A sermon by Fr. Davenport ©
Church of the Ascension and S. Agnes, Washington, D.C.
2 June 2002
Deuteronomy, 8:2-3, 14-16
I Corinthians, 10:16-17
John, 6:47-58
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Last Sunday, the first reading at mass was the creation story. At the end of every 'day,' God beholds his creation and sees that it is good, indeed very good. Just a few chapters later, however, his vision has changed. "And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth." (Gen 6:12) Man, the finest of his works, had corrupted his creation. God decides, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh [of all men]; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth." (Gen 6:13) God's mighty act of destruction is the flood. God "blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the earth, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air." God, of course, spares the righteous Noah, and all that were with him in the ark. With the waters covering the earth, we have essentially a return to the beginning of Genesis when the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. Through the baptism of the flood, God renews his creation. When the waters subside, God once again blesses his creation and orders his creatures to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He also makes a new covenant with all mankind, and the rainbow is a sign of this covenant. God promises not to send another flood to destroy the earth, and he gives man permission to eat animal flesh, but not with its life, that is we can eat flesh, but not with its blood. The ancients thought that life resided in blood. Drinking blood is strict taboo. It is a violation of civility as well as the Jewish law. In Leviticus, God declares, "If any man of the house of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people." (Lev 17:10)
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." Jesus knew how to annoy an audience. He appears to be dumping the Jewish law, as well as basic rules of human decency. It sounds like cannibalism. Through the ages, these words of our Lord have offended not only non-Christians, but many Christians as well. So many Christians have tried to interpret them in a more respectable way. Yet, it is hard work to make it say something else. "Eat the flesh of the Son of man." A more accurate translation is: "Munch on the flesh." "Chew on the flesh of the Son of man as a cow works its cud." It is amusing that with this verse most biblical literalists decide to find a symbolic meaning. "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." They make a Clintonian argument that 'is' does not mean 'is,' but something else. The false argument is that the bread only symbolically represents Christ's body and the wine only symbolically represents his blood; consequently, the mass can not be a means of eternal life. Those who think that we receive eternal life from faith in Christ, from having a personal relationship with Christ, do not give Jesus' words much heed. They mostly ignore the sixth chapter of John or twist its meaning. They choose not to listen to Jesus because his words are so far beyond conventional thinking. Jesus does not say anything here about being saved and having eternal life through belief in him or faith in him or a relationship with him. That is not what he says. "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." There is nothing about faith. There is nothing about a spiritual relationship with Jesus. There is nothing about our souls. It is much more simple, and more shocking, and more offensive to us. Flesh and blood, human beings, must eat and drink our Lord's body and blood if we want eternal life. "This is not soul communing with soul, it is men feeding upon a man." (1)
Eric Mascall, one of the premier Anglican theologians of the last half century, warns us against the tendency to separate man into soul and body and to assume that only the soul has eternal meaning. The mass is not merely about sanctifying the soul and giving the soul eternal life. The mass is concerned equally with the body. We have to remember that the Jewish tradition understands human beings as 'ensouled' bodies, a material creature into which God had breathed his Spirit; there is no notion of a lower physical nature and a higher spiritual element. In contrast, the Greek tradition understands human beings as embodied souls, as "an immortal soul temporarily condemned to inhabit an alien physical organism." (2) Whereas, the ancient Jews placed equal emphasis upon body and soul. One was inconceivable without the other. Therefore, "when [the Jews] thought of man's final condition, it was in terms of the resurrection of the body rather than of the immortality of the soul." (3) So when Jesus referred to his flesh and blood, he meant all of his human nature, the totality of his person, body and soul.
Unfortunately, our tendency is to think more like the Greeks, to think of the mass merely as spiritual sustenance, as having nothing for the body. Mascall, who was anything but a progressive, trendy theologian, reluctantly points out that the Prayer Book taught this false view. If you have a black pen (especially if it is a black magic marker), please open the '28 Prayer Book to page 293. This section is called the 'Offices of Instruction,' which really is a catechism, that is a series of questions and answers teaching the faith, except here it teaches falsely. If you look about two-thirds down the page, you will come upon this question and answer:
Question. What are the benefits whereof we are partakers in the Lord's Supper? [In other words, what do we get from the mass?]
Answer. The benefits whereof we are [1)] partakers in the Lord's Supper are the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ, as [2)] our bodies are strengthened and refreshed by the Bread and Wine.
WRONG! That is not the catholic faith. Take your black pen and mark out that question and answer - blot it out to the glory of God. We do not believe that nonsense, and we can thank God that the '79 Prayer Book corrected this.
Mascall points out that this question and answer falsely teaches that human beings are made up of two parts: body and soul, each of which needs to be fed. It is true that our bodies need to be fed with food, such as bread and wine, and there are no two foods that give us more pleasure than bread and wine. But the error is the claim that our soul is a purely spiritual thing that needs spiritual things for its food. Matter and spirit are not separate universes. The spirit is fed by matter. The Body and Blood of Christ are not merely spiritual things; they are material things as well. When we receive communion, we receive not just our Lord's spirit, but his whole manhood, which includes his body. When we receive communion, we receive supernatural sustenance for our entire being: body, soul, spirit, mind, personality - everything. The old Prayer Book catechism implies "both an inadequate view of man and an inadequate view of the Eucharist." (4) It is dualism, that is it implies that there is an opposition between spirit and matter. The Good News is that God through the Spirit has brought forth the Word, which has become matter, renewed matter, perfected matter. We receive Christ's Body and Blood, the matter of his resurrected and glorified humanity, and thereby we have union with him, and we have hope of eternal life. Matter communicates eternal life.
Religion is not concerned merely with the soul, or with the spirit, but with all of life. Yet, we try to confine God, God who created all things, and when he appears too close to us, too much part of the ordinary, we may get offended and try to make him less accessible. The ceremonies of today's mass show us just how near he is. For after every mass we carry Jesus home with us, hidden in our hearts, our bellies, our minds, but today after communion we not only carry our Lord in our hearts, our bellies, our minds, but through the aisles, and he will be clearly visible in the monstrance. It reminds us that we should adore Christ wherever he is, and that Christ really is everywhere and in everything, in ourselves, in our families, in our neighbors, in strangers, in enemies. In him we live and move and have our being. God fills all of creation. So in a way, each one of us is a living monstrance, a tabernacle to show forth the living God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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