Bread for the Journey

'Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The crowd then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”'

--John 6: 51-58

More bread, huh? Well…that’s just prime As I had into my final days as Interim Rector of St. James' Church in Skaneateles, this lameduck preacher is starting to run out of material but we can always count on Jesus to give us something, and in this third week of Gluten-tide, he shifts from talking about bread to talking about flesh. I saw maybe worst church meme ever this week, which was a picture of the resurrected Jesus that had the caption: the only zombie who lets you eat him. Just the worst. This is the material we’re left with, y’all.

To recap: Jesus fed 5000 folks in Tabgah three weeks ago, he left to go to the town of Capernaum where, two weeks ago, that same crowd tracked him down demanding more bread, but he told them that the real bread they wanted was the bread that came down from heaven, and last week folks began to turn on him, getting crankier and more confused as he rattled off all this jargon about bread from heaven. Once again, the final line in last week’s Gospel is the first one today: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

It's worth pointing out that that line right there has been really problematic. Maybe it’s obvious to you, maybe it isn’t, but Jesus is alluding is to the Holy Eucharist, to the bread that we say is his body and the wine that we say is his blood. The community that produced the Gospel of John was steeped in the practice of the Eucharist, so for them this line made perfect sense: it was about full participation with Jesus, a sharing in his life and his love. But if you think this sounds a wee too much like cannibalism, you’re not alone. For what’s it’s worth, cannibalism is, in fact, forbidden by the Bible in the book of Leviticus, so many of those in that crowd that day who faithfully abided in the Judaic law, felt that Jesus had crossed a line, and as we’ll see next week, folks will abandon him because this teaching is just too hard. Remember that what the Gospels are saying and doing are reflective of what is going on in the real world for the communities from which they sprung, and for John’s community the whispers kept stirring – “those Christians eat flesh, have you heard this?” “I think they drink some guy’s blood. Disgusting!” It’s true that folks really did believe Christians were cannibals, that Jesus literally expected people to eat flesh and drink blood in order to be his followers.  Literalism, man, it ain’t a good look. 

Without spending this whole blog post rehashing one of my favorite Episcopal 101 classes, I want to mention how the institutional church finally got around this pesky cannibalism issue. Let’s be clear, the earliest followers of Jesus understood that he was present in the celebration of the Eucharist. Both Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr – that wasn’t his last name - said so less than 200 years after Jesus was gone. It wasn’t just in the hearts and minds of those gathered, no, he was really there in the meal; after all, he did say this is my body, this is my blood. So how is it possible? It wasn’t until shortly before the turn of the first millennium that the Church found an answer in an unlikely place: Aristotle. That's right, in order to understand the Eucharist, you have to understand Aristotelian thought! The Greek philosopher who lived some 400 years before Jesus, said that all matter is composed of two properties, accidents and substance, which communicate who and what they are. Accidents are things like a person’s, height, hair length, or whether or not they wear glasses. These tell others who you are, but they change. Substance, however, doesn’t change. It is the unseen thing residing in all matter. Aristotle called it a soul, the spirit within you that makes you who you are but never changes. Accidents change, substance doesn’t. The miracle of the Eucharist, then, is the flipping of the natural order. When we eat the bread and drink the wine the accidents – the outer texture, the taste – those remain the same, they stay bread and wine. But the substance of bread and wine – the soul of the bread and wine, if you will – is transformed into the substance, the soul, of Jesus. We call this transubstantiation, and I’m willing to bet many of y’all who’ve heard it thought it meant you were literally crunching on Jesus’ bones. It doesn’t. Rather, it means that you are feeding on the very soul of Jesus, mingling his life with yours, so that, as the bread and wine are transformed, you will be.

The guy who helped give birth to theology for a religion that wouldn't exist until he was dead for four centuries.

