Gone too Far Jesus (Proper 16B)

Gone too Far Jesus

Proper 16B
26 August 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

at Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, Oregon

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

When I was a graduate student, I published an article that caught my father-in-law’s attention.  It argued against an idea that he considered a core part of his faith.  He was shocked and surprised.  He came to me, and said, “Tony, now you’ve gone too far!”  

Hearing this, it was my turn to be surprised.  No one in my family had ever used such language with me before.  My parents had always been discussers and arguers, and all opinions, however outrageous, seemed open for discussion.  You just had to be ready to defend them from withering critiques. In our home, there were many differing opinions, some true, some erroneous.  Perhaps no one had the ultimate answer, and so it was important to cherish a diversity of opinions and teachings.  Pluralism was the value.  In my father-in-law’s home, generally there was one truth, one doctrine.  Monism, one-way-only, was the value. So both he and I were in for some intra-familial culture shock.  When he said that to me, I myself thought, “Clark, now you’ve gone too far!”   I was, in my own pluralistic way, just as intolerant as I thought he was being.  We eventually got used to each other, because each of us in our own degrees valued both pluralism and monism.   

Jesus often offended and outraged those about him.  He often heard, “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In Mark 3, Jesus’ family thinks he has gone insane.  When he comes back from his baptism and the 40 day retreat, instead of returning to them as a dutiful son and brother, he begins his wandering ministry.  “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In Matthew 19, Jesus forbids divorce in most if not all circumstances.  His own disciples reply, “Well if that’s the case, it’s better never to have married.”   “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

Several times Jesus’ opponents criticize him for keeping open table fellowship with known sinners, and unclean people.  They blast him for spending all his time with drunks, whores, and traitors.  He replies that God himself is gracious to sinner and righteous alike, and that it is the sick, not the healthy, who need a doctor.  This is the very thing that God wants him to do.  “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In John 8, a crowd tries to stone Jesus to death because he has said that he was older and greater than Abraham.  In John 10, another crowd tries to do the same after he says, “the Father and I are one.”  “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In the passion narratives, Jesus’ accusers tear their hair and rend their clothes, saying “he has blasphemed!”  “Jesus, now you’ve really gone too far!” 

So also in today’s Gospel reading—Jesus says people must eat his body and drink his blood in order to have everlasting life.  Many disciples say, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”   As they leave, never to be seen again, Jesus replies, “Does this offend you? How will you react when you see just who I really am?”  He asks the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”  The best Peter can answer is “And just where else can we go at this point? You’ve already hooked us, and made us think ‘You have the words of eternal life.’”   

All of these stories suggest that there comes a point in all people’s interaction with Jesus where they reach a tipping point, where a single word of action by Jesus is just so outrageous that they can no longer put up with him.  Sometimes, they leave Jesus.  Sometimes, they try or plot to silence him. In the end, it is what nails Jesus to the cross, and kills him.

Modern research, analyzing carefully the various retellings of the Jesus story, has pointed out well that only part of this reflects the historical Jesus before his death, while much reflects the Christ of faith of Jesus’s followers, talking and writing after mature reflection on the Easter events.

It seems clear that Jesus in his earthly life did not have a clear vision of what would happen at Calvary and on Easter Sunday.  His preaching and ministry was focused on God’s Reign, not on himself.  The Romans killed Jesus for insurrection, not blasphemy.  Much of Jesus’ emphasis on his own person in John’s Gospel actually reflects the later insights of the Church.  

That said, the Historical Jesus almost certainly had an increasing sense that the Kingdom of God was breaking into human history in his own person, and that his pursuit of the Kingdom would lead to his own death.  Trusting in God to save his servants and redeem even their deadly sufferings, he persevered and took his challenge to the powers that be to Jerusalem. 

Jesus almost certainly took his practice of open table fellowship with him there, and celebrated one last meal with his close followers at the time of the Passover festival.  Whether at a Passover seder or a last meal the day before, Jesus likely pointed to the usual Passover meal symbols, the “bread of affliction” and the wine of the “cup of blessing,” and gave them new meaning. “This surely will end with my death, with my body over here (pointing to bread of affliction) and my blood over here (pointing to cup of blessing). What I will now suffer is true affliction and true blessing.  Share this bread and wine with me.  Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” 

After the Easter events, this took on completely new meanings, which we have been discussing in homilies with you for the last few weeks. 

