In the news this week was the story that many people in Greece are so worried about the future of their county’s economy, and even the survival of the Euro, that they have been converting all their savings into gold coins, to provide – they hope – some security in case their economy collapses.
Economic systems are the structures in which payment and reward can happen, the transactions of everyday life. The Gospel reading we’ve just heard, and the extract from Paul’s letter to the Romans before that, both talk about payment and reward. Both those readings are in fact the conclusions of much longer passages. Matthew talks about how the disciples of Jesus will be persecuted by human beings but rewarded by God. And Paul compares the result of living according to sin with the free gift of life which God offers.
What both Matthew and Paul do in these passages is to compare two different economic systems: not the Euro and the Pound, but something much more fundamental and different: the human economy, and God’s economy.
The human economy is founded in limited resources. There’s only so much to go round. Payment and wages are transactions carefully measured out and checked, for labour or goods of equivalent value. And the natural human thing is to try and get the best value for what you’ve got, and to hang on to as much as possible for yourself.
In the human economy, even life itself is a limited resource, not something you want to squander or give away recklessly, but something to eke out little by little. You’ve only got so much, and then death puts an end to the little you have. This economy, this imagination of the way things are, leads to rivalry and violence. The human economy, governed by the fear of death, ends up being ruled by death.
God’s economy is completely different. God does not deal in measured out payment and reward, or in limited resources. God gives, and gives in unmeasured generosity, poured out and overflowing. Generosity, in fact, is God’s very nature, a generosity which is love, continually pouring itself out without being diminished. God’s economy gives life without limit. Our very being flows from God who is the continual loving act of creating and giving.
So Paul concludes his argument in Romans with the famous verse, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In other words, what I think Paul is saying is that you can choose to stay trapped in the human economy, bounded by death and ruled by rivalry and violence. Or you can choose to receive the free gift of life from God made known in Jesus. God’s gift is to live according to God’s economy of generosity and love that knows no limit. And this is not something we earn, because if you begin to live according to God’s economy, then you are leaving behind the old way of bargaining with death, of trading off the little you’ve got to try and get something in return.
The whole Christian life consists of living from God’s generosity, from his free gift, revealed to the world in Jesus, who is both the model of God’s generosity and that generosity itself, God incarnate, giving himself that we might live.
At this time of year we celebrate Corpus Christi, God’s gift of the Eucharist, the Mass and Holy Communion which Christians celebrate every Sunday.
The Mass was of course instituted by Jesus at the last supper, with the words and actions which the priest repeats in the Eucharistic Prayer. Because the Eucharist is a gift of God’s generosity, it overflows with meaning and depth, with grace and life which are inexhaustible.
Firstly, under the signs of bread and wine, Jesus gave his body and blood to his disciples, to be, for ever, the sacrament which makes present and effective his saving death on the cross. The Passover meal commemorated God’s saving actions in the past, when the Children of Israel were liberated from slavery in Egypt, but it wasn’t just calling to mind stuff that happened long ago, like watching a history programme. Rather, the Passover really made those events of the past present and effective for Jewish worshippers in their own time and place.
Jesus, by instituting the Eucharist in the context of the Passover, was establishing a new Passover, a new making present and effective of God’s saving work, this time the saving work of Jesus Christ for all people in his death and resurrection.
Secondly, the Eucharist establishes a new people, the holy people of God, who by living with Christ’s life actually become his body in the world. "Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me." We become what we receive, the body of Christ. We are, through the Eucharist, members of Christ, joined to him as our head. Jesus remakes the human race, freeing us from the old economy of sin and death and enabling us to live with God’s life and love and limitless generosity. We are, together, made into a new human nature, a “new Adam” in Christ.
Thirdly, Jesus truly gives himself in this sacrament. He who is the truth, who cannot deceive, took bread and wine and said, “this is my body… this is my blood”. And the faith of Christians has always received those words as meaning what they say. At the consecration in the Eucharist the body and blood of Christ become truly present under the outward signs of bread and wine, together with his soul and Divinity. Jesus our risen Lord is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. Not indeed in a way perceptible to the senses, but faith believes nor questions how.
From the very first Christians reserved a portion of the consecrated Bread to give holy communion to those who could not be present at the celebration of Mass, such as the sick or those in prison. Just as we do here in the tabernacle in the corner.
But Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament all the time, not just when It is being received in communion. So reservation of the Sacrament gave rise to devotion and worship of that special sacramental presence of Christ, even apart from the celebration of Mass.
It’s important to remember that Jesus did not institute the Eucharist so he could sit in a tabernacle being worshipped, he instituted it so that people could receive him and be transformed into his body and live with his life. But nevertheless, the generosity of God overflows all boundaries. Devotion to that sacramental presence is not an essential part of the Eucharist, but belongs to the overflow of God’s generosity and love. God does not give just enough, but more than we can ask or imagine.
The gift of the Real Presence is one that has inspired love and devotion down the ages. Most days when I come into this church there is someone here praying in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Whether people realise it or not, Jesus is here in his love, his presence warming cold hearts, converting sinners, comforting the troubled, setting the hearts of secret saints ablaze. And always drawing us to himself, drawing us to that most intimate and necessary union with him in Holy Communion.
So we will celebrate that gift today, God’s generous love in the Eucharist which overflows and spends itself without ever being diminished, his presence and his very self, and essence all Divine.
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