Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
August 19, 2012
Reading I: Proverbs 9:1-6
Responsorial Psalm: 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Reading II: Ephesians 5:15-20
Gospel: John 6:51-58
Jesus said to the crowds:
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them,
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever."
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A Necessary Explanation. The selection for this Sunday's liturgy, the seven verses, 51 to 58, are not part of the original Chapter 6 of John's gospel. Commentators are convinced they have been inserted by a later editor. Unfortunately the editing is clumsy and the fit is far from seamless. Without warning the focus moves off the problem of Jesus claiming to be the bread of life come down from heaven - this Jesus of Nazareth - and moves to a problem that could only be experienced in a community well accustomed to celebrating eucharist: how can this be real, this communion in the body and blood of the Lord by eating the blessed bread and drinking of the cup?
The protagonists of the "argument we had to have" cannot participate in this latter debate for they would have no idea of its context or its meaning. We will therefore shunt them into a siding for this week, and move our scenario two or three generations into the future, to an assembly of christians, perhaps in Ephesus, celebrating their memorial meal on the first day of the week, the day after Shabbat. Among them are some who would be quarreling among themselves: How can this man say we must eat his flesh? It is a preposterous idea.
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There are two statements in response. In the first, the language is severely lacking in that necessary nuance which theology and catechesis have always demanded:
...unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
It is strange and puzzling that these unqualified expressions should have been allowed to remain in the text of John 6, since they do not express accurately or adequately the belief of any christian community. Christians do not eat human flesh or drink human blood. Every explanation of the eucharist will insist that the body of Christ is "eaten" sacramentally, and we "drink" the blood of Christ sacramentally, that is, in a sign, "sub specie sacramenti" , and "per modum sacramenti" as the scholastics would say: under the appearance of sacramental bread and wine after the manner of an effective symbol; "really" - as in a symbol that really, authentically and actually makes present what it symbolises.
Yet as long as these words remain in the text we will continue to be scandalised by them, imagining that the crucial issue is to be found in the "mechanics" of the memorial meal, and this even at the ontological level touched on by the theory of "transsubstantiation" As John Marsh observes, "In the setting provided in the fourth gospel, [this] represents another human escape from the personal demands of Christ." (Saint John, Penguin, 1968. p. 305)
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The second statement goes to the heart of the mystery and might have been enough on its own:
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and [as] I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
Within the metaphorical framework of the whole chapter we focus without hesitation on the mystery of life drawn from the living god and communicated to those who open their hearts to the one he has sent.
Curiosity leads me to speculate on the intentions of the gospel editor. Was it to bring some trouble makers in his community under the challenge of vs 60: This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it? To be confronted with the question puts you under obligation to make up your mind. Will you go away? Is community sharing the issue that will make you turn back? The upshot, however, of this adaptation of the text is that over centuries the focus has been on the "how" - by what miracle - is the bread transformed into flesh, when all the while the focus should have been on accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the one in whom we may share in life given by the Father.
Another possibility comes to mind: I wonder could it be an attempt to draw a parallel with the pagan rituals in which animals were killed to be eaten, participants drinking the blood in sacred rites portraying fellowship with the god. The christian eucharist was such a simple homely celebration that it may have been necessary to insist that it is both equivalent to and superior to those pagan rituals which were common in the Greco-Roman world. Communion in the life of the god is the goal of all such celebrations, but this communion in the body of Christ is the most real of all, even when it is celebrated as a simple family meal . This is real food for the spirit, nourishing eternal life.*
Tony Lawless
* PS I have just read Jerome's comment for the 19th Sunday which seems to get to the heart of the matter. A closing statement reads: Our every thought, word and action is about being an integral part of the body of Christ, of life eternal. "integral part of eternal life" Why, of course, eternal life is the life we live now insofar as we live in Christ, in the spirit, in the dimension we are meant to live in as sketched by Jerome. We do not look forward to eternal life, we flourish now and for ever.