May 29, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16 + 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 + John 6:51-58
The feasts of Pentecost, Trinity, and the Body and Blood of Christ belong together. The wisdom of our church in grouping them peals back layers of wonder about God’s Love and God’s presence. As I said on the Feast of Pentecost, what we celebrate these weeks before we settle into Ordinary Time is the wonder of three gifts: each unique yet part of God’s self gift to us. Reflection on them individually and collectively leads us deeper in the mystery of God’s presence and plan for our salvation.
That first gift of the Spirit awaked us to a world outside our expectations, outside the boundaries of our culture and language; outside our locked up rooms, gates, and fears.
The second from last week’s Feast of the Trinity is the Gift of Relationship. Healthy, human growth, physical, emotional, and spiritual is impossible without human contact. Our joy on the feast of the Trinity is that God has invited us in, into the dynamic life-giving relationship of a family where accepted as we are in love, we may grow to become what we are called to be: children of God, heirs of the heaven, and brothers and sisters of Jesus.
The third of these great gifts is ours to ponder today: The Gift of Nourishment.
At the end of the Second World War, young boys recruited as children into the Gestapo were without and food and shelter, lost from their families, and totally helpless when the war suddenly ended and the institution that fed them collapsed. In tent cities and bombed out buildings, doctors and nurses worked with them to restore their mental, emotional, and physical health.
In that image, think of the gift of Spirit, of Relationship, and Nourishment.
It seems that many of the boys would awaken several times during the night screaming in terror. One doctor had an idea for handling their fears. After serving the boys a hearty meal, he would tuck them into bed with a piece of bread in their hands that they were told to save until morning. The boys began to sleep soundly after that because, after so many years of hunger and uncertainty about their next meal, they finally had the assurance of food for the next day.
In a few moments, you will put out your hand and receive bread
that you know is more than the answer to your prayers for “daily bread.”
You will put out your hands to receive a gift that can keep you from worry and fear about tomorrow, a gift that can quiet restless nights and quiet fearful dreams.
It is a gift that holds at bay the demons of fear and want, and lets you live serenely each day and sleep soundly through each night.
The gift of this bread however does not come without challenge. The offer of this bread or “flesh for the life of the world” caused consternation, dissent and divisions among his contemporaries. They questioned and quarreled over it and some parted company. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the reference is always to “food and drink”. In John it is “flesh and blood”, a startling and troubling difference for the Jews of his time. Eating flesh and drinking blood were as abhorrent to Jews as the notion of cannibalism would be to us. Yet in the Jewish writings, flesh and blood were the way of describing human life, meaning the real person. And so we must hear this gospel with all the intended meaning of the scriptures,
and not be tempted to distance ourselves from the reality of what Jesus says
by sacramentalizing or turning this into something that is just a sign or a symbol.
This is where we meet the Jesus of the cross, the risen Christ and the exalted Lord for all eternity. We meet and we commune with one another in the hallowed presence of God. We are lost in the Spirit of that God, commune in the relationship of Love that is the Trinity, and in our own flesh in our own blood, and in our own lives, that God takes flesh again. This is the Eucharist, the continual, on going, incarnation of God’s human presence, the church.
In a few moment, you will put out your hand to receive this gift.
If you believe what you accept, you will not be the same.
This Eucharist does not invite us to “imitate” Christ.
It is not a proposal that we copy the actions of Jesus – it does not suggest that we ask “What would Jesus do?”, but rather it proposes that we imitate his relationship with God and then because of that relationship we will do the right thing, the Will of God.
Jesus proclaimed a new way of life based upon a new relationship with the Father.
He did not propose a new set rules. He gave a new relationship out of which we might begin to live. In that relationship we shall discern the will of God and act upon it, because that is true righteousness. Saying, “Lord, Lord” will get us no where. Even doing mighty works is not the point, no matter how good they are. Only doing the will of God is what matters, and that is only possible for those who live an intimate relationship with God: as intimate as flesh and blood.
In this Year of the Eucharist, proclaimed by our late Holy Father John Paul,
our challenge is not so much to do something
as it is to become something; and that is a lot more difficult.
So, put out your hands and say, “Amen.”
But not for a piece of bread or a sip of wine.
Say it for a new life; a new way of life.