Today’s readings expose us to the most vulnerable in society and challenge us to respond. We find two women; both have suffered the loss of their child, and two men, Elijah and Jesus, are confronted with these losses and are challenged to respond.

In the first case Elijah sought hospitality with a woman outside of the land of Israel and while he is in the woman’s home, her child dies.  She assumes that Elijah is somehow responsible.

In the Gospel reading; we encounter Jesus entering a town as a funeral procession is leaving—a widow has lost her only son. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus responded with pity toward the woman. We can assume that Elijah was experiencing that same emotion when the provider of his hospitality lost her child as well. In fact we see a real intimacy in his care for the child—the Scripture making note of the fact that he “laid the child on his own bed.”

We always have to remember the cultural situation out of which both these stories come. Both these women were doubly disadvantaged—first, as women; they had no rights, no voice.  In their culture, men were responsible for the welfare of all in their households.  Secondly, the two women were both widows, so had no one to protect them.

We don’t know the gender of the child at Zarephath, the town where Elijah was staying, but the child at Nain in the Gospel story, was male—a son.  By the amount of upset that the woman in the story with Elijah seemed to be experiencing; we can assume that her child was male too.  Beyond the sadness of losing a child, losing a male child in this culture, someone who eventually would hold some power within the community, becoming a source of support, was doubly distressing.

Both interceptors in these grief stories, Elijah and Jesus, model the behavior that must be ours—responding to others in need with pity, with love—seeing beyond the immediate predicament to all that it truly means.  Seeing the injustice in a society where all are not equal.  Where half the population, men, have the power and the voice and the other half, women and children, which in truth is more than half, suffer, if not connected to a man.  Where the population is taught that all of this inequality is God’s will.

It’s curious isn’t it that the teachers of such a “truth” are the very ones who have the most to gain by it—the men! We could cut these men a break given the fact that this was more than 2,000 years ago and perhaps they didn’t know any better, but the same situation exists today, so as thinking, compassionate people who should and do know better; we have to ask, why we allow our Church to continue teaching such untruths.  Because you see, when we support untruth by our compliance; we give power to the lie.  A case in point: If you haven’t seen the film, Spotlight, documenting the child sexual abuse by clergy in Boston that came to light finally in 2002,  extending the light across the country and around the world; do see it. A quote from the film, “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.”

This past week, women from Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC), Roman Catholic Women Priests (RCWP), and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, (ARCWP) demonstrated in Rome, at the Vatican, during a Jubilee Time that Pope Francis hosted for priests.  We women priests thought that included us too, even though we weren’t invited.  The women successfully met with a cleric there and presented a groundswell petition signed by a great many women and men requesting that Francis reconsider his stance on ordaining women to the priesthood. The women were told that the petition will be given to the pope on Wednesday.

Jesus was one of us, a man of God, who came to turn all this injustice on its head.  He did this by refusing to live as the men around him lived—he challenged the powers in place and called the lie to such behavior. It has been said that the plight for women in this world would be better had God initially came as a woman.  Elizabeth Johnson, theologian par excellence, criticized by Rome, primarily because she is a woman,  for questioning and speaking her truth, has said that Jesus needed to be a man in his society giving the example primarily to men, of servant-leadership—the women already knew how and were living servant-hood. And such prophecy doesn’t go unrecognized, as we know—they killed Jesus for this affrontery.

So what of our society? What has changed? The plight for single women today is not much different.  There is still injustice, inequality all around—people still live on the streets while others have two houses. We still fight wars instead of educating and feeding our children.  Religious so-called leaders still try to control the consciences of people, while they themselves live arrogant, immoral, and dishonest lives. These same so-called leaders uphold God’s call to men to serve at our altars while diminishing God’s call to women, stating from their positions of power that nothing can be done—God has willed it so! Is this the same God who lived so wonderfully in Jesus of Nazareth—who loved so perfectly and turned his society on its head, boldly stating through his life and actions that, “No, this is not God’s intention!” Is it any wonder that in his wake, the people proclaimed, “God has truly visited us!”

Fear makes us want to keep our silence when we witness power that strips members of our communities such as women advocating for ordination, of their status, and even attempts to sever them from the life of the community through excommunication because they do not follow the man-made laws. We must not give in to the fear. We must be willing to speak up to this power which is not of God, not of the Gospel, not of Jesus.  Anglican bishop, John Shelby Spong has said, “Christianity, at its origins was intended to be radical, transforming—a boundary-breaking religious system built on a Gospel message identified with Jesus. Spong continues, Jesus does not let us get away with merely, “keeping the law and not caring for the needy in our midst—Jesus called attention to the prejudice of the day, the Samaritans,” –those considered “less than” by the Torah-touting Jews, because of their different views and practices.

