Sermon: The Eucharist/The Great Thanksgiving
What is the Eucharist? You might have heard it called many different things: the great thanksgiving, the Lord’s Supper, Communion. Each of these says something different and special about this great mysterious act that we do almost every Sunday. As communion is such a central act that redefines our lives, our hopes and our faith, I’m going to pinpoint on it for a little time. Over the next three Sundays, I want to look at communion from these three angles. Today, I want to look at communion as the Eucharist, literally translated as: the thanksgiving.
We aren’t long past thanksgiving at this point, so hopefully you still remember all you have to be thankful for - and there is a lot. God’s blessings are new every morning. He provides the rain for the good and bad alike. He provides food for animals in due season. He leads us beside green pastures. He sets a table up for us in the midst of our enemies. Sometimes the valleys and the shadows of death seem pervasive, but looking at Psalm 23, we should be reminded that God’s blessings are far more numerous and far greater than any of the struggle or evil that is out there. Even when we are at the hardest times in our lives, if we have eyes to see, there is an abundance of things to be thankful for and God is giving us more than we can imagine.
That brings us to the beginning of the great thanksgiving. It all starts with “The Lord be with you” and you respond . . . We say it so much that we forget how potent and meaningful these words are. We are communicating something wonderful. We don’t say the Lord will be with you, like some future hope. Or the Lord is with you, like you have already arrived. Or the Lord has been with you, like you have missed something your whole life. All of these are true, but there is something special about these words and this moment, “The Lord be with you”. It is a kind of hello, but with an invitation. It is an invitation leading into a blessing, a blessing that carries with it a true and real encounter with our Lord, savior and God, Jesus Christ. We say it to start prayer because we recognize that we meet Jesus in prayer. We say it to start the gospel, because we recognize we meet Jesus in the Word - the Bible. We say it to start communion, because we know that we are going to meet him in the remembrance, but especially in the bread and wine, as he becomes literally present for us. This is a moment of closeness and connection like no other and we are invited in this Great Thanksgiving to receive one the greatest blessing and gift that we can ever receive.
Next I say, “lift up your hearts” and you respond, “we lift them up unto the Lord”. The vast majority of the Eucharist is about what God has done and what God has done in us, but it is still essential that we respond. He has come down from heaven. He has made these everyday materials of bread and wine into his body and blood. He has turned our bodies into his dwelling place. He has gone 99.999999% of the distance, but it is still important that we move towards him, that we reach out and grab hold, that we give our hearts over to him, as they ascend into a new kind of praise and love. So, that’s what we do. In communion we say, God you have done everything to come down and be present with me here, so I am going to do everything my little broken body, heart, soul and mind can do to come to him.
So, of course, this leads to the next response, “Let us give thanks to the Lord”. The great thanksgiving, the great thankfulness is a natural response to meeting Jesus and experiencing the sheer wonder and awesomeness of his joy, love and faithfulness.
Except, this isn’t everyday thankfulness. This isn’t just thankfulness over a nice thing we have that makes us feel nice. This is a thankfulness for something that has utterly changed our lives and world.
As great as this gift is, sometimes we would rather have the simple kind of thankfulness. We would rather just say thank you for this food and go about our day. It is so much easier to focus on the smaller things. The Israelites in the wilderness as they escaped from slavery in Egypt, had the powerful presence of God travelling with them, they had just been saved by wonders and miracles and yet they started grumbling about food. They forget who is with them and instead of humbly asking with thanksgiving they complain. Sounds familiar. The jews of Jesus’ day followed him because they wanted food, but they couldn’t see what God, Jesus was trying to give them. He is trying to give us something that truly fills us, something that doesn’t just help us survive today, but helps us survive into eternity. The kind of great thankfulness that we are putting into practice at communion, is one that recognizes that we owe everything to God and more. This thankfulness is harder to recognize because it calls us to live differently, to respond in a certain way, to speak and sing and rejoice and not stop.
