Sunday Homily - August 5, 2018 - I AM the Bread of Life: Part. 2

St. Thomas Aquinas - Orthodox Style Icon

I.

“Oh yeah? Prove it!”
That’s a familiar line, for sure.
You might have even had this said to you
at some point in time or another.

The five-year-old boy on the playground looks at his friends
and says, “I can climb up that slide backwards!”
and his friends reply:
“Oh yeah? Prove it!”

The 16-year-old sits in the driver’s seat
of her dad’s car for the first time,
and her driver’s education teacher
sitting quietly with a clipboard
is silently saying,
“So, she thinks she can drive? Well, she better prove it!”

The high school coach before the big homecoming game
gathers the players around in the team circle
and says,
“If you think you deserve to wear our colors
time for you to prove it.”

Or, maybe a much less innocent use of this phrase:

“You say that you love me: oh yeah, well prove it!”

“You say that you’re a good person, huh? Prove it!”

“Prove it!”
Those words
are so often are employed in combative,
antagonistic ways.

And just because you don’t say it out loud,
doesn’t mean that we all here don’t do this, too.

“He believes THAT about Jesus?
        I would love to see him prove that."

“She said THAT about me??
I would love to see her prove that.”

But, sometimes “Prove it!” comes from a place
of deep searching
deep longing
wanting answers.

“So, you say God loves me.
I would love to see you prove that
given my family situation is in shambles.”

“Christians say that they believe in God,
and yet they so often are hypocrites.
Prove to me, Christians,
that you actually believe in God.”

Or, how about this one:

“You really believe that
        God is present in a wafer and Concord wine?
               I would love to see you prove that.”

“You really believe that Jesus Christ
is present within the Blessed Sacrament?
PROVE IT.”

II.

You know,
nothing has really changed over the past 2000 years.

Because this “Prove it” mentality,
this incessant need to know for sure
is exactly the resistance
that Jesus encounters in today’s Gospel.

In fact, this resistance comes from the exact 5000+ crowd
that Jesus had just fed in last week’s Gospel.

These people had SEEN the sign that Jesus did
they were the ones who actually ATE the bread he broke
and were satisfied because of Jesus’s miraculous power.

*“They run after Jesus,
not because of the signs that Jesus performed
but because they ate the loaves
and had their fill.” *[paraphrase - John 6:26]

And when Jesus calls them out on it,
when Jesus tells them that they should instead
               eat the Eternal Bread and never hunger again
                       and that “the Work of God
              is to believe in the one he has sent” [John 6:29]
             they respond thusly:
“Prove it!”
More specifically, they say,
“What sign will you give
that we may see it
and believe you?”

How are you going to “Prove it!” Jesus?

III. 

You really believe that
God is present in a wafer and Concord wine?

You really believe that Jesus Christ is present
in the Blessed Sacrament?
PROVE IT.

And that, friends, is where you and I need the help
of one of the greatest thinkers in the Christian Tradition.
St. Thomas Aquinas.

So, who was this guy?
Well, a short biography may be in order.

Thomas was a theologian and philosopher
during the Middle Ages.

He was a Dominican Friar
(a Monk in the order of St. Dominic)
and he was a lecturer at the theological schools
                        in Rome and in Paris, France.

And St. Thomas wrote some of the most important works
of theology in the history of Christianity.

He wrote thousands of pages of theology,
taught hundreds of classes,
influenced generations of Christian thinkers
and has been the conduit for Jesus’s love
for many generations of Christians
even after his death.

And in one of his theological works,
        called the Summa Theologica
        [it is also called the Summa Theologiea]
                St. Thomas talks about the Sacraments.

And in his discussion of the Blessed Sacrament,
the Holy Communion,
the Eucharist,
he says something very important
for us today.

This his answer to the following question:
      Whether the Body of Christ is present in this sacrament truly 
        or merely as a figure or sign?

