The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, June 6th: Genesis 14:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11-17)

JESUS’ BODY AND BLOOD THE MOST IMPORTANT SACRAMENT

God is a spiritual being. Before God created the natural world, all the beings that existed—God Himself in His triune magnificence, angels, cherubim, seraphim, etc.—were all spiritual beings.

Can you imagine the confusion and apprehension when God starting tinkering with matter? Some of the angels probably said to themselves, “What is He doing?! Why is He messing around with atoms and molecules and energy, rocks and gases and stars? That’s so beneath Him!”

There is no doubt that for a purely spiritual being to dabble in natural, material elements is a big step downward. It would be like an immaculately dressed bride and groom, in their finest wedding gown and tuxedo, running out of the church and splashing around in a big mud puddle. Everyone in attendance surely would be horrified by such undignified behavior. I suspect the heavenly creatures, all those angels, etc., were quite horrified to watch the Almighty, all-powerful God gleefully creating and molding matter into all kinds of shapes and forms. “He’s getting so, um, dirty, playing around with all that…stuff,” they whispered to each other.

To the confusion and chagrin of the pure spirits in Heaven, our God likes to get dirty playing in mud puddles. He created the natural world and called it “good.” (A pronouncement which also must have produced incredulous whispers.)

Then God really embarrassed Himself in the eyes of the pure spirits. Not content to settle for inert forms, such as dirt and water and air, He created living organisms, fully natural but quite alive—plants and fish and birds and all sorts of critters scurrying along the ground. Finally, God selected one specific critter, an oddly shaped ape with very little fur, and breathed into this creature a spirit and soul.

This hybrid, this Frankenstein creation, this first-ever being to combine the natural and the spiritual, must have disappointed the angels. “That’s it?” they said to each other. “That’s the Lord’s crowning achievement? A weak baboon with a big head that He calls ‘man’? Huh, I was expecting something much more dignified and intelligent.”

Despite any angelic confusion and/or disappointment, the fact is, God created mankind as a unique hybrid creature: part natural—flesh and bones and blood; and part spirit—the presence of a genuine soul, self-awareness, free will, the ability to think and pray and enter into a loving relationship with our Creator.

Many people focus on one or the other of these aspects. In our secularized culture, there are those who focus exclusively on the material aspect of life. For these folks, the main goals in life are physical pleasure and comfort, material wealth and acquisition, and personal power and prestige. The spiritual aspect of our lives is ignored, explained away by the highfalutin fiction that our human consciousness, self-awareness, and longing for the transcendent can be explained in purely natural terms: complex brain biochemistry that only APPEARS to be spiritual. These people completely miss out on the reality that our Creator, God Almighty, wants to enter into a loving relationship with us.

On the other hand, some people focus almost exclusively on the spiritual aspect of life. (I say “almost” because even the most spiritual among us would not be around very long if they completely ignored food and shelter and sleep and going to bathroom—all quite necessary physical functions.) These people believe prayer and mediation are the only important aspects of a truly spiritual life. Anything else, anything that smacks of being physical or material, should be avoided.

The first group, the secularists, live their lives similar to sub-human apes: the material, physical aspect of life is all that matters. (And who can deny many of the behaviors we see in our society these days are quite beastly and savage?) The second group, the spiritualists, live their lives as if they were angels: the material, physical aspect of life is to be ignored as something which is profane and dirty and beneath our dignity as beings created in the image of God. (This, by the way, was the basic belief of Gnosticism, a heresy that sprung up in the 1st and 2nd centuries and has found popularity on and off over the years.)

However, Jesus did not agree with either of these views. He offered the hybrid view: humans have been created as both spiritual and material beings, and both aspects of our lives are important. As proof that Jesus holds the hybrid view, we only need to read the Scripture verses for this week, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.

In this week’s second reading, from the first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul describes Jesus instituting the most important of the many sacraments, the Eucharist. At the Last Supper He took elements of the earth, bread and wine, and declared that they are His body and blood. He then instructed His followers to repeat the same ritual often in remembrance of Him.

Sacraments are acts where God reaches down and touches us in our physical, material existence. Sacraments are when the spiritual infuses the material with divine grace. Sacraments are a lot like us: hybrids, which are part spiritual, part material.

Many sincere disciples of Jesus shun anything physical—sacraments, liturgy, vestments, artwork, stained glass windows, ornate architecture—as being beneath the dignity of Almighty God. But Jesus never taught that message. He knows that we are physical beings. He knows we can better comprehend elements that are part of our world: bread, wine, water, oil, word, touch.

The physical world is not evil. The evil is what our sinful hearts prompt us to do while in this physical world. Jesus proves to us that the physical, material aspect of life is good by the very fact that He lowered Himself to take on human flesh at the Incarnation. (Can you imagine what the angels said among themselves when they heard about that plan? “No, say it ain’t so, Gabriel! The Lord is going to do WHAT?!!!”)

This week we celebrate the institution of the most important sacrament of all—Jesus’ body and blood, soul and divinity, offered to us so that we may consume Him physically and be in communion with Him spiritually.

Sacraments are good and holy. The help us to touch the transcendent, spiritual world using elements of the material, natural world. Please don’t lose sight of this. Please don’t take the sacraments for granted. Sacraments are God’s way of meeting us on our level.

©2010