Transubstantiation provides the middle ground between taking Jesus literally or thinking that it’s all just metaphorical. I had a seminary classmate who got irate when folks spoke about meeting the living Christ in the bread and wine, and he would yell “It’s just a memorial!” He never ended up becoming a priest, by the way. If it’s all just done to remember something Jesus did, then how can that be a full sharing with Jesus? How can that transform our lives? We Anglicans, being the product of both the ancient teaching on the Eucharist and the reforms of the 16th century, usually resign ourselves to saying that we believe Jesus is in the meal, but as one of our Archbishops of Canterbury, Lancelot Andrewes, once said, “we are not so arrogant as to explain how.” Transubstantiation is not an official doctrine of Anglicanism, though many of us believe it. The how of Jesus’ presence with us in bread and wine made holy doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he is present, and to know that deep down is empowering.

You have heard me say that Sunday morning is the dress rehearsal for the rest of our lives. What we do in church is meant to not just give us a good feeling as we leave and head into a new week. It’s meant to transform us, to change us evermore into the likeness of Jesus. This is what he means when he says those who do not share in his flesh and blood have no life in them. It’s less of a condemnation of folks who don’t take Communion, and more of an acknowledgement that when we come to the Table of the Lord and we are given food and drink for our journey, we share in the loving, liberating, and life-giving essence of Jesus Christ, so that we can go and break bread with others, and in doing so, share in their life, their essence, their love. Mingle our hearts, minds, and spirits with theirs. That is how the world is transformed and turned upside-down, or rather, rightside-up. 

St. Augustine of Hippo said that we eat the Body of Christ so that we may be the Body of Christ. St. John Crysostem said that in the Eucharist we unite our flesh with Jesus’, and in so doing unite ourselves to his presence and his love. As I asked folks on Sunday: I wonder what the saints of St. James’ would say? What is the altar, the holy Table and its Great Thanksgiving, to you? Is it the place where heaven and earth meet? You will meet Jesus there, but are you prepared to take him with you as you leave?

He said if we eat and drink of him we abide in him. Jesus always abides, just like the Dude from the Big Lebowski. Another, older way of saying it is we tabernacle with him, we live with and rest in him. Saint James' Church in Skaneateles is such a gift, a place where saints and sinners come to live and rest with Jesus! But as I told them, they must remember that the church of Christ isn’t the building, but it is them, the ones who will take Christ from the Table into a world that is so hungry to meet him. I can’t wait to see all the ways that they do. 

Maybe from here you will teach someone the real meaning of transubstantiation. Or not. Wherever you go, whatever you do, be sure to get some food and drink for your journey. 

In Need of a Snack, Nap, and Renewal

'Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Then the crowd began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”'

--John 6: 35, 41-51

'Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the LORD came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.'

--I Kings 19: 4-8

I remember kindergarten. And I remember the part that I enjoyed the least, which was nap time. I hated it. Maybe I don’t show it, but I had an awful lot of energy as a little kid – broke a lotta stuff and gave my parents a lotta gray hairs. But whether it was me or some other rambunctious young’un, we always had to take a nap and have a snack late in the day when we got really cranky and hungry.

There’s wisdom in that, you know? When the prophet Elijah got scared and cranky because folks were trying to kill him, he just wanted to lie down and die. What did God do? Had him take a nap and gave him a snack, a cake baked on a rock. The times when we are least able to understand what is going on around us are usually the times that make us the crankiest. Ask Kristen sometime about the occasions when I most get cranky. It’s when I don’t understand what’s going on, to which she will ask, “Why are you so upset?” and all I can say is “I don’t know!” The best solution I’ve found is to stop, maybe lie down for a bit, and even have a snack. Those Snickers commercials aren’t wrong.

Unknown artist's depiction of Elijah under the broom tree.

When we don’t understand, it often leads us to lash out, to get defensive, and to complain and gripe. It happens to kids, and to adults; after all, we're just taller children. After Jesus feeds 5000 people then explains to them that what they’re hungry for isn’t physical bread that will perish but a different bread, a bread from heaven, he him-self, the people get real cranky. The final line of last week’s Gospel is the first line this week: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Turns out, folks took Jesus pretty literally with that one. Immediately the crowd grows cranky, even angry over what Jesus is saying. None of this is making any kind of sense. How can bread come from heaven – and how can this guy that they all know, who is just an ordinary son of an ordinary family, claim to be from heaven? What’s he trying to pull? 

