Richard Bollman, S.J.
CORPUS CHRISTI Year C Sunday, 2007
Genesis 14:13-17; 1 Corinthians 11:20-27; Luke 9:11-17
The scripture today directs our attention to the feeding of hungry people,
starting with Abraham, and then the crowds Jesus met,
and then the table communion of the early Church.
In Genesis, Abraham is tired and hungry after a rescue mission,
and as he passes Jerusalem, the King who ruled that city,
who was also a priest of the God who was worshipped there,
came to give Abraham some food and a blessing.
This reassures Abraham that his new life
of resettlement and listening to God, is authentic,
and it links his people to Jerusalem, city of Peace,
1000 years before they’d actually live there.
Luke’s Gospel is built around a number of meals
including this meal for thousands in the countryside.
Clearly the event is more than just satisfying hunger,
but is connected to the way Jesus had been healing and teaching,
opening up the meaning of the kingdom of God.
Jesus here is the life source of everything we need as a community.
And then third, a comment from St. Paul on the ceremonial meals
of the Christian community where they would remember the death of Jesus
and exchange the bread and wine that is his body and blood,
joining their struggle with his, and being in communion
with his resurrection, his continuing life in the people.
Paul cautions that this kind of event
needs to happen in a context of mutual respect
and genuine care for one another even in our differences.
In a few places, I’ve expanded the readings
so that the context of these meals would be clearer.
HOMILY. Corpus Christi 2007, Year C
I noticed a column by Peter Steinfels yesterday in the NYTimes.
Steinfels is the Catholic writer who does their religion column once a week.
He wrote a reflection about the television debate,
the dialogue about religion and politics last week
among the democrat candidates: Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.
I missed seeing it, but maybe some of you tuned in–or not.
But the idea was to expand the conversation about politics
so as to include faith, religious values in the public arena,
and to frame this for the democrat candidates to address.
Like I say I missed the event, semi-deliberately perhaps,
and I was not surprised to find Mr. Steinfels reporting
that he cringed at some of the questions and the speechifying.
But we’re all involved in this at some level,
wanting to bring what we believe, our deepest faith,
into public life, where we share interest and at least some responsibilities.
From my own experience, I find it takes awhile
to discover the right questions, the best way even to talk.
Jesus struggled with these issues.
If he was going to be involved in his society,
to touch its wounds and issues,
he had to sort out the differences, say,
between armed rebellion on the one hand,
or just ignoring the complaints of his people against Rome on the other.
And even though he would not take up swords with the Zealot party,
we know that he was executed for standing with the people
against the hypocrisy of some of their leaders
and the vested security and silence of the wealthy.
This scene of the feeding in the countryside
is a Gospel story rich with implications
about Jesus’ vision of God and of society.
It is, for example, a story of bread that came from nowhere,
from miraculous intervention, which is one way to look at it.
So it is a parallel story to the bread called manna
which came upon the Israelite refugees in the desert and fed them,
just enough for everybody.
There it shows a society of equity, everyone fed,
trusting and receiving from God,
giving and sharing enough to sustain life a day at a time.
Here there’s a compelling contrast too in the way
Jesus involves his disciples in the miracle, and in the abundance of the food.
Others would say that what happened in the countryside
when everyone was hungry and food was scarce
is that a conviction grew among the people that brought food forward
from one person’s extras, another person’s nearby farm,
some unfolding of the miraculous in people’s generosity,
that gives us what we need
when we actually experience the need together.
As one biblical theologian notes,
Jesus did not take sides with armed rebellion
because he realized that "true social change comes more slowly
by way of community building from the grassroots
upward into the larger structures."
You get a feel for that grassroots movement
in the early household communities in the first century of the Church,
where they celebrated the Eucharist in the context of sharing meals,
bringing the bread and resources of their family lives,
rich and poor together.
It’s as if generosity and mutual respect were the context
within which bread and wine was to become the body and blood of Jesus,
and the community itself could become that body for the world
again through generosity and mutual respect.
I’m proud of the way this tends to work around the parish here,
a receptivity for the broken and the poor as the context for Sunday worship,
whether in collections, or the work of the Vincent de Paul Society,
visiting homes on Saturdays, (there’s an article in the Bulletin about this),
or the visits to Harlan, Guatemala, or over on Symmes Street
where we’re helping to build a house.
I’m glad to see again a new interest in the Just Faith program
where people come together to do what couldn’t be done on TV,
which is to take the time to dwell with the questions believers really do ask,
and to learn more about the world’s issues as they crowd around us,
to hold this in prayer and in respectful dialogue
and with the learning of our Christian social traditions.
Peter Steinfels had the right idea about this kind of inquiry.
He noted that what the candidates were asked to talk about
was mostly private faith: how they prayed, how they got through hard times,
but not much how those things touch politics.
But the real questions that can be good to chew on, Steinfels thought
were ones like this: (now I’m guoting)
"What does the Bible or any other religious source tell you
about fighting poverty–and what doesn’t tell you?
Likewise for writing tax legislation or extending health care.
Does your faith dictate any absolute principles,
ones you would never compromise, about using military force?
For interrogating prisoners? For making peace in the Middle East?
For legal provision of abortion?"
Linking the hot-button questions to what we believe and to what is revealed,
this takes time. And I would also like to ask
are you aware of any spiritual forces in the world as it operates,
spiritual forces that work against the common good, or work for it?
How do we identify these forces and live faithfully?
Well, that’s a bracing agenda, and it’s going to be with us through 2008.
Getting anywhere with it requires building relationships of dialogue,
as we take the bread and cup of the living Jesus among us,
where he welcomes the crowds and speaks of the dominion of God.
It would take time, finding a way
to dialogue and mutual learning rather than debate.
It takes meeting new people as well.
Remember the sparks that flew when Jesus met the Palestinian woman,
and how he contacted her faith? Or the Samaritan lady at the well.
Or the tax collectors who invited him to dinner, and then maybe wished
they hadn’t . . . . because their lives began to change,
not just how they intended to vote, but how they would engage in their profession, or their family or their neighborhood.
So do we come, in these hard times, to the table
where Jesus reveals himself and gives himself as food
where we are really hungry.
Where we want peace, freedom from fear, new patience and direction,
where we want to touch and be touched.
This table is a meal where all are invited to be part of the miracle,
declaring the Lord’s friendship in our struggle
until he comes again.
Quoted material from
New York Times, Section 1, June 9, 2007, "A Tentative First Step in Bridging the Gap between Faith and Politics," by Peter Steinfels.
Monika Hellwig, The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World (Sheed and Ward, 1999), p. 16.