Becoming what we eat

Are you full yet? I mean, full of bread… or the image of bread. Are you full yet?

If you have been following the Gospels in our Eucharistic cycle of readings, you’d have noticed that we have taken a month-long break from the Gospel of Mark and are three-fourths of the way through the long discourse in the Gospel of John where Jesus talks about himself as living bread.

Jesus says, “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. … Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

For the past four weeks, we’ve heard—in response to Jesus walking across the stormy lake and getting in the boat with us—that Jesus is bread of life. So… are you full yet?

Not by a long-shot!

I know, I know…. Jesus could well have said, “You are what you eat” and that would be that! To tell the truth, I am betting that nearly every preacher on the planet today has or will use that old saying, just as I did last week and the week before that and the week before that! But just because the idea is repetitive doesn’t make it any less true.

This is familiar territory for us Episcopalians who value Holy Communion so much. We might be tempted to say “yeah, yeah” or “are we there yet.” But I am going to invite you look closely at this part of John’s Gospel that we have been journeying through to discover what God is up to here.

If you take up that challenge, the first thing you will notice is something strange. John, unlike Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, does not contain an account of the Last Supper. He does not describe how on the night before he died, Jesus took bread and wine and told his disciples to eat and drink of it, calling it his body and blood, and to keep doing it until he comes again in glory. Instead, when John talks about the part of Jesus’ Passion in the Upper Room, he recalls Jesus washing the feet of the disciples—which is not found in the other three. Does that surprise you?

So where did that Last Supper go?

Right here. Of course, the writer of the Gospel of John certainly knew, along with the rest of the Church, that Jesus’ people lived in eucharistic community, and every week did exactly what Jesus’ commanded; but instead of rehearsing the Eucharistic story again (as the other Gospels and Paul the apostle does), he gives us a commentary on what it all means!

In John, we hear Jesus talking about a profound but mysterious spiritual truth: that in the Eucharist bread and wine, through the power and spirit of God, becomes Jesus’ living presence.

John tells us that just as Jesus gave his followers physical food, as in the feeding of the 5000 a few weeks ago, he gives us spiritual food as well. The living bread that Jesus spoke of in John’s sixth chapter is something that has woven itself deeply into our everyday Gospel stories. In eucharistic community, we become people who show off the Eternal Word of God in all we do. In short, we really do become what we eat.

Dom Gregory Dix, the English priest whose scholarship on the Eucharist helped get the ball rolling on the recovery of the liturgy that we use today, once wrote,

“At the heart of it all is the eucharistic action, a thing of an absolute simplicity—the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread and the taking, blessing and giving of a cup of wine and water, as these were first done with their new meaning by a young Jew before and after supper with His friends on the night before He died….

“Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth.”

When you come to the table today, think of all the places where you have taken communion, and all the people with whom you have taken communion—people in this congregation, people you know in this diocese or elsewhere who are gathered in their own communities, people still living but you don’t see anymore, people now long dead and seen only by God. Imagine all the places in which God has been experienced through this Eucharistic meal. Jesus is the “bread that came down from heaven,” whose presence sustains people in every place and situation, who over and over again follow Jesus’ command to take, bless, break, and give.

We need this strengthening of the Body and Blood of Jesus encountered in the Eucharist now more than ever. We live in a time that prizes the self-reliant, where people confuse the snarky for the clever, and where we think we can power through life by sheer will power. We live in an era where everyone has a right to their own opinion and where people will not hesitate to get in your face to tell you how wrong you are. We live in an age that is suspicious of community and who think all the answers are found in the self. But all the noise and snarkiness and righteous rage all over cover a deep, gaping hole in our souls.

The truth is that when we are apart from God, we find it all too easy to remain apart from God and to rely instead on other, lesser answers to our deep hungers and thirsts—hungers and thirsts which only Jesus can satisfy.

