Readings (Track 1)

One thing good movies and stories have in common is that they don’t waste our time. If they show or tell us something, sooner or later it’s going to be important. For instance, at the beginning of John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000, he says “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” That’s going to be important later, and he’s invited us to keep it in the back of our minds.

Meanwhile, on center stage Jesus feeds the 5,000 and the next day gets into a long conversation with the crowd. Today’s reading is the last part of it. If we had a bit further in the Gospel we’d have heard Jesus’ disciples saying “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

The teaching is certainly unexpected. When the conversation started with the crowd still full of bread, Jesus told them: don’t focus on the bread; “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” No one else could or can say this, but it’s not that different from much of what Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels. (“I am the light of the world”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”) Like the crowds, we hear it and think: right, we follow Jesus’ teaching and we have life. Our link to Jesus is through Jesus’ words, or, if you like, through our belief in Jesus words or our obedience to Jesus’ words. We think: OK, it’s not such a barrier that Jesus was in the 1^st Century and we’re in the 21^st Century. We relate to Jesus like a Buddhist relates to the Buddha or a Muslim relates to Mohammad.

And then we hit the verses we heard today: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” That was as scandalous in the first century as it is today, and Jesus makes no attempt to soften it. The next verse, translated literally: “The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood…”

In the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples, and in the middle of the celebration reinterprets it: “Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” There’s nothing like it in John’s story of Holy Week; rather, John gives us Jesus’ words “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” here after the feeding of the 5,000 near the feast of the Passover.

Since the time of Moses, Passover has been the Jewish festival. To get something close to it we American Gentiles would have to combine Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. At Passover every generation of Jews is cotemporaneous with those who first experienced the Passover: God liberating them from slavery in Egypt and setting them on a journey to the Promised Land. At Passover every generation says “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our God brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.”

You don’t mess with Passover. To return to our analogy, imagine the outcry and derision if a president said: “You see, Thanksgiving (or the Fourth of July) is really about me.” But that’s what Jesus is doing. He’s saying to the disciples: you need a more profound, a more complete liberation than the liberation you’ve been celebrating in the Passover. So, taking the bread and wine which already had their own meanings within the celebration of the Passover, he gave them new meanings— this is my Body; this is my blood—so that the same meal could hereafter celebrate that more profound, more complete liberation.

As long as the Church was working from a Jewish center of gravity, the Eucharist as transformation of Passover was obvious. Because that was obvious, it went without saying that Eucharist was about the gathering and sanctification of a people, and their liberation from every form of oppression, the breaking in of the world to come into this world.

That gathering, sanctification, liberation is not simply a matter of adopting a particular program, even Jesus’ teaching. It’s a matter of being grafted onto Jesus: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” It’s not simply a matter of ideas, values, goals or decisions. “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

This role for the Holy Eucharist can seem counterintuitive. We often think of our self as other than our body. But the big moments in our lives, birth and death, are body moments, to which we could easily add embracing, making love, sharing food, celebrating a touchdown, etc. So when God sets out to transform us, the body stays centerstage. Circumcision, baptism, Eucharist.

And I wonder if the element of vulnerability in eating and drinking isn’t relevant here. Eating and drinking is letting down our guard, opening ourselves –quite literally—to what we are about to receive. In the case of Holy Eucharist: Jesus’ Body and Blood. “Yes –we say—may Jesus’ life merge with ours so that his life flows through ours.”

“Abide in me as I abide in you.” So it’s just a matter of showing up at Eucharist? No. Consider what Jesus said about this abiding as recorded in John.

• Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

• If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love…

• If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples…

We can all think of Christians, churches, denominations in different times and places that have latched onto one of these to the virtual exclusion of the others:

• Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. The Eucharist as magic.

• If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love… Jesus as Ethical Teacher, or New Moses.

• If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples… Belief and/or reading the Bible are what’s important.

It’s the same Jesus in the same Gospel who says all three! It only makes sense to show up for Eucharist if there is a real –but always imperfect—desire to keep Jesus’ commandments and to continue in Jesus’ word. That is why from the start the Eucharist has been something shared by the baptized.

The universe, scientists tell us, is held together by forces that pull in opposite directions. The reality I’ve been trying to describe here is like that. On the one hand, our Eucharist is Passover Remixed, celebrating a liberation more profound and complete than Moses could have dreamed. Its constant reduction to an act of individual piety would be absurd were it not so common. The Chinese Government has got it right: the status quo is in danger when Christians come together to celebrate Eucharist. From this perspective the Eucharist is a symbol.

On the other hand, in Eucharist heaven and earth meet, as “Abide in me as I abide in you” gets very personal, very physical, very intimate. How God does this is a mystery, though we Anglicans are pretty sure that neither Roman transubstantiation nor Baptist symbol are adequate explanations. Elizabeth I, as responsible as any one person for the enduring shape of Anglicanism, put it this way: “Twas God the Word that spake it, / He took the bread and brake it; / And what the Word did make it; / That I believe and take it.”[1]

On the other hand –yes, there’s a third hand here; it takes a community to do theology—Jesus tells us “abide in me” because only by staying connected to the vine does the branch bear fruit, and Jesus wants fruit. This brings us back to the feeding of the 5,000. What John has done in sticking the Eucharist in the middle of the feeding of the 5,000 is put us on notice that the world and the sanctuary are part of the same conversation. The multitudes who are like sheep without a shepherd and often needy are not one conversation and Eucharistic theology another conversation.

The UN estimates that about 25,000 people die of hunger every day. So God has us and Christians around the globe coming together to celebrate Eucharist because God doesn’t care? Precisely because God cares God gathers us together, because what happens here is God’s primary strategy for something better happening out there. This is the front line, and that’s why we show up here week after week –for our good and the world’s good.

We come to this table—and then hold the world’s needy before God in prayer, open our checkbooks, participate in the coming elections. We could say that where the Body and Blood are distributed at this table other tables with other distributions start popping up. We could say that it’s part of the same Eucharist, the same outpouring of thanks to God that can transform our world.

The Eucharist: New Passover, Feeding on God, Life for the World. Alleluia.

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[1] Source: Clark’s “Ecclesiastical History–Life of Queen Elizabeth”, p. 94 (edition 1675). http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Elizabeth-I/1/index.html