This push-the-envelope practice of table fellowship, this personalization of the redemption of Israel, and near insane talk about cannibalism as communion was revolting to the people around Jesus.  And that is the point of the “now you’ve gone too far” Gospel story today. 

These scenes describe a very different world than that portrayed by the Deuteronomist in today’s lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures.  There, the message is not a tipping point that we should let pass.  The message is clear unambiguous decision—“Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve:  Yahweh, or the pagan idols, life or death!”  Exclusion, not inclusion.  Firmness, not open-mindedness.  Joshua is not saying don’t think “now you’ve gone too far.”  He is saying, “Here’s a line—don’t you dare cross it!”

The author here portrays the choice between Yahweh and the pagan gods as a complete dichotomy that ancient Palestinians might not have seen.   Archaeological digs have shown again and again that earliest Yahwism had much in common with Ba'alism, and for many of the people of that early era, the choice was closer to a consideration of a tipping point than the watershed decision portrayed in Joshua.  For many of them, Ba’al (which simply means “Master”) was simply another name for Yahweh.  The most basic original distinction seems to be that while Ba’al was a god of wealth, fertility, and power, Yahweh was the defender of the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the barren.  This one god among many who protected the disadvantaged evolved into the monotheistic creator and Lord over all, the one and only one God who, unlike Baal, defended the weak and forbade human sacrifice.   

The choice for early Palestinians to follow Yahweh and not Ba’al may itself have thus been based on a tipping point: Yahweh as unique was somewhat above the fray of all the conflicting unexplainable forces in their lives, otherwise personified individually by the competing and at times petty deities of the polytheistic pantheon.  A plurality of gods meant that what happened to you could be explained only by recourse to the random struggles between the gods.   Monotheism made room for a natural order in a created universe where cause and effect could in principle at least be reliably determined. 

To be sure, that Yahweh at times would described in distant and at times heart-breaking terms.  Because he could make the poor man rich and the sick person well, he could also be seen as responsible for almost anything previously chalked up to pagan gods, whether good or bad.  Perhaps it was because God rewarded the righteous and pushed the wicked—a view held by the Deuteronomist and Proverbs but denied by the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes.   Prophets tempered this stark view by saying God, “slow to anger and of great kindness,” did not willingly afflict anyone.  

In these stories about Jesus “going too far,” the basic complaint against him is by monists who believe that Jesus is weakening the monotheistic faith by his pluralism and his personalization of God’s redemption.  

The fact is: I remain very much a pluralist.  I love the fact that our scripture is called the Holy Bible, ta biblia ta hagia, which means the Sacred library, the Holy little books, and NOT the ONE, TRUE, HARMONIOUS, AND INFALLIBLE-IN-ALL-ITS-DETAILS BOOK.   

Biblical faith is pluralistic faith.   

I like the fact that we have four gospels, all very much in glorious disharmony and at odds with each other on some very basic points, and that this diversity is the very starting point of our discussions about the historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith.   

 I stand in awe of the glorious doctrine of the Holy Trinity, where the one and only God, monistic by definition, is tempered and modulated by a society of three persons in one being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally dancing and processing, eternally relating, and calling us into the dance.   

 Christian faith is pluralistic faith. 

And I am very, very pleased that today’s gospel tells us to keep an open mind and heart about new things we learn from God.  We must not draw red lines that, once crossed, will force us to say, “Now you’ve gone too far, Jesus.”  oly Trint

I remember my reaction when my children first mentioned around the dinner table, 15 years ago, the need to honor the loving and monogamous relationships of same sex couples by celebrating marriages for them.  It was a few months after our daughter had come out of the closet.  I thought I was being very open minded and liberal by not rejecting her.  But when she talked about same sex marriage, I thought (and probably, alas, said,) “Now you’ve gone too far!”  I felt that holy matrimony was somehow being demeaned and cheapened by spreading it or something like it to what I had been taught all my youth was deficient, unnatural, perverted, and sinful.   But thank God I remained open minded and open hearted.  The wedding of that same daughter to her beloved Paige this summer, that I conducted at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Seattle, was a spiritual high point for my life.  And then General Convention authorized these rites for the whole Church just a couple of weeks later.  Thanks be to God, who moves in wondrous and mysterious ways to bless his children. 

