The subject of eating and food in general is a relevant subject for probably all of us, isn’t it? Andy Rooney used to say that the two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. He said the cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it.

Yes, in one way or another, most of us are obsessed with food. We use food as a means of celebration in happy times. We use food as a means of comfort in unhappy times. A California scientist has pointed out that the average human being eats 16 times his weight in the course of one year. The average horse eats only 8 times its weight in the average year. Which proves that if you want to lose weight, you should eat like a horse.

Well, imagine if all of us were as obsessed with heavenly food as we are with earthly food. In other words that food that our Lord gives us.  Jesus said to everyone who would listen, “I am the living bread which comes down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” What shall we say to this bold claim that the Savior makes? Could it have something to do with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper?

A poll was taken of the national membership of the Presbyterian Church. One of the questions was: “When do you feel most a sense of being at worship with God?” More than 80 percent of those surveyed said they most felt a sense of worship during the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. A lot of other Christians would agree. There is something about receiving the bread and the cup before God’s altar that lifts many of us to a higher place.

It is interesting to note that, when it comes to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we Lutherans stand only with the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Anglican Episcopal Church in believing that we partake of the very body and blood of the Savior at communion. All other Protestant Christian denominations fail to recognize the real presence of our Lord’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Their conclusions are quite logical actually. It goes like this. How can Jesus, who ascended bodily into heaven and sits at the right hand of God possibly come to us in the Lord’s Supper, in churches all over the world on Sunday morning, with His physical presence?

And we respond, “Because Jesus said, TAKE EAT, THIS IS MY BODY. TAKE DRINK, THIS IS MY BLOOD”. Because Jesus says in this morning’s Gospel lesson, UNLESS YOU EAT THE FLESH OF THE SON OF MAN AND DRINK HIS BLOOD, YOU HAVE NO LIFE IN YOU. We cannot explain it logically, but we faithfully accept it as so.

Now, does that question the validity of these Protestant communions who see communion as only a “memorial meal”? No earthly person has been vested with the authority to rule on that. It IS the Lord’s Supper, after all. But I invite you to consider this. In the Lutheran, Catholic and Episcopal Church. In the Greek Orthodox Church, in the Russian, Syrian, or Latvian Orthodox Church, where we feast on the physical body and blood of Christ, communion is celebrated frequently, often every Sunday. In all other Protestant Christian churches, who believe Jesus is referring to consuming His flesh and blood only in Spirit, communion is celebrated infrequently.

Is it because we are so hungry for the real presence of Christ’s own body to be near us, to be touched, and even consumed within us? Is it because we never feel more completely forgiven and enveloped in a Savior than when we receive Him in communion? The reading of the Holy Gospel in our worship service has traditionally represented the high point of the worship service, and rightly so. These words of Jesus feed us and renew us – and ultimately the words of Jesus save us.  But it is the Lord’s Supper where we connect with the Savior physically, and that is very powerful indeed.

So the Lord’s Supper has the power of forgiveness and the promise of stronger faith for each individual recipient, but maybe one of its greatest powers is one we tend to discount- the power to bring us all together from our many different backgrounds, when so much in this world seeks to drive us apart, like politics or different standards of living. The Lord gave us His holy supper as His last will and testament so that his followers would not remain a collection of individuals, but we would be together on one important team, and we would think like a team and act like a team and serve like a team.

A little league coach pulled one of his players aside and asked him: Do you understand what cooperation is, what a team is? The boy nodded yes. Do you understand that whether we win or lose we do it as a team? Again, the boy nodded. ‘So,’ the coach continued, ‘when the ump calls a strike on you, or you are out at first, you don’t argue or curse or attack the umpire. Do you understand all that?’ Again, the boy nodded yes. ‘Good,’ said the coach. ‘Now go over there and explain it to your mother.’

Holy Communion brings us together and equips us to be a force for God’s will to be reckoned with. One of my most favorite true stories related to holy communion has to do with two Catholic altar boys. One was born in 1892 in Eastern Europe. The other was born just three years later in a small town in Illinois. Though their lives were very different, these two boys shared a similar experience. Each altar boy assisted his parish priest in the celebration of Mass. While handling the chalice during Holy Eucharist, they both accidentally spilled some of the wine on the carpet. But this is where their stories diverge. The priest in the Eastern European church, seeing the purple stain, slapped the altar boy across the face and shouted, ‘Clumsy oaf! Leave the altar.’ And boy did he ever leave the altar! The little boy grew up to become the atheist and communist dictator of Yugoslavia, Josip Tito.

The priest in the church in Illinois, upon seeing the wine stain, knelt down beside the boy and looked him tenderly in the eyes and said, ‘It’s all right, son. You’ll do better next time. You’ll be a fine priest for God someday.’ That little boy grew up to become the much loved Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Two young and highly impressionable boys given the task of handling these mystical elements of bread and wine that will become the body and blood of the Savior both spilled the sacrament. Their punishment for the careless handling of the wine was self-evident and no doubt self-imposed. Both surely felt shame and a sense of failure. Both needed to hear a message of forgiveness and reconciliation. Only one of the boys experienced God’s gracious reinstatement.

By His own admission, the flesh and blood of Jesus is real food and real drink, and it is through this gift of the sacrament that He remains in us and we remain in Him.  It was that scampy duchess of York, Wallace Simpson who once famously said, YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO RICH OR TOO THIN. That diet advice is about as bad as any. But when it comes to the holy meal of the Lord’s Supper, never miss a chance to be at the table and to feast. For, Jesus said, HE WHO EATS THIS BREAD WILL LIVE FOREVER! Amen