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Scripture citation(s): John 6:47-58
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
on
John 6:47-58
✛
Faith our outward sense befriending, makes the inward vision clear.
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Last week I spent several days at Nashotah House Theological Seminary. At the graduation mass, suddenly, next to me, a colleague’s iPhone started ringing – that particular ringtone that apple invented for Face Time – his wife wanted to talk to him. As I listened to the ringing while he was desperately trying to find his phone in his cassock pocket, I pondered on the juxtaposition of the mystery of the mass that was unfolding before me and the fact that someone wanted to face time him. The mass is, after all, one of the ways that we are close to Jesus. He told us so; “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”
Jesus came to reveal to us the Father’s love; you could say that the incarnation was the greatest Face Time experience in all of history and, even after his resurrection and ascension, Jesus left the means by which his friends could be close to him – the Eucharist. After walking the road to Emmaus, the disciples said ‘“Were not our hearts burning within us as he talked to us on the road?” They recognized him in the breaking of the bread.’
The late Professor John Maquarrie explored the idea of God’s presence, by speaking of different types of presence:
Temporal, Spatial and Personal.
He explores these different types of presence in his beautiful book ‘Paths in Spirituality’ in order to delve deeper into the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Some people, of course, have argued that there is no need to even talk about God’s presence, since God is everywhere. In that case, argues Macquarrie, why speak of presence at all! In fact, it is precisely because we experience the presence of God in different ways that we can talk about God’s presence. Thus, speaking of the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, Maquarie says “if there were no particular places where one might find Christ present, I do not think he would be present anywhere.”
Simply put, Temporal presence is the presence of God experienced now as opposed to the past or in the future. The presence of God in history is important –“I am the God of your forebears – of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Equally, we will experience God in the future, “Behold, I will make all things new.” But God is also experienced now, in the present. This is expressed in the heart of our liturgy in many of the contemporary Eucharistic Prayers across all traditions when we say “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
Spatial (or we could say local) presence is that which is experienced here as opposed to at a distance. For example, I Face Timed my daughter in England yesterday; in one respect she was not present at all because she was in England and I wasin New York, but in another sense she was very present to me; I felt her presence even though I could not touch her. Soon I hope to see her and when she walks in the room her presence will not just be temporal it will also be spatial – she and I will share the same room.
But personal presence implies communication and communion between two people; I have a personal relationship with my daughter and we communicated, albeit through an electronic device. There are times when my wife and I sit in the car on a long journey and say nothing; our communion is deep yet there are no words. When she speaks to me, I feel her presence in a very personal way.
On the road to Emmaus, two disciples experienced a new kind of presence of Christ and this would help them understand how he would be with them after his Ascension. While Jesus walked with them and explained the scriptures they did not recognize him even though he walked with them in his Resurrection body – and they could have touched him. When he broke the bread their eyes were opened, yet he had vanished from their sight. Their hearts were burning; they had experienced his presence in a temporal way, a spatial way but also in a personal way – it was the real Jesus.
My friends, this is what, I believe, happens in the Eucharist. Jesus is present in the Eucharistic action in a very particular way. We feel his presence now – the Eucharist is a sacrament that we repeat daily and, in many churches including ours, several times a day. Christ is present in the here and now. Whilst the mass looks back to Calvary and forward to the marriage supper of the lamb, it is, nevertheless, bound up with our present moment.
Similarly, Christ is present in the Eucharist in a spatial or local way – we feel his presence and worship him. “Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him that taketh away the sins of the world” we stretch forth our hands in love and eat his body and drink his blood. His presence fills our individual lives: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
And the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is also personal. We gather as the body of Christ, to consecrate the body of Christ, to receive the Body of Christ in order to be the Body of Christ but we also receive individually – Christ comes to each one of us; it is why we call it ‘Holy Communion’ – we truly communicate with Jesus through the bread and the wine.
Saint Tomas Aquinas, of course, puts this far better in the beautiful Eucharistic hymns that he wrote. One line, for me, still sums up the mystery of the presence of Christ in the mass: “Faith our outward sense befriending, makes the inward vision clear.” May the Lord come again into our lives today – now – in this place – and in our hearts.
