Let us Not Be Hard or Sharp Things

We still use elements of the parable every time we use similes, analogies and metaphors, in our own story telling.  We try to highlight a true or surprising or even a hidden quality of something by comparing it to something else that isn’t the same, but has elements in common. It often takes the form “it is like”

 The dawn is like rosy fingers, his habits are like a night owls, wool is like snow, work is like

drowning in paper, love is like a rose or a heart is as cold as ice.

The New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd says of Jesus

“He used metaphor or simile drawn from nature or the common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in the sufficient doubt of its precise application to tease it into active thought”

 How often was Jesus asked? Where is the Kingdom of God? What does it look like? When is it coming?

Can you really answer the unanswerable? Can you describe the indescribable?

But, trying to answer these questions, by “teasing the mind of the listener into active thought” as Dodd suggests, is the heart of all of Jesus’ parables.

What is the Kingdom of Heaven?

“Well, Jesus would say “the Kingdom of Heaven is like”.

Even the Son of God, could say the only thing you could say about the inexpressible transcendence of the Kingdom of Heaven - that it was like something else, more familiar and experienced; leaven, a lamp, a pearl, a hidden treasure, an vineyard, an owner of a vineyard, a forgiving father, a good Samaritan, a mustard seed, a fishing net, and so on.

When is the Kingdom coming? Jesus says, only the Father knows, but it will come unexpected like a thief in the night or like the unannounced return of the master.

Jesus also used the parable to say something about his own mystery; I am like a good shepherd , or like the gate to the sheep fold, I am like a vine, I am the bread of life, I am living water, I am like poured out wine, I am like the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies so as to produce much fruit.

 The common thread of all Gospel Parables is the hidden and multilayered invitation to faith in Jesus, belief in the Good News he preached and the transforming reality of the Kingdom of God, which he himself had ushered in. Of course, they are all one in the same.

Today we hear Jesus teaching the crowd about the coming Kingdom of God, using the parable of the sower who casts seed onto the ground.

The seed is assumed good and the casting is generous. We are told that some seed fell on poor soil and failed to take root. Some fell on marginal soil and was overcome by weeds, and thistles. And some seed fell on good soil where it produces in great abundance. One hundredfold we are told.

Many listening would hear an echo from the book of Ezra

“For just as the farmer sows many seeds upon the ground and plants a multitude of seedlings, not all that have been sown will come upon due season and not all that were planted will take root, so all who have been sown in the world will not be saved”

In an agricultural world, the listeners would get that regardless of the quality of seed and the diligence of the sower, it still did not guarantee a good harvest.  There are other variables and obstacles to overcome.

Some of those listening to Jesus might have then thought to themselves.

The heart is like the land, varied and diverse. Sometimes open and inviting, sometimes stubborn and unforgiving. And like the land the heart, needs to be loved, cared for, cultivated and nurtured. 

But, again like the land, the heart resists and fights back.

“Some have ears, but do not hear and some have eyes but do not see” Jesus said.

 This is the painful mystery of faith.

We can hear but do not recognize the voice. We can see, but only what we (or the world) wants us to see. Untended we lay fallow and prefer being dry and barren to flourishing and fruitfulness.

We ourselves can be the hard and sharp things, obstacles to the harvest.

But, the heart of this parable is not what we are like, but what God is like -

“Thus says the Lord; just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful . . . So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth, shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it”.

 In God’s merciful love the season of planting and harvesting comes around again and again. What seems futile and hopeless will come to pass.

The hard path and the rocky soil will become the furrowed field. The harvest promised will be harvest fulfilled and fulfilled beyond our imagination.
Simply said - what God promises, God will do and the good seed will continue to be sown by he who loves us till the end of time.

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.