TODAY is one of those days when less is better than more, sermon-wise.  We have a lot to do on Corpus Christi – We celebrate the Eucharist, which leads seamlessly to a procession with the Blessed Sacrament around our block, then back into the sanctuary for Benediction.  So no long expository sermon about the texts for the day; instead, think for just a few minutes about how we worship today, and in particular about the circuit of our block.  All our ritual today revolves around the corpus, or the body, of Christ, as do our texts.  Paul recounts how Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, the sacramental ritual where Jesus’ body comes to us in and under bread at Holy Communion.  Deuteronomy 8 and John’s gospel together remind us that this heavenly food is the only thing sufficient to feed the deepest hunger we experience in the wilderness of this world.  And we enact something incredibly rich and profound by parading through our neighborhood carrying the body of Christ.

For one thing, this ritual reminds us of what we are.  Alexander Schmemann begins the first chapter of his book For the Life of the World with these five words: “Man is what he eats.”[1]  Fr. Schmemann isn’t making a dietary observation, so much as an ontological statement.  Christians, when we make our communions and receive the body of Christ, become the very thing we consume.  We are the body of Christ.  And a body is something that is present to the senses, it’s tangible, you can see it and touch it.  It bleeds. “In the words of St. Gregory Nazianzen: ‘We needed a God made flesh, a God put to death, that we might live again.’”[2]  It was indispensable to the redemption of the world for God himself to take on flesh and blood.  If God’s mission demanded that he become tangible to save the world, and his mission is our mission, we cannot be satisfied just to stay in here comfortably pious and out of sight.  That’s why the procession with the Blessed Sacrament is much more than just “taking Jesus for a walk.” 

I found that Gregory Nazianzen quote in a book by Kenneth Leech, an Anglican priest who served a lot of years at parishes and homeless shelters in the East End of London.  Last year Chuck Bass and I went to hear Fr. Leech speak here in Washington at a conference on urban ministry, and he told us how he had a curate years ago who would “saunter” – that’s the word he used, I looked back at my notes to check – he would “saunter” around the East End and talk to whomever would talk to him.  The curate saw the time he spent sauntering as very much a part of his ministry to the city, I think for two reasons:

First, walking through the city let the world see him.  So long as he was in his office or in the church, the curate could be doing all sorts of holy and pious things, but the world couldn’t see it.  As it is, unless people follow us in here, they won’t hear our beautiful music, they won’t see our rich art, they won’t hear what we talk about, and they won’t know what really believe.  Last week, U.S. News & World Report posted an article to its website about mainline churches launching media campaigns costing tens of millions of dollars to change the public perception of the church in America .  The article quotes an officer in an advertising firm that the United Methodist Church hired because its membership has dropped almost 25% in recent decades:  “The under-35 generation thinks church is a judgmental, hypocritical, insular place . . . .  So our question is, what if church can change the world with a journey?”[3]  I’ll come back to the second half of that quote, but the first part was right:  The church does have a perception problem, but it’s one that won’t be changed by better P.R.  What can change it is to really be a church on a journey, a church the world can see, a church bold enough to leave its walls and become a sacramental presence in the street.

But it’s not enough just for the world to see us; we also have to have our eyes open to see the needs in the world around us.  As Fr. Leech’s curate walked around London, he talked to people, saw where they lived, where they worked, and he started to understand what their needs were.  I read somewhere that Gandhi once said “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”  I don’t know if Gandhi really said that, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the town of Jesus’ birth, the actual word “ Bethlehem”, literally means “house of bread” (beth + lechem).  Lots of people in our city need bread.  They have needs that fill up the horizon of their consciousness, and many of them won’t hear the gospel in what we say until they feel it enacted in what we do. 

Many churches commit one of two errors here:  Either they equate salvation with preaching the gospel to individuals, or they equate it with institutional reform and social progress.  But the salvation Jesus offers is holistic, so the church must be concerned with whole persons; we can’t just try to save lost and disembodied souls, we have to help heal lost, broken and needy persons, and often the way to that healing is through what Tim Keller calls meeting “felt needs” for things like food, clothing, medicine, human contact and friendship.  Christianity tells us a kingdom is coming where every felt need will be met, but the church has to both herald that coming kingdom and be the agency that helps it come because, as Martin Luther said, we are saved by faith alone, but not by faith that remains alone.  What we do matters as well as what we say.  We cannot reduce the complexity of the gospel because it’s “not only [for] individual salvation and pardon for sins but also the renewal of this world, the end of disease, poverty, injustice, violence, suffering, and death.”[4]  Dr. Keller does a better job than I can at explaining why it’s important for us to preach the gospel in word and deed:

To spread the kingdom of God is more than simply winning people to Christ.  It is also working for the healing of persons, families, relationships, and nations; it is doing deeds of mercy and seeking justice.  It is ordering lives and relationships and institutions and communities according to God’s authority to bring in the blessedness of the kingdom . . . .  The unbeliever is not necessarily moved by seeing Christians serving the theological and psychological needs of others.  They cannot understand the action because they do not feel the need themselves.  But unbelievers do feel physical needs.  When they see Christians feeding the hungry, comforting the suffering, supporting the financially and physically weak, unbelievers see our service.  Through this, hearts can be softened to Christ.[5]

So, when we’re walking around the block in a few minutes, open your eyes; pray for our city; look for needs that you may be able to help meet.  And think about the second half of the quote from the U.S. News article:  “[W]hat if church can change the world with a journey?”  Our procession with the Blessed Sacrament is a symbol of a journey – of God’s journey to save us, a journey that brought him into our world and into our flesh, and of the journey that now takes us beyond our walls and doors into a hurting world.  Jesus said “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” and every time we come to communion for that bread, we become what we eat, the corpus Christi, sent in mission with bread, with medicine, with companionship, and with the words of the gospel to bring life to the world.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.