“Be what you see, receive what you are...”
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 22, 2021
Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18 • Ephesians 6:10-20 • John 6:56-69
Between April and July of 2016, the lobby of the United Nations Headquarters included an art exhibit called “We Are What We Eat.”(1) The exhibit was presented to highlight the human right to food. It testified to the fact that almost 30 percent of the world’s population suffers from malnutrition, and that almost one in nine people on Earth go to bed on an empty stomach. The exhibition showcased a broad array of food-related injustices, from malnutrition, to disease and toxicity caused by contaminants in food, to overconsumption of food, in particular fast food in industrialized nations, to the waste of food – that over one third of food produced on the planet for human consumption is lost or wasted. The exhibit expressed that we really are what we eat, or don’t eat – that what we eat, or don’t eat, and how we grow, harvest, produce, process, distribute, lose, and waste food affects not only our bodies, but also our communities, and, ultimately, planet Earth and its ecosystems. What we grow, what we consume, and even what we lack and waste, abides – it is expressed through us, and in us, and lives on, either as a physical manifestation of a fundamental injustice, or as a physical manifestation of life, and goodness, and health. It abides, one way or the other.
Today’s Gospel is laser focused on the Gospel message of abiding. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” This truth of abiding runs deep throughout John’s Gospel. In fact, one source I read indicates that the Greek word used here that means “abide” appears 34 times in John’s Gospel – three times more often than the that same word appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined! And the word that the Gospel’s author uses, which we translate to “abide,” really means to “dwell,” and to “remain,” maybe even to “live on.”
John is pointing out a mystery of the Incarnation and the bond between God and creation that was affirmed in the Word who became flesh, and attested to in God’s liberation of God’s people as told in the story of the exodus. For John’s author, there is an unbreakable fusion between humanity and God, between human and divine, between physical and spiritual, where the one doesn’t detract from the beauty and fullness of the other.
The idea of abiding is key to understanding the life of faith that grew among the disciples in this early period of Christianity. This abiding may be the key to understanding the real meaning of all of these bread narratives that we’ve heard for many, many weeks. Like those early disciples, through God’s abiding love and ours, we stand at the confluence of two glorious rivers that course through the whole of our lives and the whole of creation: we are infused with humanity and holiness. And, in the context of all of the bread narratives, we occupy this confluence of humanity and holiness, physical and spiritual, when we eat bread and drink wine that is for us – as it was for the early disciples – the body and blood of Christ. Jesus reassures his disciples that this shared meal is the surest sign of how God abides in them and they in God.
In the early fifth century, St. Augustine of Hippo was focused on this confluence of physical and spiritual from today’s Gospel text. Based on the idea of abiding from today’s Gospel, St. Augustine understood that sharing Eucharist – sharing the body of Christ – transforms us into that which we consume. The body of Christ makes us the body of Christ. St. Augustine says it this way:
“Remember that bread is not made from one grain but from many. When ye were exorcised, ye were so to speak ground. When ye were baptized, ye were so to speak sprinkled. When ye received the fire of the Holy Ghost, ye were so to speak cooked. Be what you see, and receive what you are...”(2)
In essence, what is accomplished through Eucharist is the manifestation of the solidarity that exists between God and God’s people. We are fed at God’s table, where we gather, where all are welcome; it is to this table that we bring the gifts of God’s creation – fruit of the vine, grain from the field, formed, and made, and offered with human hands; it is at this table that those gifts are transformed and made holy for us by God’s presence among us; at this table, all are nourished; from this table, no one leaves hungry, or thirsty, or without; and all who gather are assured that God abides in them and they abide in God – forever. We are brought, by God’s grace, into a unity with God and with one another by the God who abides in us – all of us – and in whom we all abide. The apex of all these bread narratives involves a gathering around God’s table of abundance, God’s table of plenty, to be fed and nourished with the body and blood of Christ, so that we might be the body of Christ that nourishes our siblings, and the blood of Christ that brings life to our communities.
God abides in us by making us the gift that we see on God’s table; the blessing that we receive and consume – that consecrated physical thing that we consume – we become. And the table models for us the justice that we seek in the world. A world of communities where all are welcome; a world where the gifts of God’s creation, already blessed and holy, are brought and distributed to all according to their need; a world where all are nourished, where no one goes away hungry, or thirsty, or without; a world in which God abides, and a world that abides in God, by giving to all the gift of abundance already given for all; a world that is nourished and liberated in the same way that God has nourished and liberated us already. It is a table of solidarity, where the gift of God’s solidarity in us, and with us, is remembered to us, that we might live in solidarity with one another. God abides in us, and we abide in God, and each one of us abides in one another when we gather around this table – this table, where, according to one United Church of Christ congregation, “you are more welcome than anywhere else on earth.”(3)
If we “be[come] what [we] see,” if we “receive what [we] are,” if “we are what we eat,” then our faithful response is to lay a table for our siblings – a table “where [they, too] are more welcome than anywhere else on earth.” A table where we share ourselves and our gifts openly and lovingly with one another; a table where we can gather, and dwell, and remain, and live on in the love that we share with one another, and in the justice we enact for one another. Amen.
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(1) You can learn about the exhibit here: <https://www.un.org/en/exhibits/we-are-what-we-eat>
(2) Augustine of Hippo, “Treatise on the Gospel of St. John XXVI,” in Maxwell E. Johnson, Sacraments and Worship (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, 2012), 209-210.
(3) Ruth Duck, Worship for the Whole People of God: Vital Worship for the 21st Century (Westminster John Knox: Louisville, 2013), 14.