Many to one Body

This is my homily for Sunday, June 14, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.  The readings for the day are here.  In addition, at least for the next few days there is a video available of the recording of the mass at which I gave this homily, here.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.  It’s the day on the church calendar for us to offer our thanks, praise and worship for the gift of the Eucharist.  I could talk for hours about the many meanings and themes of the Eucharist: the Holy Sacrifice, the sacred banquet, the bread for our journey here on earth, the mercy and forgiveness of this sacrament, Christ’s pledge of future glory – all that, and much, much more, is contained within this blessed sacrament.

Today, I’d like to focus on just one of these many dimensions of the Eucharist: the dimension of unity.  The Eucharist is the sacrament of our unity with one another.  St. Paul, in the first letter to the Corinthians from which our 2^nd reading was taken today, says this succinctly: “We, though many, are one body.”  

Notice that, contained in these six simple words – “We, though many, are one body” – in those six simple words juxtapose two profound ideas.  We’re many, but we are one body.  Many, and one, at the same time. 

I suppose it’s not news that we are many.  We’re not all the same.  The very same St. Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, named some of the social divisions that marked his time: Jews and Greeks.  Slaves and free persons.  Males and females.

There is much that is good about diversity, but there is no getting around the fact that throughout human history, up to and including our own day, these social differences often result in distrust and conflict.  Jews and Greeks, with their different religions, viewed one another with mutual suspicion.  Free persons and slaves were entangled in social and economic relationships that were fundamentally unjust.  Relations between males and females could be characterized by infidelity, exploitation and abuse.

All those things are bad.  They were bad in St. Paul’s day, and they’re still with us, and continue to be bad, in our day. 

The Good News is this: such is the power of Christ that the Eucharist is able to overcome even these unjust and exploitative social relationships.  Remember the 2^nd part of our six words from St. Paul today: that even though we’re many, *we’re one*. 

Now – here’s the difficult part: the idea isn’t that the Eucharist papers over the problems between ethnicities and races, the injustice, the exploitation and abuse.  Jesus does not mean for the Eucharist to be a thanksgiving for an unjust status quo.  No, the idea is that the grace of the Eucharist gives us new eyes, to see these bad things as they are.  And the Eucharist gives us the spiritual strength to stand against them.  And by addressing the ills that plague our world, we make it possible to be one as Jesus wishes.

If we are followers of Jesus, then we’re called to take part in the work Jesus began, to inaugurate the kingdom of heaven, even right here on earth.  If we take Jesus seriously that we’re all called to be one, then we must be willing to be peacemakers – blessed are the peacemakers – where division and conflict reign.  If we take Jesus seriously that we’re all called to be one, then we must be willing to bring about justice where injustice reigns.  If we take Jesus seriously that we’re all called to be one, then we must be willing to go and stand in solidarity with victims of exploitation and abuse and stand up for human dignity and security. 

Because if we allow conflict and injustice and exploitation to fester and grow, then we’re really not one.  We’re just many – the sinful many.  And that’s not what Jesus wants. That’s not what he prayed for on the night before he died – he didn’t pray that we all continue to be many – separated from each other, suspicious of one another and inflicting injuries on another.  He prayed that we be *one* - that instead of being separated, we be unified, in him.  That instead of being suspicious of one another, that we be able to join hands – or, these days, at least come to within six feet of one another – in trust and peace and love.  And that instead of exploiting one another, we serve one another’s needs.

 

As followers of Jesus, we want to build God’s kingdom.  We don’t want our marriages and families to be unfaithful and abusive – we want them to be nurturing and full of love.  We don’t want our civic life and our workplaces to be instruments of injustice and exploitation; we want them to be places of human dignity and justice.  We don’t want relations between nations, peoples, races and religions to be filled with mutual distrust and suspicion – we want them to enable peace and human flourishing.  We want Jesus’s vision of *unity* to be realized, even in our lives here on earth.

The great tragedy of the death of George Floyd seems to have awakened many Americans to the existence of some continuing injustices in our society.  The video of his killing seem to have given new sight to eyes that formerly were blind.  As a people, we have found ourselves in a moment.  Out of George Floyd’s unjust death, could there have arisen a moment of grace, a moment to overcome injustice with justice, to overcome exploitation with equal dignity under the law?  The answers to those questions are for us, the People of God and the people of the United States, to discern.  But my prayer for us as a people and a nation today is that we let our discernment be guided by our vision of the Eucharist – that we are all to be united: in love and thanksgiving, in mercy and forgiveness, in healing and justice and dignity.