John 6:41 - 51
My birthday is December 22nd. During the time I was growing up I think I had two or three actual birthday parties where I got to have friends over.. After all, my mother reasoned, why have a party that close to Christmas. I got no sympathy from my dad, whose birthday was December 25. When you are a little kid a birthday party is a big deal. Your friends show up; you usually play a few games, and then the big climax, the highly decorated birthday cake and the singing of the birthday song. You all dig in and maybe have some juice or milk or soda with it. Then maybe another game or two and everyone goes home.
When I was growing up in Montana one of the things that I remember about Sunday Mass was that about a quarter of the congregation would receive communion and then walk out. They didn’t wait for the final prayers or the blessing, just receive and leave. I’m sure they must have had good reasons. But it seemed kind of like going to a birthday party and asking for your piece of cake and then leaving. It would not be considered good form.
Today Jesus continues his dialogue with the Jews and his disciples that we refer to as the Bread of Life discourse. For Catholics and Orthodox, at least, this section of the Gospel of John, which begins with the feeding of the five thousand, followed by Jesus trying to escape the crowds by taking a boat across the lake, then meeting up with the crowd again, where he gives this radical sermon, about how he is the bread of life come down from heaven; unless you eat his body and drink his blood you cannot have life; only those who eat his flesh can have life eternal -- and finally, the Jews who are listening and many of his followers say, “This is a hard saying, who can follow it?” and they leave. The discourse ends when Jesus turns to his apostles and says “Will you also leave?” and Peter says, “You have the words of eternal life; where else would we go?”
Jesus is the bread of life; he gives us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. It is, in a sense, food for the journey, the trip we take between birth and death; like Elijah, who went forty days on the nourishment God provided, we also get the spiritual and indeed physical nourishment to overcome death and live forever. How this happens, I don’t think anyone really knows, but it’s clear that our eating and drinking Jesus is his plan. And the people who receive and walk out of church afterwards are certainly doing part of what Jesus wants. But the covid lockdowns and the suspension of requiring us to fulfill our Sunday obl;igation have done a couple of things that have the potential to change how we look at things. First, it seems like a lot of people are listening not to the bishop reinstating the obligation to attend Mass, but to the exceptions -- if you are ill, if you have a weakened immune system or are elderly or have other risk factors or maybe you are just too anxious. There was a study done recently that said 63% of young Catholics between the ages of 18 and 35 have attended Mass less often than before the pandemic. They make up for it by watching on-line masses and instead of receiving Holy Communion in person, make a spiritual communion. Clearly the message that we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood if we want eternal life is not getting through.
But there is something else here, something that goes way back before Vatican II, perhaps, but is even more obvious today. Holy Communion is meant to be food for the journey for you and I, of course. But Holy Communion is also meant to form the Church. We consume the Body and Blood of Christ in order to become more like him, in order to draw closer to the Father, in order to receive strength to do good and resist evil. But the Church is formed by those who receive the Eucharist. Saint Paul said, “There is one bread, and we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” Saint Augustine echoes this when he says, “If you have received worthily, you are what you have received … though many, you are one body”. The Church is not only some big world - spanning organization; the church is us, here in Saint Mary’s, and it comes about because we partake of the one bread. So when we fail to receive the Eucharist worthily, in the flesh, in the company of our brothers and sisters, we hurt the church; we diminish the body, the Body of Christ.
Perhaps the greatest harm from Covid is the implication that the Eucharist is not necessary, and that we can sit in our living rooms and watch a mass on television and say the spiritual communion prayer and that is sufficient. But to become what we have received we have to receive it; and to build up the Church we have to become one body through the reception of the one body of Jesus.
And you of all people don’t need this reminder; but you must know some people who do. Invite them back. To stay for the cutting of the cake, for the whole birthday party.
