Bread of Life (John 6)

     “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” From the Gospel according to John, chapter 6, verse 58.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     We are all familiar with bread, of course, homely, comforting, ordinary, nourishing bread, a part of meals and snacks, in kitchens and shops and restaurants, on lunch and dinner tables and so on and on. Bread is everywhere, and is so common we hardly think about it. When I was a boy, my grandmother, and my mother made bread, and they were good at it, a skill which I never mastered. I remember asking my grandmother once how she measured the ingredients. “Oh,” she said, “a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” These days I use a bread-making machine, which works wonderfully, but only when I measure things exactly according to the recipes. But however we make it, we call bread “the staff of life” and so it has been for thousands of years. And come to think of it, in this time of transition, parish-making is something like bread making: a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and no one has figured out exactly what the recipe should be. But the ordinariness of the process shouldn’t discourage us, since it is that very ordinariness that Our Lord uses to bring the divine presence to us.

     Into this environment of ordinariness, of daily bread that everyone knows and uses, comes Jesus with his extraordinary claim: “I am the bread of life!” What are his hearers, and we, to make of a claim like this? It is at least surprising, it is certainly confusing, and to some people, it is really outrageous. And, according to today’s reading, people react to the statement rather strongly. Jesus’s hearers react strongly to his very unusual statements, as we would if we heard anybody making such remarks. As the Gospel says, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’” Jesus, of course, is using bread as a symbol or image of divine life, connecting his hearers and us to something divine by using bread, something earthly and ordinary.

     “But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?’” In other words, by complaining among themselves, by giving themselves reasons not to pay attention to the message coming to them from outside their own inward-looking circle, by passing around their own opinions and ideas, the disciples are never going to hear anything unfamiliar, and are never going to hear the message from Jesus that will free them from their self-perpetuating complaints. They will not be able to see the “Son of Man ascending” if they don’t turn away from their own preoccupations, and allow Jesus to teach them.

     “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” We know about the manna in the desert, which God provided for the Hebrews during their travels in Sinai, on their way to the Promised Land. Manna is apparently a real, natural substance, made by insects, which exists even today in the deserts, and it is understandable that people would experience it as coming from God, as indeed the whole of Creation comes from God. We can think of it as a kind of bread, truly a “staff of life” to the Hebrews travelling through the desert. But it was not “the bread that comes down from heaven” that Jesus is talking about.

     The people listening to Jesus would know about the manna, and they would also know about the bread used in the Temple, the Bread of the Presence, called the ‘showbread’ in the old translation. It was a perpetual offering, on a golden altar dedicated to it, and always in the presence of God. It was changed once a week, and the bread being changed out was consumed by the priests. It was the only offering not burned in the Temple, but it was eaten by the priests once a week. We can think of it as a kind of communion, in which the priests took into themselves the holiness of the bread, made holy by its nearness to God in the Temple. Jesus knows about this, and identifies himself with the Bread of the Presence, and the Temple priesthood, as we know from the Letter to the Hebrews. Our liturgy of bread and wine clearly recalls this Temple liturgy. Jesus applies its meaning to himself, and makes it available to us, in making himself present to us, as God made himself present to the priests in the Temple.

     In the prayer the Our Father, we pray for “our daily bread.” This has an ordinary daily meaning of course, in which we ask God for what we need from day to day, bread and everything else. But there is a mysterious word in the original Greek version of the prayer, which no one has ever convincingly proved actually means “daily.” The word is ‘epiousios’ and is a very rare word, which, when we break it down, means something like ‘super-essential’ or ‘super-substantial.’ So when we pray for our daily bread, we are not praying merely for ordinary daily needs, but also for super-essential bread, the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of Life.

     Our Eucharist is a celebration of the Bread of Life, the Bread of Heaven. In it we make present the manna in the desert, the Bread of the Presence in the Temple, and Our Lord himself, the living bread that came down from heaven. We conclude, as Simon Peter does when he says to Jesus, that “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” If we, like the disciples, can let go of our worrying, we will experience what Simon Peter does, when he says that Jesus is the Holy One of God. Then we will “see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before.” Then the Bread of Life will be real to us, and we will know, as Jesus says, that “the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

    

    

      

Assumption (Luke 1)

     “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 1, verses 48 and 49.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Decades ago, in my parish in Toronto, a priest began his homily for this feast, by saying, “People who have problems with the Assumption of Mary make three false assumptions!” I don’t remember any more of the sermon than that; I don’t recall the “three false assumptions”, but, whatever they were, they didn’t detract from the splendor of the occasion, or from the veneration that the congregation accorded to Mary.

