I receive. Even when I can’t

Thursday of the

Third Week of Easter

April 30th

READING: John 6: 44-51

‘No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.”  Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

So, if I may add to the stunned-mullet expressions on the faces of the crowd (John 6: 6:24), what is this “living bread”? With two thousand years collective insight and a few decades of my own experience I would say there’s some link between this saying and the Eucharistic meal – but what?

So many questions: how does eating this sacrament nurture our spiritual life? What do we do with the command to eat when the government (for good reason) tells us we can’t (do we join those alleged Christians who have decided that gathering in the name of Jesus to spread a fatal virus is a good idea?). How do we eat living bread when we can’t?

In hazarding some ideas I make no claim to wisdom, insight, authority. Some experience, I guess, but experience is so, well, experiential, so subjective. I know of people who for decades have “eaten” in the sacramental act of communion, and for them it remains “meh.” I had a vicar once who made it quite clear that the sermon was the thing, and the silly queuing-and-eating business was a waste of liturgical time.

Whereas I can hear the most bleugh sermon, tolerate the most banal liturgy, sing the most vacuous hymns/songs, but then reach out my hands to receive the elements of communion and, well, whoopy! I hope someone slips me communion when I’m getting ready to die. If I have a “getting ready” phase. And if I don’t die in a lockdown, I guess.

But God and the Living Bread God gives is [sic: not “are”] bigger even than that, as Monseigneur Quixote reminded some of us in the book and film that bear his name. Remember Monseigneur Quixote? Deranged, dying, the old, dying priest wanders off one night, delirious. In a dark chapel, he sleep-celebrates Mass, with no bread, no wine. 

Solemnly he communicates himself, and then his travelling companion, the old, hardened Marxist-atheist mayor, Sancho, who has slipped in to join him. The pair share one of the holiest communions I have witnessed in art or reality. So much holiness, so much living bread, so much comes down from heaven. And of course the atheistic, Marxist mayor receives (because the meal of Jesus should always welcome the stranger), and of course no he doesn’t believe.

But it’s not about us believing – as I’ve said several times now. Human, scarred, fallible, holy Graham Greene saw that, too, when he reworked Cervantes and wrote Monseigneur Quixote. It’s about God believing. Believing in us, within us, despite us. Becoming living bread for us, and offering God-made-flesh to nurture us, despite us. And our job? To reach out our hands and believe: yes, Lord, I receive. Even when I can’t.