Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve
Corpus Christi, May 30, 2024
- Deuteronomy 8:2-3
- 1 Corinthians 11:23-29
- John 6:47-58
The Bread of Life discourse in John 6 has read to me for a long time as a rough draft in need of a good editor. The repetition especially seems like overkill. But by digging a bit more into the context of the Johannine community, I have come to appreciate the motivation for the emphasis. The scholarly consensus is that the community from which the gospel of John came were settled in Ephesus. Ephesus was an important center of pagan worship with a large temple and the ritual that went along with it. The worship of Artemis provided social identity and cohesion. If we were to go back in time and talk to a typical resident of Ephesus, he or she would describe a world in which the pagan gods were higher and more powerful than human beings and held the right to punish or bless. Seeking through ritual sacrifice to appease the gods was a way to earn favor and avoid hardship and pain. Our imaginary Ephesian believed a great chasm is fixed between the realm of the gods and the realm of humans. They believed that we earthly creatures are defined by our deficiencies - we lack immortality, we lack freedom from flesh and pain and death, we lack freedom.
The gods are our idealized selves, the truly free beings who have real power. By sharing in their benevolence we participate in those attributes and can aspire to escape our dreadful enfleshed state and touch the eternal, our true home. Life is about the hope of escape and freedom from limits.
These beliefs are the backdrop to the gospel of John. The gospels' description of the incarnate Son of God is in every way the exact opposite theology of the pagan gods. This deity does not escape flesh, but becomes it, does not find freedom by ascending above us, but by dwelling among us. When the gospel is read as a renunciation of pagan theology by the revelation of the incarnation, it comes alive in a richer way. The Bread of Life repetition serves a rhetorical and catechetical function. The Son of God is not one more addition to the program of sacrifice and appeasement. The Christ event is an utterly original and reorienting revelation of the nature of God in the world and our human vocation. The minds of the new converts needed to be “de-paganized”, programmed as they were to see the world one way, now in Christ it is revealed as something else, with a truth, beauty, and goodness entered into by belief.
How do I become a clean insider so that I may approach the Son of Man? “whoever believes has eternal life”. Christ is not like that.
My social status and sin exclude me from participation in the life offered by Christ… “whoever eats of this bread will live forever…” The Son of God welcomes whoever.
How can I climb up to reach Christ? “This is the bread that comes down from heaven…” The incarnate Christ comes down to us, we do not go up to him.
This life in Jesus is sent down into the Incarnate One to earth; from divinity, for humanity in whom Jesus is the great Reconciling One. The material and the earthly now become the means of embodying and reflecting life eternal now. Jesus’ words and actions set out the contours of the human and divine relationship. We are made participants in the divine life through the initiative of God - not something we ascend to possess, but life that Christ descends to give freely, without respect for the person. “Whoever” stresses the individuality and particularity of God’s gift in Christ; our true identity, our true home is found as we put ourselves inside this word, “whoever”.
The narrative acknowledges the scandal and the stumbling block of believing and receiving: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The scandal is how the life offered is a great equalizer of human worth and value. I cannot increase status or favor or value. The fullness of the divine image is always already present and secured by God and cannot be revoked. In believing, eating, and drinking, we are set into the wondrous glory and limit of being a creature made in the divine image, yet dependent on our creator. Being truly human is cooperation, not competition. To receive this gift is to believe that I am welcomed along with you. The scandal is that I am welcomed no differently, not ever less or more than you.
Christ’s “whoever-ing” of all humanity reveals the essential unity and shared glory of every human person. Even as we differ in gifts, responsibilities, and roles, in Christ we eat and drink from the same gift offered in the same way to each of us. For John and his community, life is not a new legalistic hierarchy of conformity, but a universal invitation of living as brother and sister in Christ.
To the extent that I receive this hospitality in and for me, I am formed to recognize and welcome in my brothers and sisters the same dignity and Christ-indwelt sacredness. This mutual recognition faces difference and conflict in the context of our shared call by Christ and the need of Christ. We express our positions and preserve boundaries and give and receive consequences and solve problems and reach consensus not with the goal of yielding power over the other, but in the assurance that our shared “whoever” is inviolable and that anything that denies or harms our mutual welcome cannot persist in the community.
As enmity, insult, and abuse engulf social discourse, perhaps hearing Saint John’s repetition is necessary. As divisions swirl around us and rivalry would tear at our very humanity, the words of life ring with renewed prophetic hope. To eat and drink and live is to renounce these evil powers and affirm our common dignity.
The Holy Eucharist itself is the eternal now of this common receiving of the one gift of life offered as and by Christ equally with whoever is willing to believe and eat and drink. As we gather as a eucharistic community, we are practicing the reception of one another in the reception of bread and wine. Help us believe in your words, Lord Christ: “Bread of life, living bread, those who eat and drink have eternal life, abide in me, live forever.” Amen.
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