     The special place of Mary in Scripture and tradition is well-attested. And it’s her place in Scripture that I’m going to talk about tonight.

     Today’s Gospel, which is the psalm-like text we call the Magnificat, is placed between Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, and the birth of John the Baptist. It would make sense to include the visit to Elizabeth in today’s Gospel, because the Magnificat, in the text as we have it, is really a continuation of the conversation between Mary and Elizabeth. The Magnificat is a reply to, and an expansion of, the words of Elizabeth. And Elizabeth’s words continue the revelation in Luke’s Gospel of the role and meaning of Mary in the history of salvation, and Mary herself adds to that revelation.

     "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” says Elizabeth.  The blessedness of Mary is intimately connected to that of her son. The one cannot be separated from the other. Blessing, of course, is divine goodwill, or grace. We recall the greeting of the angel Gabriel to Mary, even earlier in the chapter, “Greetings, favored one!” or “Hail, full of grace,” as the old translation says. This is far more than a casual expression, a polite noise, which we may perceive as even more polite because an angel is condescending to address a human. “Favored one” or “full of grace” is a title, and meant to be understood as such. These words associate the blessedness, the grace-filled state of Mary with the many references to the blessings of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, beginning with material blessings of long life, family, crops, herds and wealth and including the later, deeper understanding of blessedness as wisdom, righteousness and peace. Wisdom, righteousness and peace in the Hebrew Scriptures are marks of the coming Messianic age. Blessedness means nearness to God and all that flows from that. When the angel addresses Mary as “favored” or “graced” he is associating her with all the blessings of God, past and future, especially with the blessings of the promised Messianic age. Elizabeth confirms this when she proclaims, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” This word “blessed” is not mere complimentary decoration around an encounter between two women, but is a theological statement about the nature of Mary and her child; the Evangelist is making it clear that Mary has a central, vital role in the history of salvation, a role as great as, or greater than, the roles of all the prophets and personalities in the Hebrew Scriptures before her. As Elizabeth says, “the Mother of my Lord comes to me.”

     Mary’s response to Elizabeth, today’s Gospel reading, has two parts. The first part, verses 46 through 49, records Mary’s reaction to the revelation she has received. The second part, the remainder of the Magnificat, is about God, the “Mighty One” as Mary calls him. She lists some of the Mighty One’s attributes, and summarizes some of his mighty acts in history, including his mighty act in preparing Mary for the birth of the Messiah, the Son of God.

     "My soul magnifies the Lord,” says Mary; other translations say, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” These are not mere words. Her “soul” proclaims the greatness of the Lord. In other words, in her inmost being, her soul, she perceives directly God in his greatness. This is a real experience, a spiritual and psychological event, in which she knows God directly; this knowing she calls “greatness”. The word “greatness” only begins to convey what this experience is like. The next verse does more to convey it: “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Imagine the flash of joy, of wonder and surprise, that she experiences in her awareness of her nearness to God. “Rejoicing” hints at the impact of this awareness. The history of the Church is full of people, men and women, young and old, who have had experiences like this. We know them as “mystics” or “contemplatives” and the lives of some of them have been recorded. And Mary is a model for them all.

     “For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The literal meaning here is easy to understand: a high-status being has decided to confer a favor on a low-status person. (The Mighty One is nothing if not “high status”.). We are all familiar with this kind of behavior. Our society has many high-status individuals who do confer favors on the rest of society, financial and otherwise. We are all impressed by such acts, and are grateful for them, as we should be. But there is more going on in this verse than a mere status-based transaction. The “favor” after all, is nothing less than the spiritual good of the world, the salvation of the human race. It is Mary’s lowliness, that is, her utter lack of concern for worldly status, which has made it possible for the Mighty One to bring the Messiah into the world. The same soul which perceives the greatness of God, perceives the real nature of the salvation he is offering, and makes it possible for that salvation to come into the world. Her “lowliness” is her complete willingness to accept her calling, to make this salvation possible.

     “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” This Biblical injunction is as clear as it can be, and mainstream Christians have been calling Mary blessed ever since she first uttered these words. These words are a clear expression of Mary’s nature and role in the history of salvation. We call her blessed, because her acceptance of her vocation to bring the Messiah, the Son of God, into the world, helped make possible our blessedness, our ability to accept God’s gift of eternal life with him.

