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“Jesus happened to me.” These are the words that author Sara Miles writes to express her experience of receiving communion for the very first time as an adult. “Jesus happened to me.”
Raised as an atheist, Sara woke up one morning, left her sleeping spouse and child at home, and spontaneously wandered into a church. She describes the beautiful scene in her spiritual memoir, Take this Bread.
She writes: “Jesus invites everyone to his table,” the woman announced, and we started moving up in a stately dance to the table in the rotunda. It had some dishes on it, and a pottery goblet. And then we gathered around that table. And there was more singing and standing, and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, saying “the body of Christ,” and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying, “the blood of Christ,” and then something outrageous and terrifying happened. Jesus happened to me.
Miles goes on to write about the inexplicable nature of this encounter with Jesus and how jarring it was. She concludes saying this experience “utterly short-circuited” her ability to do anything but cry” (Miles, 58–59).
A parishioner shared with me last week that she had left the church in young adulthood, as many of us do, and only returned in her mid-30s because she craved the eucharist. When I think about the long stretch of missing church in my own young adulthood, it was the same yearning. I was living abroad for a period of time in a place with very few Christians and I simply couldn’t get to a church. Sure, I prayed on my own, but it wasn’t the same. I longed for the Eucharist.
Maundy Thursday has a lot happening, from the foot washing to the stripping of the altar. But at its heart is the institution of the eucharist. This is the night when we remember in word and deed, the night Jesus broke bread with the disciples—the night he told them to do this in “remembrance of me.”
What is it about this ancient ritual, this communal practice stretching back centuries, that so unites us with God and with one another? What happens when we receive communion that ignites and feeds our souls, knocks us off center, and grounds us all at the same time?
There are shelves and shelves of books written on this very topic with more books to come. Christians don’t agree about what this sacrament means. There are competing beliefs and theories. The theology of the eucharist is something that has divided churches and peoples.
And yet, it is something so powerful, so holy that people around the world continue to celebrate this ritual in a myriad of ways.
Holy Baptism and Eucharist are the two great sacraments instituted by Jesus himself. From the earliest days of the church, the sacred ritual of the eucharist has been the centerpiece of Christian gatherings.
Only twenty years after Jesus died, St. Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth. I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Think about that! This was written to the first generation of Christians—the ones meeting in each other’s homes, telling the stories of Jesus, sharing eucharist with one another around a simple table while sitting on the floor. And these are the same words the presider intones behind this altar at each and every celebration of the eucharist.
This ritual is part of our Christian heritage stretching back millennia. Across the centuries, Christians have been gathering in grand cathedrals and modest country chapels, at outdoor altars and around living room tables, weekly and even daily, to re-create the ritual of sharing Christ’s body and blood.
There is a sense of connectedness in this spiritual practice to God, to one another, to Christians around the world and throughout history, and most especially to Jesus himself. This sacred meal is not intended to fortify our earthly bodies. These calories have no bearing on our bodily form, for that is not what eucharist is about. Partaking of holy communion is about eating the bread from heaven that sustains our souls.
Have you ever worried that you don’t understand eucharist or that you wouldn’t pass the test if there were a pop quiz before coming forward to receive? Have you ever looked at your child or grandchild and wondered what they are getting from this?
As we move through the phases of life, our understanding of the eucharist changes with us. No one is capable of completely understanding what it does to our souls when we receive the bread and wine of eucharist and still, it spiritually nourishes us at each stage. It is Jesus. Jesus happens to us.
As Episcopalians, we believe that Jesus Christ is really and truly present in the bread and wine as they are blessed and shared by the priest and people. In the eucharist, we offer to God “our selves, our souls and bodies” (BCP 336). And in the eucharist, God blesses us with the presence of Christ himself, both in the sacred elements and in the gathered community.
As Americans, we are conditioned to believe that we don’t need one another, that the individual reigns supreme. But you know that is not true because you are here. We need one another.
In this highly individualistic society, the eucharist is one thing we cannot do alone. As the saying goes, “wherever two or three are gathered…” The eucharist can only happen when we are in communion with Christ and with one another.
Did you know our Book of Common Prayer includes short personal prayers one can use before and after receiving communion? They can be found on page 834. In the prayer to be used before receiving communion, it asks Jesus to be present with us as he was with the disciples. And, it beseeches Christ to be known to us in the breaking of the bread.
In other words, may Jesus happen to us as we receive the bread and drink from the cup.
So tonight, as we gather on this Maundy Thursday—the night Jesus gave us a new commandment to love one another, the night he broke bread with his friends—we do more than remember. We participate. We come to this table not because we fully understand it, but because we are drawn here by love, by hunger, by mystery. We come trusting that Jesus will meet us in the bread and the cup, just as he met the disciples that night, and countless others before us.
Let this holy meal remind you that you belong—to Christ, and to this body of believers. Let it nourish your soul and soften your heart. Let it draw you out of isolation and into communion. And as you leave this place tonight, washed by love and fed by grace, may you carry Christ into the world—not just remembering what he did, but living it. For when Jesus happens to us, something in us changes. And through us, that love can change the world.