It Is The Spirit That Gives Life, The Flesh Is Of No Avail – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; August 25, 2024

It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

Since the end of July we have been listening to the 6^th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, the account of the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse, culminating last Sunday with his dramatic assertion, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life in you. (Jn 6:53)

Now in today’s Gospel, we get the reaction: many of Jesus’ own disciples decide that this is a hard saying, impossible to accept, and so turn away from Jesus. As for the Twelve, they too are bewildered, but led by Simon Peter they cling to Jesus in faith, Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Yet, in the midst of this we also hear words of Jesus that seem to take back everything he said: It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

Indeed, one of the three great architects of the Protestant rebellion, Ulrich Zwingli, used precisely this passage to insist that when Jesus said, This is my Body, he did not mean what he was saying, but was only speaking figuratively.

So what are we to make of this?

Before we try to understand the answer, let us consider, in light of today’s 2^nd reading, just how much is at stake.

The 2^nd reading speaks about the order of Christian marriage out of reverence for Christ. Is this real or not? Is it just an airy ideal?

Wives should be subordinate to your husbands, as to the Lord … Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her.

I emphasize here the reality of Christian, sacramental marriage.  There is also marriage of fallen humanity, unredeemed marriage, that labors under the curse recorded in Genesis, when God said to the woman, Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. (Gen 3:16) For unredeemed, graceless, humanity, and also for Christians who live as though unredeemed, marriage degenerated into the husband lording it over the wife; though in modern times, in the name of equality, unredeemed marriage has tended in the opposite direction, wives lording it over their husbands. Unredeemed marriage has further been defaced by polygamy, infidelity, and divorce.

To his own disciples, Jesus says, Among you it shall not be so; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant. (Mt 20:26) Authority, real authority, is given – in this case to the husband – not to oppress others, but to serve others. This spirit is exhibited in the exhortation of St. Peter, Husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor on the woman as the weaker sex – weaker not just in a boxing match but because of the unique vulnerability that comes from her glorious capacity to conceive a child in her womb – since you are joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Pe 3:7) Notice where the real emphasis lies: being joint heirs of the grace of life. To serve each other out of reverence for Christ means serving precisely the life of grace in each other, which cannot take place unless the life of grace is recognized and esteemed for what it is, a real sharing in the life and nature of God, which makes us truly to be his children. (cf. 2 Pe 1:4, 1 Jn 3:1)

The importance of the order of Christian marriage becomes more apparent when we consider that it is a sacrament: the two shall become one flesh; this is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.

As a sacrament, the marriage bond serves as a source of grace for the married couple, grace that enables them to fulfill the duties of marriage, live out the love they have mutually promised, and walk together, helping each other on the pilgrim path to the heavenly Jerusalem. As a sacrament, Christian marriage also becomes a sign of the greater reality, the marriage between Christ and his Church.

Sacraments, as signs, belong to this life, in which we walk by faith not by sight. (cf. 2 Cor 5:7) They will pass away in the eternal kingdom in which we will no longer see in a mirror dimly but face to face. (1 Cor 13:12) The nuptial union between Christ and his Church, which begins in this world and is consummated in the eternal kingdom, is absolutely indissoluble. Sacramental marriage, which is a sign of the unbreakable union of Christ and his Church and which receives its firmness from that greater reality, is dissolved only by death.

These two realities, husband and wife, Christ and Church, are themselves intimately bound up with the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. While marriage signifies the union of Christ and his Church, it does not bring that union about, rather it is strengthened by it. The Holy Eucharist, however, actually brings about and strengthens the union of Christ and his Church, here and now; the celebration of the holy Eucharist is the sacramental celebration of the wedding feast of the Lamb of God. (cf. Rev 19:7)

Now, we begin to see what is at stake. The good order of the Eucharist, the good order of the Church, and the good order of marriage are all intertwined.

If Zwingli was right and Jesus took back his words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, if the visible signs of bread and wine do not actually contain the Body and Blood of Christ, but are merely signs of a distant heavenly reality, then neither is the Church a visible reality in this world, but merely an invisible spiritual union of those whom God knows to be faithful, and Christian marriage itself becomes open to divorce, when the invisible spiritual “love” dies. The visible substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the visible reality of the Church in this passing world, and the visible indissolubility of marriage all stand and fall together.

