[Sermon composed for the Sunday broadcast at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ (https://www.stmarysphoenix.org/online) for Sunday, August 2, 2020, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Growing up the beginning of August was called Lammas, a term familiar to all my Church of England friends and relatives, but not so much any of the rest of Protestant New Brunswick. It is an old term, a concept that the Anglicans carried forward with them in time. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon Hlaf-mas which means “Loaf Mass”, the formal Ecclesiastical thanksgiving for the beginning of the Harvest Season. Being the fortieth day from the solstice, it was a big deal for the pagan Celts as well, whose festival to Lugh, the chief of their gods, was celebrated around the same time as Lughnasadh. The idea here is that it is a turn of the season, where the wild growth uptick of spring through midsummer hits it end and the slow spiral down toward the equinox and All Hallows’ is consumed with preparing for the long dark of winter.
Sustenance is important and is never far from our thoughts and underpins many of our actions and anxieties. Those of us who are a bit older may recall a slang term for money was bread. Even now the person or people in the household who are responsible for its income are breadwinners. Even those with celiac disease or gluten sensitivities seek out bread (and have helped us think beyond wheat for staple crops). Bread has been called the “Staff of Life” by anthropologists and home economists alike. In the Book of Sirach, we are told “The necessities of life are water, bread, and clothing, and also a house to assure privacy.”[1]
Today’s Gospel[2]shows that bread figures into the Lord’s work among us. In fact, bread is not featured just here but in many places throughout the Gospels and in other places in the Scriptures. Here, Our Lord is confronted with a very large crowd who has hungered to hear what He had to say. They ignored their own comfort and sustenance to hear the words of Life itself. Jesus looked on them and felt great compassion, so rather than send them away and deprive them of the Life-giving words He offered, He instead took what little there was at hand and provided abundantly for their physical need as they slaked their spiritual need.
We really should not be surprised at this, for did He not say He Himself was the Bread of Life? We do not hear this in St. Matthew’s Gospel, but in St. John’s Gospel we get a more detailed teaching from Our Lord following this miracle. Jesus after feeding them was confronted by the same crowd, possibly swollen with a few others who had their ear to the ground. At this moment, perceiving that they saw in Him physical security,[3]He took the opportunity to guide them into a deeper truth, something they missed from the previous day.
This teaching is one of the foundations of universal Christian orthodoxy. “I am the Bread of Life,”[4]Jesus said, “The bread that comes down from heaven.”[5] The implication here is that Jesus and what He has to offer is of basic importance; that is, without Him there is no life. Also, He just did not pop up out of nowhere. The assertion that He “came down from heaven” is a clear indicator to everyone listening to Him that He was no simple human-derived prophet spouting philosophical musings but that He came directly from the throne of God. This was the authority behind the statement, and a difficult one for His audience to hear.
If He had left it at that, His listeners would have had enough to wrestle with for quite some time, but Jesus further stirs the pot when He says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”[6]He had already stated that He was an improvement on the manna in the wilderness,[7]that His mission was of Divine origin, that His message was life-giving, but was He content to leave it at that? No, He did not! Beyond the implication that He was to provide them all life, He stated that in order to do so they had to eat this Bread.
Now, at first, they could possibly take this as an allegory. Imagine the inner dialogue:
“Okay, what’s He saying here? Um, yeah, His words are bread to us, after all, is it not written that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God?[8] Er, okay, via a prophet, we can accept that…that whole ‘from heaven’ bit, though, was that just Him underlining his point? A bit excessive, but okay, I guess He feels strongly about it…”
Well, that inner dialogue went totally outer dialogue upon the next statement when Jesus stated this bread was His flesh, and that,
“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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever”[9]
Later on in the chapter we learn that Jesus lost a few followers over this. After all, in the words of the Apostles, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”[10] Here, however, Our Lord tied quite a few concepts together. First, what He offers is life. Second, He offers Himself as a sacrifice to redeem us. Third, to complete the sacrifice we must partake in it.
Earlier in St. John’s Gospel, St. John the Forerunner called Our Lord the Lamb of God.[11] This was no cutesy nickname for a distant cousin, this was the Forerunner stating in no uncertain terms that the ultimate Passover sacrifice had appeared. Among Israelite sacrifices, some were not consumed, but the Passover sacrifice absolutely had to be eaten in its entirety if at all possible and no leftovers were permitted. Because Jesus came to redeem us from Sin and Death, we need to partake in Him, make Him part of us, to share in His victory over them. First we partake in that sacrifice in our baptisms, where we unite ourselves to His death, which destroyed Death, and His resurrection, which gives us Life.[12] Second, we partake in His flesh and blood in the Holy Sacrifice at the altar, where the Holy Spirit makes the bread and the wine the true body and blood of Jesus, and where we every chance we can eat His flesh and drink His blood so we may have Life within us.
In this time when we think we have been separated from the Sacraments we must take heart. For those of us baptized, let us be glad that we have taken part in the sacrificial Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that through Him we have died to Sin and risen to Life. For us waiting to be baptized, take heart as this is a time of preparation, to learn what this means for you or for your children whom you seek to baptize. For us who are baptized but have not for some time partaken of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, that Holy Passover by which we strengthen ourselves and further take into ourselves the true Bread of Life, take heart. For having taken Him in before you still have Him within you, and with Him you can work toward conforming yourself to His image.[13] There will come a time when services will resume and the Sacrament offered in person. What joy we will have on that day, as we have prepared for weeks and months to receive the life-giving presence of the Lord. For He is our true bread and gives us life, not the physical security we crave, but the eternal joy of His everlasting presence.
Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us.
[1] Sir. 29.21
[2] Mt. 14.13-21
[3] Jn. 6.26
[4] Jn. 6.35, 6.48
[5] Jn. 6.41, 6.50, 6.51, 6.58
[6] Jn. 6.51
[7] Jn. 6.49
[8] Mt. 4.4, Dt. 8.3
[9] Jn. 6.53-58
[10] Jn. 6.60
[11] Jn. 1.29b
[12] 1 Pet. 3.21, Gal. 3.27
[13] Rom. 8.29, 12.2