Perhaps the crowd isn’t that much different from us. Folks today have a tendency to want to read the Bible literally, and when they do they come upon a passage like this, they grumble that that just don’t make no sense. What’s more, our post-Enlightenment minds don’t do well with symbolism and metaphor, so we waste our time worrying whether or not we understand or are being under-stood, and we get cranky when we don’t or aren’t. Bread from heaven. Eternal life. The bread I’ll give for the life of the world is my flesh. Who wouldn’t need a nap and a snack after trying to listen and understand all of this?

There are a few things that we can unpack, though. Jesus brings up the story from Exodus that we heard last week, about the people eating the manna in the wilderness, and he says that they ate it and died. Was the manna poisonous?? Not as far as we can tell. Again, it’s not literal. Rather, what Jesus is saying is that bread alone – physical stuff – is not enough to sustain life. Yes, they died…eventually, not because they ate the manna, but because all things die. What Jesus is offering is not a physical bread that only temporarily satisfies and then is gone. He offers himself, his teachings, his love, his grace, his mercy. These are the things that we “feed on” , that give us a kind of life that is not encumbered by the threat of loss or death, a life that is more attuned to the goodness of God in the world and recognizes to the Christ-light that is within all creation, within our neighbor, and yes, even within ourselves. 

It is our deepest held conviction that at the holy table, the altar of God, we receive the very bread of heaven and, to borrow words from an older version of our Prayer Book, we feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving. St. Ignatius of Antioch called the Holy Eucharist the “medicine of immortality.” It is here with outstretched hands and open hearts that we taste eternal life.

Still, we have to remember that when Jesus talks about eternal life he doesn’t mean something that is waiting on us when we die; after all, he uses the present tense in his teaching today: “whoever believes HAS eternal life.” It’s not later, in some future heavenly realm where we get our reward, it’s now. And right here, in this place, surrounded by these saints, we step outside time and share the same feast as all those other saints. We don’t have to understand how or why. A little boy I once knew, who isn’t so little anymore, used to come up to Communion and put his hands out and say, “Gimme a cracker!” That cracker is the bread for our journey, out into an ever-changing and confusing world. It sustains us as the cake sustained Elijah for 40 days in the wilderness. We need only believe this, or so we’re told.

The Greek word we translate as ‘belief,’ is pistis, which means a self-surrendering trust. To believe is to surrender, to let go of our need to have everything figured out, our need to be in control or to understand. Sabbath rest is at the heart of this self-surrendering trust. More than a mere nap, the practice of Sabbath leads to transformation, it is the quiet space we cultivate for God to once again take up residence, our greatest weapon to combat the overwhelming feeling that we have to know or do everything. As Thomas Merton, one of my spiritual heroes once wrote, “Lord I do not know what I am doing, but I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you.” Even when we don’t understand, the fact that we want to, the fact that you showed up today, that matters, and that’s enough for God. Maybe it could be enough for you too.

So brothers and sisters, in the times when you feel confused or cranky, remember the kindergarten method: return to the altar of God for nourishment from the very bread of heaven, and find your Sabbath rest to remember who you are and whose you are. Remember that you are enough, and cultivate that self-surrendering trust in Jesus to continually transform you into who you already are. 

Hungry For What??

'The next day, when the people who remained after the feeding of the five thousand saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”'

--John 6: 24-35

Welcome to what the organist at my parish calls Gluten-tide! Each Sunday during August we will be reading this section of the Gospel of John that we call the Bread of Life discourse. So I hope you like hearing about bread. As I told the folks on Sunday, by the time Kristen and I leave at the end of the month, y’all are gonna be experts on the Bread of Life!

An icon of Jesus as the Bread of Life.

Let’s take a second to recap last week and how Jesus gets on this kick about bread. Through the faith of a young boy who offered his five loaves and two fish Jesus managed to feed a crowd of 5000.  You might think that Jesus would take a moment to bask in the accomplishment, but if you remember last week’s Gospel, he heads to the other side of the sea under the cover of darkness. He does the deed, and then he moves on.  Our modern, celebrity-obsessed culture would not take so kindly to Jesus’ insistence on being so discreet!  

