Proper 15B: 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14; Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
Rev. Cameron Partridge
August 18, 2024
Good Morning, St. Aidan’s.
Last Sunday (at the 10 AM) Deacon Mark opened with a story about his grandmother’s bread-baking. Recalling this, and mindful of this morning’s continuation of Jesus’ “bread of life” discourse in the Gospel of John, I found myself thinking about my grandmother’s baking. Now my maternal grandmother (whom I’ve shared about here over the years) did not bake bread, at least not in my memory. But what she did make fairly regularly, even rather ritually, was pie. She took great pride in them, always making the crusts by hand – never, ever from a mix. Her recipe was very simple: flour, salt, Crisco, ice water – as little as possible. Minimal mixing with forks, followed briefly by touch to pull the dough together, never enough to melt the fat. Then refrigeration in a covered yellow bowl before being rolled out – only once! God forbid you have to re-roll. Then there were the fillings. Her apple pie was fantastic. Gramps favored banana cream. I loved her lemon meringue with its perfect egg-white peaks, so much so that I would ask for it instead of a birthday cake. To enjoy these treats was to participate in the life of Grandma, to abide with her. To take a scrumptious bite was to take into one’s own body a lifetime of pie-making, a history of family dinners and deserts. It was to connect to, I suspect, the happy moments of her challenging childhood on whose shadows she would never cast any light. To enjoy Grandma’s pies with true appreciation, was to live in and with her, to allow her life and history to nourish ours, to well up into a greater, living, still unfolding continuity.
Jesus may not have said, “I am the living pie that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this pie will live forever; and the pie that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh….” Yet if I sit back from the challenging actual words of today’s passage and make that simple switch, something happens. I laugh, for starters (and that’s not a bad thing). But then I find myself increasingly aware of the strangeness of these words – Jesus’ original ones more than my substitute. The association of Jesus’ flesh or body with bread, and of his blood with wine, as in the Communion phrase “the body of Christ, the bread of heaven; the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation” can all too easily cease to strike us as shocking, but it should, as Mark said last week. The shock comes from the intimate, unitive quality of the phrase – that we become one with Christ in and with our bodies, nourished by and with him as we share spiritual food and drink. When we eat the Communion meal we take into our bodies the sacred story, the mystery of our faith: Jesus’ liberative life, his death at the hands of the Roman empire, his resurrection, opening up to us and to all creation the rising of the green blade, newness gifted by healing and restoration, eternal life. Such bread, such wine nurtures us in this mystery, roots us more deeply in this rich soil.
Do we fully understand how such a meal can work in this way? No, we cannot.
Commenting on the Bread of Life sequence, the Roman Catholic spiritual writer Richard Rohr has underlined that the bread we share at Communion is an extension of the Incarnational character of our faith, the mystery that in Jesus Christ the divine Word became flesh, had a human body, lived a human life. Rohr writes, “[Jesus] did not say, ‘Think about this,’ or ‘Fight about this’…. He said ‘Eat this!’”[1]
Eat this.
