Saturday, May 28, 2016
Corpus Christi ~ May 29, 2016
Sermon for the Sunday after Corpus Christi
Year C ~ May 29, 2016
Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
Give us today our daily Bread
+In
the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
I hope you say this every day – the Our Father several, times a day – as the center of your private
prayers. There are a few things to notice about this petition.
In the first place, it is in the
plural. That is, when I say it, I am praying not just for myself – The
petitions in the Lord’s prayer refer to us,
not to me. Whenever I ask for daily
bread, I am asking not just for myself, but for you, too. For all of us. For all
creation. I ask for daily bread on behalf of ALL, and that God give it to us
together, in common. In fact, in
asking this way I recognize that the only way I CAN receive this gift is in
common with others, unto all creation.
The second observation is more perplexing: in
the original Greek the words our Lord commanded us to say do not include the
word daily, in our usual sense. The
word in Greek
– επιούσιος – is unique, not found
anywhere else in ancient literature. Its meaning is unclear, except that it certainly
does NOT mean “everyday” in the sense of ordinary. It is ironic that the Latin
word St. Jerome used was quotidianus.
It just meant daily, but quotidian has come to mean ordinary,
everyday – even dreaily everyday or
mundane! That has to be just about the
OPPOSITE of supersubstantial, which
is the literal meaning of the Greek.
Literally, it may mean bread that is necessary for life,
but it may also mean bread that is to come. Bread
necessary for life may refer to ordinary, everyday, human life but it may
just as well refer to ultimate, spiritual life. And the bread that is to come – as it is translated in Syriac, the language
closest to the Aramaic Jesus must have spoken – gives it a mystical, apocalyptic flavor.
I kind of like that
interpretation. Give us today our daily
bread, then, is a prayer that today may be the Day of the Lord, that is,
the promised Day of the Coming of the Kingdom. This would make sense, in view of the fact that
the petitions preceding it in the prayer refer to the same End Time (your Kingdom
Come, your will be done on earth as in heaven). The supersubstantial bread, is, then, the food of the Messianic Banquet
– the Bread that is to come. “Let it
be now, today” is what we are asking.
As such, the connection with the
Holy Eucharist is obvious. The manna from heaven, which daily fed the liberated
Hebrew slaves in the wilderness of old, is a figure for the bread that is to come in the Kingdom.
The transfigured Bread that our Lord calls My
Body is the same sign. Whoever eats it lives forever. The Eucharist is the
Kingdom of God come on earth, where God’s will is done on earth as in heaven,
and the so-called daily Bread is
anything but ordinary and quotidian! In the Eucharist, the Day of the Lord is
come, the Bread that is to come is
here.
We call it the Body of Christ, and
with it we receive His Blood. These terms are intentionally outrageous, when
you think about it – especially so in
their original context. An observant Jew would never consume blood, even of those
animals the law permitted to be eaten, let alone human blood. Blood was thought
to be life itself. The altar of God was drenched in sacrificial blood, because
life belongs to God alone. But now Jesus Christ calls the wine His Blood and
commands us to drink it. He invites us to
share His Life.
The Blood of Christ is the Life of
Christ. In drinking it we join in everything that He is. Partaking of Communion
we participate in His Divine Life. He is in the Father and the Father in Him. When
we drink His Blood, He is also in us and we are in Him. Thus we call it Communion – participation in the Divine
life. Our participation is communal, not individual. We eat His Flesh and drink
His Blood together, never separately.
Give US today the bread that is to come. Participating in His
Divine Life, we are freed from the prison of our individuality to become
persons, like the three Divine Persons, gathered around the table of Abraham’s
hospitality in our ikon – the table
that is the Table of the Holy Eucharist, God’s Kingdom come on earth as in
heaven.
ALLELUIA!
YOU GAVE THEM BREAD FROM HEAVEN,
CONTAINING WITHIN ITSELF ALL SWEETNESS.
AMEN, MARANATHA, COME, LORD JESUS!
ALLELUIA!