It turns out that we really are what we eat; so, we must mind carefully what we eat and digest spiritually, for the health of our souls. The world offers us a lot of unhealthy diets – diets of materialism and greed and selfishness. Feeding on the word of God and partaking of the body and blood of Christ ensures life-sustaining nutrition for the spirit – food for the soul. By faith, eating the bread and wine of Holy Communion, in community steeped in prayer, scripture, and service, we take part in the process by which Christ penetrates our beings and nourishes our lives. In this sacrament, God’s very life comes to us through the elements of bread and wine so that we can have union with God. Time after time, the Eucharist re-calls us to union with God through Jesus Christ, and guides us to see and know all that is good and true and holy in us, each other, all people, and in all creation.

The early church writer Irenaeus said it this way: “The word of God, Jesus Christ, on account of his great love for [humanity], became what we are in order to make us what he is himself.”

We can never be full enough of the bread Jesus offers! The incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus gives himself to us and through our baptisms and Eucharist; through our common life, our study of scripture; through our prayer and ministry and care for each other and creation we take him into ourselves. Eating Christ’s body and blood in the Holy Eucharist and sacramental community nourishes us and transforms us so that we become more and more what he is. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again…because it’s true! We truly are what we eat.

Jesus and the hometown crowd

I once lived in a place that that must have been central castings idea of the ideal midwestern “hometown.” It had not one, not two, but three “Main Streets’ (even though none of them were called “Main Street”)! There was one that went past the small college, through the center of town past the courthouse and the opera house, crossed a small river and connected to another part of town. There was one that was perpendicular to this one, and went from the local “grand” hotel, past businesses, the armory, and post office and then past a few churches. Then there was the third “main street” that also started at that hotel but went north (actually, compass east) along the Ohio River eventually past the supermarket, the strip mall, the multiplex, and the big box stores.

At that time, I ministered in a variety of little churches up and down both sides of the Ohio River, mainly along what I called the “west coast” of West Virginia but also on the Ohio side. And in each of those little Appalachian towns there was a “main street,” whatever they were called. 

And they all had their own special day or weekend or week. Sometimes it was July 4^th, or Labor Day, or else it was built around the county fair circuit. And even though I didn’t grow up in these places, their rides, booths, fireworks, corn dogs, ramps, and cotton candy, all had the feel of being “home.”

Being from a “hometown” can be very comforting and grounding; but it might also be something very different… someplace one gets away from.

The Rev. Dr. Andrew Harmon of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reminds us that “….for many people, hometowns can also be sources of pain. They can hold old anxieties. Maybe these were places where one found one’s true identity… or had to leave to become their own person. Maybe the hometown might have been a place where one really didn’t “fit” in. Maybe one’s faith (or lack thereof) was growing in a different direction, or maybe one fell in love with someone from outside or from the wrong part of town. Maybe a person’s political beliefs affected their view of the place or just made it hard to talk to others. Some people looked evil in the eyes for the very first time in that place, or found themselves ostracized for who they knew themselves to be or how they wanted to live their lives or for whom they loved.”

He’s right! Small town life can be complicated!

Whatever “hometown” means for us, it can be lifegiving and heart-rending all at once! And that’s how it was for Jesus!  

Today’s Gospel from Mark shows us Jesus returning to his hometown with his disciples in tow. And while we don’t know if he gave his gang the grand tour, showing him the sites and meeting friends and family, we do hear that were some pretty significant challenges.

I am always surprised about how little we know Jesus’ upbringing (although some of the Gnostic and early Christian material that didn’t make it into the New Testament, has some pretty fascinating and outright weird stories about the young Jesus)!  But here's what today’s passage tells us: He grew up in a big family. His parents, Mary and Joseph were devout Jews and probably pillars of the local synagogue. Jesus certainly inherited his faith and learned faithfulness in that home. I love the scene in the Gospel of Matthew where the adolescent Jesus hangs out at the synagogue for three days, sitting among the religious leaders, peppering them with questions and suggesting new takes on old stories! When the Bible says that Mary and Joseph pondered these things in their hearts, I think that was ‘Bible speak’ for “what’s Jesus up to now?”