Indeed, we see verified in the historical advance of the Protestant spirit, all three falling together. When they fall, the visible concreteness of the faith becomes a mere fairy tale, a dream world, a private fantasy, an internet meme.

It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

So, what then are we to make of these words?

If Jesus meant to clarify a misunderstanding, to soften the reality of his words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, then given the departure of so many disciples, he evidently did a poor job of it. Still, we can best grasp his intent if we review the whole dynamic of his discourse, or better the way in which the crowd resisted his words and closed themselves off to faith.

When Jesus first mentioned the bread of life, they asked for the bread, but when he identified himself as that bread, even before he spoke graphically about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they started to have problems. They said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’ (Jn 6:42)

They see before them a man, they think of his human origins, and therefore reject his divine origin. How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’  They refuse to believe – despite ample proof (cf. Jn 5:30-47) – that the man before them came down from heaven; they refuse to believe that the man before them is the Son of God. Everything hinges on Jesus’ identity. Who is he? The son of Joseph? Or the Son of God? Now, everything hinges on the reality of the Holy Eucharist, is it merely bread? Or is it the Body of Christ?

Next, when Jesus gets to the point of saying, And the bread which I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world, they reply, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? (Jn 6:51) Note, that they still see him, listen to him, and understand him as if he were no more than a man like them.

That is when Jesus gets even more graphic and says, Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (Jn 6:53) He indeed emphasizes his own humanity as life-giving, but it gives life as an instrument of his divinity: As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. (Jn 6:57) The life he gives through the concrete flesh and blood of his humanity does not come from his humanity, but from the Father.

The crowd, still focused on his humanity, is now absolutely horrified as they imagine the prospect of gnawing Jesus’ flesh and pouring his blood into cups to drink. It sounds to them like Jesus is asking them to kill him, carve up his flesh, put it on spits and roast it on a fire. How else would they eat him?

If, however, they had understood (and believed) what he was saying about his origin and the life-giving character of his flesh, they might have been struck with wonder, rather than horror, as they grasped that he was speaking about eating living flesh that would not be damaged by the eating but would rather communicate its own life to the eater.

How could that be? Jesus did not reveal the “how” until the Last Supper, when he gave them his living Body and Blood in the form of bread and wine, but had they been willing to believe in him, that he was indeed the Son of God come down from heaven, they might have been given to perplexity and wonder rather than to horror.

So, we come to Jesus’ final reply to them. It goes right to the matter of faith, faith in the Son of God made man. Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?

His reply goes right to the heart of what the crowd had been rejecting all along and right to the heart of what lay at the foundation of everything Jesus had said to them. He is a man, yes, but he came down from heaven (where he was before) because he is indeed the Son of God made man. So he gives as the decisive proof of his words his return, as man, to where he was before, in the glory of the Father, which would take place in his ascension into heaven. So he is asking if they would accept his words if they saw him sitting at the right hand of God.

Finally, then, we return to the words that, taken out of context, have caused so much trouble: It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

These words do not deny the concrete reality of his Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. Their meaning is really no different from what he said earlier: As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. His flesh and blood do not give life, eternal life, because they are merely human flesh and blood but because they are the flesh and blood of the Son of God, whose life is from the Father. The spirit gives life through the Body of Christ.

God is Spirit, Jesus had said to the Samaritan woman, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (Jn 4:24) He is not talking about the person of the Holy Spirit, but about God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is spirit, the Son is spirit, and the Holy Spirit is spirit, they are not three spirits, but one divine spirit, just as they are one God. The flesh of Jesus Christ gives life as the instrument of the divine spirit. It is the spirit that gives life.

The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. This does not mean that his words are “figurative”, a mere metaphor, rather his words have their origin in the divine spirit, they come from God, because the speaker is God from God, who is spirit, and they give life to those who receive his words in faith.

To receive life, the life of grace, eternal life, from the flesh of Jesus Christ, it is necessary to believe his words; it is necessary to believe that when he says, This is my Body, that it is, in truth his body; it is necessary to believe that what looks like bread is truly his life-giving Body, life-giving because it is the Body of the Son of God.

This is the faith of Peter, upon which the Church is built, upon which Christian marriage is built, the faith that looks now upon the appearance of bread and hears, The Body of Christ, and replies, Amen. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. (cf. Mt 16:16)