St. Thomas says the following in response:

*As it says in Luke 22:19: [Jesus says],“This is My Body, which shall be delivered up for you.” St. Cyril says, “Doubt not whether this be true, but take rather the Savior’s words with faith, for since He is the Truth, He lieth not…

*[Also] St. Ambrose says, “Christ is in this Sacrament” (De Officiis)

*The presence of Christ’s true Body and Blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine Authority….hence, He [Jesus] says, “He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me and I in them (John 6:57).

*[Peter Kreeft. Practical Theology. Pg. 267; quotation of block text above is of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Tertia Pars, Question 76, ad contra 1]

Did you notice what St. Thomas did?
How does St. Thomas “Prove it!”?

He does it very simply:
he says very clearly that to “Prove it”
in a physicalist, materialist sense
in which our modern world operates
is precisely the WRONG way
to understand Jesus’s presence.

Instead, the enactor of our mystical sense of Jesus’s presence
is Faith, that comes by hearing the Gospel of Jesus.

And the blessed virtue of Faith
is not something
              that we can merely train,
                        or force ourselves to have.

Faith,
saving faith,
Baptized Faith,
is the kind of character that we must have,
is the kind of vision that we must have,
to approach this Sacred Mystery.

And that Baptized Faith
that Sacramental Seed,
               watered by the grace of your own Baptism,
               produces that exact fruit of Faith
               to receive Jesus hidden
                in the Holy Communion.

But that Faith is only enlivened
by Jesus Christ’s own words,
his own Institution:
“This is my body;
This is my blood.”

Christ, who is the Truth, the Eternal Word,
speaks His own Divine Self into our presence,
His own objective, real presence
under these forms of Bread and Wine.

And as St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Cyril and St. Ambrose,
(the saints who lived almost 900 years
before St. Thomas Aquinas)
who St. Thomas Aquinas quotes,
confess that self-same Faith
that St. Thomas notes
                                       in his Eucharistic hymn:

*“Taste and touch and vision
to discern thee fail;
Faith, that comes by hearing
pierces through the veil.
I believe what-e’re
the Son of God hath told
What the Truth hath spoken
that for Truth I hold.”

*[Hymnal 1982, #314 - Adoro Devote]

Faith means to take God at His Word:
and that means, for us as Episcopalians,
that to try to “Prove it”
as if we are trying to test a scientific hypothesis
using mere taste, touch, or sight to establish Truth
is to ignore the One whom we confess
as THE Way,
THE Truth
and THE Life.

The sense that we must use is our spiritual sense,
our spiritual vision,
our Faith.

And Holy Scripture says this about Faith:
*“[It] is the assurance of things hoped for
and the conviction,
(the evidence),
of things not seen.” *[Hebrews 11:1 NASB]

IV.

Why is this so important?
Why is this so vital to understand?

Because Friends:
        we have to regain,
reinvigorate,
recapture that ancient Truth.

In our Western world that increasingly
         is suspicious of anything unobservable,
anything unprovable by scientific inquiry,
and anything miraculous:
     we must hold to the ancient roots
            of our Christian Faith. 

And our Ancient Faith says this to our world:
God is present,
God is here,
and God calls out and beckons to all
that all might be saved.

Saved.
Through Jesus’s death: the atonement for sin.
Through Jesus’s resurrection: his victory over Death.
Through Jesus’s coming:
His coming at the end of the age.
His coming into our lives in Baptism.
And his coming into our own selves
through the Blessed Sacrament
of the Altar. 

And as you are sent, bearing the Son of God within yourselves,
you are to be sent in power
to transform the world with the Gospel of Jesus.

*“To bring those who do not know Him
to the knowledge and love of Him.”
*[Book of Common Prayer; Collect for Mission, pg. 101]

To point those lost in darkness
pain, hurt, and despair,
to the Light of the World,
already present and already in power.

And to turn the skeptical “Prove it!”
Into the joyful acclamation:
“I believe:
Good Lord, I believe...”

...In the Name of the + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.