Communion

As a child, I grew up in a large Vicarage with a huge garden. My favourite place in the garden was the mulberry tree, which long before had fallen over, but was still alive and still produced many leaves, as well as delicious Mulberries. Now there is a certain caterpillar which lives off mulberry leaves, known as Bombyx Mori. They are very uninteresting and, later on, they give rise to the most boring of moths. What marks them out as special is the chrysalis they make on their journey from caterpillar to moth. The chrysalis is made out of silk and indeed the common name of the caterpillars is Silk Worm. Having a mulberry tree, my parents got us some silk worms, which we cared for and fed year by year, as we observed their annual lifecycle and collected in the brilliant yellow silk-made chrysalises.

In commercial silk-farms, they keep the silk by boiling the chrysalises. Doing that kills the developing moth and preserves the silk of the chrysalis. The chrysalis becomes the creature’s tomb. It must not be allowed out, for in escaping it destroys the chrysalis. By contrast a chrysalis that is broken open is a sign of life. It is no longer a tomb, but the starting point for new life. You either preserve the chrysalis, and kill the life within, or you release that life, and allow the Chrysalis to be destroyed.

The final sacrament of the seven is Holy Communion. We take bread and wine, we give thanks over them, we break the bread and we share the bread and wine. We do so because Jesus tells us we must do so – in remembrance of him. In taking the bread and the wine we discover a sacramental moment, because we are brought face to face with a real death, a real body broken and real blood outpoured. In Holy Communion, we find ourselves at one with the crucified Lord Jesus.

But I suggest that just taking the bread and the wine is not enough. Did Jesus really just want us to sit in churches and hold services of Holy Communion? Might it not be that he wanted us to live like bread, broken for the world, and wine shed for the world? Perhaps, when we try to preserve the life of the Church, we are acting like the silk-farmers, who in preserving the chrysalises end up killing the life within. The alternative, this day, is for us to live like broken chrysalises, that is as people who are broken open in self-giving for every neighbour we meet. To live like that is to set the Spirit free.