One of the funniest Russell Baker columns in the New York Times I remember from years ago was his explaining the best book to take on summer vacation: Marcel Proust’s In Search of Times Past (A la recherche du temps perdu). Baker wrote this column well before the publication of the Harry Potter books, one consisting of 732 pages. Chosen because Proust’s writing goes on forever and would certainly last the reader a whole summer (it took me three months to get through half of it in French), his book is a monumental 3000 page opus, divided into seven or nine books (depending on who publishes them). The act of remembering the past begins when Proust dips a madeleine cookie (something like pound cake in the shape of a sea shell) into a cup of tea. Suddenly, he is transported to his childhood and his aunt’s house, doing the same thing. What is most remarkable about Proust’s writing is his capacity to take a single event — a three hour dinner for example — and create 60-70 pages about it. In one memorable description, one sentences goes on for some three pages. I can’t remember how many words it is — I counted them up once and it was something between 500 and 800 words, but then again, French has so many one and two-letter words.
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John’s Bread of Life discourse does pretty much the same thing on a smaller but much more important scale. This Sunday we hear the last installment of a forty-verse teaching on the significance of the bread that Jesus gives his followers. If there is a sense of déjà vu having heard this morning’s gospel, one is correct. But the teaching also progresses and this morning John’s Jesus gets to the heart of the matter: namely, to eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood, one must also participate in the crucifixion. Indeed, verse 58 of this gospel passage is the crux of the entire teaching in chapter six: The one who eats this bread will live forever.
John’s Jesus goes far beyond the metaphorical interpretation of Passover bread and wine familiar to us from the last supper scenes in the other three gospels. Here, he speaks with shocking literalness of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. (The Greek term is to ‘munch’ on him.) To Christians familiar with the eucharistic rite, this language would have been dramatic; to outsiders it would be completely scandalous.
The place in which Jesus speaks furthers the dissonance between his teaching and those listening. He teaches in the synagogue in Capernium. Speaking words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood would have certainly offended those who lived their lives according to the teachings of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Their way of living was based on maintaining a high level of purity. Eating anything that had shed blood was considered unclean. How could this Jewish teacher then invite people to break with the approved norms in such an offensive way?
No doubt about it — Jesus as we meet him in this gospel is demanding, almost aggressive. He takes on the crowds, and through them attacks their and our ignorance, listlessness and spiritual comfort. He challenges them and us to consider the connections among four things we might not necessarily bring together: Jesus’ passion, bread, life and God.
Once again Jesus says that he is the bread of life. But this time he insists on the sheer physical nature of this bread. It is his flesh — the flesh that will be crucified, the body that will be raised up on the cross. This bread, this flesh, he states, I will give for the world.
And then he talks about his blood that will be shed, the blood that flow from his pierced side. He speaks to us in life and death terms. Terms that shock us into awareness that the meal of which we partake week in and week out is something awesome, beyond our real understanding, but something so necessary to our well-being that its shocking nature sustains us. For the meal of which we partake is the only one that can bring us close to God. Jesus makes clear that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will have eternal life, they will be raised up on the last day; those who eat his flesh and drink his blood abide in him, and he in them.
The idea of abiding in Christ and Christ abiding in us is what gives us life — not just now but always. John’s gospel is fond of the term ‘to abide’; it appears over and over again throughout the gospel. Knowing that through our receiving of the body and blood of Christ we are joined to him and he to us surely is something which sustains us.
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I know that however it is possible, I will want to receive communion up until the very end, even on my deathbed. I will want to be connected with Christ in that intimate way for as long as it is possible, because I have known over the years how the eucharist has sustained me, even through the desert times. I have seen how the familiar eucharistic words — This is my body, this is my blood — reach and touch the dying, even those who are past the point of communication. Even if in great pain, the person seems to relax, having received communion whether it be by actually consuming the bread and wine or a receiving by a simple placing of a drop of Christ’s blood on their lips. There seems to be just that much more serenity in the person’s soul as she or he travels closer to God and eternal life. I pray that in that moment, the dying person knows that Christ dwells in his or her soul and that he or she dwells in Christ and that Christ has come very close.
A couple of years ago, I attended the funeral of the husband of a colleague. We clergy types were seated off to the side of the church and, as things ended up, I was next to the font. When it came time for communion, it was clear that we weren’t going to be able to get up to the altar rail so we passed the paten and then the chalice amongst ourselves. In our neck of the woods, that meant reaching over the font to the next person. Somehow it all made sense and wonderfully so: in the midst of death, there is life. And the life that sustains us is the bread of life and cup of salvation. And how do we get there? Through baptism, expressed through those living waters in which we die to the old to be born anew in Christ, baptism that will carry us to our dying day. My sister priest later commented on how powerful it was to receive communion, her hands outstretched, over the font. It really was.
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What about us? Those of us gathered here this morning are perhaps not physically dying but perhaps there is a part of our lives or souls that is dying…dying to the old, dying to the unhealthy, dying to the familiar. How does partaking of the eucharist bring some life to those desert places in our hearts that are dying? How does partaking of the eucharist sustain the weary body? How does partaking of the eucharist remind us that Christ abides in us and we in Christ? How does partaking of the eucharist bring us hope?
Come, eat of Christ’s flesh and drink of his blood… for those who do so will live for ever for he will abide in us and we in him.
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