In today’s Gospel Story (Jn 6:1-15) Jesus feeds the five thousand with a few loaves and fish. This is generally understood to prefigure the Eucharist, so it might offer some insight of what we are called to do, and not do, in our Eucharist celebrations and how we live them.
Throughout his public ministry Jesus met and reached out to people and responded to their needs. He helped everybody where they were, as they were, without setting any conditions. In the Story he saw the people were hungry, and he helped his disciples work with him to get them something to eat. He cut across traditional lines when he told the people to recline in groups as they were — ordinary people, outcasts, wealthy, poor, men, women, perhaps even people who were not practicing the Jewish tradition. He didn’t ask people where they stood on issues, whether they went to temple or synagogue, kept the dietary laws, followed the minutiae of the law, avoided the outcasts, listened to the rabbis. He taught his disciples to welcome people, not keep them away.
A legitimate question is why people claiming to act in Jesus’ name today do things and set conditions he never did. They cause great hurt among folks who just want to know and be with Jesus in their lives. They say, in effect, if you want to get to Jesus you have to go through us, and we’ll tell you the only way to do this. As if any of us are qualified to tell others how they have to live and love, or think we alone know God’s mind. With the suffering being caused allegedly in God’s name, “church hurt” is an increasing area of ministry. People are hurting people. Jesus feeds the hungry as they are, where they are, the hurting and the hurters.
For many people Eucharist is a thing. Real Presence is something we have and nobody else does. Jesus becomes present in the bread and wine, and that’s it. However, Eucharist is not a thing. Eucharist is a verb, an act, a relationship. It’s what we do as a group, and how we live as individuals. Jesus, working with his disciples, fed the hungry. This is what he calls us to do, to work with him in feeding the hungry of all kinds, not to decide who is worthy of the food we are offering. Jesus, with his disciples, welcomed everybody. He did not have a behavior code they had to follow first. At the Last Supper he told his disciples to “do this in memory of me”, to give their lives for others as he was giving his life. He never told his disciples to worship him, only to imitate him. It is easier to worship Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament that to imitate him in our daily living, to keep Jesus in a sacred place surrounded by rules and locks while we leave and go on with our daily living.
Eucharist, Mass, is not about making Jesus present on the altar, as if he were someplace else and comes to the altar in response to the words of a priest so we can have some time with him. Jesus is present among us now and always has been since the beginning. Celebrating Eucharist is where we recognize him, if we are open to it. What we refer to as the Blessed Sacrament is a consequence of our gathering together celebrating Eucharist, Jesus present among us, sharing our relationship and teaching us, if we we are willing to hear him. It is not a sacred thing we have and nobody else has. When we limit Jesus to the Blessed Sacrament where we can worship him for a while and then go our way, we limit him to specific places and not involved in our lives. Real Presence is a living and dynamic relationship we are invited to share in if that’s what we want. Jesus didn’t tell his followers to worship him, only to follow him. When we encounter Jesus in Eucharist, we are asked to encounter him in the people in our lives. This means taking a chance, trusting Jesus in us. So much depends on our openness and willingness to be led.
Jesus welcomed the young boy with the loaves and fish and accepted what he had to offer. Many of us say, no thanks, we don’t need anything else. We have our ideas and definitions, our rules, we know all there is to know. We don’t recognize our own hunger, and so are forcing people to starve rather than share Jesus’ love with them. And people are suffering in silence, or just walking away because they can’t bear the hurt anymore. Is Jesus calling us to set up conditions and requirements for people to be fed with his presence, or simply to live his presence and love for them where they are and as they are? I have to keep asking myself am I doing anything that is refusing to meet people’s needs, refusing to help them? Anybody? No doubt the answer is obvious if I’m willing to see it.
When we live and celebrate Eucharist we find that, as with the boy in the story, Jesus takes what we offer and with us feeds the hungry, brings healing to the injured, helps fractured relationships, does much good, provided we are willing to share and move to where we are being called. If we are willing, Jesus leads us to others who hunger for the gifts he has given us, to dialogue with the lonely and fearful and go where it takes us, arms and eyes wide open.
Perhaps I can look at people hungering around me, maybe myself included. How many of our LGBTQ+ sisters and brothers are hungering for acceptance, for love, and instead are told to go away and not come back until they follow a particular tradition’s moral code, and so suffer even more? How many migrants hunger for a safe place to live for themselves and their children? How many lost, confused, frightened persons are hungry for someone to listen? How many people are hungering for racial justice and an end to racial discrimination, for simple respect and being really listened to and heard by church management? How many hunger for peace and safety in the midst of violence caused by people who themselves are hungry and hurting so much that they cause the violence? How much painful hunger is there in divisive public rhetoric? Am I willing to recognize hungering and hurting folks in my own life, or am I keeping them at a distance for my own comfort and convenience? Am I willing to be led, or do I think I have all the answers? Just sayin . . .