Real Food

A sermon preached by Father Dwight D. Duncan, ssc, Rector, St Matthias, Dallas, Texas
10 August 2003 - The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B, Proper 14)


I am sure many among you have expected that I would address this morning the actions of the recently concluded General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Some of the folk at Low Mass this morning told me they could hardly wait to get here. I presume some thought/hoped I might call down fire from heaven upon selected persons and sites throughout the Episcopal Church.

Quite frankly, I wish I could. But I have "waited upon the Lord" this week and have discovered neither a vocation nor a charism (gift) from the Lord to be his pyrotechnical hit man. So the only pyrotechnics you are going to witness this day are those you witness every week: the making of holy smoke (incense) with which to honor the Lord.

No. Within the midst of this our sacred assembly, I am not going to deal with the actions of General Convention. In the narthex, both for members of St Matthias' and you who are not, is a booklet containing letters to you from our bishop and me. I ask you to take it home and to read and reflect upon it carefully and prayerfully. For now, it has enough on the subject. There will be much more to say, to think about and report on in the days, months and year ahead.

I believe, as I say in my remarks to you in the booklet, that there is great reason to hope. I am feeling it already. Even through this fact: for most of this summer I have felt exhausted ... now I feel energized. Coming from a Virginia family who gave leaders to our War of Independence and to the South in the "War of Northern Aggression"(!), that may not be surprising. But I also have a mother who was wont to say in response to crazy, ridiculous situations thrust upon her and with which she had to deal, "Well, I didn't call for this dance ... but I wouldn't miss it for the world." Go figure!

I shall not address General Convention's actions because the unfaithfulness to the Gospel and to our Catholic and Apostolic Faith of a majority of our bishops and priestly and lay members of Convention should not be allowed to shadow the joy of our adoration of God. This holy Sacrifice of the Mass is our weekly ascent to heaven,

• where along the way we hear God's eternal word proclaimed to us in the Sacred Scriptures and hopefully opened to us in the sermon;
• where along the way we bring before God our lives broken by sin for his forgiveness, cleansing and renewal;
• where along the way we bring before God all our concerns and those of the world, beseeching his aid, comfort and correction; and
• where finally our way ends for a brief moment in heaven, at table with him, where he presides both as host and as food and gives himself to us as that nourishment we need in this life so that we may journey through it safely and arrive forever in heaven at last.
  

This Sunday Mass is that one assured moment of joy available to all God's people week after week after week. It has been so for God's people since Jesus first instituted this Holy Meal. And we will not let that joy be diminished by the foolhardiness, arrogance and sins of others ... THOUGH we will take them with us on this ascent to heaven, pleading God's mercy upon them and the reformation of their minds and their hearts to his will.

No ... we will fix ourselves this day on the joy of Jesus' word to us in the holy gospel. And it most certainly is a joyous word which Jesus has speaking to us these past few weeks, a word which first he spoke 2,000 years ago to men and women gathered at synagogue in Capernaum. Again and again, he has referred to himself as the Bread of Life. And this day he says, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

These are incredible words, awe-full words, in the primitive sense of that word "awful": they fill us with awe, for they are words from which we both draw back in fear or disgust and yet move to embrace in fascination and amazement. These words produced the same reaction in their first hearers: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

But Jesus never replied to their incomprehension or fear of cannibalism, nor does he reply to ours. Instead, he moves on, asserting: "... unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life ..." And then Jesus makes this extraordinary promise, " and I will raise him up at the last day." It is the promise of his own resurrection victory to all who will abide in him faithfully.

It sounds like a fairy story: God becoming bread in Christ ... God coming to you and me hidden in a piece of bread. The claim stuns the mind. Either Christ is a raving madman ... or, perhaps, just perhaps, he is indeed omnipotent and merciful love, finding the most direct road to our hearts, a road that will neither frighten nor scare us, a road that is as simple as could be ... a road which brings us to a table on which God lies as bread. "My flesh is real food," Jesus says, "my blood real drink." (Jn 6:55)

But why should we find it strange that Christ should want to become bread for us and to be eaten by us? Isn't that what love always desires? To become bread for your beloved, to be their nourishment, not only making contact with their body, but penetrating into their soul, so that, while remaining distinct, you two become entwined as one.

The Eucharist is nothing strange. It is the most logical thing in the world, arising from the heart of the greatest love ever lived, by a man named Jesus. For this Bread is the living summary of God's love for mankind: of his eternal desire to give himself to us completely, to receive back from us ourselves completely, and so for he and we to be together forever in joy.

And God does give himself here. In the most vulnerable, personal way. Think of it: in but a few moments, you shall be holding God in your hand. If God were before us in another way ... a way more striking, more triumphal ... we would be oppressed by it. We would be afraid. We would be in danger, for nothing which is not holy as God is holy can exist in his unveilèd presence ... and our sanctification is not yet complete, is it?

But under the sign of bread, God protects us from his glory, and yet still can get himself into us and take us into himself ... all for our salvation. Only God could make so clever a way, so close a way of being present with us without overpowering us.

Read for yourself the entire discourse of Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum, in the sixth chapter of St John's gospel. Jesus concludes it saying, "My flesh is real food; my blood real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells continually in me and I dwell in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me shall live because of me ... whoever eats this bread shall live for ever." (Jn 6:55-58)

What can you understand of this if you do not accept it with the soul of a child, believing deep down that the God who is love really loves and adores you ... and really wants to make you whole by giving himself to you as food.

In God, what he desires and what he is are the same thing. He desires to be our food. And so he is. And so he shall be, in just a moment, upon that altar table: food for the life of the world.

O taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is; blessed is the man who trusteth in him. (Ps 34:8)


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