Now here it is twenty years later and Jesus has left home. He’s gathered some blokes to come along while he begins his ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing. He travels up and down the region staying in homes and villages and cities all around Galilee. Along the way, Jesus talks about something called the kingdom of God and utters shocking, outrageous statements about his relationship to God.

Throughout Mark’s gospel, he tells those who witness or experience his healing power not to speak, for fear that their testimonies will be misunderstood and, perhaps, get them into hot water.

But you what happens in small towns, right? Word gets around and people flock to Jesus. But it’s not to hear the barker at the county fair…they come to Jesus to be made well in body or soul. Others, want to see a miracle with their own two eyes. In Mark 5, immediately before our text today, crowds saw Jesus casting out demons in the land of the Gerasenes. We heard last week how others saw him raise the daughter of a synagogue official and the healing a woman with a blood disorder. Jesus has been busy, on a journey that has taken him far from home, but now he returns to his hometown.

I wonder if Nazareth was a place of some comfort for Jesus? I wonder if seeing familiar faces, being reintroduced to familiar sights, sounds and smells might have reminded him of all the things that happened—those meals, those events, and maybe even those shenanigans, with his family and friends since childhood. Perhaps all this nostalgia got in the way of others being able to see Jesus for who he was.

“Where did this man get all this?” they ask. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”

Jesus observes that “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

So just like that, Jesus went from being a hometown hero to pariah. Because why would the hometown hero come home and call people out?

Well, Jesus had a prophetic role as well a teaching, healing ministry. We like the other stuff, but prophets come to unsettle, startle, and stir things up. They call people into new ways of seeing the world. Prophets call attention the work of God and demand faithfulness. I can hear the grumbling now: We gave him his start and taught him everything he knows, and this is how he treats us?

You know, I think I understand that hometown crowd. Rather than “booing” them for their inhospitality, I think I get their resistance. I mean, I know that I am not always ready for Jesus to challenge and change me! Too often this is not what I want or expect from Jesus. Neither were they ready for what he had to offer them.

I think that by now you know that I am allergic to the word “disruption.” It has been the trendy concept in leadership training circles both in business and in church for over a decade. Often people think disruption is just coming in and breaking the dishes just for the fun of it, as if the shocked reaction is the main event.

But Jesus is doing something else… he is saying that God’s kingdom, God’s reign, is here now and that the things of God are not what we’ve come to expect. And that disturbed the folks in his hometown synagogue. And often that disturbs us.

For many of us, faith is supposed to be cozy, especially in a world where good news can be hard to come by and things are so unpredictable. But as a hymn in our hymnal says “the peace of God, it is no peace but strife sown in the sod…” The punchline of that hymn urges us to pray for that same, “marvelous peace of God.”

You know, of course, the difference between a real prophet and a religious huckster, right? A real prophet points to God, pointing beyond themselves and allows God’s spirit to work and for people to grow into the things of God. A huckster says that only they know the way to God and it’s all about them and their technique or charisma. As much as we want real prophets, often our hearts and our fragile egos want the ready answers and the good feelings.

Jesus said, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” That’s because it is uncomfortable to be in the presence of a prophet. It can wreak havoc in the corners of your heart, in your own house, among your own people. When God speaks into those fragile, protected parts of us, or even to the warmest, coziest places of our lives, our souls’ capacity for love grows—our love for God and our neighbors grows. We change and grow in the process. It might feel like scales falling from our eyes, encouraging us to see those who were, for the longest time, invisible to us. We might start to witness walls of hostility and division come tumbling down, or cease to be built in the first place. We might learn to welcome those whom we, at one time, labeled “unsafe” or “other” or “criminal”.

We are all shaken up by Jesus in our own way. But whatever happens, routine religiosity is the first thing to go and transformation occurs in its place. Like the people in Jesus’ home synagogue, they were at once “astounded” at God’s words and works and they were invited to take part in Jesus’ challenging and healing power.