Bread of Life; Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ

Bread is a staple for much of the world.  Bread sustains the body and good bread lightens the spirit. We all know that to have homemade bread and wine on the table is a very good thing.

Bread is bread, but it also a process that begins with planting seed, cultivating, harvesting and refining grain.  Bread is brought to life by mixing and kneading by human hands. It becomes itself when baked in an oven. And finally bread is offered up (in communion and fellowship) to family and friends at the table where it is broken, shared and eaten.

 Stretching the metaphor of bread helps reveal the breath and depth of Jesus; planted (so to speak) at the incarnation by the Holy Spirit, cultivated by a life of selfless love for us and obedience to God, harvested and fired through his passion. And forever broken and shared through his resurrection, the Holy Spirit, and the Church, and most significantly in the Eucharist itself.

 In today’s Gospel Jesus uses the rich metaphor of bread to contrasts who God was thought to be and who God is. Jesus contrasts manna (the first bread from heaven) with the Son of Man (who is the true bread from heaven).  Jesus tells the crowd that unlike the manna which sustained life, but could not stop death, true bread from heaven gives eternal life.

And the crowd, cries out - show us a sign. Give us this bread.

 Unlike the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 Jesus doesn't do anything. He does not bring down mana like dew frost. He does not produce loaves out of thin air, his does not turn water. into wine. He says - I am this bread come down from heaven.

We know what Jesus can do. He healed the sick by forgiving sins, he freed the prisoners of suffering. Jesus could certainly produce bread to satisfy hunger, and wine to quench thirst.

He had done it all before.

 But, we also remember the words from scripture - man does not live by bread alone, but only by the word of God, or do not work for food that parishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.

Jesus, the Word of God still hidden, now reveals that this living bread come down from heaven is his flesh, and his blood. What is more, he tells the astounded crowd that unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life.

Standing before the grumbling crowd Jesus is literally offering himself up. The Word of God, is offering his incarnated being, his very real flesh and blood, to be given up and poured out for the life of the world. His life for ours. Not a swap, but consummation. This is how the temporal becomes eternal.

And we are told by the Lord himself that to share in his eternal life we must share in his giving up and out pouring, not by simply believing, but by eating his body and drinking his blood. We must, by his invitation, be radically and forever mingled and mixed, like bread itself.

Jesus tells us that we must eat and drink of his body and blood because he knows that this Eucharistic communion is always mutual, relational and transformative. This is the difference between the old experience of God and the new reality that is God.

Manna was bread, not God. Those who ate manna, did not become manna. Manna did not stop death. There was a separation between God and man which could never be overcome by offering up the first fruits or following the Law.

 But, the incarnation changed everything. Now, Jesus, the giver of the bread of life is the bread of life. He is giver and gift. And in consuming this gifted bread (his body and blood) we ourselves in some real measure become bread.

Whoever eats this body and drinks this blood remains in me and I remain in them, Jesus says.

 And so with Jesus there is no separation. God is no longer somewhere else.  God who is transcendent and unknowable, through the incarnation becomes God with us, and through the Eucharist God, who is still transcendent, still with us, becomes the indwelling God.

This is radically new. This makes all things new.

 Through body and blood. In Truth and Spirit we are forever changed. How can we not be changed. What we eat, at the table of the Lord, does not become us, we become it.

We could truthfully say we are consumed by the body and blood of Christ.

 We become gifted bread; planted in faith and hope, cultivated through discipleship, refined through active love, fired in the Spirit, nourished by the Eucharist.

And in the end we become bread to be broken and shared for, and with, others.

 This is what Jesus is telling the crowd, that it is in the Eucharist that we become Eucharistic, one bread, one body, one Spirit, one life for the salvation of the world.