The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
Lately, I have been reading several books by James Martin, a member of the Society of Jesus and a popular author on the topic of faith. He describes a distinctly Jesuit method of contemplative prayer, a way of reading scripture that involves putting one's self in the story. It relies quite heavily on the imagination, as the reader places him or herself into the role of disciple, prophet, Jesus, or fellow villager, and when effective, it can lead to a new level of insight and revelation. When not so effective, it can just leave one feeling silly. I have a friend, himself a Benedictine monastic of some 25 years, who said to me that he could never be a Jesuit, because he wasn't creative enough. So it was with some trepidation that I tried this method on today's Gospel.
Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
I cannot imagine what my reaction would have been, had I been standing there that day, some 2000 years ago, and heard Jesus utter these words. I would hope that I would have been a perfect disciple, would have understood instantly, would have accepted his words without question and looked on, secure, maybe smug in my all-trusting knowledge, as the other villagers questioned and sneered.
However, I think it is much more likely, knowing how my brain works toward rational explanation, that I would have been one of the villagers who, looking upon this man whom I had known since birth, with whom I had played in the fields as a child, whose parents were Mary, the sweet gentle woman with the sad eyes, and Joseph, the hardworking carpenter who loved all his sons equally, despite the murmurings about betrothal dates and births that surrounded talk of this oldest one, Jesus- I think that daily familiarity with all of this , I would have been among the grumblers, the ones who suspected that this Jesus was putting on airs, or, worse, fully off his rocker.
It is so much easier, after all, from the perspective of lazy intellect, to assume that the thing which cannot be comprehended easily, or at all, is the product of a mistake on the part of the one who said it, rather than a radical shifting of the world.
At the end of the second World War, looking out over a world that had been a witness to evil on a scale never before considered, whole populations decimated by hatred, generations of young men lost to battle, a German theologian said, “What this world needs is liturgy and community.”
By liturgy, I think that theologian meant reverence such as that experienced in holy worship, a sense of the holy in otherwise everyday actions, a manifestation of God and our love of God in the physical.
By community, I think he meant a means by which we could reflect God’s love in the faces of each other. We have, in our readings today, in graceful simplicity, both.
Liturgy- St. Athanasius said that God became man so that man might become a god, and we experience this most literally in our Eucharistic feast. With the statement “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus transformed the eating and drinking of physical food for nourishment of our bodies into a spiritual communion with him, and a nourishing of our souls.
As for community, well, Paul’s words to the Ephesians are an instruction manual of how men can be Godlike to one another.
“Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors," Paul said, "for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
To extract the essence of this would be to say: Be Christlike to one another, make every thought, every action, an act of worship.
These words are so easy to hear, in this gorgeous, holy place, surrounded by the familiar trappings and faces of our faith, but something happens when we cross the threshold, and go out into the world. Somehow, in the (admittedly rather long) distance between this altar and the cathedral door, the values of our secular world creep back into the most well meaning heart. Individual struggle takes over, fear of not having enough to take care of ourselves and our families takes hold, concern about mortgages and 401(k)s and health insurance – not that these things aren’t important, they are, but we cannot let them take the place of God, become idols to us, so that the face of our fellow man is obscured by fear of scarcity. Because Jesus offers us abundance, simply, almost unbelievably, when he says to us: I am the bread of life.
With this bread, none shall hunger, and none shall thirst.
