13 Pentecost Cycle B proper 16 August 23,2015
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18 Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20 John 6:56-69
For five Sundays we have been reading from the sixth chapter of John on the bread of heaven discourse. I guess the people who made the assigned readings figured that in late summer the preacher would be gone on vacation for three or four of the five Sundays and so would only be required to address the bread of heaven discourse once or twice. I, who am driven by the endless meanings of everything have been trying to present various meanings that are present in the bread of heaven discourse.
When Jesus said "Eat my flesh and drink my blood" we are told that some responded to this by saying, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" And then we are told that "many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
This section of John Gospel involves the Gospel writer placing the Eucharistic disagreements in the church back into the narrative of Jesus. The Gospel writer was acknowledging that some people had a problem with the Eucharistic liturgy, particularly the party of the literalists. The preachers of the community from which the Gospel of John derived were aware that members of their community were offended by the literal meaning of the words about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus.
This turning back and no longer walking with Jesus because of literalism may be something which happens more commonly in our modern scientific era. Modern science has been great and the achievements because of the scientific method have created the industrial revolution and the technological revolution and the high-tech revolution. The scientific method has been so successful it has been intimidating for people who know that important true meanings in their lives are more than simply "believing their eyes" and following only the naive realism of commonsense observation. Even before the age of science, the commonsense view of life was present to create doubt and skepticism about other ways of coming to meaningful truths.
The literalists make into a superior and exclusive truth that something is only meaningful and therefore true, if and only if it can be empirically verified, that is, tested with all of the current methods of commonsense. There is no physical way in which one can verify that one has actually partaken of the flesh and blood of Jesus and therefore it is silly to even imply the truth of saying such a thing and so there is good reason to disassociate from such foolishness. There is both scientific literalism and ecclesiastical literalism which limit the meanings of the truth of actual human experiences.
When Jesus said "Eat my flesh and drink my blood" we are told that some responded to this by saying, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" And then we are told that "many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
This section of John Gospel involves the Gospel writer placing the Eucharistic disagreements in the church back into the narrative of Jesus. The Gospel writer was acknowledging that some people had a problem with the Eucharistic liturgy, particularly the party of the literalists. The preachers of the community from which the Gospel of John derived were aware that members of their community were offended by the literal meaning of the words about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus.
This turning back and no longer walking with Jesus because of literalism may be something which happens more commonly in our modern scientific era. Modern science has been great and the achievements because of the scientific method have created the industrial revolution and the technological revolution and the high-tech revolution. The scientific method has been so successful it has been intimidating for people who know that important true meanings in their lives are more than simply "believing their eyes" and following only the naive realism of commonsense observation. Even before the age of science, the commonsense view of life was present to create doubt and skepticism about other ways of coming to meaningful truths.
The literalists make into a superior and exclusive truth that something is only meaningful and therefore true, if and only if it can be empirically verified, that is, tested with all of the current methods of commonsense. There is no physical way in which one can verify that one has actually partaken of the flesh and blood of Jesus and therefore it is silly to even imply the truth of saying such a thing and so there is good reason to disassociate from such foolishness. There is both scientific literalism and ecclesiastical literalism which limit the meanings of the truth of actual human experiences.
Literalism has been problematic for Christians as well who have disagreed about how Christ is present in the bread and the wine at Holy Eucharist. Let us count the theological positions. Mysterious presence, transubstantial presence, real presence, consubstantial presence, receptionism, symbolic presence, spiritual presence, sacramental presence and even more.
I would suggest that Eucharistic presence has been treated often just like the Bible; the wrong things has been defended in the wrong way and so confusion has ensued and dismissal of Eucharistic experience has happened.
I think that one of ways in which one can find true meanings of the Eucharist is to understand the reality of what I would call the artistic sublime presence.
If one takes the variety of people who attend a classical music concert, one might find spouses dragged there kicking and screaming and not finding truth or beauty in the experience but only an occasion for sleeping discreetly under the guise of meditation until one gets whip lash from being wakened suddenly (a warning to my meditating sermon listeners). But at each concerts there are people who are enthralled and can actually be transported into an combination of experiential feelings when the conditions of ecstasy are evoked. We call this experience, the experience of the sublime and those who have this experience know both its meaning and its truth. These experiences change one's life. They make one behave and act differently. And if one makes the mistake of gushing about such experience of ecstasy to the person who does not identify, it is literally the experience of casting one's pearl before the swine. People who do not identify with sublime truth will literally trample your swooning heart into the ground or if they are polite they will walk away and roll their eyes at your brand of craziness.
It is true that lots of people do not "get" the sublime presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And each person does not get the "sublime" presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the same way each time, since we are literally a differently constituted person each time we come to receive the Eucharist. Liturgy is a multi-media human experiential construct of the fact that we live and move and have our being in Word. Word ability is able to join with the aesthetic nuances of music sung and played, poetry in prose and rhyme, thinking and teaching, and textiles and colors and the context of pageantry to create the conditions for the sublime to be known. It can be a highly complex liturgy of many ministers in magnificent beautiful sacred space or it can be a simple camp side Eucharist at the seaside or in the woods. No matter what the setting or elements, the church for 2000 years have found the event of sublime presence of Christ in continuing the tradition of gathering to comprise the event of Holy Eucharist. These events are causally connected with Jesus of Nazareth when he walked this earth and also connected with his post-resurrection appearances. The poignant experience of the lingering and recurring sense of the presence of Christ brought the church to use literal language to emphasize that it was really, Real.
The ancient church was so certain about Christ's presence that they believed it to be like they had literally consumed the very essence of the life of Christ. And because we are so empirically, physically and seeing inclined, the best way to say that something was real and true was to say it was physically true. We use physicality today to mark something that we believe to heighten experiential truth value. A soldier may read a letter from a distant spouse or lover and say, "it was like you were here with me." The experience was so palpitating that it had a metaphorical equality with physical presence.
I believe that the physicality metaphor of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus was simply the extreme and exaggerated language of the early church saying and celebrating, "Wow, something happened here. Did you sense that?" And in the confirmation of the fellowship, the truth and meaning of the continuing presence of Christ got re-confirmed again and again." But not everyone got it. Many people are not in the place to receive it. So what do they do? They in their honesty may give up seeking to know and find the Eucharistic presence and choose to believe only their eyes and keep a skeptical distance from the Christian love feast. Because the literalists do not get it or understand Eucharistic presence, we don't stop convening the Holy Eucharist. Even as all may not appreciate the occasion of the sublime in music or art, we don't stop doing art or music. The sublime presence is there in music or art whether we get it or not.
Today we keep doing the Eucharist as an invitation for people to find particular presence of Christ within the context of fellowship and friendship. We keep doing Eucharist as an invitation for people to learn to open themselves up to fuller dimensions of truth and beautiful meanings in the events of the sublime. The Eucharist invites us to the truths of believing more than our eyes in the event of the sublime.
I speak today about the Eucharist not because I want to offer any judgment about how you might be experiencing it. As a privileged celebrant at the Eucharist, I can only tell you it is new and different each time I say it and in each new occasion. And I don't think I will ever understand it, because the meaning and the truth of the Eucharistic presence of Christ is a sublime experience beyond my ability to say what it is.
For today, I simply offer to us that the Eucharist is an invitation to awaken our wonder capacity for the sublime. Be open, be vulnerable, be in childlike wonder today as the presence of Christ becomes physical too. Why, and how is it physical? Because it happens to us in our bodies, the physical homes of the sublime presence of Christ. And by happening to us and in us it can change us physically, mentally and spiritually. And that is quite a substantial presence, the presence of the risen Christ. Amen.
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