Bread-Body-Wine-Life Sylvia Crouter: August 20, 2006
Bread…the basic source of nourishment the world over. Bread made from wheat, or from corn, or rye, or barley, or even rice…and for Jesus in the first century, in what we now call the Middle East, bread was the mainstay when that was all you had. If you were lucky you might be able to add lamb, or salt fish, or olives or grapes.
But bread was the mainstay that kept body and soul together, and wine the drink of the people.
This morning we heard Jesus say, “those who eat my flesh, and drink my blood abide in
me and I in them…whoever eats me will live because of me.”
A shocking image! Shocking in 30 CE and shocking in 2006 CE. The early Christians
who used this image were accused of cannibalism. You and I have heard acquaintances
object to the image of eating and drinking flesh and blood. And we have various
comforting words for them: “what Jesus really meant by this”…or, “this is how I
interpret these words”.
But the stark words remain: “whoever eats me will live because of me.”
Years ago when my twin nieces, Effie and Anna, then four or five, were visiting my parents in Cave
Creek Arizona they accompanied their grandparents to the local Episcopal Church. As my elderly and
sedate parents escorted the twins to the communion rail one twin whispered loudly to the other,
“Is this real blood?” The other replied thoughtfully, “Not in this church. They use white wine.”
What was impressive about this response was that the second twin had made a metaphoric transfer:
red wine is like red blood. There was a transfer of meaning from red wine that causes joy, enhanced
life, and power to red blood that courses through our arteries bringing nourishment, the basis of life.
Of course, my little niece didn’t intellectualize this as I have done, but some kind of pre-verbal insight
was there none the less.
Bread, too, is a metaphor for the essence of Jesus as is wine. Bread nourishes and so does Jesus.
He did and does so by his life and teachings, but also by the powerful conduit of God’s Spirit, a spirit
that the historical Jesus unleashed on earth, and by the echo of that spirit in and amongst us today.
Much of religious language is metaphor. Metaphor is from the Greek word metapherein, “to transfer”,
or change.“Meta” involves change and “pherein” is to bear or carry. So a metaphor carries within
itself a change from a literal meaning to a non-literal meaning.
Blood, the human fluid that kept Jesus physically alive, is like red wine that brings joy, fellowship
and life enhancement. Flesh, the body that served Jesus during his lifetime is like bread that is the
basis of life the world over.
Religious language is full of metaphor: bushes that burn but are not consumed like a heart on fire with
a sense of God’s presence; or fire dancing on the heads of Jesus’ followers at Pentecost when they felt
the Holy Spirit within them intoxicating them; like “bread” that appeared one morning on desert
bushes when the starving exodus wanderers were just about ready to pack it in and go back to Egypt
where at least there was plenty of bread!
This sticky bread-like substance was God’s gift through nature, a substance secreted by insects,
but, in the language of faith, it was holy food, manna from heaven. The Israelites ate this bread and
lived to enter the Promised Land. But it was physical nourishment not spiritual nourishment,
and this is what Jesus meant when he said eating the bread of his body was different from “the bread
from heaven your ancestors ate”, and later died. The kind of bread that is Jesus , he said, “ came down
from heaven” but gives you a kind of life that is forever, un-terminated by your physical death.
If you were on your toes this morning, metaphorically, that is you heard Lloyd reading from the Book
of Proverbs. Lady Wisdom, that strange, wise female figure, warned against simple thinking.
She called it immaturity. “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”
To walk in the way of insight is to take literal meaning, unpack it, and see inside its deeper meaning.
To “eat Jesus” , to take Jesus into oneself, is to open oneself to his Spirit, to, as St. Paul wrote,, “put
on the mind of Christ. ”Those long ago followers of whom we are the spiritual descendents took on
the mind of Christ, took it on right from the source, first hand.
Can you imagine being in Jesus’ presence during his lifetime? It wasn’t necessary for him to do
anything spectacular: turn stones into bread or jump from a high place and have angels cushion his
fall. It was only necessary that he be who he was, God’s image among us bearing God’s power, God’s
compassion. We can only imagine what it was like to have his eyes rest on you for just a moment,
the knowing of his glance. Surely, one would feel that one was accepted in all one’s uniqueness, warts
and all.
It is this presence that is the life of Christ Jesus. It is this life that we “eat” (take into ourselves) when
we meditate on his life. It is this life that we accept when we drink wine consecrated in his name.
The blood of his body is transferred metaphorically into his Spirit: the best of wines, premier cru.
So hear again Jesus’ words with immaturity laid aside walking in the way of insight: “Those who eat
my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them… whoever eats me will live because of me.”
The words of the old prayer book invite us “to draw near with faith…devoutly kneeling.” The
experience of eucharist is a “drawing near”. It is nearness to the Holy. It is nearness to one another,
a surrendering of our judgments about one another, an acknowledgement of our oneness in God.
St. Teresa of Avila said that only “by becoming what we eat” can we experience life in full, the eternal life that Jesus gives us at the core of our being.
Amen Proverbs 9: 1-6 John 6: 53-59