Leora Weitzman’s Homily from the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, May 29, 2016

The economy of love is not like the economy of money.  Love multiplies when it’s shared.

To me, this is the primary message of the stories where Jesus feeds crowds.  These stories invite us to a leap of faith, from seeing situations through the lens of the money economy to seeing them through the lens of the love economy.  When we take that leap, we find, like the disciples, that after the sharing there’s actually more of what matters.

Let’s see what happens if we apply the two economies to the words of Jesus about the bread and the cup: “This is my body that is for you… This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” According to the theory of Substitutional Atonement, this means Jesus gave his body and blood in place of what we owe to God for our sins.  We were in debt; Jesus paid our debt.  The often-used language of debt clearly situates this interpretation within the economy of money.

Does God really see us as debtors?  Certainly we often see ourselves, and each other, as falling short.  But the whole idea of falling short may be a human creation.  Consider these words from 14^th-century mystic Julian of Norwich:

… I saw no wrath except on man’s side. …I saw truly that our Lord was never angry, and never will be.  Because he is God, he is good, he is truth, he is love, he is peace…And between God and our soul there is neither wrath nor forgiveness in his sight.  For our soul is so wholly united with God, through his own goodness, that between God and our soul nothing can interpose.  And then our courteous Lord showed… a wonderful example of a Lord that has a Servant.  The Lord looks upon his Servant full lovingly and sweetly, and sends him to a certain place to do his will. The Servant not only goes, but runs in great haste, for love to do his Lord’s will. And anon he falls into a ditch, and is greatly hurt. And then he groans and moans and wails and struggles, but he neither may rise nor help himself by no manner of way. …I beheld with carefulness to learn if I could perceive in him any fault, or if the Lord should assign to him any blame. And in truth there was none seen: for only his goodwill and his great desire was cause of his falling…. And thus continually his loving Lord full tenderly beholdeth him…  If this is how God sees us, there’s no debt to be paid for us.  What, then, is the meaning of a new covenant, complete with body and blood?  To begin with, it might help us out of the ditch of our own score-keeping, our judgments of ourselves and others.   Let’s look at the new covenant through the lens of the economy of love—love that multiplies when it’s shared.  Jesus’ willing gift of his body and blood, his life and his death, becomes his own leap of faith into the new economy.  He lives a life of loving and accepting people who can’t repay him in political power or safety.  His gifts of healing and inclusion make no economic sense as investments in his own security.   This threatened people whose faith was lodged in the economy of money, of predictability and control, to the point that they put him to death.  Rather than betray what his whole life had been about, he embraced that death as an irrevocable leap into the new economy, the economy of love. This irrevocable leap is what creates the new covenant.  Old-style covenants were sealed with blood sacrifice, animals divided into halves between which the parties to the covenant would walk.  Sacrifice belongs to the economy of money:  to gain one thing, we sacrifice another.  Conservation of math.   Enter the new covenant, the covenant not of sacrifice but of sacrament.  A life freely given over in love is not divided but multiplied.  It is present every time the gift is shared.  That presence is sacrament.   The sharing of the gift witnesses to the new covenant, the new economy.  It witnesses to our own leap of faith, our own commitment to give our lives with the same integrity and love.   We can’t do this alone; Jesus “looked up to heaven” before blessing and distributing the bread.  Not just to the 5,000; ultimately, he distributed himself to us as spiritual bread, nourishing us to do likewise.   So our first task as disciples is simply to accept.  To let go the belief that we need to earn or deserve the gift, as we would in the economy of money.  To shed our shame, our sense of unworthiness and debt, and let God love us so we can love each other. 17^th-century poet and priest George Herbert beautifully captures the dance between a soul afraid to trust the economy of love, and Love Itself gently insisting till the soul yields.  As you listen, remember that in his time, the word “meat” could simply mean food.

Leora Weitzman, May 29, 2016 – Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