In addition to trying to "unlearn" all that I know about a passage of Scripture, another thing that helps me make sense of difficult passages is to look at their context, at the story they are part of, and if necessary at the whole of Scripture. In this case we don't need to look very far: Chapter 6 (the chapter these verses are found in) begins with the incredibly famous feeding of the five thousand. We all remember from Sunday school or from paintings, or songs, that Jesus multiplied two small fish and five loaves of bread and fed with those over five thousand people. Interestingly, the word "bread" shows up 75 times in the New Testament, and of course it is part of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, the "Our Father." If we add to these 75 occurrences all the episodes where Jesus is reported to have sat down to eat, we immediately realize that the actual nourishment of the body is a pretty significant issue in the New Testament, and is often the door to spiritual insights and revelations.
One could argue that in the passage we read this morning Jesus must have talked of a purely spiritual kind of nourishment. However, that is not how early Christians interpreted it. In first Corinthians, Paul describes in some details what scholars call "agape meals", or "Lovefeasts", which was the way in which the Lord's Supper was celebrated by the early Church. In addition to being celebrations of the Christian mystery, those meals were actual meals that nourished people. In fact, one of the main concerns that Paul expresses in that letter is that people of means could afford to come early to those meals, and ended up eating almost everything, leaving little to nothing for the poor who could only show up later because they were working. Paul admonishes his church by saying, referring to the Lord's Supper: "So then, my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat, you should all eat together."
The point I'm getting at, is that the early Church didn't have a rigid separation between the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist and the physical act of eating. Moreover, the Eucharist was a communal event that was supposed to bring together rich and poor, and enabled the latter to get something to eat, probably for the first time that day. If we fast forward to the very end of the Gospel of John, we see Jesus reminding Peter three times to "feed my sheep". Again, I suspect that the feeding he was talking about was as much spiritual as it was physical. I'm very grateful that here at St. Martha's we use real bread to celebrate the Eucharist, and not paper-thin hosts. Not to sound irreverent, but I once heard from someone that it takes more faith to believe that the paper-thin host is actual bread than it takes to believe it's the body of Christ! Jokes aside, sharing a meal is one of the most fundamental, time-honored ways that every culture I know of uses to bring people together. In our Christian language, we could say that whenever we celebrate the Lord's Supper we are kneaded into the body of Christ as one.
Now, if we only had the words of today's Gospel, "I am the bread of life", we might be content to just celebrate the Eucharist. However, these words are sandwiched (pun intended!) between the feeding of the multitudes and the injunction (repeated three times) to "feed my sheep" at the end of the Gospel. And so, as a community we must do that.
I'm sure you all know about the feeding program at the Cathedral. Deacon Nancy plays a key role in it and is there almost every week, and several of our parishioners help with cooking, cleaning up, etc. I asked my spiritual director, Br. James Dowd, whom some of you have met and who is also involved in the program, what I could do. In spite of my Italian heritage, I am not a spectacular cook, and we all know about the "too many cooks in the kitchen". He told me that he grabs something to eat and sits down with the guests to eat and talk with (not to) them, if they feel like it. He emphasized how essential it is that he eats with them, as opposed to simply sitting down and talking with them. I was struck by this, and it made a lot of sense. By not sharing what the others are eating we immediately set ourselves apart as "others". So I went and tried that. I grabbed something to eat and sat down with other people at a table. While eating, we struck up simple conversations. Interestingly, nobody asked me the question I am usually asked, on account of the way I speak: "Where are you from?, often followed by a "No, but where are you really from?" if I don't give a reason for my non-American accent right away. An innocent question. A question, however, that has the ability to other the people that are asked. Interestingly, no one asked that question down at the Cathedral the times I have been there.
I believe that one of the most important things Jesus came to do was (and is!) to bring down walls, barriers that we humans build to separate body from spirit and soul, us from them, poor from rich, and the list goes on. If we want to use fancy theological language, Jesus came to preach a non-dual way of thinking. The divine spark that shines in all of us makes us one with God and one with one another. "Love your neighbor as yourself" does not simply mean as much as yourself, but as if that person were yourself, because in a way she is.
The message I would like to get across today is quite simple. The Eucharist, eating that bread of life that we heard of in today's reading, is a wonderful opportunity that God uses to knead us into one body, Christ's own body. And it does not end on Sunday. As the body of Christ, we respond to God's love by going forth and taking care of the body of Christ, which is everyone. One way of doing that is by providing nourishment, spiritual as well as physical nourishment. These need not be artificially separated. Again, the non-dual thinking mode that Jesus hints at several times.
Making sure our fellow humans are taken care of is one of the ways we respond to the love that flows from God and passes through us on its way back to God. If we open ourselves to truly receive that love, we almost have no choice but to release that love back to the body of Christ and back to God. I am grateful for the example provided by the feeding program at the Cathedral, and I look forward to seeing what shape our response to God's love manifested in the Eucharist that we are about to receive will take as we go forth into the world. Amen.
