4. The language of sacrifice

Launching the vision

23 August 2009

John 6:51-58

You join us in the Wesley Theatre as we come to the final of four addresses from John 6. We have clearly seen that the whole chapter moves around a central theme which is enunciated in the first of the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus, as he talks of himself as ‘The Bread of Life’.

My text is the closing words of verse 51:
“This bread is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world.”

There is a distinct shift in language here which becomes obviously sacrificial in tone and emphasis. In the early part of the verse, Jesus has carried a step further the consistent metaphor of the chapter – ie bread – by talking about this bread needing to be ‘eaten’ to give life.

This thought, plus the absence of the Last Supper in John, has led many commentators to conclude that John has a clear Eucharistic meaning in his mind.

Whether this is true or not, does not alter the fact that the early Christian church is influenced by the concept of sacrifice.

I make two introductory remarks which are so different:-

Sacrifice essentially grows out of the Old Testament traditions of religion and, as such, it should not surprise us that many people today find it does not sit easily with modern thought.
Sacrifice as a wider concept is generally considered noble and descriptive of the laying down or offering up of some aspect of life in the cause of another.

Some writers handle the problematical words of this verse by referring to the textual uncertainty which surrounds it – and, whilst interesting, it is not very helpful. I want to talk about the language of sacrifice and explore whether or not this is a positive contribution in describing the Christian way today.

In both the Old and New Testaments, sacrifice is one of the greatest problems that people face, when trying to understand the religious life. However, there is no question that it underpins so much of the developing relationship between humanity and God. In the New Testament, sacrifice takes on a much broader and deeper meaning, being understood as a quality of discipleship and a way of living out the Christian call.

We cannot understand with simple rationality a deep mystery

The word ‘mystery’ used in this way requires some explanation. In its Greek background – and what we know as the ‘Hellenistic Mystery Religions’ a mystery is a secret rite or a kind of password. This is certainly not its biblical usage, which has two distinct aspects:-

It describes the plan of God in history – his purpose and sovereignty.
It defines the situation or context whereby that purpose is disclosed.

This is why the New Testament describes the coming of God in Christ as the mystery of God. When we talk about Communion or the Lord’s Table in relation to mystery, it must be in that quite specific sense. It is good for us to talk about what happens in the Lord’s Supper.

So what is it that would make the Service of Holy Communion a mystery in the light of the words we are thinking about this evening? I would suggest:-

It speaks of the presence of Christ

What Jesus offers is himself. Whenever the people of God meet together to break bread and pour wine, they acknowledge the presence of God in Christ. Throughout the history of the church, there have been those who have seen this presence in a quite direct relationship with bread itself – and whilst I would want to resist some aspects of this use of language, it would be equally inappropriate of us to talk about this as ‘simply bread’.

When we meet around the Lord’s Table, we are suggesting in actions and words truths which speak clearly of God’s mission to the world:-

Jesus Christ is present with us in a quite specific and unique way.
Jesus Christ has offered his life to make a new and living way for us.
Jesus Christ calls us to share this sacrifice and join with him in a mission of salvation to save the world.

A loving couple goes and buys two rings at a jewellers and exchange them during the wedding service, where I (or whoever conducts the service) bless them – and this is important to the couple. They remain rings, true enough, but now they take on a whole new meaning. To prove the point, ask any person who has lost their wedding ring! There is a real sense that God was uniquely present in the blessing and somehow the ring has taken on a quite specific significance.

It is possible to attend a lecture, but not really be ‘present’ in the fullest sense of the word. Ask any student – or, in a similar sense, anyone who has enquired of their partner preoccupied with some issue … ‘Are you with me or not?’

Real presence is demonstrated by taking ordinary bread and wine from usual use – and for it to be reserved for sacred or holy use. It now speaks to us of Christ’s presence.

It is a ‘holy remembrance’

We must not underestimate the power of remembrance. The whole Jewish tradition of a holy meal has its roots in what we know as the ‘seder’ meal. This word simply means ‘order’ and we think of this specifically in relation to the Passover meal, which may well have been the context for the first Lord’s Supper instituted by Jesus just prior to his death. Such a service in the homes of all Jews enables people to tell the story of the ways in which God has blessed them.

By asking specific questions, the story is told of God’s redemptive acts with the Children of Israel. Table etiquette was so important in Jewish life and, as one writer described it, it was ‘textured with religious meaning’. Passover was ‘a time of telling’ and, when Moses explained the Passover festival to those early Israelites, he said, ‘And you shall tell your children on that day, “It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.”’

Every time we meet to break bread, we pass on the story. We repeat the meaning of the table as we tell the story of our redemption and the painful memory of events: ‘On the night he was betrayed’ (1 Corinthians 11:23). We must recognise the power of remembering … it is to bring to bear on the present the meaning of the past.

It is mediated through the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the key to understanding the nature of the Lord’s Supper and is, of course, the power by which we live out what we discover at his table. Christians retell the story of the events following the death of Jesus with breathless joy.

The disciples were transformed from a dejected huddle into an awestruck community … and the doorway to understanding this is not just the resurrection, but the gift of Pentecost. The disciples received what Jesus had spoken of: ‘what my Father promised’ (Luke 24:49).

In the midst of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, we call on the Holy Spirit to make the simple gifts of bread and wine to be to us the body and blood of Christ. This is a recognition that this is not about magic or our own words … it is the Holy Spirit coming to his people with gracious power.

But we can experience such a truth in our lives and be profoundly changed

The Table of God is always a transforming table and this comes as we observe what God has done for us in Christ – and the offer of grace that is laid before us. Most mature Christians can look back upon their lives and say that their life in Christ has been nourished by their visits to the Table of God as he has equipped them for service.

