THE SCANDAL

Jesus said to them,”Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Human One and drink the blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

Just as the living God sent me, and I live because of that, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.
- John 6:53-58

God, how beautiful you are;
how radiant the places you dwell in.
My soul yearns for your presence;
my whole body longs for your light.
Even the wren finds a house
and a sparrow a nest for herself.
Take me home, Lord; guide me
to the place of perfect repose.
Let me feel you always within me;
open my eyes to your love.

Happy are those who trust you
and merge their will in your will.
They let go of all desires,
and give up everything they know,
until they finally enter
the inmost temple of the heart,
where there is no self, no other,
nothing, but only you.
- Psalm 84

Buddha constantly told his disciples that they must never take anybody's teaching, no matter how august, if those teachings did not tally with their own experience. They must never take any doctrine on faith or at second hand. Even his own teachings must be jettisoned if they failed to bring followers to enlightenment. If people relied on an authority figure, they would remain trapped in an inauthentic version of themselves and would never attain the freedom of nibbana.
Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation

At first reading, the gospel lesson from John given for today is repellent. It seems to have no place in a spiritual conversation about contemplative prayer. You may even wonder why I was willing to have it read for today. It is a reference, of course, to the institution of communion or Eucharist, which is so central to the Christian faith and tradition. Communion, described as the breaking of bread, or sharing of a meal is the way in the gospels by which the disciples recognize Jesus after his resurrection. The two followers walking along the road to Emmaus who meet Jesus toward the end of the gospel of Luke hear his wise words and counsel. But they do not recognize him as the risen Christ until he shares a meal with them.

At the end of the gospel of John, several of the disciples have gone fishing. Jesus appears on the shore and instructs them how to cast their nets. When they do so, they catch so many fish they have to drag the net to shore. When they come ashore, Jesus has set a charcoal fire and is cooking fish along with bread. He says to them, “Come and have breakfast.”

Eating blood was forbidden in Jewish law, because it was sacred to God as central to life. Why does Jesus, or the later writers of the gospel, go out of their way to make such a repellent statement about literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood? It is as offensive to us hearing it as it was to those who heard him in the gospel account.

In fact, I have a friend who decided to never take communion again because of the idea, seemingly reinforced by this passage, that communion had its origins in cannibalism. Why would Jesus want to imply a literal eating of his body and drinking of his blood in this sacrament so fundamental to our faith? And why should we even be discussing it?

There is a kind of earthiness about the Bible and the teachings of Jesus that may seem a little inappropriate or even offensive to us in our time. We can say that of course we understand that he really means a spiritual relationship, a way of being in Christ in our hearts, a resting in the presence in meditation. So why does he need to insist on such a crude way of saying that?

Notice that he does not say here that there are certain doctrines we must believe in order to know that relationship. He does not insist that a certain way of thinking is necessary. He does not even talk about a warming of the heart, a feeling of love as the foundation of our relationship with God in Christ.

What really does he mean in insisting that our relationship with Christ is centered in communion or the Eucharist, and to describe that relationship as literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood?

As those of us with Roman Catholic background know especially, in that tradition his words are held to become literally true in the Eucharistic prayer itself – the bread and wine literally are changed into the body and blood of Christ, even though they still are bread and wine. They call it transubstantiation. The Protestant Reformers thought the body and blood of Christ were present alongside the bread and wine during the service. They called it consubstantiation. The great Dutch Roman Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx understands that the bread and wine become symbols of Christ or have the significance of Christ during the service. He called that signification.

I'm sure this all seems dry and dull and something only a theologian could love. But what is Jesus really trying to say here? What does he want us to know about the depth of relationship with God shown to us in Jesus Christ?

The lovely psalm 84 puts our relationship with God poetically.
God, how beautiful you are; My soul yearns for your presence. Let me feel you always within me; open my eyes to your love, in the inmost temple of the heart, where there is no self, no other,nothing, but only you.

I don't think it can be said any more beautifully than that. Our relationship has to be experience, nothing less. Now I know that we don't always feel that way in meditation or perhaps at other times.

What is important is that it has to be our experience, not somebody else's. Whatever our experience is, we are invited to know it in our heart, in our lives, to explore and investigate who Spirit, Christ, Wisdom is in our discernment, guidance, living

And that brings us to the words of Buddha that I think are so useful. There are so many teachers, discarnate entities, gurus, whatever,around, all purportedly giving us special instructions about how to access the divinity and guidance that are essential and fundamental to our life of faith. There are so many of them, as if we couldn't possibly come to faith or trust in God, or access Spirit guidance and support in our lives unless they told us what to do, what to believe, what secret or magic formulae we had to use because we obviously couldn't figure it out for ourselves or on our own.

And that's why I like the advice of Buddha so much that Karen Armstrong summarizes in her wonderful new book, The Great Transformation. As she puts it, he constantly told his disciples that they must never take anybody's teaching, no matter how august, if those teachings did not tally with their own experience. They must never take any doctrine on faith or at second hand. Even his own teachings must be jettisoned if they failed to being followers to enlightenment. If people relied on an authority figure, they would remain trapped in an inauthentic version of themselves and would never attain the freedom of nibbana.

The great good news that Jesus Christ brought is that we can figure it out for ourselves, we can trust our own experience, we can come to God as we are and who we are. We don't need some authority to tell us what do do, we don't need some secret teaching or formulae from some being or beings somewhere out there in the cosmos, we can just come, and to paraphrase the words of Jesus, eat and drink from our own experience, trust and rest in the depths of our being that Spirit will come to us, will nurture us in the guidance and support that we need. God is not distant or absent from us, even when we may be distant or absent from our own center and true being.

Jesus said to them,”Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Human One and drink the blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

Just as the living God sent me, and I live because of that, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.
- John 6:53-58

God, how beautiful you are;
how radiant the places you dwell in.
My soul yearns for your presence;
my whole body longs for your light.
Even the wren finds a house
and a sparrow a nest for herself.
Take me home, God; guide me
to the place of perfect repose.
Let me feel you always within me;
open my eyes to your love.

Happy are those who trust you
and merge their will in your will.
They let go of all desires,
and give up everything they know,
until they finally enter
the inmost temple of the heart,
where there is no self, no other,
nothing, but only you.
- Psalm 84

Buddha constantly told his disciples that they must never take anybody's teaching, no matter how august, if those teachings did not tally with their own experience. They must never take any doctrine on faith or at second hand. Even his own teachings must be jettisoned if they failed to bring followers to enlightenment. If people relied on an authority figure, they would remain trapped in an inauthentic version of themselves and would never attain the freedom of nibbana.
Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation