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The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 17)
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The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): John 6:56-69
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
John 6:56-69
✛
Hard Saying, Physical Faith
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Although we took a break to celebrate Saint Mary the Virgin, the appointed Gospel readings for five Sundays running since the last Sunday in July have been from the sixth chapter of Saint John. This begins with the story of the feeding of the five thousand on the eastern, Gentile, shore of the Sea of Galilee. There Jesus perceived that the multitude were about to take him by force to make him their wonder-working king; so he sent his disciples back across the lake in a boat, dismissed the crowd, and withdrew by himself. (vv 1-15)
That night, Jesus, walking on the water in the midst of a great wind, met and joined his disciples in the boat which rapidly and wondrously got to land at Capernaum on the northwestern shore. He then taught in the large local synagogue. The crowd, perplexed at how Jesus had got there (they had not seen him get into a boat nor walk the long distance around the lake), attended to his teaching. (vv 16-24) All this is told in the first 24 verses of Saint John’s chapter six. Then, for 47 more verses to the end of the chapter, Jesus speaks of himself in terms of food; namely, as the Bread of Life. “The Bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” In today’s portion he is quite graphic: “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” (vv 56-57)
We absolutely need, and are fed by, the sacred humanity, the flesh and blood, of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. We absolutely need it. Except you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man you have no life in you, said Jesus. Why is this? Because Jesus is far more human than we. Jesus is fully, perfectly Human. By contrast our humanity is marred, twisted, and diminished by our manifold sins. The proof is inside us. Why do we blush when we are caught in a lie, or ashamed? Do we feel fulfilled when we hurt, abuse, take unfair advantage, or betray someone; when we leave undone something we know must be done? We do not; and if such things do not bother us, then we are further dehumanized by a coarsened or even missing conscience. Sin subtracts from our humanity. Think of Adam and Eve hiding from the presence of God after disobeying him.
This brings us to the fulfillment of humanity. Free, obedient, constant communion with our Maker is the fulfillment of humanity. Harmony with the word and commandment of God is not servitude. Sin is the bondage of the will. The service of God is perfect freedom. Surrender to God is power. This is the secret of the eternal Son and Word of God who in Christ took upon him our flesh as the Son of Man. Jesus calls himself the Son of Man and means by this the One True Human Being – the New Adam. He once told his disciples, who wondered if he had gotten food, that his food was “to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.”[1] As we heard today, “I live by the Father.”
So the food which feeds the Son, perfect union with the Father and harmony with his will, animates every fiber of his being, soul and spirit, flesh and blood; especially flesh and blood, because it is his life’s work to incarnate God, to be the Word made flesh, and in that flesh to confront and to atone for our predicament, our enslavement to sin. On the cross, out of his pierced side flowed water and blood, the elements of birth and sustenance. When we receive Christ we are baptized through water into his death and raised to new life with him in his resurrection. And then we are fed, sustained by the food of his sacred humanity, his flesh and blood, under the forms of bread and wine. When Father Spurlock last week said that all of this – the stone and glass in glorious gothic form, the liturgy, the music, the words of teaching and preaching, even the fellowship and service we do as a church – all of this is in honor of the tiny Host; he was spot on (pun intended). God was man in Palestine, said John Betjeman, and lives today in bread and wine; where he gives otherwise dying souls the transfusion of his life.
Many of Jesus’ hearers in Capernaum found this offensive: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Even his disciples murmured: “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” (vv 42, 52, 60) Jesus’ words are hard, in the sense that they are, and are intended to be, physically realistic. Why? Because we are physical; because sin is as physical as a clenched fist, and the issue before us is vivid. As the Son lives by the Father, so we may live through the Son.[2]
Sacramental Communion is not a violent or bloody ritual. The Eucharist is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Christ’s blood-shedding was once for all on the cross. The Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist communicate the Lord of the cross, the empty tomb and the ascension to the throne of God. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing,” said Christ. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” (v 63) In other words, the Son’s Objective Real Presence, in his earthly life, his heavenly glory and in Holy Communion, is known and received by the means of faith, which is a gift of the Spirit. Yet Jesus’s hard sayings were losing him disciples. He said to the twelve, Will you also go away? Peter, not yet understanding, nevertheless bet his life on Jesus: “Lord to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe that thou art that Christ the Son of the living God.” (vv 66-69) I’m with Peter; be my soul with Jesus!
We use that quintessential Anglican/Episcopal prayer before Communion, the Prayer of Humble Access: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies…”[3] The prayer draws from two figures of faith in the Gospels, the Canaanite Woman with the possessed daughter and the Roman centurion with the dying servant; [4] and it is composed with the theological influence of Thomas Aquinas in the unmatched English of Thomas Cranmer. [5] If its flesh and blood language is hard – like Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel – know that this great prayer plumbs the depths of our human predicament with the soundings of full salvation. It gets to the heart of the matter.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[1] St. John 4:31-34. This is during, two chapters earlier, Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well.
[2] In the Church’s Trinitarian and Christological doctrine (1979 BCP, pp. 864-865), the eternal Son is consubstantial with the Father and coinheres with Him and the Holy Spirit in the Holy and Undivided Trinity; and the incarnate Son maintains perfect Personal Union with perfect divine nature and perfect human nature. This eternal life is communicated to us through faith, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who rejoice in Christ’s appearing.
[3] “…We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.” The bold italicized clause was omitted by the American 1979 BCP. But it has been retained in the Church of England and other provinces in contemporary language versions, as well as in the traditional version. At Saint Thomas we retain the clause (for reasons seen in footnote #5 below) in both Rite One and Rite Two liturgies. It is my prayer that the Episcopal Church will in due course restore the clause for both traditional and contemporary rites and place us back within the classical tradition.
[4] Mt 15:22-28 and Mk 7:24-20: The Syrophoenician Woman who “wrestles” with the Lord and wins both his blessing and commendation. Even the dogs get the crumbs under the Master’s table. Mt. 8:5-13 and Lk 7:1-10: The Roman centurion bids Christ only to say the word, not even to come under his roof. Christ’s commends him and answers his prayer.
[5] St. Thomas Aquinas said that the concomitant Body and Blood of Christ (whom we receive totally under each species of consecrated Bread and Wine) nevertheless effectively symbolizes the cleansing and feeding of our bodies by Christ’s Body and the washing of our souls by Christ’s life-giving Blood. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer composed all these biblical and theological insights in what I believe to be the most superb of all Communion prayers, utterly biblical, evangelical and catholic.
