Proper 15B; Proverbs
9:1-6; John 6:51-58; St. Paul's, Smithfield, NC 8/16/2015
Jim Melnyk: “Enfolded
in God”
A little boy, who would one day become a learned Rabbi, was
once challenged by an adult: “Yitzhak Meir,” the grownup said, “I'll give you a
gold coin if you can tell me where God lives!”
Yitzhak reportedly replied, “And I'll give you two gold coins if you can
tell me where God doesn't live!” (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim,
Vol. II, Page 303).
Meir's quick response concerning where God lives or doesn't
live has much to do with our ongoing lessons about Jesus as the Bread of Life
come down from heaven. To be able to
make sense of what Jesus means when he says, “unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” is just as hard as
identifying where God lives – or for that matter, where God doesn't live. And yet, isn't that part of our struggle of
faith – to understand what it means for Jesus to be the Bread of Life or the Bread
of Heaven that has come for the life of the world? For nearly two thousand years Christians have
tried to figure out what we mean when we say, “This is my body – this is my
blood,” and the answer is as much a mystery today as it was when the words were
first uttered.
When Jesus declares his body “food” and his blood “drink,”
our heads and our hearts both tell us there must be more to the meaning than
just those simple words. Centuries ago,
in an attempt to avoid any possibility of superstition, much of the
post-Reformation Church declared the Eucharist to be memorial of the Last
Supper. Christ's ongoing presence in the
meal was declared to be real in memory only.
And much of Christianity lost a great deal in that decision!
But as Anglicans we took a middle way – what I believe to be
a better way. Though we know we don't
literally feed on flesh or sip real blood from the chalice, our faith has
always maintained a mystical sense of the “real presence” of Christ in this
most holy meal. The words spoken by
Jesus in John's Gospel, along with the accounts of the Last Supper in the other
Gospels and in Paul's writings, while not entirely literal, are more than mere memory,
metaphor or allegory for us.
I believe we're called to look at these events at an anagogical
level – that is, at an interior level – at a level of insight that calls out
and speaks to the soul. In the Eucharist
Christ feeds us at a level that calls to our souls – that nourishes our souls –
that touches the deepest part of our being where we know ourselves to be at one
with God – where we know ourselves to be created in the very image and likeness
of God. To meet Jesus at this soul-level
is to meet Jesus at that place where we somehow know him to be fully present with
us and fully present for
us, in the holy meal we share. Julian of
Norwich understood this way of knowing Jesus when she wrote, “A mother feeds
her child with her milk, but our beloved mother Jesus feeds us with himself.” (Enfolded
in Love, Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich, The Seabury Press, NY,
1981, p. 36)
The challenge – the struggle for us – is to allow ourselves
to be comfortable NOT fully understanding the words of Jesus. And it's so strange that in a day and time
where imagination and fantasy abound – whether on TV or in the movies – in
books or even in real life – it's so strange that we modern day folk have lost
the ability to imagine theologically.
We've lost our ability to allow ourselves to be enfolded in mystery and
imagining. We want the stories of our
faith to make the same kind of sense we find in a news report, or in a lab
experiment, or in a history book – thinking, “How can these things be?”
Stories like the Last Supper or the Feeding of the Five
Thousand – or stories like Wisdom's invitation to feast at her table, or the
author of Ephesians call to be filled with the Spirit – all are invitations by
God into Holy Mystery and Holy Imagining!
All are invitations to meet God at that interior level – at the level of
our souls. The stories invite us to
suspend our inadequate understandings of creation and Creator and believe in
God's ability to fill us, and fill this world – to believe in the ability of
God to always do something new!
These stories, and our weekly pilgrimage to the Holy Table,
invite us to believe – and to live – as a people united in God through the love
of Jesus. We are invited to believe – to
make real in our hearts – the power of God to bring each one of us into God's
presence through the body and blood of Christ once offered and forever shared!
Holy Mystery! Holy
Imagining! The Creator of the Universe
finding yet another way of making God’s Self real for us – of reaching out to
us and drawing us near – of enfolding us with a never-ending love which won't
let go – of taking those who were once “no people” and making us God's
People. Holy Mystery! “This is my
body!” Holy Imagining! “This is my blood!” Somehow, in the wild imaging of our Creator
God, we have been drawn together –drawn into the circle of God's love – by a simple meal shared
among friends so long ago by a simple preacher who wasn't quite so simple as
the world wanted to think – as the world often wants to think today.
We, who might never have met one another but for the mystery
of Christ's most precious gift, we come together at this Holy Table and are
bound together – we are made one – by the mystery of God's love made known to
us in the breaking of the bread. But it
is not the one little bite of bread itself that nourishes us with its meager
calories – it is the real presence of Christ in the community gathered – and it
is the community gathered as we are made one with Christ that nourishes us each
week. As our fraction anthem later today
declares, “Be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread. The bread
which we break is the communion of the body of Christ. One body are we, for though many, we share
one bread” (S-167, The Hymnal 1982).
It is the power of Holy Mystery which moves us to hear the
cry of those who are made outcast by the world.
It is Holy Imagining which opens our hearts to our children's cries of
confusion and fear as they face an uncaring world with its deadly choices of
bigotry, hopelessness, indifference and hate – a world that would teach them
not to care – a world that tries to teach us not to care. It is the most precious gift of Christ's self
which brings us together – so that where one voice cannot be heard above the
maddening din of the world, our many voices joined together can speak out for
the justice, peace and love of God that has the power to transform a world.
Someone once wrote, “The breath of God comes and dwells in the
things we habitually do and makes them new starting points.” We come together to this Holy Table with a
prayer that God will somehow transform us and make us new – because often, it
seems, we need to be made new on a daily basis.
We come together at this Holy Table with a prayer that God
will spark our imaginations in such a way that we will know God has given us
the power to transform the world. Holy
Mystery! God enfolding us, we are
transformed into the body of Christ!
Holy Imagining! God enfolding us,
we become the blood of Christ for the world!
God drawing us into the deepest places of not just our own
being – but into the deepest places of God's own being – into the
deepest places of God's own hopes and dreams – the deepest places
of God's own heart. And
there are all kinds of implications for us and for our lives when we understand
ourselves to be filled with Christ – and when we understand ourselves to be
inhabiting the deepest places of God’s own being – of God’s own hopes and
dreams – of God’s own heart.
The story is told that “one day, as he began his daily
prayer, a Desert Master saw pass by him a cripple, a beggar, and a beaten
person. Seeing them, the Master went
deep into prayer and cried, 'Great God!
How is it that a loving Creator can see such suffering and yet do
nothing about it?' And out of the depth
of prayer, God [answered the Master and] said, 'I have done
something about it. I made you.'”
(Understanding the Sunday Scriptures, A Synthesis Commentary, Year B,
Page 62)
* Second photo from Student Affairs at Duke.edu
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