at arm’s length into the hand, into our mouths. But no sharing of the symbolic common cup, only a ‘spiritual’ partaking in the blood of Christ, and no chance of hugging a fellow worshipper at the Peace.  Not knowing how long this will last, my choices of hymns on Sundays this year will include as many eucharistic songs as I can find in the book. 

But the words of this verse remind us that the communion is not only for our own benefit: we are gathered in from our different backgrounds only to be sent out again together. We are invited here to sing “call us anew to be salt for the earth”, and “nourish us well and teach us to fashion lives that are holy and hearts that are true”.  The Christians strengthened by the body and blood of Christ go out as one body to be of service in the world, in the light of his presence.

The Bible in a Year – 23 December

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

23 December. John chapters 13-15

Here we have Jesus’ final speech to his disciples, in the course of which he washes their feet to demonstrate that his way of loving and saving people begins with serving their practical needs.    There is much that could be said about any small part of this important speech, but I will start with one verse – “Very truly, I tell you, whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (13:20).

It reminds me at this Christmas season of another verse from the beginning of John’s Gospel which is traditionally read on Christmas Eve – “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (1:12).  Put the logic of those verses together in the right order, and whoever “receives one whom I send” (any Christian proclaiming Jesus) can “become a child of God”.

What makes Christianity different from many other religions and philosophies is that it is not really about believing certain things about God and the world, and even less about how we behave (although neither of those is unimportant).  Principally, to be a Christian is to receive Jesus, who became flesh for us, in our bodies as well as our minds,  and this is never something done in isolation, it is equally about becoming part of the community of other believers, which started with the eleven faithful disciples at the Last Supper, and now numbers hundreds of millions around the world.

The act of receiving Jesus has variously been expressed in different ways – “inviting Jesus into your life”, “turning to Jesus”, “being born again” (see my blog for 18 December).  It is symbolised in the one-off act of being baptised, and is also part of the repeated symbolism of the Eucharist or Mass, in which some people will share at Christmas if at no other time of year. By eating a piece of the broken and shared bread that represents Jesus’ body offered in sacrifice for us, we become part of the “body” of Christians.  Even if, with most protestant/evangelical Christians, you don’t believe that the bread literally becomes Christ’s flesh, it is still a reminder of that holy and sinless body that first appeared on earth about 2020 years ago in Bethlehem.

This dual emphasis on both the physicality of Jesus’ incarnation and our relationship with him, and on the act of serving others as the proof of sharing in his love, is why at this time of year individual Christians and congregations often make more effort than usual to attend to the needs of those around them.  It might be inviting lonely people for a festive meal, singing carols in care homes, opening the church building as a shelter for homeless people on winter nights, or giving food and clothing through local foodbanks and charities that work with people living in poverty.  Of course people of other religions or none do the same – compassion is a human instinct. But where these acts of charity and compassion are motivated by the love of Jesus, there is also the offer to those being served of becoming part of the Body of Christ themselves.  “whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me”.