Walbrook Talk 2

Talk 2 Loaf broken Christ given, Christ broken, Christ divided Wednesday March 18th

We are on our way to Easter, and are travelling through the passion of Lent. We celebrate this resurrection, which is the gathering, reconciliation and redemption of all things around Christ. The cross is our route to the resurrection, and we undergo a little of this passion every time we leave this gathering, as we must do, in order to take this celebration of the resurrection out through the world. 1. Christ gives himself God is with man, and God loves man. Man is created by that love and as he participates in it, he comes to himself. The Lord God is wooing us and comes with a gift, ‘his only begotten Son’. He offers his Son to us as the true image of man. God has given himself to man, and for as long as man prevaricates, God waits. Last week we said that Christ has brought us together to be his body for the world. The Christian people are drawn together to become one loaf, the body gathered and held together against all the forces that want to break it up. That loaf is the Church, the community gathered around the indivisible Christ. We are integrated into this body and put in one another’s hands and so we are placed in good company. We also said that we see Christ on this cross. In every church we are confronted by this appalling figure, who has been separated from all humanity and slowly robbed of life. He appears as man overpowered and reduced to nothing by some unspeakable force. To approach this sight we have to overcome our own feelings of dismay and disgust. This exaltation of this image of death is hard to take, indeed it appears to nonsensical to some, ‘the message of the cross is foolishness’ as the Sunday epistle puts it (1 Corinthians 1.18-25). Christ is this unacceptable image, and because it is his body, the Church is part of this unacceptable image, as it appears to be suffering, divided, outdated or superseded. We see the Church so because we see Christ so. We have no wish to see this crucified Christ because we are afraid that this is also the truth about ourselves, and that we see our own end and death there. So very understandably, many people hold out against this cross as long as they can. Indeed we have to overcome some of this feeling of disdain every time we look around the church, see how unimpressive its people are, and have to bear the

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embarrassment of association with them. For it is only when we come close enough to that cross that we can look up and see the truth, which is that Christ is glorified. Though on the cross Christ appears to be isolated and estranged from all, when we come nearer we see that he is glory, with the Father and with the whole company of earth and heaven. Then we can conclude that being isolated and on the cross is just what the glorified Christ has done for us. The cross that appears to be his, is ours. Christ is never without the whole company of heaven, but seeing that we were the ones on our own, he came to be with us, so that we should not be abandoned and go under. Christ is with us, and has brought us into a good company. This time I have to tell you that Christ divides and distributes himself here, giving himself away to us, recklessly, but that for all that we grasp at his body, it is never entirely in our grasp. 2. The indivisible divides himself When the Christian people come together they give thanks to God, which is what ‘eucharist’ means. At the climax of the eucharist the minister holds up the loaf, and breaks it, and gives it to them. Christ is our bread and he is the one who divides himself up and shares himself out. He has given himself and in the passion we laid hands on him and took hold of him. This is the moment I am going to explore today. The eucharist celebrates the incarnation and the passion of Christ. We remember the Last Supper in the Upper Room and the chain of events that followed, the Garden of Gethsemane, arrest and trial. Jesus is scourged, stripped, dragged out of the city and all human society. He is torn and broken up, his death this calculatedly conspicuous form of public disintegration: We call all this the ‘passion’. It shows that the incarnation goes all the way down, so that God really has encountered man and remains with him, and that nothing, not even death can undo this. Jesus is about to be handed over. To show that in this way God is handing himself over to man, Jesus hands this bread over to his disciples. As this bread is in their hands, so the Son of God is in the hands of man. Christ is about to be broken and divided up, so he breaks and divides this bread. He performs this handing over and being broken up in miniature, showing with this bread and cup what is going to happen, thereby showing that it will happen only with his knowledge and consent. It 2

looks as though, by his own power, man takes Christ into his hands to do something appalling to him in which Jesus is simply the victim. But, by playing this all out before hand, Jesus shows that man is not master of this event at all. It is Christ who gives the instruction to ‘go and do what you are going to do’ to Judas (John 13.27). He took this role in it for himself, so in these events in which he seems most passive, he is also entirely willing and active. It is not man who is in charge – not Judas, not the crowd, not the Sanhedrin or high priest or Pilate – but Christ. The eucharist is an offering made, and a gift given, to us. At the Passover supper celebrated with the disciples in that upper room, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them. Christ breaks open this bread, tears pieces off and so divides it and hands it over to his friends. He breaks and hands over. He hands over and shares himself. What we are handed here is not this or that thing, but Christ himself. God places himself in our hands, so God is really given and man really receives him. So at each eucharist Christ brings us in, sits us down and feeds us and waits on us. The indivisible and indestructible Lord divides and distributes himself to us, making us one community and making each one of us distinct persons within it. Christ gives us these instalments of this redeemed creation, he gives us his service and he gives us his own company. In all this, he gives us himself. So, happy are those who are called to his supper. 3. Bread broken – seed scattered As Christ lifts up his people, in the eucharist the minister holds up this loaf. What is happening here? Out of this loaf comes the whole communion of God for man. This Spirit-filled people of God flow out from this loaf into the world; they are the form in which the communion of God comes to the world. Led by Christ, identified by the cross, the people of God descend from the altar and process down the church, out of the building and into the world. They are sent in all directions, to bear the witness of God into every corner of the world. So each eucharistic service seems to come to an end with the dismissal, Go in peace to love and serve… which we should better call the commission. But in each Christian this same service now journeys through the world and penetrates every part of it. During the service you see us all together, and we are visible as the Church, and after the service we disappear into our 3

