FROM SELF-PROTECTION TO BEING FOOD FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD
There are times when we can only live by hope, when what confronts us is so overwhelming, so huge, so utterly beyond our strength, that it’s simply hopeless to try to muster any resources against it.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Jesus, in defining his meaning and ministry, said: “My flesh is food for the life of the world.” Notice what he’s not saying: Jesus isn’t saying that his flesh is food for the life of the church or for the life of Christians.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
His body is food for the life of the world and the world is larger than the church. Jesus came into the world to be eaten up by the world. For this reason, he was born in a manger, a feeding-trough, a place where animals come to eat, and it’s for this reason that he eventually ends up on a table, an altar, to be eaten by human beings. Jesus came not to defend himself, the church, or the faith, but as nourishment for the planet.
We need to keep that horizon always in front of us as we journey through a time of anti-ecclesial and anti-clerical sentiment. Today the church, its teachings, and its clergy are often under siege, sometimes for good reasons but many times simply because of ideology and bias.
The danger in that is not that the church will somehow collapse, but that the church, us, will become too-defensive, too-self-protective, lose the vulnerability that Jesus demonstrated and asks for, and instead see the world as an enemy to be fought rather than as a precious body to which we are asked to give our lives (akin to a parent who has a child whose hostility makes an easy loving relationship difficult, but who must then resist the temptation to write off his or her responsibility for that child). The first task of the church, no matter the difficulty, is not to circle the wagons and defend itself. Even when the world doesn’t welcome what we have to offer, we’re still asked to give ourselves over to it as food.
Our task as church, especially today, is not to defend ourselves or even to carve out some peace for ourselves against a world that sometimes prefers not to have us around. Like Jesus, our real reason for being here is to try to help nourish and protect that very world that’s often hostile to us.
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