It is important not to forget the value and truth of monism as well.  Without a clear sense of monotheism, of the unity and uniqueness of God, the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation make no sense.   Without a sense of sanctity of matrimony and of the union of two people, of human love, and the importance of exclusive, monogamous, dedicated relationships, marriage of any kind doesn’t make much sense either. 

“Now you’ve gone too far!”  When do you say this to those you love?  When have you said it to God, to Jesus? 

This week in your prayer and quiet time, think about this, and ask whether this is part of a healthy monism or an unhealthy one, and whether you should broaden your mind and open your heart. 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Bread from Heaven (Proper 12B)

Bread from Heaven

Proper 12B
22 July 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

at Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, Oregon

2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The film A River Runs Through It tells the story of Norman Maclean, who grows up in 1920s Montana living with his Scots Presbyterian minister father and brother.  The film opens with the deceivingly simple line, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” 

How possibly can fly fishing and religion be connected?  Most people, I think, find it difficult to see any connection between religion and everyday life.  We generally are conditioned to see faith, holiness, and religion over here—special, sacred, and separate, and everyday life over here, ordinary, profane, and common.  The very word “sacred” means “dedicated or set apart for worship of a deity.”  If something is set apart, that means it isn’t ordinary, it isn’t everyday. 

But what the character Robert Maclean means by this becomes clearer as he tells the story of his family.  Fly fishing on the Blackfoot River is part of the rhythms of the family’s life, where the sons struggle in the shadow of their minister father to find their way of being human, of making something beautiful of their life.  “As for my father,” Maclean says at one point, “I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician, but he certainly believed God could count and that it was only in picking up God’s rhythm were we able to regain power and beauty.  Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word ‘beautiful.’” 

Today’s reading from the Gospel of John tells us a story where the holy and truly unusual intersects with everyday life.  In it, Jesus shows us that God not only can count, but knows also how to multiply.  The “multiplication of the loaves,” where five barley breads and two fish, once blessed by Jesus, feed over 5,000 people, is a story that occurs in all four Gospels.   In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the story demonstrates the power of Jesus and his role as Messiah.   In John, it forms part of that Gospel’s Book of Signs, a recounting of marvelous deeds by Jesus that point beyond themselves to inner, hidden truths about Jesus: turning water into wine shows he is the true Vine, multiplying the loaves shows he is the Bread of Life, curing the man born blind shows he is the Light of the World, and raising Lazarus from the dead shows he is the Life of the world.  The point is that Jesus gives us joy, changes us, nourishes us and sustains us, makes things clear for us, and makes us truly, fully alive. 

Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 here is a sign pointing to and embodying the truth that Jesus is both nourisher and nourishment.    Right after this story, Jesus gives the sermon of the Bread of Life, where he expands of what this sign shows:  “I am the bread of life.  The one who comes to me shall not hunger.  The one who believes in me shall never thirst.  … I am the living bread come down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread shall live forever.  The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.  … Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up at the last day” (John 6: 35-54). 

Where the Synoptics say Jesus took the loaves and fish and “blessed them and gave them” to the people, John alone uses the language, “he gave thanks (eucharistesas) and distributed (diedoken)” them.   Those words link this story to early Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, which, after all, means “Thanksgiving”.

St. Paul, writing about 25 years after the death of Jesus, described the origin of this sacrament in this way:  “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’  For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.   So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.  (1 Corinthians 11:23-27) 

Though Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this same basic story, John, for his part, does not tell of a Eucharistic prayer at the Last Supper.  But that is because the Fourth Gospel removes literal references to sacraments in stories about Jesus and instead talks about their meaning.   Jesus never receives baptism by John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel; instead he works a sign by telling the Samaritan woman her background and offering her the “Living Water,”  mentions birth “by water and by the spirit” to Nicodemus, and has water flow from his pierced side on the Cross. 