Who are the “Samaritans” in our day?—those we don’t have time for, don’t want to be seen with, are comfortable to let others care for, or not? It must always be remembered that Jesus’ mission among us was all about love—he didn’t come out of God’s “need” for atonement for our sins, which we all learned in our catechisms.  The trouble with such theology is that it takes our focus away from the love. Spong says it well: “Love is manifested in the human willingness to venture beyond the boundaries of safety…love calls us into being.” Really it calls us into being our best selves, what we were created for!

The recent revelations displayed once again in the daily news and across the air waves of impropriety and cover-up within the Catholic church here in Winona cause us all to feel sad, angry and more. And as painful as it is to realize once again that our so-called leaders can’t be trusted to tell us the truth, it is even more painful for the victims of the abuse perpetrated to have to relive the abuse all over again. But friends, the truth must be told and deep sorrow and regret must be expressed by these so-called leaders if we are ever to become the community of believers that Jesus intended.

Being a follower of Jesus calls each of us to courage, to faith, to trust and to the realization that the answers are within us and complacency is not one of them. Let us pray together my friends for the strength to speak our truth and to demand the change that we all need—we have great power if we but use it. Amen? Amen!

 

Last week we spent time trying to get our minds and hearts around the concept of the Trinity—One God in Three Persons.  I suggested that a better way to understand our God who gives prodigally to us is through the heart.  In understanding the theology of Corpus Christi, which is, The Body of Christ or as the feast is now more formally titled, The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, but for simplicity, we will stick with the more familiar, Corpus Christi; I would suggest that again we try to leave logical thinking and reasoning behind and enter this mystery too through our hearts.

Three years ago, I used a story about my Dad to help us make sense of this mystery of physical presence and I’d like to repeat that here today as a good model for us. My Dad died in 1986, 30 years ago in August. For the last year and a half of his life, he lived at Lake Winona Manor on the first floor in Room 105.  In those days; it was called the C &R Unit—the C & R stood for Convalescence and Rehabilitation.  It’s curious when I think about it now—he was not convalescing, nor was he being physically rehabilitated; he was dying the slow death of people with emphysema and congestive heart disease.

Even though he couldn’t get physically better, the rehabilitation that I saw going on for him was in a spiritual way.  For the first time in his life; he was given the opportunity of time—time to reflect on what was really important in life and I believe he grew closer to God, to Jesus, his brother, as a result.  He also made it his mission to know who his “neighbors” were in the Unit and to be as kind as he was able, to them.

For all intents and purposes, Room 105 became my Dad’s home for the last year and a half of his life—this was where I went to spend time with him, to reflect on all that life had been for us and our family.  After he died, in the first weeks of grieving his loss;  I had the strange sense that if I wanted to see him; I could go to Room 105 and find him.  Intellectually I knew this was wrong, but on the heart level, it seemed right.

In relationship to this feast, it strikes me that Jesus, in giving us the Eucharist, may have been on the same wave length—using it as a way to remain close once he was no longer physically present.  The bread and wine doesn’t look like Jesus, but it is Jesus, just the same, in our need to have him close—still a part of our lives.  Just like room 105 had become the place where I could find my Dad, the Eucharist is the place where we can find Jesus in a tangible way and be comforted and strengthened by that presence.

We might ask in this line of thinking if the Eucharist has purpose other than comfort.  I believe that Jesus always meant for the Eucharist to be a starting place—the place to receive our strength and then move on into our world, pick up the pieces of life and  carry on with all that he taught us—to share all that he gave us with the world of people that we meet each and every day.

In my preparation for this homily today, as I was reading and praying over the Gospel, it came to me what a gift Jesus gave to the people gathered and he started from something so small, a few loaves and fishes. It struck me that if we each took seriously our mission and call to be his followers, what great things we could do in this world, starting from our small places, our own “loaves and fishes.”

Jesus no doubt intended that we would see and feel his presence within the community here gathered, because if we don’t or can’t see and feel him here, then we can never truly know his presence in the bread and wine either.  In fact, Karl Rahner has said that the presence of Christ in the community gathered precedes the possibility of the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements.  It would seem, we can’t have one without the other!

