Pentecost+11/Proper 14B (John 6:35, 41-51)
One of my favorite cooks is Anthony Bourdain who died by suicide in 2018. I very much enjoyed his last show, Parts Unknown. While he’s such a complex figure, one of the main reasons why I like him as a person is his openness to food. He would at least try something completely new to him though it can be quite awful, for example, like Icelandic fermented shark, along with Namibian warthog rectum. His openness to food manifests his openness to different cultures in the world. He knew how to connect deeply with people through sharing meals. Here’s some lengthy quotation from him: “The little moments that I have regularly in places like Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Libya, Borneo, Barcelos in Brazil, Liberia, the Congo—the moment they’re looking at you and you put your hand in [a repugnant-looking offering] and you eat and you experience that thing with them. You share an intimate moment. You can’t say, ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll pass.’ If you blow that moment, it’s done. They’re not telling you the interesting thing they might have said afterwards. Because you’re rejecting everything they love. You’re rejecting their mom. It’s a simple thing. But openness to that, simply a willingness to say, ‘I’ll have that; I’m interested. Wow, where’d you get that?’ Then people tell you.” (smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/anthony-bourdains-theory-foodie-revolution-180951848) Now, let’s reflect on the bread of life in our Christian tradition since we’re all about eating. One doesn’t need to take any course on Christian liturgy to understand how our practice of partaking in the Eucharist comes from. While there are many scriptural references to the Eucharist, Jesus’ own words about redefining himself as the bread of life or the living bread that came down from heaven in today’s gospel lesson are the most obvious ones. However Jesus means it, it has one clear purpose which is to connect people with God in the way that transforms their lives so that they will never feel hungry or thirsty. This cessation of hunger and thirst may mean our desire to fill the void in our hearts is fulfilled. Only in God, only in our union with God can we experience something beyond ourselves, beyond birth and death. We taste the life of the resurrection. What do we mean by tasting the life of the resurrection in partaking the Eucharist? As much as I can describe things in the most abstract sense to hide what I actually don’t know about, this taste of the resurrection is real. It’s the taste of intimate connection among us with God. While our Eucharistic host is probably the most tasteless wafer bread and has no distinct flavor or characteristic that defines a person or a culture as who she or he is, it may be the most tasteful food. In our baptism, we declare our own death of the ego as we join the death of Jesus. In this same baptism, we are born again in Christ that who we are is only identified with our union with God. God is not just God but always God with “us.” This “us” is how we see ourselves and who we’re called to be. Through baptism, we no longer see ourselves apart from God. That God is with us sheds light on who we are. This baptismal identity is the core recipe for our Eucharistic meal. Its blandness might feel like there’s no distinctly unique culture but because of it, it can embrace all different cultures into itself as God embraces all. In its tasteless nature, it becomes most tasteful as it is eaten by all different people. Paradoxically speaking, something with no taste has the most potential to taste like everything. In some sense, we are to be this Eucharistic bread to the world in which our egoistically toxic taste is dissolved and only the ingredient of God’s grace and compassion is tasted so personally and intimately. Would it be too much to say God’s love may also taste bland but due to its blandness it is eternally faithful and accepting of all? Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, the 19th-century German philosopher who was one of the sharpest atheist critics of Christianity said perhaps the most relevant saying to our Christian faith: “Der Mensch ist,” meaning “You are what you eat.” Regardless of our differences (e.g. cultures, racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, socioeconomic, political backgrounds), we are what we eat. In our baptism, we have committed ourselves to eat the bread of life to be the bread of life for the world. The question of whether we really are what we eat is already answered in our baptism, and the real question is how we, homo eucharisticus, become the bread of life for the world. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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