     "Assumption” comes from “assumpta” meaning “taken up.” The word and the idea have a long history, but I’m not going to get into a long, technical discussion about this word, and other words for the feast like Dormition and Falling Sleep and all the arguments about just what is meant here. All such discussions would lead us away from what is the main point of this celebration: the central, and pivotal, role of Mary in the history of salvation, and the veneration she deserves. Because Mary is blessed, so are we blessed, and Mary has helped make that blessedness possible.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

    

     

      

Bread of Heaven (John 6)

     “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel of John, chapter 6, verse 35.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     We are all familiar with bread, of course, homely, comforting, ordinary, nourishing bread, a part of meals and snacks, in kitchens and shops and restaurants, on lunch and dinner tables and on and on. Bread is everywhere, and is so common we hardly think about it. When I was a boy, my grandmother, and my mother made bread, and they were good at it, a skill which I never mastered. I remember asking my grandmother once how she measured the ingredients. “Oh,” she said, “a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” These days I use a bread-making machine, which works wonderfully, but only when I measure things exactly according to the recipes. But however we make it, we call bread “the staff of life” and so it has been for thousands of years.

     Into this environment of ordinariness, of daily bread that everyone knows and uses, comes Jesus with his extraordinary claim: “I am the bread of life!” What are his hearers, and we, to make of a claim like this? It is at least surprising, it is certainly confusing, and to some people, it is really outrageous. And, according to today’s reading, people react to the statement rather strongly. “Is not this Jesus…whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Perhaps you’ve noticed that in today’s reading, Jesus doesn’t actually say that he comes down from heaven; he says it in verse 38, which the compilers of our lectionary skipped over when they put together  this reading out of verse 35, and then went straight to verses 41 to 51. In any case, Jesus’s hearers react strongly to his very unusual statements, as we would if we heard anybody making such remarks. In fact, I remember an encounter with a young man I knew years ago. One evening in a café, he said, “I’ve just realized that I’m God!” I was at a loss for words, of course. It soon became clear that he was trying to describe a powerful experience, the kind of experience we call “mystical,” in which God is a perceived, known reality, more than a word or an idea. Jesus is speaking out of that kind of experience, and he describes his experience using bread as a symbol or image of it, connecting his hearers and us to something divine by using bread, something earthly and ordinary.

     “Do not complain among yourselves,” says Jesus. “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father.” In other words, by complaining among ourselves, by giving ourselves reasons not to pay attention to the message coming to us from outside our own inward-looking circle, by passing around our opinions and ideas, we are never going to hear anything unfamiliar, and we are never going to hear the message from Jesus that will free us from our self-perpetuating complaints. “Drawn by the Father” means that we release ourselves from the inward-looking circle, and allow ourselves to be “taught by God,” as Jesus says, quoting Isaiah. The Father is always drawing us toward Jesus. That is why God became incarnate in Jesus: to draw us to himself.

     “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” We know about the manna in the desert, which God provided for the Hebrews during their travels in Sinai, on their way to the Promised Land. Manna is apparently a real, natural substance, made by insects, which exists even today in the deserts, and it is understandable that people would experience it as coming from God, as indeed the whole of Creation comes from God. We can think of it as a kind of bread, truly a “staff of life” to the Hebrews travelling through the desert. But it was not “the bread that comes down from heaven” that Jesus is talking about.

     The people listening to Jesus would know about the manna, and they would also know about the bread used in the Temple, the Bread of the Presence, called the ‘showbread’ in the old translation. It was a perpetual offering, on a golden altar dedicated to it, and always in the presence of God. It was changed once a week, and the bread being changed out was consumed by the priests. It was the only offering not burned in the Temple, but it was eaten by the priests once a week. We can think of it as a kind of communion, in which the priests took into themselves the holiness of the bread, made holy by its nearness to God in the Temple. Jesus knows about this, and identifies himself with the bread and the Temple priesthood, as we know from the Letter to the Hebrews. Our liturgy of the bread and wine clearly recalls this Temple liturgy. Jesus applies its meaning to himself, and makes it available to us, in making himself present to us, as God made himself present to the priests in the Temple.

     In the prayer the Our Father, we pray for “our daily bread.” This has an ordinary daily meaning of course, in which we ask God for what we need from day to day, bread and everything else. But there is a mysterious word in the original Greek version of the prayer, which no one has ever convincingly proved actually means “daily.” The word is ‘epiousios’ and is a very rare word, which, when we break it down, means something like ‘super-essential’ or ‘super-substantial.’ So when we pray for our daily bread, we are not praying merely for ordinary daily needs, but also for super-essential bread, the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of Life.

     Our Eucharist is a celebration of the Bread of Life, the Bread of Heaven. In it we make present the manna in the desert, the Bread of the Presence in the Temple, and Our Lord himself, the living bread that came down from heaven. May we always, as it says in the Prayer Book, “feed on him in our hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.