John 6:51 - 59
There are many pleasures in life -- a
day at the beach, a game of golf with friends, an evening in front of
the fireplace on a cold winter’s day, and of course being with the
person you pledged to spend your life with -- we can all think of our
favorite things. But except for a few psychologically disturbed
individuals, a pleasure that is common to every human being is the
act eating. Some people make a big thing about it, spending hours in
the kitchen and then having a long drawn out supper savoring the food
and wine. Some people on the other hand, are mostly interested in
eating something to turn off the hunger pangs. But in either
extreme, there is pleasure. The pleasure of eating can still be seen
in people who have dementia.
We know why God associates pleasure
with human activities; it’s because he wants to have us pursue
those actions. And the pleasure of eating and drinking are directly
connected to the quality of our lives. You and I Long for those
moments in life when we can lean back and say, “It doesn’t get
any better than this!” Without exception, we say that when we feel
that we are physically and emotionally fulfilled.
Today we hear one of the most
controversial passages in the New Testament, Jesus not only tells us
that we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood, but if we don’t
we can’t have eternal life. And this is from the Gospel of John;
the other three Gospels describe the last supper when Jesus held up
bread and said that it was his body and they were to eat it, and the
wine in the cup was his blood and they were to drink it. Very early
in Christianity many fathers of the Church took Jesus at his word,
and the doctrine of the real presence began to develop. Roman
Catholics along with Eastern Orthodox Christians pretty much stick to
that same idea -- the real presence of Jesus in what appears to be
bread and wine. Most protestant denominations don’t go that far,
but still see something special in their celebrations of the
Eucharist. Many Christians don’t believe the bread and wine become
the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but many Catholics don’t
either, if you believe the polls. And many Catholics who claim to
believe this don’t act as if they do. I think most of us could get
behind the idea that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist, but
why does he insist that we eat his flesh (or as the Greek text says,
“Gnaw on his flesh”) and drink his blood? Some of our Protestant
brothers say that what Jesus means is that we are to become one with
him, and consuming the sacrament, which for them is only a symbol, is
a way of acting out our intention to do so. I think we could agree
with that. But I think the real significance of eating His flesh and
drinking his blood, and we do both whenever we partake of the
Eucharist, even if what we eat appears to be bread, or if what we
drink appears to be wine) is that Jesus wants us to remember that He
is interested in all of us, not just our souls. His flesh and blood
become our flesh and blood, or as Saint Augustine put it, in the case
of the Eucharist we become what we eat. And ultimately the miracle
of the Eucharist is not beyond the powers of the one through whom all
things were made.
If you look at any human being, rich,
poor, sick, healthy, male, female, and I could go on, you find that
we all have a spiritual hunger. Spiritual goes beyond our souls, and
maybe we need a new word. But the point is, as the Buddha recognized
600 years before Christ, human beings are hurting because we are all
bundles of desire that never gets totally satisfied. We desire
material things, we desire comfort, we desire our youth when we are
old a frail; we desire love when we are lonely -- and most of the
rest of our time as well. We want more respect than we get; and even
if we get exactly what we think we want, before the dust settles we
want something else. We seek power, profit, pleasure and prestige,
and it seems as though we can never get enough. And that makes us
miserable. The Buddha's solution was to rid yourself of all desire,
even the desire to continue to exist, and when you reached that
state, you would dissolve into nothingness and finally escape from
the pain of existing. But if you died with even a little desire
left, you would soon be back existing, maybe as a bug or a king, it
didn't matter; you would go through the same process over and over
again, possibly forever.. The Buddha admitted that very few people
could hope to achieve this and initially he did not think women could
free themselves from desire at all -- they would have to wait until
they reincarnated as a man.
I think the Eucharist is Jesus’
answer to that human dilemma. If he gives us himself to become part
of our bodies, souls and minds, to literally become part of us, he is
offering us participation in God himself and all desires are filled.
And that is not dissolving into nothingness, that is eternal life.
You may not feel anything when you partake of the Eucharist, but put
your faith in the promise of Jesus: you have eaten his flesh and
drunk his blood, and you have eternal life.
