Heavenly Hospitality

Corpus Christi Sunday

Sermon Text for Sunday June 10, 2007

1. Good Morning. Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

2. Opening Comments: Well today is Corpus Christi Sunday. This is the Sunday that we remember and celebrate our Lord’s great gift of the Eucharist – His Body and Blood – the Blessed Sacrament which is a continual memorial to His sacrificial love for us!

Wow! Think about it – we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday on May 27. Then we celebrated Holy Trinity Sunday last Sunday and now today we’re celebrating the giving of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

First we focused on the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Trinity, and this morning we’re focusing on the Blessed Sacrament where the Spirit and the physical creation unite most perfectly!

Let me say that in another way:

· First we focused on the Person, and the Power of the Presence of the Holy Spirit!

· Then we focused on the Tri-une reality of our Sovereign God

· and now today we’re focusing on the ongoing physical presence of our Lord in His Body and Blood! The Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ! The Blessed Sacrament!

So where do we take a hold on this most sublime mystery? Where do we begin?

Let’s think for a moment about those two words – Corpus Christi . . . “Corpus” is Latin for “Body” and “Christi” is the Latinized form for “Christ.” Christ’s Body.

In every worship service we listen and reflect upon God’s Word and then we partake of our Lord’s Body – the Blessed Sacrament. We are nourished by God’s Word and then we are nourished by His Body and Blood.

John 6:40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” . . . 47 I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life!

48 I am the bread of life. . . . 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

We must believe to have eternal life and we must eat His Body and drink His blood also to have eternal life!

And Christians throughout the ages have come together to listen to and believe His Word and then eat and drink of the Blessed Sacrament to be nourished for eternal life!

The question that I want us to ask is this: “What’s happening to us as we eat His Body and drink His Blood – as we partake of the Blessed Sacrament? What’s actually happening?

Let’s turn to our Scripture readings for today to find out!

3. The First Reading came from Genesis chapter 14 verses 18 through 20. In this rather cryptic reading we’re introduced to the enigmatic figure of Melchizedek, the Canaanite priest/king of Salem which was the old name for Jerusalem. In our reading this king brought bread and wine out into the desert to Abraham after his victory at a great battle.

Melchizedek is a transliteration of two Hebrew words, melek and tsedeq. The Hebrew melek means king and tsedeq means righteousness. Therefore, the term "melchizedek" means literally, "king of righteousness."

Josephus, a famous Jewish historian of the first century AD, writes that Melchizedek "supplied Abram's army in a hospitable manner, and gave them provisions in abundance… and when Abram gave him the tenth part of his prey, he accepted the gift" (Ant., I, x, 2).

The silence of Scripture over this mysterious character called Melchizedek's are noteworthy. He’s referred to only 10 times in the Bible - once in the Book of Genesis; once in Psalm 110 and 8 times in the New Testament Book of Hebrews. This only heightens the mystery surrounding this rather amazing person.

Melchizedek appears with bread and wine after Abraham’s great victory and blesses Abraham and in response Abraham gives him one tenth of all the booty that he had captured from those he had just conquered.

This was all the more remarkable since the priest-king was a stranger, to whom he was not bound to pay tithes, as were the children of Israel to the priests of the Aaronic line. Abraham, therefore, and Levi "in the loins of his father" (Heb. vii, 9), by acknowledging his superiority as a type of Christ, thereby confessed the excellence of Christ's priesthood.

What we see in this strange occurrence are two very important things that anticipate the Corpus Christi – the Blessed Sacrament:

· The first is the Bread and Wine as signs of His blessing Abraham

· and the second was the spirit of hospitality that permeated this whole occurrence and foreshadowed the infinite hospitality Christ demonstrated by His self-sacrifice in order to provide us a way into the Kingdom of God. Christ’s body and blood – bread and wine - opened the gates of heaven to all who would believe in Him – this is the ultimate act of hospitality!

Hospitality? Hospitality? It’s such a homely word isn’t it? Not very dynamic at first glance – is it?

Hospitality . . . Hmmmm – God through Melchizedek was extending heavenly hospitality to Abraham after his great act of faithfulness in pursuing the enemy with a very small army. God through the Priest King Melchizedek was blessing Abraham!

And somehow Abraham knew that this simple yet majestic blessing came from an authority beyond Him and so he received the blessing and in turn returned responded to this blessing with one tenth of all that he had captured!