We don’t know how to live out this kind of thankfulness. Remember when the Raptors won. Remember the celebration. It seemed to be all consuming for many people that night - and even days after, but what was that. Did that utterly change our lives or our world? Did that bring us into being? What kind of hope did that really give? Did that heal anything? It is still good, but comparing it to other things, what is it? Compare it to the thankfulness we could show our mothers who literally sacrificed their bodies, often their careers and goals to give birth to us. Compare it to the thankfulness we could show to our parents in general that gave up huge portions of themselves so that we could know love, joy, peace, and life itself. Now, none of this compares to the thankfulness that would overwhelm us when we realize that God planned our being before our parents thought of us, that God breathed his spirit into us, giving us a little bit of himself so that we could have life, that God carefully and precisely knit us together in our mother’s womb. Compare that to the God that has held your hand protecting you from stumbling into almost every danger and death that literally surrounds us. Compare that to the God who has willingly sacrificed again and again to show us mercy so that we might have life, bounty, love and joy, even when we don’t deserve that. Compare that to the God who has all of creation to be busy with and yet comes to us every moment we pray. Compare that to the God that is willing his goodness into every moment of our lives, even when we reject him, even when we ignore him. Compare this to the God who is healing relationships, and bringing reconciliation so we might know friendship, love and intimacy in a broken world. I could go on. If we were really to come to terms with all that God has given us, not even to mention his promises, our whole lives would be overwhelmed with thankfulness and praise.
Most versions of the Eucharistic prayer will look back at the many ways in which God has worked through history and ultimately as God worked as Jesus to pour out his abundant blessings on us. We remember the glorious works of God, even in times long past, to remind ourselves of the glorious work that is present, that has shaped our lives, and continues to. We remember how God has, is and will make his presence known to change our lives.
And so we respond in thankfulness and praise. In even the most basic communion service we sing or say the sanctus - Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory, Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. I don’t have time to pour over every word of the sanctus, but did you know that the Holy, Holy, Holy references three important scripture passages. Isaiah 6:3, when Isaiah has a vision of heaven and sees the angels singing God’s glory, Matthew 21:9, at Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and Revelation 4:8, when John sees the angels and humans alike praising God perpetually. In the sanctus, we are calling into remembrance, but we are also putting into practice the natural response of praise, that comes when heaven and earth realize the glory of God’s presence in their midst. We too are recognizing, if we have eyes to see, that God has come into our midst and it is more glorious than everything else combined.
At the moment of the Eucharist, we are called to great thankfulness and praise, which is a special and holy moment, but it does not end here. As we remember the wonder of God’s work in our life and throughout human history, we can hold onto that and see it in our daily lives. As we are filled by Christ in communion, we are filled to the overflow so that Christ pours out through our lives, like a living water that bubbles up in us. As Jesus Christ becomes present to us, we are called to recognize and call forth his presence in every moment. As our hearts are overcome with thankfulness and praise, Paul reminds us in Ephesians that we should redeem our days by endlessly filling our hearts with thankfulness, hymns of praise and more. This kind of response, even if natural, might seem hard at first, but think about what a heart of endless praise would do for your life. Think about the power of God’s presence and how that could miraculously change every struggle and joy. Think about how Christ could pour out of you and affect every relationship for the better. The Eucharist is effective and powerful, because in this great thanksgiving we recognize our God who has come close and changes everything. AMEN
What has God done for you? It’s actually a really important question, one that we should keep digging into. What you will find as you search, is that the answer keeps getting deeper and richer and more lifegiving.
Every Eucharist or Great Thanksgiving, we recognize what God has done for us and is doing for us. We remember the amazing reality that is his work throughout history and our lives. We recognize his glorious presence that draws close and fills us. Thankfulness and praise becomes a natural response to meeting and understanding our amazing God. So it should be no wonder that communion, this moment of holy and special encounter with Jesus, is a moment of great thankfulness.