Similarly, for John, there is no Eucharistic prayer at the Last Supper, but rather the feeding of the 5,000 points to and embodies the fact that Jesus is the Bread from Heaven, and the bread for which he gives thanks id Jesus made present to us.

The Bread of Life Sermon in John and the Last Supper narratives in Paul and the Synoptics brought the Church early on to recognize the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist celebration and in the Eucharistic elements themselves.   The bread and the wine were thus seen as holy things for people seeking holiness. 

An early Christian hymn by Ephrem of Edessa, writing in a form of Aramaic in the fourth century expresses the wonder and reverence of this belief well: 

Lord, your robe’s the well from which our healing flows.
Just behind this outer layer hides your power.
Spittle from your mouth creates a miracle of light within its clay.

In your bread there blows what no mouth can devour.
In your wine there smoulders what no lips can drink.
Gale and Blaze in bread and wine: unparalleled the miracle we taste.

Coming down to earth, where human beings die,
God created these anew, like Wide-eyed Ones,
mingling Blaze and Gale and making these the mystic content of their dust.

Did the Seraph’s fingers touch the white-hot coal?
Did the Prophet’s mouth do more than touch the same?
No, they grasped it not and he consumed it not. To us are granted both.

Abram offered body-food to spirit-guests.
Angels swallowed meat. The newest proof of power
is that bodies eat and drink the Fire and Wind provided by our Lord.
                                          (tr. Geoffrey Rowell) 

We live today in an age where much of the wonder, awe, and reverence has been removed from life, a world where the realm of the sacred and holy is getting smaller and smaller.  That’s one of the reasons we have difficulty understanding a statement like “in our family, there was not a clear line between religion and fly fishing.” 

But if we are to be fully human, and true to our nature, we must not lose our sense of the holy, our sense of reverence, and our ability to see the holy, to see divinity, in ordinary things of daily life, like bread and wine.

When I hear people mock belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as superstitious “cookie worship,” I question their capacity to wonder or hold anything in awe or reverence.  Part of the problem, of course, is that some people do indeed have superstitious and magical ways of seeing the Eucharist.  “Hocus-pocus” as a way to mock superstition is a corruption of the Latin translation of Jesus’ words when he instituted the Eucharist, “Hoc est corpus meum (This is my body).”   

But some peoples’ bad opinions or misuse of doctrine should not lead us to the opposite error of rejecting true doctrine.  We need to follow here the example of the young Elizabeth I, who affirmed her faith the Real Presence while declining to over-define the matter.  When queried under threat of possible torture or death as a heretic by Queen Mary’s inquisitors about her belief regarding the Eucharistic elements, Elizabeth referred to Jesus’ words “this is my body, this is my blood,” and replied with this quatrain: 

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.
 

Key in experiencing and honoring the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is having a general idea about what a sacrament is.  It is, just as in our Gospel story today, a sign, a symbol, an outward and visible expression of inward, hidden reality.  A symbol does not just point beyond itself to something else; it participates in and embodies the reality to which it points.  It makes the reality it indicates available to us by the very fact that it is there.   It is for this reason that any understanding of the Eucharist that does not encompass a belief in the real presence of Christ is to my mind flawed.  

It is hard to express the reverence and awe I feel at the presence of Christ in the sacrament.  But hymns, like the one of Efrem the Syrian I quoted earlier, manage at times to capture elements of this awe. 
Today’s introit hymn:

“Here our humblest homage pay we,
Here in loving reference bow;
Here for faith’s discernment pray we,
Lest we fail to know You now.
You are here, we ask not how.”

“Life imparting heavenly Manna,
Smitten Rock with streaming side,
Heaven and earth with loud hosanna
Worship You, the Lamb Who died.
Risen, ascended, glorified!”

Another hymn we sing today speaks of how our worship in the sacrament of the Eucharist must fit into a larger sacrament of life for us:  

Draw us in the Spirit’s tether;
For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them:
Alleluya! Alleluya! Touch we now thy garment’s hem.

