Sunday, August 16, 2015

Pentecost 12, Year B (2015)

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.