A strange almost absurd happening in the desert yet recorded in Holy Writ and remembered by David in His Psalmic writings and by the Author of the Book of Hebrews when seeking to explain who Jesus the Messiah actually was and is!

He described Jesus as a Priest King in the order of Melchizedek!

When referring to Jesus he says, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” Heb. 5:6

And he went on to explain:

Hebrews 7:11 If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the law was given to the people), why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron? Heb 7:11

The HOSPITABLE act of the enigmatic priest king Melchizedek is revisited millennia later by Jesus Himself but this time the Bread and Wine are not being offered to Abraham but rather to us – but it’s the Bread and Wine of Heaven – the Blessed Sacrament.

The key idea in both of these occurrences is “the Hospitality of Heaven!”

4. Now please turn with me to see a most perfect enactment of this spirit of blessing revealed in our Gospel reading when Jesus fed the 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish! And do you remember how that reading ended?

Luke 9:17 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

When Jesus blesses us there’s inevitably a superabundance left over. He blesses us superabundantly!

And for this we get to do what Abraham did – return to Him one tenth of our wealth! And we do this not out of a sense of compunction but out of a sense of utter blessedness!

5. And finally please turn with me to our Second Reading from 1Corinthians 11:23-23. These are the words that I say every Sunday when I consecrate the elements. Listen to them:

1Cor. 11:23

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

What we see here is Paul’s recording of the exact words that Jesus Himself used to institute the Eucharistic Rite – the most sublime act of heavenly hospitality!

In this very brief statement Paul gives all ownership to this statement to Jesus Himself – Jesus from the order of Melchizedek.

He said, “This doesn’t come from me but rather what I received from our Lord I now pass on to you!” And then Paul proceeded to give his readers and picture perfect image of what was to be said at all Eucharistic celebrations at that time.

Jesus took bread, gave thanks to God for it and then broke it and told us what this meant – “This is my broken body – which I have sacrificed for all of you. This is my blood which is in fact the cup of the new covenant. So eat my flesh and drink my blood and in doing so you will not only remember me and all that I have done for you but this very Rite will be a most perfect proclamation to the watching world of the Good News that I loved the world so much that I was willing to die for it. But remember – never forget - that I love you so much that I died for you and keep on doing this until I come again!

In this statement Jesus is telling us – His Body on earth - how to extend His Heavenly hospitality to the entire world!

Can you see it coming?

We, you and I, as we follow Him - become a Holy Priesthood of the order of Melchizedek called to proclaim the Good News of Heaven’s Open Arms – of Heavens Sublime Hospitality - to all who would come and believe in Jesus and eat of Him at His Altar – at His Communion Table!

You and I are being reminded again this morning of our calling to the Priesthood of all believers to extend the arms of heaven to all who would come!

Hospitality is to drive – to describe - to enliven – to invigorate our very existence as Christians! And that which we have to offer is Jesus Himself not only in His Words but in His very physical presence in the Blessed Sacrament!

This is the great heavenly gift – it’s the very font of our existence. Life – streams of living water - flow out from this altar and we’re being called to bring people to this life giving font!

6. The Challenge: So what does all of this mean to the Christian community here and now – what does it mean to you and me today?

Ah! God is calling us this morning to assume our priestly mantles and to reach out and TELL PEOPLE THE GOOD NEWS OF HIS HEAVENLY HOSPITALITY AND THEN TO bring the lost to the font of His blessing – the Blessed Sacrament! – the very source and fount of our faith!

You see my dear friends that the fundamental message of Corpus Christi Sunday is God’s infinite hospitality in giving us the Body and Blood of His precious Son to feed and sustain us for the life we live here on earth and then imitate this great hospitality both in our response to the world and to Him with our acts of hospitable charity and in our tithing to the Kingdom!

So, at the beginning of our new life in a new church building God is reminding us of our most fundamental calling to follow Him in loving the world by expressing this in unmitigated acts of heavenly hospitality!

We must look beyond ourselves for the brother or sister in need of our love and the friend or even enemy in the world who needs to experience God’s welcoming love through us!

Can you hear it? God is calling us to expand our hearts! To grow in the foundational Christian characteristic of LOVING OPEN ARMED HOSPITALITY!

May it always be said of TCC that we are a hospitable people!

May this be so in all of us. Let us pray . . .