Years ago, when I was a postulant for Holy Orders, I had a wonderful liaison to the Commission on Ministry (a role I have now), a deacon whose name was Gloria Wong. Her cheer was indefatigable. She walked quickly and prayed fervently. She also rose early – like, 5 AM. She would occasionally call me at that ungodly hour, just to check in. Awakened out of dead sleep, I assumed a call at this hour had to mean an emergency (no cell phone, no caller id, no coffee in my system). But no: how was my formation going?! I eventually found a way to let her know that I am well and truly not a morning person. Instead we would meet up for lunch. I had never had Dim Sum, so we met in Boston’s Chinatown and she took me to her favorite place. She ordered for both of us from the rolling carts, me having no idea what it would be. But this was part of the point—sharing not simply a meal but a culture, placing myself in her trust. At one point I asked her what the item I had just eaten was. After speaking the name in Cantonese (I believe), she translated, “it means, ‘little bits of heart.’” I remember gulping a little uncomfortably, thinking, I might not have ordered that…. But then I thought of a tradition we have in my family of origin. Whenever we have an artichoke, after we’ve made our way through the tender, steamed leaves, dipping them in mayonnaise (Hellman’s/Best Foods, always), and have scraped the thistle away from the heart, we always slice it into quarters or more. Then we each trade a piece of the heart with one another. Take eat, this is my heart, given for you. You may not understand it. You may not have ordered it on your own. But share this in remembrance of what I have done for you, in honor of me, with respect for our unfolding connection, our interconnection, our living link to things known and unknown, things done and left undone, a taste of divine re-creation and nourishment building us up for the divine dream.[2]
* * *
The sixteenth century Spanish mystical theologian, Carmelite friar, and poet John of the Cross composed “Song of the Soul That Is Glad to Know God by Faith,” that we often pray with at Evening Prayer on Wednesdays, using a translation that the Sisters of Saint Helena have rendered as a canticle. The poem dwells upon the source of all being as one whom we, like Nicodemus, encounter by night.
The eternal source hides in the Living Bread,*
that we with life eternal may be fed,
though it be night. Here to all creatures it is crying, hark!
that they should drink their fill though in the dark,
for it is night. This living fount which is to me so dear,*
within the bread of life I see it clear,
though it be night.[3]
John of the Cross describes an encounter in the darkness of night, not able to see and yet somehow able to perceive, to know on some level the hidden vitality of the source we are meeting. This source meets us in the darkness of our experience, our not knowing. And that not knowing not only refers to God, to Jesus Christ fully human and fully divine, who exceeds our understanding. It also speaks to all of life that we cannot for the life of us comprehend. Why did my grandmother barely speak of her childhood? Why did she not return for her mother’s funeral? Yet in that darkness she made glorious pies, pies that likely originated in the kitchen of her mother or maybe of her grandmother. Pies that provided sweetness and joy in the midst of grief and struggle. Take, eat. Drink this, all of you, from this fount which is to me so dear, within the bread of life I see it clear, though it be night.
Eating and drinking of such sacraments, we take new life into ourselves. We are constituted again and again as a people of the meal, of the stories behind the meal, of the families, the communities, who generated these stories in and through meals. Week by week in this place we are nourished as members of a shared body. We are continuously constituted as a collective extending far beyond this place, connected to those who have attended here in generations past, bound to our loved ones whose meals have sustained us, built up as members of a body that is Christ, Christ who calls us to his table and gives himself to us again and again. Together, we are living bread. * * *
A coda. At some point when I was a teen, I ask Grandma if she would be willing to show me how to make pies. So she did. Or, she tried. I watched her work studiously. I read a couple of recipes she suggested. And then my friend Betsy and I decided to try for ourselves. We would gather in her kitchen or my mom’s. For some reason we always put Billy Joel on the stereo. And then we baked. I must tell you, it was not pretty. We had to patch our crusts – they always broke in the transfer from the counter to the pie shell. Grandma told me to wait on lemon meringue but I didn’t listen. Worse, I thought we could simply substitute lime for lemon. We even added green food coloring. The meringue came out amazingly, but the lime filling never congealed, so the meringue swayed on the top of green soup like the spinning ice burg in last week’s news. But over time, with lots of practice, we improved. I decided I did not need to use Grandma’s precise crust recipe. I use butter, more water, and a pastry cloth. And every time I make a pie, I think of my grandma. I am practicing her craft. And now, teens inhabit our kitchen, baking their way into delicious connection. With Grandma, with them, with one another, we reach out for that fount that is so dear, within the bread of life, within the pie, we see, we taste it clear. Though it be night.
[2] On the divine dream, as always, Verna Dozier, The Dream of God: A Call To Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Press, 1991)
[3] The Saint Helena Breviary (New York: Church Publishing, 2006), 239.
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