+Bishop Bill shared this story with me: he was officiating at a funeral for people who were not familiar with the church. But the family, for reasons unknown to the Bishop, but clearly important to them, wanted communion at the service, so in a funeral chapel, not one of our churches, Bishop Bill officiated and celebrated the Holy Eucharist. When the time came for communion, the Bishop said that anyone who felt drawn to receive communion was invited to do so. As he distributed communion he noticed a little boy in the back of the chapel…it was clear that the boy was “feeling drawn” but didn’t come forward. Later at the reception, the Bishop spoke to the boy’s father who said the boy desperately wanted to receive communion but said, “I can’t, we’d be eating Auntie’s body.”
It makes sense. For someone who wasn’t raised in the church and was at a funeral with communion for the first time, how must it sound to hear “Take Eat, this is my body” …while staring at a casket with the body of your Aunt in it? Of course, the boy was torn, bewildered, scared.
And even for those of us familiar with the ways of communion and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist today, this whole Bread of Life thing gets kind of creepy doesn’t it?
Jesus says: only those of us who will eat his body and drink his blood will have eternal life.
Of course, we use this imagery and almost exactly these words, each and every time we celebrate the Eucharist “This is my body, take eat, this is my blood, take, drink….”but somehow, because we’ve heard it for so long, because we haven’t thought about it that much, because we just excuse it as one of those “mysteries of faith,” we let those words roll of our back. But there’s something about how John words it in today’s Gospel that makes me understand how freaked out the temple authorities were then, and how freaked out that little boy was last week.
Back in Jesus’ day and in the early days of Xnty this concept of eating of Jesus’ Body and drinking of Jesus’ blood was downright scandalous. The creepiness, the discomfort with which many of us heard the words of today’s Gospel was magnified as they heard Jesus speak them…it smacked of cannibalism and cannibalism then, just as it is now, was taboo, forbidden. It was horrifying, disgusting, evil.
And yet, it is one of the foundations of our faith—to take to eat, to remember.
How do we explain this—to those unfamiliar with our faith and, if we want to be honest, to ourselves.
how to understand it?
Well, I didn’t have a good answer until I read some words written by Elizabeth Kaeton, an Episcopal Priest in Delaware who, while searching for inspiration as she prepared her third sermon in a row about the Bread of Life discourse, pulled out her Oxford Dictionary of the English language and looked up “bread.” By doing that she, and in turn I, discovered that the word we use to describe bread wasn’t always bread, and by understanding that, this whole thing becomes a lot less creepy and lot more poignant and life giving. (many thanks to Elizabeth's weekly email of last week: Telling Secrets, I am the Bread of Life, August 12, 2018 received via email)
Let me explain:
The substance we commonly refer to as bread was, before 1200 or so, called hlaf---loaf.
It was only around 1200 that the common usage switched from the old middle English word hlaf or loaf gave way to the Germanic based word, brud or bread.
Hlaf meant one whole thing ---- while brud, bread, meant a portion of, a piece of….
When I read this, it hit me---Jesus is talking to us about the interconnectedness of God’s creation, of the desperate need we have for each other and for God. And the desperate need God has us. Think about it---God so longed for us, so wanted to understand us that God became one of us, taking flesh and bone to to walk among us as Jesus. I suppose it’s easy to think of us as needing to be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but how often do we consider how much God needs/wants/longs for us?
This change in the word that we use for bread highlights that for me---when Jesus said he was the bread of life he most certainly wasn’t speaking English. And when John wrote about Jesus’ life he most certainly did not write it in English BUT when the Bible was translated into English ---in the 16th century—the word used was not Hlaf—the whole thing---but brud, bread, a piece of, a portion.
I am the Bread of Life, says Jesus, only those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will be a part of me, a part of God.
My friends, we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. We are part of something much bigger than our friends and our family, bigger than this parish and this diocese, bigger than this state or this country. We are part of God’s creation and God longs for us, aches for us to do our part within it, because if we don’t do our part, if we don’t partake of our portion than we, than us, than this creation, God’s creation is incomplete.
I am the Bread of Life says Jesus, all who partake of me will have eternal life, all who eat of my flesh and drink of my blood will be a part of me and I will be a part of them.
Dear people of St Martin’s, we are hungry, the world is hungry, Jesus is hungry, God is hungry and you know what? We all hunger for the same thing---each other, together in peace and in love. Take and Eat: For Alone We are Nothing, But Together We Are Everything.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment