Given the fact that the Eucharist is the central activity of our faith, the action that marks us out as Christians, it’s appropriate that Easter and the Feasts that follow it should come to its conclusion on this day – a feast recognizing the mystery of the body and blood of Jesus. Body and blood that bind us in unity with Jesus as a fellow human being; body and blood that was broken and spilled as Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for us; body and blood that creates the most intimate connection possible with Jesus and through him with the Father.
There was a time as the Mass evolved when the Church put so much emphasis on the bread and the wine and the ceremony surrounding them, that it risked losing the meaning and significance of Christ sharing his body and blood through the Eucharist. Our readings today help to counter that danger by placing bread and wine, loaves and fishes, a shared meal, in a much wider context.
What Jesus gave us in the Eucharist was a gift without parallel, but it wasn’t a one way exchange. We are not passive recipients. Melchizedek offered bread and wine to Abram and Abram offered back a tenth of the spoils he had just won in battle – it’s an exchange (Genesis 14:18-20). When Jesus fed the crowd he took the opportunity to do more than give them a meal – if that had been the objective he could have sent them to get food for themselves, as the disciples suggested (Luke 9:11b-17). In telling the disciples to give the people food themselves, and showing how that could happen, he made them aware of their role in feeding people and how they would share the abundance of God after he had left them.
When Paul tells the church in Corinth what he had learned about Jesus’ actions at his Last Supper, using the same words as we use today (1 Corinthians 11:23-26), he wasn’t suggesting that these words and actions should simply be repeated. He went on to explain what the significance was: “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes”. In eating and drinking we are not just receiving food, sharing in Christ, body, blood and divinity, we are making a statement, a proclamation of our belief. We believe that this Lord died, but lives and will be with us again. God’s gifts call out a response.