A Eucharistic Homily (Tangentially Related)

I don’t know about y’all, but yesterday it wasn’t long into the morning before I found myself painfully aware of how most of my days are unconsciously structured around a regular desire for food. Indeed, with the Ash Wednesday fast, I became increasingly aware of not only how important the intake of food is to the simple preservation and proper functioning of life, but how much our creaturely drive to live is tied up with a concurrent desire simply to eat. I suppose that at some basic animal level, the intensity and immediacy of our desire for the regular intake of food is bound up with this innate simultaneous desire to live and live richly (for as my wife’s spice rack so nicely illustrates, rarely are we satisfied merely to eat). In fact, hungry and newly conscious of this desire as I was, though it may just have been brain-starved delirium, I found myself momentarily transported to some distant Saturday afternoon in my youth where I first watched that 1968 musical remake of Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist, Oliver! Resounding in my head and musically syncopated with the rumblings of my stomach were those melodious words Oliver and the young orphan boy’s sang at top volume:
“Food, glorious food!
What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more -
That's all that we live for
Why should we be fated to
Do nothing but brood
On food,
Magical food,
Wonderful food,
Marvelous food,
Fabulous food”

Of course it is our human desire for food which stands in the background of our Gospel lesson for today. As Jesus prepares to teach in the synagogue in Capernaum, the people whom he had miraculously fed the previous day return, apparently seeking seconds, and having gone so far as to cross the Sea of Galilee in pursuit of this promising, albeit curious, meal ticket. They had been quite impressed with yesterday’s performance and presumably thought this prophet from Nazareth, this supplier of bread in abundance, might just be the answer to their socio-economic woes. Yet Jesus, both sensing their motives and aware of their deeper hunger responds, "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal."

Not sure this was the answer they had in mind, the people persist, asking Jesus to perform a sign mirroring Moses’ calling down manna from heaven in the wilderness. “Yeah, yeah, Jesus, food that endures to eternal life. But how about we talk this over after another one of your tasty Mosaic lunches?” …It’s startling to see just how much our natural cravings can blunt our sense of the truly important.

Jesus, however, not to be distracted, moves to remind the people that even the bread which Moses called down from heaven was given to those who, if they recalled, all eventually died nevertheless. For, hadn’t Moses said, “[God] humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD?” Stomachs growling, the people, it seems, are nonplussed.

Then, with unfathomable patience and love, Jesus counters their request for a meager and transitory meal with an even better offer; indeed, the greatest offer of all: a bread given from the Father in heaven that gives real life to the world. “I am the bread of life,” he says. “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; …the bread …which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." Despite the shock on their faces he continues, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."

The story our Gospel writer tells is one which reminds us in Trinitarian fashion of our truest and deepest need, the real object of our creaturely hunger and desire. Beyond our various appetites for mere food or status or stuff, natural though they may be, Jesus makes clear that it is only our consumption of him, made present for us in the Eucharistic meal, wherein the satisfaction of our real hunger may be met; that feeding on Jesus’ flesh and blood made possible in our celebration of Eucharist, which fulfills our most basic of creaturely desires, the desire to live and live richly. Our Gospel lesson teaches us that it is Jesus for whom we truly crave, and that, by feeding on him in the bread and wine, our desire to live, our most basic creaturely hungers are satisfied. It is by feeding on Jesus in this meal, for example, that our hunger for relationship and community is most fully met, as Paul tells the Corinthians of how we are united to Jesus and each other thereby. It is in this meal that our longing for intimacy is fully realized, depicted in Revelation as the wedding feast celebrating our new union with the Lamb who was slain. It is in this meal, that our desire to live and live richly, indeed, eternally!, a desire made significantly manifest in our simple desire for daily food, wherein our longing for nourishment and life may be realized. Oh that we would hunger and seek after him, Christ made present in the Eucharistic meal, with the vigor in which we pursue for our daily meals! Oh that it was in reference to Eucharist that we found ourselves overwhelmed with song:
“Food, glorious food!
What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more -
That's all that we live for
Wonderful food,
Marvelous food,
Fabulous food”

Amen.

Deuteronomy 8:2-3
Revelation 19:1-2a, 4-9
1 Corinthians 10:1-4, 16-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-29
John 6:47-58