Sermon for August 15, 2021 - The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Rev. Isaac P. Martinez

When I first learned in seminary that early Christians were accused of cannibalism by their religious competition in the Roman Empire, I was confused and astounded. How could anyone think that? And then my New Testament professor pointed to today’s Gospel reading to show how it wasn’t such an unthinkable proposition. Writing some 50 years after John, the early church father, Justin Martyr had to vigorously defend Christians against the charge of eating human flesh. If a Roman emperor, like the one Justin Martyr wrote to, had heard only rumors about what these Christians were up to, and then picked up a scroll of John’s gospel, and read Jesus saying “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life,” well, we begin to see why Justin had to write his defense.

Of course, theologians throughout the ages have pointed out that Jesus is being willfully sarcastic here. And I do mean sarcastic, coming from the Greek word for flesh σαρκα. There is a reason the evangelist spends 71 verses in this chapter detailing the miracle of Jesus feeding the crowd and then explaining and debating it with his disciples and his fellow rabbis. The power he demonstrates in turning five loaves and two fish into a feast is divine. But what does it mean? And why does Jesus have this power?

Since the beginning, God has desired that we humans have eternal and abundant life. That is what Hebrew scripture teaches us. But even manna, that miraculous bread from heaven falling like dew in a desert, could not convince us. So God sent prophets, and still we humans didn’t listen. And then God came Himself in a body, in flesh, in σαρκα to show us, to teach us, to die for us, and to rise again for us. And all Jesus asks in return is for us to abide with him—to trust in him so fully and completely that it is as if we are feeding on his very body.

But while we shouldn’t take this passage literally, it’s not quite right to say Jesus is speaking metaphorically or even symbolically. Rather, we have to interpret this passage spiritually, from a Christian persepctive. 

But what does it mean to spiritually eat of this true food and drink? Well, when I speak of something being spiritual, I don’t mean it is only emotional or mental, though it does have those aspects. No, like Jesus, a spiritual interpretation unites the seen and the unseen, the abstract and the concrete, the symbol and the symbolized. It connects a physical object, or posture, or action with an internal motivation aimed at belief in our One, Holy, and Living God. Thus, to feed on Jesus’s flesh and blood means to approach our incarnate God with our own bodies—in our prayers, in our service and justice-seeking, and especially in our Eucharistic worship—with faith that She is right there, abiding with us and loving us to the end.

That, my friends, is why your leaders here at St. Paul’s have been so dissatisfied with what I call our Zoom exile and why, despite the uncertainty posed by the Delta variant, we are still planning and working towards regathering physically and safely, for fellowship, for formation, and above all, for Eucharist.

We can be grateful that our nearly 18 months of primarily online worship taught us important lessons about accessibility. Most importantly, it gave us a way to connect when safety from a novel virus was of the utmost importance. But if I may be so bold, Zoom church is like the manna that the Israelites ate to stay alive in the wilderness. It may have been miraculous. But like manna, virtual worship is not the true bread of life. This—being here, in person, in this assembly, singing, hearing each other, coming to this table and taking this bread—this is where Jesus promises to abide. 

Up to now, I have been talking about the conditional clause implicit in this passage. If you eat of Jesus, the living bread, then what? What is the result? Eternal life, Jesus tells us. And just as we need to interpret eating of Jesus’s flesh and blood spiritually, we also need to understand that when Jesus speaks of having eternal life, he doesn’t just mean a possible afterlife, but rather something we can holistically experience, body and soul, in this life. But how?

In a 1992 essay written during the height of another viral crisis, in this case, AIDS, Episcopal priest and college chaplain, William Coats, theologized that people living with AIDS could re-convict the church of the transformative power of the resurrection on this side of death. He writes:

We measure time in terms of duration, the long span of our age until death. But if time is duration, then time is simply a measure of quantity; there are so many years allotted to us, and we mark them as we go. But if someone has a fatal disease, let us say AIDS, and will die within a short span, then time cannot be durative. Life is lived with death as a certain boundary. The choice then becomes how to live. Indeed time is now qualitative, because one lives intensely, purposefully; one makes the most out of life, precisely because life and time is no longer durative. Yet what happens to a person with AIDS is no more than what happens to everyone, save for the matter of time. The person with AIDS differs from the rest not in kind but in degree. We are all going to die. In reality, the illusion is that time is duration and that life is forever…Only when time is compressed, only when we live with the clear understanding of our mortality, do we really live. We can live only when we know we are to die. The great shift is from living time as duration to living intentionally without time…[Early Christians] lived knowing they were mortal. They also, however, lived without the fear of death. How does that happen? [Well] if death is conquered, then every human experience of affliction which is but a sign of death and decay is now at the same time a potential instrument of transformation. It becomes the means itself of living and showing the glory of God. For if death has been conquered then affliction, though a sign that we all will die, is also a sign that we all shall live even and especially in and through our affliction. Only the resurrection can guarantee that.

Beloved, if there is one thing this COVID pandemic has taught us it’s that we do not have as much control over our lives as we have been conditioned to think we do. None of us can extend our lives by a single second. But what we can control is our perspective. If we can shift our understanding and live each moment, no matter the quantity, fully, openly, and lovingly, then we will prove the truth of the resurrection. We will have eternal, abundant life now and in the world to come. May it be so. Amen.