In addition, Edward Schillebeeckx stresses the importance of seeing Christ’s presence as ultimately not toward the bread and wine, but toward the community.  He goes on, “If participants want to understand the Eucharist as sacrament, they should understand themselves first as the Body of Christ.” In this sense, as a wise person once said, and a paraphrase, the Eucharist is really not a static word, a noun, but an action word, a verb, and not to see it this way misses the main point of what the Eucharist is all about.

I always struggle with this homily each year because of those who receive it and wanting to be true to what many of us learned in our growing years concerning transubstantiation, yet wanting too, to stretch us a bit past that notion of worshipping Jesus’ gift of his life in the elements of the altar to moving us out into the community and seeing, truly seeing his body and blood in the faces and life experiences of all we meet each and every day.  My fear with the older theology of transubstantiation is that it has the tendency to plant us in front of the tabernacle, the altar, instead of the community.

Indeed, the Eucharist was always meant to be a starting place, not an ending place.  This is why we say at the conclusion of our liturgies, “Let our service begin or continue!”  And, just like Room 105—at some point, I needed to re-engage in life, to come to terms with my loss, to carry all that my Dad meant to me into my life going forward—he would continue to live on now through my life and my siblings’ lives—through our families—every time we remembered him and chose to live out what he taught us.  When I perform funeral liturgies I always remind the grieving families that they honor their loved one best when they carry on in their own lives what their loved ones taught them about right living.

For Jesus’ followers, all of us, it is all about fulfilling his mission.  Jesus has called all his followers to be his presence in their communities—for us specifically, to see his presence in the greater family of our world—to do all that we can to see that Jesus continues to have a body; eyes and ears, mind and heart in our world.  And we will continue to need the comfort of the Eucharist, the strength of the bread and wine blessed, the unity of the community where Jesus truly becomes present by our collective words and gives us the strength then to take him into the wider community.

In our first reading from Genesis, the old is tied to the new—Melchizadek, an ancient king and priest, in offering bread and wine prefigures Jesus’ offering of his body and blood, his life in its entirety to God for us so that we might know how to do the same.

In the Gospel from Luke, Jesus takes the opportunity of a very large group of physically hungry people to teach his apostles and disciples a greater truth—that he will always be with us to care for all of our needs—to show us primarily that we are loved and that no matter what befalls us, our God will be near.  The feeding of the 5,000 exemplifies the prodigality of our God’s love for us—our God is wasteful with love.  We read, “They all ate until they were full; and when the leftovers were gathered, there were twelve baskets full.” Again, we marvel that he began with five loaves and two fish!

Jesus is always teaching us a greater truth—I have come into this world to live your life, to share my life with you—the very life of God!  I have come to show that you can begin with seemingly little and do great and wonderful things for my people—for my body.  Each of us makes up Christ’s body—we are his flesh and blood for our world. When we partake in the Eucharistic bread; we are transformed into Eucharistic bread for that same world, Diane Bergant says.  When we partake of  the Eucharistic wine; we become the lifeblood of Jesus, following his example in service, in sacrifice, for our sisters and brothers.  We give Jesus the greatest honor and glory, along with the Creator and the Spirit, not in our worship of the bread and wine on the table as an end in itself, but in giving honor, respect, mercy, love, working for justice for the “bread and wine, body and blood of Jesus” in our world.  We honor and praise what the words of consecration do—making Jesus fully present in the form of bread and wine, signaling the next step for us—of taking his flesh and blood into our world through our bodies which become with our reception, Eucharistic bodies.

And of course, it doesn’t happen by magic—we must make a conscious effort to live our lives in such a way as to continue his life of love and service in our world.  We see the “wasteful” giving of love to the 5,ooo—we are expected too, not to just give when convenient or give what is left-over, but to give in abundance, “wastefully”—generously.

It only makes sense rejoicing over the goodness of our God in Jesus if it compels us to give likewise. We may not physically be able to meet every need—but we can be a listener, a supporter, a friend to all.  If we can’t help, perhaps we know of someone who can—maybe we can right a wrong by making others aware—writing a letter, standing up for the truth when we hear the lies that incriminate our sisters and brothers.

The feast of Corpus Christi holds great significance for each of us if we allow its deeper message to arise to the light of day.  Each time we say the words here, celebrating that Jesus is fully present within our community; we recall the covenant that our prodigal God made with the People of God from all time—a covenant made perfect in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ—our Brother and Friend.  We, as his body and blood now, for our world, must move into that world and let our service begin!