Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson, John 6:52-59, focuses on Christ’s self-identification with the elements of bread and wine. This story occurs in the larger context of Jesus feeding the five thousand, and of describing himself as ‘the bread of life’, which unlike the bread Moses provided in the wilderness, is a bread which truly satisfied, which truly gives life.

Throughout the centuries since, the Church has associated these sayings of Christ with the sacramental meal that forms the core of Christian worship, the Eucharist. Jesus was blatant enough in his statement that his contemporaries were put off by the suggestion that bread could be ‘his body’ and wine ‘his blood’ – and that eating and drinking were required!

This difficulty has not been resolved since then, not by any means. In the West, we have long argued about the possibility of the elements being understood ‘literally’, and the consequent emphasis on ‘real presence’ in the most vivid sense, versus a purely ‘symbolic’ notion of presence, leading to the supposition that the elements are no more than empty symbols whose purpose is to remind us of a past event. (There are many other approaches in between these, but they tend to be a polemic against one side or the other.)

However, it's worth noting that John’s gospel presents Jesus as ‘bread’ and ‘wine’ in a symbolic context (that of these past feedings) while also emphasizing presence: ‘this is my body….’, etc. In a similar way, the early Church writers used more realistic language (Anaphora of Sarapion), while embracing words like ‘symbol’, ‘sign’, ‘figure’, and ‘type’ (St. Augustine).

The reality is that a more ancient understanding of ‘symbol’ or ‘sign’ involves the thing symbolized, participating in the reality signified. This is a difficult thing for us to grasp as post-Enlightenment people, who tend to reduce deeply symbolic things to objects. Take icons for instance. Do we treat them as 'sacred art' or as windows into heaven?

How should we understand these difficult words in John's gospel as they relate to the Eucharist? Fr. Alexander Schmemann, that beloved 20th-century theologian of Eucharistic theology, found the answer in a rejection of the real/symbolic dichotomy. Instead, we may understand the Church itself as a sacrament – as the mystery of the Kingdom of God in our midst. The Church is ultimate reality, heaven on earth, which is communicated to us symbolically: through liturgy and sacraments. As we enter into this heavenly worship, we too become citizens of this Kingdom, and are ‘born again’ as members of the body of Christ. (This summary is from Fr. Paul Lazor's address, 'Father Alexander Schmemann: A Personal Memoir', 2007.)

Thus, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember past foreshadowings of the Eucharist, such as the Manna and the feeding of the crowds in Galilee. We remember Jesus' passion and death too. We participate in the immediate presence of God, communicated to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the elements of bread and wine, believing the direct expressions of the gospels to 'eat' and 'drink' Christ's body and blood. We also enjoy a foretaste of the Supper of the Lamb in the Kingdom of God, to which we look forward in the age to come.

Is this symbolic? Certainly. Is it real? Of course. Perhaps the word we need now to describe all of this is Mystery!

Yours in Christ,
Justin