But the crowd does eventually catch up to him on the other side of the sea in the town of Capernaum, which is where we pick up the story today.  Picture, if you will, that you are part of that crowd.  You have just witnessed something that is beyond explanation.  Each and every day you experience hunger, real, painful hunger, and you have just witnessed a man feed roughly the population of Capernaum itself!  How might you react to him?  Would you try to get him to stay in your town, like forever?  Would you try to get him to help with other problems in your life?  If you’re nodding your head then you’ve got a good idea of what is going on for the folks when they track down Jesus.

So they find him, and the first thing they ask is:  “When did you come here?”  In other words, when did you leave us?  They’re persistent, having tried the day before to make him king after he looked like he could be a perpetual food supplier.  But their persistence is misplaced, self-serving, and Jesus knows that and calls them out on it.  They are preoccupied with the literal loaves and fish, the food that has just perished, and they’re looking for Jesus for all the wrong reasons.  Their primary motivation for going across the sea to find him is that they want more bread to hoard, so that they won’t be hungry again.  But Jesus isn’t a Cosmic Vending Machine, and he points out to them that while satisfying their physical hunger is important—after all, he did feed all of them—they must not think that hoarding up more magic bread will satisfy their real desire.  Despite what he tells them, they plead with Jesus:  Show us some more miracles, they beg, and fix all of our problems!  

They wanted signs. They kept asking for more and more, but what they were asking for was something they already had, which was Jesus, right there in their midst. Makes a person wonder: if even they who had him right there with them still don’t get it, what hope do we have? We, like them, ask for greater understanding, for more meaningful work to do and people with whom to journey. We ask to be empowered by him, fulfilled by him, and blessed by him. Again. And again. Meanwhile, we fail to see that everything we need has already been given.

Like a modern church-goer who just wants the preacher to tell them what to do so that they can get their reward, that crowd was only capable of thinking on a surface level. What they truly desire is deeper than that. What Jesus offers is deeper than that. The crowd might feel comfortable in a church that preaches the heretical Prosperity Gospel, that claims God’s favor for a person is measured in their material wealth and possessions – an abundance of food being a sign of both in the ancient world. If you are never lacking for anything, it must mean that God has blessed you, that false gospel preaches. Yet this is neither the Gospel of Christ, nor is it in line with the teachings Jesus himself was taught. Recall the story from the book of Exodus, when the people complain that they do not have enough to eat, and God provides for them manna, a flakey bread-like substance that falls during the night. There is a catch, though, and that is that the people are not to hoard it, otherwise it will go bad. Each will be given just enough to meet their needs. But they want more. The crowd wanted more from Jesus. Like a Jedi who has had a taste of the Dark Side, we too want more: more signs, more bread, more wealth, more security. All we have, though, is Jesus. Is that enough?

We have been allotted just the right amounts of giftedness and have just the right failures to now be and do all that we are meant to be and do. We have even been given companions for the journey, so numerous we have yet to meet them all - and in the case of St. James' in Skaneateles, there is one very important companion, their next Rector, whom they will meet very soon.

Brothers and sisters, we already live in the shadow cast by so many blessings heaped upon blessings, though they may not be the kind of blessings that the heretics preach. The blessings are not the materials themselves, they are the gifts of grace, of manna and mercy, of love, and of beloved community in which Jesus not only lives but thrives. Look around you, this is the miraculous sign; we need no other. Whether or not we see it or believe it, the miracle is radical abundance. Enough for all. Whoever comes to Jesus will never believe the heretical gospel that signs and stuff will assuage our deepest hunger and thirst.

I invited our parish on Sunday to consider three questions: What miracles have you already witnessed in this place? What is still on your secret wish list to see? Are you at ease yet with having just enough, of being good enough, of knowing, in your very soul, that the hunger and thirst you feel is so much deeper than what your outward senses and reactive feelings will tell you? 

We all hunger, we all thirst. But for what, exactly? That’s the question the crowd in Capernaum couldn’t answer. But perhaps you can. Because of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. Allow Jesus to break through any misconceptions you may have of how the whole of existence functions, and you will never hunger or thirst for the things which will perish because you’ll be too busy performing the very works of God.