As the faithful used to gather
In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father
Break the bread and bless the cup,
Alleluya! Alleluya! So knit thou our friendship up.

All our meals and all our living
Make as sacraments of thee,
That by caring, helping, giving,
We may true disciples be.
Alleluya! Alleluya! We will serve thee faithfully.

And simply, in the hymn, “Lord you give the great commission”:  “Lord, you make the common holy, this my body, this my blood.  Let us all, for earth’s true glory, daily lift life heavenward.” 

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask “give us this day our daily bread.”  But this is not simply a prayer for basic physical sustenance.   The words translated by “our daily bread” actually mean something more like “our bread for the morrow,” the bread of the great feast on the Day of the Lord, or “the bread beyond what you meant when you said, ‘man shall not live by bread alone.’”  It is for this reason that the Lord’s Prayer has always been recited as part of the Great Thanksgiving, just before the breaking of the bread. 

Friends, in the coming week, please remember to say the Lord’s Prayer at least once a day.  And when you say the words, “give us this day our daily bread,” think of the Bread of Life, come down from heaven. Think of Christ made present to us in God’s gifts of bread and the wine, at his table of plenty.  And then in your silent time, your private prayers, feed on him in your hearts by faith, and be thankful.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Reverencing the Blessed Sacrament (Mid-Week Reflection)

Ceremonies Reverencing the Holy Sacrament

(Mid-week Reflection) 

Sisters and Brothers at Trinity, 

Some of you have asked about the use of the sanctus bell during the consecration of the Eucharist, as well as some of the small ceremonial practices I use when I celebrate.  Here is a beginning of an answer.  

 St. Paul, writing about 25 years after the death of Jesus, said,

 “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’  For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.   So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.  (1 Corinthians 11:23-27) 

This early Christian saying lies behind the words of institution that are at the heart of the Eucharistic Prayer (the Great Thanksgiving).    Another Christian tradition recorded about 50 years later, takes the thought further: it has Jesus saying,   

“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink” (John 6:53-55).  

 
These sayings brought the Church to recognize the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  In both Eastern and Western traditions, many ceremonial practices resulted that sought to express faith in and reverence for the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament: the use of incense, bells, bowing or quickly kneeling (“genuflecting”), and ensuring that the consecrated elements were consumed reverently and not thrown or washed into the trash or sewer. 

The Western Church much later actually tried to define the method by which the Eucharistic bread and the wine supposedly became the body and blood of Christ:  a mystical miracle where the priest used God’s power to change the elements’ philosophical “substance” (bread-ness and wine-ness) into the blood-ness and body-ness of Divinity Itself: transubstantiation.    Such a definition required that the consecrated elements be treated as if they were God himself, and produced late medieval abuses such as simply observing the Eucharist but not partaking of the bread and wine, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as if it were God.   

The Eastern Church was reluctant to define such a mystery and accept the one-on-one identity of the consecrated elements and the Almighty.  Rather, it was content to simply affirm the Real Presence.  The radical Protestant Reformation reacted against what it saw as Rome’s “idolatry” of worshipping “mere creatures of bread and wine,” and instead focused on other early Christian passages where the Eucharistic Meal was treated as a memorial or remembrance.    

Anglicans remained in the middle (along with Lutherans), and affirmed the Real Presence and called for the reverencing of the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated elements of the sacrament while declining to accept transubstantiation per se, on occasions preferring consubstantiation or transignification.  We have been consistent in viewing the Eucharist as a sacrament where the unseen power of God is made manifest and visible rather than a mere ordinance or memorial.  Many of us have preserved or revived the older traditions expressing reverence for the Blessed Sacrament while not adoring it as such.  That’s where sanctus bells, bowing, and washing of vessels come in.  

In all this, we have followed the lead of the young Elizabeth I, by affirming in faith the Real Presence while ambiguously declining to over-define the matter.  When queried under threat of possible torture or death as a heretic by Queen Mary’s inquisitors about her belief regarding the Eucharistic elements, Elizabeth replied with this quatrain: 

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

Peace. 

--Fr. Tony+