Cutting-Edge Christianity
We live in a culture dominated by advertising and publicity. We are told that we can have it all. We are told that we can live the high life. We can have the best of everything. In the advertising world, the appeal is always to be on the so-called “cutting edge.” We have to have a cutting edge computer. We want a cutting edge car. Businesses seek to invest in cutting edge technologies.
Well, tonight brothers and sisters we are reminded that we are called to another kind of cutting edge. It is the cutting edge of Christianity. Tonight is the beginning of the Triduum, those three days that are a whole liturgical season. They are their own liturgical season because these three days commemorate the most central mysteries of the faith, dealing with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the institution of the Eucharist, the summit of our faith.
Jesus brought his followers to the cutting edge of faith in Him. To be sure in his public ministry, Jesus worked a miracle of feeding thousands with a few fish and barley loaves. He talked about God the Father as giving people heavenly bread. He called himself the Bread of Life.
But in our second reading tonight, St. Paul recalls what Jesus told his disciples about the Eucharist. He forces the apostles, and as Christians us, to the cutting edge of faith in God and faith in Him as the Son of God. In instituting the Eucharist, as St. Paul says, Jesus tells his apostles that unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, they shall have no life in them. He says that they will have life only if they feed on Him.
Jesus was leaving no doubt that about that which he was talking. Scripture scholars tell us that in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke, Jesus was actually telling them that they had to gnaw on his flesh and suck his blood to have life in them.
Now I would imagine this certainly got their attention. This image was the cutting edge of the faith Jesus was to establish. For what Jesus called his followers to that day, and what He calls us to today is an incredible intimacy of love. He would offer his very body and blood to us. He would pay the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. He would enshrine the ultimate gift of self in an excruciating death so as to demonstrate his all-abiding love and overcome sin and death through the Resurrection.
This is why Christ’s institution of the Eucharist begins the Triduum. It is the logical entry into the story of Christ’s Death and Resurrection, and the reason for it.
But Christianity is not just about what Jesus did a little less than 2000 years ago. It is a radical, if you will, cutting edge faith because we are called to that same gift of self that Jesus demonstrated. Now I wouldn’t want Father Rick to think that I told you to gnaw on each other. That is not my point. Rather, Christian love at its very essence is service-based. It is the service symbolized by Jesus’ washing of feet before the institution of the Eucharist, a symbolic washing that Father Rick and I will repeat tonight. It is service to the God who gives us all that we have. And it is service to others who we are called to love with the same devotion to which Jesus loved us.
If we are not prepared to show that kind of intimacy to others, our faith becomes lifeless. We will lack the love that Jesus, the Bread of Life showed to us.
This is pretty tough stuff. While as humans, we often seek emotional and physical love as our first objective, Jesus was teaching his apostles in tonight’s Gospel that love is not perfected or complete unless it is grounded in sacrifice. To be sure, we all have physical and spiritual needs. But those needs are taken care of by the Lord in a mysterious and wonderful process defined by our giving to receive.
We need to understand that every day there will be situations when we can think of ourselves or we can think of others. There are little acts of kindness or acts of evil. They can happen at work, going shopping, relating to our families, and relating to our friends, our enemies, and strangers. We can recall Jesus’ love or we can think of ourselves first. When we fail to serve, we can have a lukewarm faith, a faith that is fine so long as we are not challenged by it in our everyday lives. Such a faith is not on the cutting edge.
Many of us are blessed with many material gifts. We often wish for many more things, things we probably don’t need but nonetheless want. This is why advertising is so successful. But when we get them, are we really happy? Compare that to the times when we surprised our spouse or our children with a special gift. Compare it to the times when we visited a sick friend or performed some other act of forgiveness, healing, or mercy. Were we not far more joyful than when we got something for ourselves?
That ought to tell us something. Self-giving is the essence of a fullness of love, a Christian love. This bond of charity is what binds us as Christians to each other and emulates Jesus himself, preparing us for life in heaven. For what greater sacrifice can there be than to die for others? What greater love can there be than Jesus’; to offer the very body and blood of God so that we all can literally have God in us.
And even when we weaken, when we fail to love, we receive the ultimate comfort. Jesus, then as now, offers us the incredible intimacy of his own flesh and blood. Through the Eucharist, we can have the joy of being raised to new life as Jesus actually feeds us with Himself.
Christianity, therefore, has a rather different cutting edge. One day, we will be called by God to make an accounting for our lives. If we partake of the Eucharist in a genuine and faithful way, Jesus tells us that He will raise us up to share his intimate love forever. If we live as Jesus lived, we will be on the cutting edge of Christianity, not the cutting room floor of a lifeless faith and faithless life.