August 27, 2006

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 12     John 6:51-58

Jesus said, “For my flesh is the real food; my blood is the real drink” [John 6:55]

Real food. It sounds like part of a lecture given by a diet guru. Lettuce, lentils, and legumes. Someone else's idea of what is good for us. No bacon, or burgers, or yummy pink-icing buns. Real is a loaded word. It slips out of advertisers' holsters and aims at us. To be 'real' we need to do this, dress like that, behave like them, be a 'real man' or 'real woman', and eat their 'real food'. Real can be a word of social control; controlling us.

That's why I like Garfield the cat - he of comic-strip fame; he of smart tongue, large appetite, and slothful demeanor. He is a nineties parody of the well-dressed, good-looking, and correctly behaved culture. Garfield irreverently debunks real culture. If you are what you eat, Garfield is a lasagna. He's a cardiological disaster.

Not that I think there is anything wrong in people choosing to go on a diet. I've done it myself and will, alas, probably do it again. What is wrong is someone else defining your reality, taking away your choice of deciding what is real and unreal. Garfield debunks any 'real' box that others want to slot human or furry-kind into.

When I think of real food I think of Niger, in the Sahel region of Northern Africa. We were sick, as only one can be sick in Africa! Finally we got up. We strolled and chanced to meet a family. Dad, mum, mum, kids and cuzzies... They lived in a lean-to on the side of a wall. On their two-stick fire they brewed coffee. With camel milk [acquired then and there from mummy camel], plenty of sugar, and lashings of hospitality we received some real food. Together, with few words in common, we communed and our souls were fed. Soul-to-soul.

This was real food not because of the taste or nutritional value. Neither would have scored very highly if served in a Viaduct cafe. This was not something real because it was common or unique to this family or this part of Africa. This was real simply in the subjective sense that the food was a vehicle of grace to us.

There is a story from the Hebrew Scriptures about food being a vehicle of grace. It's called “Manna in the Wilderness”. The Hebrew people were hungry and hot. Which is not surprising being in a desert. They were in the Sinai, miles from anywhere. Many longed for the days of the whip, back in Egypt, when there was some certainty about food, and some certainty about the real world of pyramid manufacturing. Now there was only the uncertainty of the desert and the rumbling in one's belly.

Then the manna fell from the night sky. Indiscriminately it fell on grumbler and grateful alike. The word manna is a pun and can be translated as “What is this?” 'This' was probably the nutritious droppings of thousands of little flying insects that ate one of the desert bushes. The manna fed the body. The travellers physically survived. Even though the manna quickly rotted, the miracle occurred fresh every morning. There was a special provision for the Sabbath to prove that the world wouldn't collapse if Yahweh, their God, took the day off.

One reality in this story was new economic principles that differed markedly from Egypt. Every family, for example, were ordered to gather just enough manna for their needs. Enough for everyone was the goal, unlike in Egypt. In God's world there is such a thing as “too much” and “too little” – something that our capitalistic economies need to be very mindful of!

Another new principle was that the manna bread should not be “stored up”. Wealth in Egypt was defined by surplus accumulation. For the Hebrews wealth was to be kept circulating through strategies of redistribution.

Another reality in this manna story was the feeding of the soul. Yahweh was meeting them in the midst of their uncertainty and on their road to freedom. Yahweh was a travelling companion who knew their needs. Yahweh was the chef who cooked up a feed. The food was heavenly - it was miraculous and plentiful. No one made a profit out of it. It was uncertain, non-marketable, and transient. For that group of desert wandering Hebrews it was real food.

It's hard to describe the miraculous. The miraculous happened in Niger and it happened in Sinai. It wasn't about a big God up in the sky doing a “suspend all natural laws” number. Yet it wasn't just a cup of camel milk coffee or solidified insect poo. It wasn't solely about hospitality or feeding the belly either. The miraculous did happen in the sense that somehow on our journeys God was encountered, soul-to-soul, and we were changed.

The debate around real is ongoing. For some people the word 'real' means objective, concrete, verifiable, and beyond doubt. For others 'real' is subjective, changing, bound up with experience and the doubting of absolutes. The political question of the debate is “Who defines and categorizes what is real?” The religious question is, “How is God real?”

One of my favourite children's stories is that of the Velveteen Rabbit. The rabbit, a ragged stuffed little animal, was made real. This didn't happen through believing the authorities in the Nursery. Nor did it happen by philosophical or theological deliberation. It didn't happen through market forces or the curtailing of the same. Instead the Velveteen Rabbit was made real by the love of a child. When you are loved it doesn't matter what you look like," says the wise old bear, "you have become real."

I think it is the experience of Christians over the last 2,000 years that God has been made real for us not because we were told to believe by “our betters”, nor by the insights of theology, philosophy, or other disciplines, but because as we have journeyed we have experienced something real touching our souls - soul-to-soul - and the closest word we have for that real is love.

The tension in the Gospel text today is between the real literal and the real metaphorical. Jesus' opponents say, "How can he give us his flesh to eat?" [v.52]. In the Aramaic tradition the "eater of the flesh" is the title of the devil - he of tail and pitchfork fame. The drinking of blood was looked on as a horrendous thing forbidden by God's law. To take this text literally invites us into some sort of cannibalistic carvery – if Jesus' flesh is real food and his blood real drink in a literal sense, then Christian Eucharist is dead meat.

The experience of Eucharist is something best understood with the heart, not the head. Its reality is found in the truth of encounter not in literal foolishness. Jesus is bread. Jesus gives himself to fellow travellers. We are bread. We too are to give ourselves in the service of justice and peace. This is what eternal life is - not some palace in the sky - but the giving to, and receiving from, others. The Jesus bread, food for the journey, is a vehicle of grace to be shared.

This is what real food can be: food by which we experience a God-imbued reality with each other. Soul-to-soul we find it together. Often in strange places, like Niger, or Sinai, or an upper room. We become real to each other and glimpse again the possibility of what the world might be.

My friend runs across the road, flagging me down. He has some lunch, and looks with utter disdain at my brown bread and bean sprout sandwich - "Hey, mate, have some real food. Got some chips and a fish. That rabbit food is bad for you man... Gee its good to see you." We sit down, open his greasies, and sprinkle some grace on top. We eat, we share, and we commune. Soul-to-soul. Its strange how in the midst of the mundane miracle can appear.