separate callings, and the Church is invisible. But the saints are out in the world, at work here, in London. They are seeds dropped into the ground. And they are holy, that is, so what they are cannot yet be seen. 4. Withdrawn Body When it meets together, the Church is visible. But at certain times of year, and certain points in our discipleship, the Church also disappears. In particular in the preparation time of Lent, we go on retreat, letting the clamour fade into the distance, so we can re-learn our discipleship. We recover that self-control that makes us more than simply our own bodies and needs, and learn to hear the demands of others. To exercise selfrestraint is not to act against ourselves, but simply to act for one another. We learn to ‘use’ our bodies well and so discover how to be free for one another: this is what fasting is. The Church always alternates between being withdrawn, and being given to the world. When the Christians arrived here in this city of London they gathered around their bishop, the catholicity and universality of the Church in one person, and they built their cathedral, and they have stood, sung, prayed and worshipped here ever since, in this way making the body of Christ visible for the world. But the Church also leads an invisible life, outside the city, for it is able to do this city good as long as it remains holy, and this requires that it periodically withdraws for a while. Every Christian alternates between being given to the city, and being withdrawn from it. A long time ago just up the river from here, some Christians withdrew in order to dedicate themselves solely to singing the praises of God. They followed the rule of Benedict, singing the divine office, the psalms and Scripture, seven times a day. They had conspicuously given up their own interests, held no property, did not marry, but were dedicated to this worship. The abbey church of this monastic community is still there, and its worship continues unbroken. We know it as ‘Westminster Abbey’. In the case of this particular community, the long-term effect of its worship of God is easy to see. For singing the worship of God, gives this community a very particular character. From it comes all the good practices of self-discipline and self-control of the Christian life. The wisdom that comes from this set of disciplines made itself so apparent, that people came to these Christians for their wisdom. Because they had no material stake in the outcome of any issue, they 4

made good listeners and gave good advice. The forgiveness that is extended to us by God enables a new-start for anyone previously locked in conflict, so the community of the Church that points to this forgiveness of God, is good at enabling peace and reconciliation. The Abbey’s community of monks were able to provide arbitration, resolve disputes and dispense justice for whoever came to them. The worship of God spills out into this other form of public service, the administration of justice, also known as government. The rulers of this part of England valued the counsel of these Christians enough to build their palaces around this monastery, and beautify their abbey. They wanted the blessing of God, the true king, whose servants they declared themselves to be. Their palaces, Westminster and Whitehall, are still there. This abbey is not in at the centre of government by an accident of history. The Church got there first. But when the Church goes off to be itself, the world cannot help following, for from the disciplined Christian life come all the good practices of selfdiscipline and self-control that sustain a society. Within the Church we may learn the practices of self-government and of generosity, and made confident by our restraint, others come to us, and public service and government are what result. The society that sees the results of this self-discipline is willing to receive some of it. Where it receives, however much at second-hand, the virtues of this disciplined Christian life, our society will hold together. When we or our leaders forget that all government is sourced in the self-government of this specific community, the integrity of the person and of our society drifts into doubt. 5. Man broken – society broken There is the love of God for man. And there is another love, that is not the love of God for man, but the love of man turned away from God and away from his fellow man. When we do not receive the love of God and hear the judgment of God we will certainly be possessed and divided up by these other ‘loves’. Evasion of the love of God, failure to hear the Word spoken to us and to learn self-control and self-government results in this whole vast engine of delusion and hopelessness. When we are in flight from the love of God we give ourselves away in all other directions. The cultic service of the entertainment industries is dedicated to promote the cult of the perpetual power of the unguided love-free individual will.

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So when we only tell people what they want to hear, that that they are victims and that society is to blame, we rob them. It is for the Church to tell people that they are not being held back primarily by other people, but by themselves, that is, by their own sin. They are responsible, we are responsible: whatever it is, no one has done this to us, but we ourselves. Is there anything more pitiful than the man without selfcontrol? Without it we are at the mercy of our emotions, cannot grow, so remain children, and all our interaction is then on the basis of who is loudest, and all our politics becomes a form of yelping. Is there anything more pitiful than the society that does not learn from its own great inherited fund of truth and self-discipline? The society that disparages all means of selfcontrol gives itself away, and creates the gods that it gives itself to. How have we done, say, in the last fifty years? Have we fostered self-control? Or have we simply introduced more technology instead? Has an undisciplined consumption of the earth underwritten our voluntarism and emotivism? Faster transport and communication means less obligation to be embodied in any particular place to any particular set of persons, but this technology has been paid for by massive oil consumption. What when we reach the end of the cheap oil and all the speculation that it has enabled? The society that does not value self-control and self-government, and substitutes technology for it, postpones its appointment with reality, but each postponement will make it more of a bump when it arrives. Will the yelping get shriller? Will it take to the streets? The man without self-control gives himself away and is lost. Christ gives himself away, again and without limit and is never lost. His integrity is safe with the Father. He gives himself endlessly to us in order that we take from him some, and so be drawn into his great and spacious integrity, in the communion of God. As long as we think that we have no need for the Church and its talk of love and self-giving and self-control, and are outraged every time our will is crossed, we are denying our own integrity as persons, and robbing ourselves. In the face of the love of God our sin is weak, dull and boring. Why should we rob ourselves of this love? Denial of it does not make us any more interesting. However long the route to it is, we should come to this love for ourselves, and therefore that we should ask for this forgiveness for ourselves, and receive it. We should 6

seek the approval of God, and however long it takes, let the approval of men come in its own time. For we must all give way to that true worship, which comes from the love of God for man, evidenced in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Let us be glad, for it is given to us to say ‘Christ is risen’.

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