"Breadmastide" - Chew on This

"I am the living 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 forever" (John 51a, 58b).

You know how we always talk about our celebration of the church year is divided into liturgical seasons, and our most important feast days are actually celebrated over several weeks, like Christmastide and Eastertide….Well, we’re in the middle of a special season that comes around only once every three years in our lectionary. It’s not something you’ll find in the official calendar; it’s a season sometimes dreaded by those of us who have to preach…This is the season of Breadmastide—the five Sundays at the end of summer in lectionary year B when the Gospel reading for every Sunday has Jesus talking about bread. (1) Jesus feeds 5000 with two loaves of bread. (2) Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (3) Jesus again says, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread of heaven so that you may eat of it and not die.” (4—today) Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. (5) Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

Five weeks of Breadmastide…that’s a lot of repetition…there must be something important we’re supposed to learn from it. One thing I know about bread is that it’s plain, sort of every-day. But maybe that’s part of what we’re to find from these readings. Theologian and preacher Will Willimon puts it this way:

What is your image of Jesus? For some of us, Jesus is the bleeding body hanging on a cross. He just hangs there. For others of us, he is the one who sits up on high, God enthroned in heaven. Today I want you to think of Jesus in the way he urges here—as bread. He is that bread that satisfies you when nothing else can. You chew on him, bit by bit, take your time, and savor each morsel. It is not dramatic. Just life giving. Take time to enjoy him, to let him become part of your life and thereby give you life. Sometimes we speak of the dramatic incursions of God among us, those striking, life-changing moments when it is as if God has invaded your world, swept over you, and grasped you with intensity. But today, on his summer Sunday, Jesus bids us to think of him as bread, as a meal, as that daily, life-giving, sustaining presence that keeps us going.

Out of these five weeks, the reading this week is the strangeest, and just how very strange it is, is hidden from us by time and translation. By time, because we can hear Jesus’ words and give a glossed-over explanation that he’s talking about the Eucharist. By translation, because we don’t see in English that, when the crowd argues about the meaning, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”, Jesus doubles down on his reply. He switches the verb, and when he says the second time, “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,” he doesn’t say “eat,” he says “gnaw on, munch, chew, crunch.” “Unless you gnaw on my flesh you will not have eternal life…”

Jesus’ listeners that day were Jews in the Temple at Capernaum; the dietary laws about not eating any meat that still had blood in it—about not drinking blood in any possible way—were among the most ingrained in their identity and law. This was one of their most fundamental taboos. They would have heard in Jesus’ words a direct relationship to a story about David that is told twice in the Old Testament, in 2nd Samuel and 1st Chronicles. David was waging a battle against the Philistines, and cried out in thirst, “O if only someone would get me a drink of water from the well at Bethlehem.” Three of his warriors heard it, broke through enemy lines, and carried water back to David. But David refused to drink it, saying, “Is this water not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?” He refused to benefit from their sacrifice; to do that would be the equivalent of drinking their blood. In contrast, Jesus is saying, that his hearers should and must benefit from his sacrifice, they (and we) must drink of the blood he shed. Jesus bled and died for our salvation—we must accept his offering if we are to know eternal life.

Some of the earliest Christian documents that we have—Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians, written around 55 AD, and the first church instruction manual, the Didache, written between 50 and 100 AD, have descriptions of celebrating the Eucharist using Jesus’ words of institution: “this is my body…this is my blood.” Whether daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, Christians of all varieties have since the very beginning insisted that receiving the bread and wine, using these words of Jesus, must be an integral part of what it means to follow Jesus. The Eucharist, along with Baptism, are the Sacraments (outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace) instituted by Jesus that define active participation in the Episcopal church. The Eucharist is not magic, however—it is not a means of grace that works apart from faith. An Episcopal priest cannot celebrate the Eucharist alone, there must be at least one other person present, because it is a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” that is offered with the priest but also by the community, and in community…in communion.

As inheritors of the Anglican tradition, we believe that Jesus is truly present with us as we celebrate together—but we don’t claim to be able to declare just exactly how, leaving room for each person to discern and wonder on the mystery. And I have to say, I personally think that God is much more interested in the change that Jesus’ presence causes to take place in us, rather than in the exact details of any change to the bread and wine on the altar. When we receive his body and blood, Jesus grace-fully invites us to participate in his life story. We participate with him in sharing his life with everyone, sitting as he did at the table with outcasts and sinners—sitting even with those who would betray and deny him—sitting even with us. We participate with him in giving his life for everyone, humbly submitting our wills to God’s will in service to an un-deserving and yet still beloved world. And as the Holy Spirit gives us hope and assurance of Jesus’ return, we participate with him in his resurrection to eternal and abundant life, and we are motivated and renewed for hopeful, watchful service until that great day.

This is not just a memorial of a long-ago first century meal, or convoluted theology that may or may not be interesting to you—it is, literally, a matter of life and death. Jesus said to them, “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.” To receive Communion—to chew on Jesus’ body and blood—to digest the Word made flesh—is to surrender our lives and our wills to the story of Jesus. It is to hand over our life, as Jesus did, to lose our lives as Jesus did, to die to ourselves, and find our lives with Him in the true life of God. As we consume Jesus, as we dwell in him and he dwells in us, we become his body in the world. In Romans and 1st Corinthians, Paul proclaims that’s what we are: the church is the very body of Christ—Jesus is the head and we are the various members. Our faith, our worship, our discipleship, must be so much more than belief and intellect. Jesus, the source of our salvation, is scandalously carnal—Jesus was and is in the world, literally meaty, and we are instructed to gnaw on him. The Word of God came to us as Jesus, flesh and blood, eating and drinking, hanging around with all the wrong people and challenging earthly and ecclesiastical authority, and suffering and bleeding and dying for it—for us. Conquering all earthly authority and power, even death, Jesus rose to life again, and now Jesus offers himself to us anew each week, that we might be joined to him in our very flesh and blood and bone. Jesus’ demands that we consume him, and let him consume us, that we digest the Word and let him flow through our veins with every beat of our hearts. We must partake of Jesus’ blood—we must drink deeply of his sacrifice for our salvation, and then with thankfulness find ourselves filled with his passion, and then offer and sacrifice ourselves.

My prayer for us this week is that we will be able to fill ourselves full with the Word in all these weeks of Breadmastide, that we’ll chew on the Word of God thoughtfully and with care and devotion, and find deep, life-giving, world-saving nourishment with Jesus as the daily bread we have been given, and that by this, Jesus will live in us, and through us.