Tag: Gospel of John

Symbol and Sacrament

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (Strathcona), Edmonton, August 11, 2024. Text: John 6:35, 41-51

I invite you take a moment to look around this church, identifying some of the symbols around you, and perhaps considering what they stand for.

[Call for what people saw, and how they understand them.]

Symbols are important. We find them everywhere, ranging from the very commonplace to the profound.

Open a hymn book, and you find pages and pages of symbols, both musical notation and printed text. The hymns they represent come to life only when we sing them. There is no one right or wrong way to interpret these symbols, which depend on the readers’ and performers’ points of view and abilities.

You will very often see an important symbol at public buildings—the Canadian flag. The flag represents our country, but its function is to point to the realities of place and people. The flag’s meaning depends on the viewer’s point of view—how we understand and relate to our country, its land, its people, and its history.

There are many crosses around this building, all pointing to the story of salvation as we learn it from the Gospels. Once again, we understand the Cross in many and varied ways, none of which are the ultimate answer.

Symbols are like sign posts by the road, pointing away from themselves to something else. But some symbols are more than that—they not only point to, but also embody the reality of the thing they are pointing to. In Church talk, we call these symbols “sacraments.”

We are gathered here today to participate in what for many is the central symbol of Christian life. We are here to celebrate the Eucharist, the sacrament in which believers share in the body and blood of our crucified saviour. We are here to partake of the Bread of Life, the very being of Jesus.

The language we hear throughout Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, the so-called “Bread of Life Discourse,” is very clearly symbolic. Jesus is not bread in the ordinary sense. He does not give his physical body at every Eucharistic celebration, but what we share in this symbolic act, from the opening greeting to the dismissal, is the fullness of his life, the essence of the Holy, his loving sacrifice on the cross, and the glory of his Resurrection.

What we share at the altar is a bit of bread and a sip of wine, but it is far more than that to those who see with the eyes of the spirit. I can’t pretend to know what motivates anyone to come forward for Communion—the reasons are as many as there are recipients. But what I believe deeply is that the Holy Spirit draws every one of us to this place, enlivens our hearts and our minds and our spirits with the written and spoken word, and leads us to partake of the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

What we do is symbolic, but the reality behind it is far more than our rituals. The reality is that Jesus is truly present among us, giving of his very self, the Bread of [Eternal] Life.

John’s account of the Last Supper does not have an institution narrative like the other three, focusing instead of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, given as one of the signs of participation in Jesus’ work in this world. Taking the place of an institution story we have the Bread of Life Discourse, an extended narrative on the meaning of bread as both physical and spiritual food. The language of feeding of the 5,000 is clearly Eucharistic: Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it—what Gregory Dix called the “four movements of the Eucharist.” The rest of the chapter is an extended reflection in a series of dialogues on the meaning of the bread, centering on the great claim we heard twice in today’s Gospel lesson: “I AM the Bread of Life.”

Unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John’s Gospel has no parables. Instead, we find extended discourses and narratives which expand upon encounters with individuals or groups. In many of these, Jesus uses spiritual and symbolic language, and the hearer interprets it literally, not symbolically. In Chapter 3 Nicodemus responds to Jesus’ call to be born again with the question as whether a person can return to their mother’s womb. In Chapter 4 the Samaritan woman at the well responds to Jesus’ offer of living water with a declaration of simple thirst. And in John 6, Jesus’ assertion about bread and his identity is met with similar misunderstanding.

John’s Gospel probably took shape over at least 50 years. It contains some very early material alongside the results of extended reflection on the life of the Church, and how it seeks to live into being the Body of Christ. What we hear in John 6 is one of the prime examples. From early times, the Church’s life together centred on the Lord’s Supper, a symbolic and memorial act which must be taught to every succeeding generation of Christians.

The central assertion has always been that we do this in memory of Jesus, and that Jesus is truly present as we share in the sacrament. How that happens, how we do it, what rules we put on it, have been issues at least since the time of Paul, forty or so years before John’s Gospel was given its final form.

We come to the table as ordinary people. We share in something very simple. But if we come in faith, guided by the Spirit, what we are as we depart is something more than ordinary people who have shared a simple meal. I have long held that the most important point of the Eucharist is the dismissal, when the People of God, having gathered in faith, heard the Word proclaimed, and shared in the Bread of Life, are sent forth to be the Bread of Life for the world.

Gandhi said:
To a hungry [person], a piece of bread is the face of God.

May we go forth from this place today to show the face of God to all whom we meet, sharing the Bread of Life both physically and spiritually in the same love which Jesus showed to us on the cross.

Symbols? May we all be symbols of God’s love in the world. And more than that, may our presence with others be a sacrament, making God’s love more real in all that we do, all that we say, all that we are.

