2008 May 24/25 Joan Mooney Body and Blood of Christ

Some years ago I was involved in organizing the music for some children preparing for First Eucharist. We celebrated the Communion, and were preparing for the party. One of the children, a boy, came up to me and said, ‘That blood tasted nice.’ I was rather taken aback and could only reply blandly, ‘Was it?’

 

This comment of the child is an example of a literalist view of the sacrament, which was of course reflecting the emphasis of the instruction at that time – 20 years ago. For the literalists it is easy – the words say, ‘This is my body; this is my blood.’ And this is what it means – flesh, and blood. If we are going to be literalists, then we are stuck with a slightly cannibalistic flavour, which is obviously abhorrent.

 

What, then, can Jesus mean when he says,

 

‘The person who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will live forever’?

 

This is a mysterious claim of Jesus. To interpret his words for our own time we have to go to the poets and philosophers of today, because poets and philosophers and scientists have insight, and therefore wisdom – some of them. They probe below the surface of things and words and can help to shed some light.

 

On the bulletin we have a poem by Wendell Berry, a contemporary American poet, farmer and environmentalist. He says – …….

          

                        There is nothing to eat,

                           seek it where you will,

                              but the body of the Lord

                       The blessed plants

                          and the sea, yield it

                                 to the imagination

                     intact.

 

He is saying that whatever we eat, we are eating the body of the lord. So the body of Christ is in the grains and fruits that come from the earth, and in the fish that the sea yields. This echoes Genesis,

 

         ‘While the earth remains – seed –time and harvest.’

 

As long as the earth exists we will be planting seed and harvesting grain – unless we destroy the earth.

 

The photograph shows the shore of Thursday Island and the waters of the Torres Strait. TI is the fishing capital of Australia, and for thousands of years these waters have fed the peoples of the Torres Strait. I was up there last year on the trail of my ancestors. My father was baptized in a little Church overlooking these waters, and I was struck while  there by the connection between the waters of baptism and the waters of the Torres Strait and the Eucharistic fish which the waters yield up. In the early Church the fish was always a symbol of Jesus. There is a story about Jesus after his resurrection. The disciples were on the Lake of Tiberias in a boat, fishing. They came in to the shore, and there was Jesus on the shore.   He had lit a fire and cooked a fish, which he served with bread.

 

The plants and the sea give us much more than physical sustenance. Notice how Berry refers to the ‘blessed ‘plants. For the Aboriginal and Torres ST people the land and the sea have always been ‘blessed’, spiritual entities which feed the soul as well as the body. The English poet William Wordsworth, writing in the C19, has a similar understanding in the presence of nature –

 

                                                             I have felt

        A presence that disturbs me with the joy

        Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime,

             …………………………

       A motion and a spirit that impels

      All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

      And rolls through all things.

 

And who among us has not been likewise refreshed, soothed, healed by the bread of nature, the food that the waters and plants yield up to us?

 

There is yet a deeper aspect to this food which is at once the body of the lord and the produce of the earth.

 

Christian de Quincey, a contemporary philosopher, proposes that the universe teems with consciousness through and through.

 

 ‘Matter itself tingles with the spark of spirit, and therefore nature, in all its forms and glory, is sacred to its deepest roots.’

 

Therefore when we eat the bread and drink the wine we are being infused with the spirit of God, with the outpouring of consciousness.

 

The other mysterious claim in Jesus’ statement is – for ever. And again, what can he possibly mean? Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, asks the same question in his poem, ‘And How Long?’

 

      What does it mean to say ‘for ever’?

 

He sought out knowledgeable priests, but they knew very little. The medical men likewise had no clue. He went to the crematorium, to those who burn corpses.  They offered to burn him; that was all they knew. Finally he went to the dead. He says,

 

            I never saw people so happy

 

The dead answered him, between drinks;

 

     ‘Get yourself a good woman

      and give up this nonsense.’

 

 

 

 But obviously, our span of life in this current existence is not eternal. All that lives, dies. John Eccles, a distinguished Australian neuro-scientist and Nobel prize winner, saw it as a mystery how so many diverse events in the brain are united in the conscious experience of the individual. He came to the conclusion that there is a soul, and thus the possibility of an afterlife. Science, then, is agreeing with Jesus that we may live forever.

 

The Eucharist began in the context of a meal. And we have the vestiges of that first Eucharistic meal in our celebration today. We have bread and wine and water. We call this meal Communion. So much food eaten today is, as they say, ‘food to go’ or ‘food on the run.’ But food, to be fully satisfying, is eaten with and shared among others. Jamie Oliver, one of our celebrity chefs, writes,

 

 ‘To me the dining table is a sanctuary, a place to talk and make plans.’

 

His use of the word sanctuary is significant –a sanctuary is a holy, a blessed place, a place where we feel secure. Best of all is a meal which we ourselves prepare and then share, as Jesus did for the disciples. So I have baked some bread to share with you today. This eucharist, eating the bread and drinking the wine, tightens the bonds that join us to one another, and encourages us to share our resources, our time, ourselves, with others.

 

Science, too, reveals the interconnectedness of all matter and consciousness in the universe. So when we say, ‘This is my body…. It is ourselves, it is Jesus, it is, in a mysterious way, all beings to whom we are referring. As St Paul says,

 

‘All of you are Christ’s body, and each one is part of it.’

 

Teilhard de Chardin, the great French philosopher and scientist, expands on these words of St Paul:

 

It is impossible to love Christ without loving others. And it is impossible to love others without moving closer to Christ. This has always been manifested, in the interior lives of the saints, by an overflowing love for everything, which carries in itself a germ of eternal life.

 

In the words of our communion song –

 

               This is my body

               This is the temple of God

               This is my heart

               This the altar of God

 

May we enjoy, as we share together, this eucharistic meal.