Proper 15 -- I
Kings 2: 10–12; 3: 3–14; Psalm 34: 9-14; Ephesians
5: 15-20; John 6: 51-58
A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania on Sunday, August 16, 2015.
“THE EUCHARIST:
LIVING IN TWO WORLDS”
(Texts: I
Kings 2: 10–12; 3: 3–14 & John 6: 51-58)
Imagine a drawing consisting of two
circles, which overlap one another. (OK,
if it helps you to visualize what I have in mind, it looks like the symbol for
a well-known credit card.)
The one circle represents the world
that we live in, day by day.
The other circle represents the
world which is eternal, that world in which God dwells -- in other words,
eternity.
The place where the two worlds, the
two circles, overlap is the place where we live our lives with God: We are citizens of this present, everyday
world, but we are also citizens of God’s kingdom, a kingdom which has broken
into the world we have been born into.
The holy meal of the Eucharist is a
place where we concretely experience both worlds, at the same time.
To get to the place of understanding
how this works, permit me to trace the idea a bit.
The world we have been born into has
had a beginning at some point, and that same world will have an ending. Again, we must say, “At some point,” for none
of us knows God’s plan for the ending, even as we cannot be sure of the exact
timing of its beginning.[1]
And yet, there is the world of
eternity, where time as we know it does not exist. This is the world of the timeless time of
God, sometimes known by a Greek name: Kairos.
We enter this world at birth and
begin our journey through life. At some
point, known to God, our life in this life will end.
At our baptisms, we are claimed by
God as His own, unique and dearly loved child.
Baptism is God’s action in claiming us, not our action in saving
ourselves. In a very real sense, our
baptism constitutes our “spiritual birthday”. Our baptisms begin the journey of
life in which this everyday world meets God’s eternal world, and the fruits of
baptism create an indelible mark on the soul which will last through all
eternity.
At the same time, one of the guarantees
of Jesus’ resurrection is that, once this life is over and through, we will
live for ever, as the Lord tells us when He says, “Whoever believes has eternal
life.” (John 6: 47, heard in last week’s gospel reading).
At various times, God has broken into
this world in some concrete, noticeable way.
One example would be God’s provision of manna, the bread that fell
from the sky in order to feed God’s
people during their wanderings in the Sinai Desert, as they may their way from
bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land.
The Lord mentions the giving of manna in last week’s gospel reading.
Another way that God has broken into
this world is by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who left heaven
and the presence of His heavenly Father to take on our humanity, being born of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. We call this
process by which God took on humanity the Incarnation. God has come in the person of Jesus Christ,
and by His coming, He has opened the doors to the eternal world of God in way
previously unknown.
The Lord has left for us a tangible
expression of His love for us in the holy meal we call the Eucharist, or the
Last Supper, or the Holy Communion. In
today’s gospel reading, the Lord says, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you
eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,[2]
you have no life in you. Whoever feeds
on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on
the last day. (John 6: 53b – 54)
In the Eucharist, heaven meets
earth. The tangible elements of bread
and of wine are the concrete expressions of eternity: “This is my Body, this is my Blood,” the Lord
said. And because of Jesus’ rising from
the dead, they are the guarantee that that same Lord Jesus can assure us of our
place in eternity.
The
holy meal of the Eucharist is meant to assure us, to feed us with the Lord’s
own body and blood, and to empower us to live the holy life that our baptisms
call us to live.
King Solomon prayed to God for
wisdom. May we, like him, wisely discern
God’s presence, breaking into our everyday lives, transforming everyday demands
and tasks, and fitting us for God’s kingdom.
May the sacred meal we share with God and with one another strengthen us
for service to God and to others.
AMEN.
[1] If science is right, and the earth is
billions and billions of years old, then what must that say about the God who
surely created that world and everything in it?
If the conclusions of science are more or less correct, then that
creator God must be an awesome God, whose ability to create something over a
span of so many eons of time is matched – on a small scale – with an infinite
and penetrating love for each individual human being. But, I risk digressing from the thrust of the
thoughts I wish to develop here.
[2] As we remarked last week, Jesus’ description
of eating His flesh and His blood, which appear more than once in chapter six
of the Fourth Gospel, are as close as we come in John’s gospel account to a
description of the Eucharist. In chapter
thirteen, John tells us about the Last Supper, relating Jesus’ washing of the
feet of His disciples. But John, unlike
the other three gospel writers, does not tell us about the institution of the
Lord’s Supper.