May it be so.

Believing is Seeing

Notes for a sermon at Holy Trinity Edmonton, April 28, 2019
Text: John 20:19-31

Many of us will be familiar with the adage “seeing is believing,” which may well originate in today’s Gospel story, and is sometimes taken to be the point of the story. I don’t think so. There’s a lot more happening in the story of Thomas’ encounter with the Risen Christ than how we often over-simplify it:

  1. Thomas hears the news from the other disciples and demands visual evidence before he believes.
  2. Jesus appears to Thomas and gives him the proof.
  3. Thomas believes. Seeing is believing. End of story.

Or is it? Has anyone else noticed that there’s a big gap in this story? There are two scenes, a whole week apart. A week can be a very long time: much can happen in seven short days, especially when something like the Resurrection has happened. The text is maddeningly silent about what went on between those two Sundays. We could speculate endlessly, but it seems to me the least likely answer is that “nothing happened”. Things surely happened—for Thomas, for the rest of the Twelve, and for all the disciples who received the Holy Spirit and were sent by Jesus on that first day. When he sent them, did they just sit there? Surely not—I have to believe that they went out from that room and told many people what they had seen and heard. In that week, there would have been time for Thomas to see what was going on, to talk to his companions, to ponder what was happening around him.

What happened when Jesus appeared again with Thomas present? Thomas saw and believed: that much is clear. But he would not have been there at all had he not believed on some level in his friends’ veracity. He knew something had happened, and he had not abandoned the group. He believed—and so he saw! Proof was offered, Thomas believed, and then he made the great acclamation that climaxes John’s Gospel: “My Lord and my God!” Belief in the reality of Jesus’s Resurrection led to this colossal insight. First among his companions, he now saw Jesus as he truly was and is.

Believing became seeing.

Something like this happened recently in the world of science. On April 10 an international team of scientists announced the first successful imaging of a black hole. The existence of these strange objects was first proposed over a century ago as a result of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Half a century ago, when I was an undergraduate taking a course in astrophysics, they were believed to exist, but there was little evidence available. Succeeding years led to more and more evidence, almost to the level of complete proof. The announcement three weeks ago was the culmination of over a decade’s work, involving eight separate observatories and hundreds of people. Looking like a fuzzy yellow-orange doughnut, the image agrees almost exactly with theoretical predictions. Einstein was right!

I could go on at length about the science of black holes, but that’s not where we want to go.

What struck me about this achievement was the team’s dogged determination, and their clear belief that what they were seeking was truly there. If they had not trusted the theory and the mounting body of evidence, they would never had invested so much time and energy (not to say money!) in this arcane quest.

If they had not believed in black holes, they (and we) would never have seen one. Believing led to seeing!

The Risen Christ said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We can certainly include ourselves in this number.  The fact that we are gathered here today in this place testifies to our belief in the Resurrection – in a variety of ways and understandings, to be sure – and to the church’s continued faithfulness in proclaiming this central truth of the Gospel.

The contemporary Christian writer Diana Butler Bass (in “Christianity After Religion”) has suggested that the church needs to pay more attention to HOW we believe. We’ve been pretty good at enunciating WHAT we believe, in creeds and catechisms, but we have been less effective in putting wheels on the bus.

If we say we believe, what comes next?

What difference does it make in our lives?

Will our proclamation of the Resurrection be anything more than words?

Think of those scientists. They believed in the existence of black holes enough to devote over a decade’s work and many millions of dollars to produce the image they presented to the world. They believed, and so we see.

Friends, belief in the Resurrection can never be just a head game. It has consequences far beyond that upper room, consequences reaching into every aspect of our lives, consequences that give us a wholly new way of seeing the world.

We believe and proclaim that Christ rose from the dead. We affirm that this was not just a “one-off,” but as Paul wrote in 1 Cor 15:20, it is the “first fruits of those who have died.” The promise of the Resurrection is that death will never again have the last word.

Believing in the Resurrection of Jesus is a truly eye-opening event. To the believing eye, the world no longer needs to look like a medieval map, with “here be dragons” on its margins. Rather, we are enabled to see a world destined for renewal and resurrection – a world in which the forces of evil, while still present and active, are fighting a rearguard battle. As Fr. Chris said last Sunday, “We shall overcome,” and we can and should affirm that in our words and our actions.

Believing is seeing—seeing the world as the creation of a good and loving God, seeing death not as defeat but as the next step in God’s renewal of creation, seeing all others as heirs with us of God’s eternal kingdom.

As we believe, so may we see.

As we see, so may we act.

As we act, so may we proclaim.

And may our proclamation always be
“Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”