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Sermons at Saint Mary's
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: Today, we consider yet another of these strange sayings from the Sixth Chapter of the Gospel of John. Eating flesh and drinking blood is not one more of your ordinary, garden-variety aphorisms. Quite frankly, when taken literarily, the idea is positively repulsive. And when you think that the early Christians were hung on crosses throughout the Roman Empire for practicing, among other things, cannibalism, it’s no cause to wonder. You don’t have to be vegetarian to share a bit of the disgust those Roman onlookers must have had when observing the ritual practices of this odd Christian sect. The primitive Christians, you see, were a different breed altogether. And their paschal feast was equally an affront to the Jews. Eating someone’s flesh in the Old Testament was reprehensible. In fact, in the Aramaic tradition to which Jesus himself belonged, the eater of flesh is one title for the Devil, the Slanderer and Arch Adversary par excellence. And the drinking of blood, in Kosher law, was a horrendous thing, forbidden by Almighty God. Eating flesh and drinking blood. Even among Christians throughout the centuries, there has been little consensus about the meaning of these difficult words, and the Eucharistic feast that memorializes them. For some, it’s an illusion. It’s not real flesh and blood, only figurative symbols of spiritual realities. For others, it’s all magical, where the bread and wine are supernaturally transformed into Christ’s body and blood. The rest of us find ourselves somewhere in between these two extremes, a little confused maybe, maybe even downright disturbed about this aspect of our worship. One does not have to go back to far in the history of this diocese to find most of its churches only celebrating communion once a month in favor of Morning Prayer for the very reason. Just one more indication, I think, of the ambivalence we have had at some level about the meaning of this ritual in our corporate life. So what, then, is this bread and wine we believe to be Christ’s flesh and blood? What is this real stuff we see with our eyes, and touch with our hands? What is this real stuff Jesus talked about that we smell and taste, and which is so palpably at the center of our spiritual life as Christians? Yes, it is true, we could go round and round on the questions about why it is real, or where and when it becomes real, and how it is real, but it seems to me these questions are all secondary to the fact that Jesus simply says it is real. He says my flesh and blood are real, not illusory, not imaginary, but in the world, concrete and corporeal. William Temple, Archibishop of Cantebury from 1942-1944, once called Christianity the most materialistic of religions. Because it is takes this physical world of ours seriously. Because all this stuff we take in through our senses is not a figment or our imaginations or someone else’s; because the flesh and blood that is you and me and all of us has purpose, a purpose grounded in God’s creation, and God’s redemption, and God’s continuing sustenance of the world. Jesus said his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. That’s not simply his reality. That’s yours and mine as well. Because we do live in a real world. This is real earth, and sea, and sky. This is real air we are breathing that 9 days out of 10 in the summer on the Cape is contaminated from downwind energy plant fallout. Beneath our feet this is a real aquifer we pollute with our sewage and nitrate overloading. This is real soil we depend upon for our daily bread that absorbs our toxins and waste. We live in a real world. This is not virtual reality, even as we spend more and more time on line, in front of our computer screens or televisions, or texting or twittering or connecting on Facebook. We live in a real world where each and every one of our actions affects others, even if we choose to ignore or deny this. Witness how the mortgage crisis in this country rippled through the global economy, bringing us all to the brink of economic collapse. Or witness how heavy deforestation in the Amazon River Basin has severely diminished the earth’s photosynthetic capacity to produce oxygen for all of us. Or witness how global warming due to our exorbitant use of fossil fuels threatens the lives of millions around the planet. Our world is interrelated. What affects one affects all. All of it is real, or none of it is real. Jesus said it is his flesh and his blood that is real food and drink. He was not referring to something abstract or remote. Jesus was speaking about his own body, broken for us, so that we might not hunger, and so that we might become one body in him. Thomas Merton tells the story of a Zen Master meeting one of his postulants who presented himself at his monastery gate. “Why do you wander about,” the Master asked the young man,”And neglect your precious treasure at home?” In like manner, our own search for what is real in this life need not take us further than to the real things, the real flesh and blood things, that stand before us. We need only be at home with ourselves and recognize the treasure that lies within us and about us. We need only to step back a little from our pursuit of things that are not real, and recognize that while our hunger is real, we are fed by God’s Almighty hand. We need only accept that in the end, we feed each other; we give and we take; we are absolutely dependent on this interplay of real things; the stability of our lives and world depends on this interplay, and the balance we achieve between our giving and taking. For our precious treasure is as close to us as we are to our own flesh and blood. It is as near to us the real flesh and blood of our neighbors. And just as we remain in Christ only as we eat and drink of him, he remains in us only as his life in us continues to given for the sake of the world. top | home | site index |
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