It becomes central to the growth of the early Christians

The early Christian community was sustained by the Lord’s Supper and they undoubtedly broke bread on a regular basis. It was a descriptor, for them, of what it meant to ‘be church’. This would not only remind them of what the gift of Christ meant, but it also gave shape to the mission of the church; a church to which they would need to give leadership in its formative years.

C K Barrett, in his Didsbury Lectures on Church, Ministry and Sacraments in the New Testament, wrote about the developing community and suggested that the stiffest hurdle to overcome was the first: ‘How do we affect the transition from Jesus of Nazareth, the Palestinian Jew, to the post-resurrection and eventually Gentile church?’

The key to this must lie in the growth of a church that found fresh meaning in a table that inspires the future and has the gospel itself throbbing in every part.

It sustains Christians in the most difficult times

My first Chairman of District in the life of the British Church was Amos Cresswell, who had been a personal friend of Martin Niemöller … and he could not resist speaking about him with great regularity.

Martin Niemöller, a World War I hero in Germany as a U-boat captain, was later imprisoned for eight years by Adolf Hitler on charges of treason. From 1937 to 1945, he spent time in prisons and concentration camps, including Dachau.

Still, Hitler realised much opposition would collapse if the influential Niemöller, a leading figure in the German church, could be persuaded to join his cause, so he sent a former friend of Niemöller to visit him in prison.

Seeing Niemöller in his cell, the one-time friend said, ‘Martin, Martin! Why are you here?’ The response? ‘My friend! Why are you not here?’

This willingness to count the cost of discipleship is spelt out in sacrifice and is crucial to what we mean by following Jesus today. The journey always passes by the cross.

It is an open table … with a strong sense of invitation

Not all Christians share this view, but I believe it is important to inform a real perspective on communion. It is a truth which we hold dear here at Wesley Mission. We do not decide who does or does not receive communion … occasionally people express the ill-conceived idea that they are somehow barred from the Table of God. Only one person can keep you from the Table of God – and that is yourself!

John Wesley would have understood such an attitude because he believed that the Holy Communion itself could be ‘a converting ordinance’.

We recall that the meal was so important to Jews – since eating was an act of fellowship and acceptance – and we can see how significant it was to note with whom Jesus kept company in the early days of his ministry and how this caused such controversy. ‘When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with ‘sinners’ and tax-collectors they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”’ (Mark 2:16) The reply of Jesus says it all: ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ (Mark 2:17)

We do well to see sacrifice as the model for life

In one of the most influential thoughts on sacrifice, the Apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your proper worship as rational beings.” (Romans 12:1)

So what we have here is a picture of sacrificial service flowing as a consequence of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

For this we need a wide-angle view

Alistair McGrath of Oxford has been deeply engaged in the field of apologetics. In one of his latest books, Doubt: Growing through the Uncertainties of Faith, he tells the account of an aunt who died sometime earlier, having lived to over eighty. While clearing out her possessions, he came across a battered photograph of a young man whom she had loved. The relationship ended tragically and she had never loved anyone else for the remainder of her life. This was a photograph of deep significance.

He writes, “Why? As she aged, she knew that she would have difficulty believing that, at one point in her life, someone had once cared for her and regarded her as his everything. It could all have seemed a dream, an illusion, something she had invented in her old age to console her in her declining years – except for the photo. The photo reminded her that she really had loved someone once and was loved in return. It was her sole link to a world in which she had been valued.”

As we share bread and wine, like that photograph, we are reassured of something that seems almost too good to be true – something that we might even have suspected as having been invented – yet it really did happen!

Once we grasp this truth of a wide-angle view on the world, so our lives can be offered up with the sacrifice of Christ:

Our work and witness is offered up to God.
Our mission of Word and Deed is given clarity as we discern the way Christ offered himself for us.
There need be no limits to the love we offer to others.
Sacrifice becomes normative in Christian living

It is interesting that even when we talk to people who have no identifiable Christian involvement, there is a general recognition that sacrifice is an honorable virtue. Our Christian faith has brought about some of this general acceptance.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ‘ill’ together.”

W H Auden was asked to write the Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier. He wrote these striking words:
To save your world you asked this man to die:
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

This understanding of sacrifice is lifted to a new perspective as we hear Jesus: “Greater love has no-one than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)

From Jesus … to the church … to the world

We began talking about the profoundly deep theme of sacrifice in relation to the teaching of Jesus and the Service of Holy Communion, but such a journey eventually takes us to the world! Unless it does, it remains mere piety.

As we come to the conclusion of our exploration in John 6, we remind ourselves that it is about life itself. Karl Barth concludes that the whole of John 6 deals not just with the Eucharist but with the whole meaning of the coming of Jesus into the world and his sacrifice for us.

We take this just one step further and indicate that it becomes about our willingness to share in his sacrifice and lay down our own lives.

J Oswald Sanders was a Kiwi of great standing, whose influence has been felt across the world. Before Sanders was fifty, he had arthritis so bad he could hardly get out of bed. He could have chosen to take a comfortable retirement. Instead, he entered the most productive years of his life.

At age fifty, he left a prosperous career as a lawyer in New Zealand to lead the China Inland Mission, now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. After several years of leading the Mission, he retired, only to take on the directorship of a Christian college. Then he retired again.

As a twice-time widower, he certainly deserved a rest, but rather than taking it easy, he accelerated once again. He spent the last twenty years speaking around the world more than 300 times a year. His respect grew even more, but this man never sought the limelight or to maintain his position. He was almost ninety and working on his latest book when he died.

All of this and so much more … because Someone gave their life for the world!

Christian Life