June 19, 2014
This is a homily based on the Scripture readings for Sunday, June 22.
There is so much conversation about newly-released infantryman Bowe Bergdahl because there are so many mixed feelings about him. He’s become a media football. But what intrigued me was the story of how hard it was for him to even make a decision. He was told for five year everything to do: what to eat, when to eat, how to eat. I started wondering what it would be like to eat among my captors. Then I thought of the five prisoners from Guantanamo who were released in exchange for Bergdahl. So many of those prisoners, caught in a legal- and war-time limbo, have even refused to eat. Judges have allowed us to force feed them.
After all, do we not eat best when we feel part of the company and the environment? Think of Thanksgiving or Christmas. And do we not have the most difficult time eating when we feel the environment is hostile or unsure? To take a consumer angle on this, what if friends invite you to a restaurant and, as you go in, you see their kitchen’s sanitation rating is “C” – kind of makes you not hungry, doesn’t it? You feel out-of-sort with the environment.
Being part of the environment of Jesus – we call it the Kingdom of God – is the heart of the Eucharist, which we are celebrating on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. The promises made to ancient Israel, this God who always feeds his people and who have brought food to God as a sign of belonging to God, have now been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” says Jesus. “I am the Bread of the Kingdom, of new life, of the new community that God is forming among humankind.”
But it is St. Paul who catches something of the nature of this community. Is not the bread we eat, he asks, a participation in the Lord? Is not the chalice we drink a participation in his blood? The Eucharist is all about how we belong to Jesus in the most graphic and powerful way – the sacramental symbol is the act of eating! – and therefore how we are part of everything he is, part of his Kingdom and part of his community as well. There is no casual eating of this bread. Jesus says that just as he has life because of his Father, so we have life because of him – a direct dependence, in our very being, on unity with Jesus Christ. He is our life, the Eucharist says. Anything else cannot really feed us.
We are, after all, not captives. We have been freed by the liberating death and resurrection of Jesus. That is what we share in when we eat his sacred Bread and drink his sacred Wine. And as we participate in him, so we participate in each other – as brothers and sisters, joined together in Christ. Just as we cannot casually eat this food without being part of Christ, neither can we casually eat this food without being part of each other – sharing each other’s joys and burdens, pledging ourselves to the same kind of love that Jesus has. It’s way too easy for us to come together and sit in the same space – but not realize the community we are. It’s way too easy for us to come, eat, and leave, but not realize the obligation we have to each other. And we Catholics have to understand this in a new and powerful way. We never eat along in the Kingdom. We eat together in Jesus. We are one in him.
I love it when parents bring their children up for Communion, and the children are just staring at the host, wanting to grab it. That’s how strong the need to participate is. It’s instinctual. That’s the joy we see when children celebrate first Holy Communion. And that’s the life of participation we have been given in the Eucharist by our liberating savior, Jesus.