THE recent robust discussion on Eucharistic adoration should not be a surprise.
The effective summary of the “Bread from Heaven” discourse in St John’s Gospel Chapter 6 is: “Jesus creates scandal – claims equality with God – many disciples have ceased to follow him”.
John remains silent on the Last Supper Institution Narrative and inserts the Washing of the Feet action by Jesus. Feet-washing too was a scandal.
Peter was a severely non-compliant, non-starter, at first.
Even John the Baptist (John 1:27) could not envisage untying Jesus’ sandal strap, even less having Jesus wash his feet. These were scandalous suggestions.
The foot-washing is the highpoint of John’s Eucharistic witness that God condescended to dwell (Greek: tabernacle) amongst men; the Word was made flesh.
The great Johannine interpreter, C H Dodd says it expresses the utter meaning of the Incarnation as God’s great act of self-condescension, of which the Eucharist is the continuation: God in Jesus pitching His tent amongst us.
Why then do the gospels reinforce that at the heart of Christianity is scandal, the scandal that God lives amongst us; in the flesh of Jesus Christ?
It requires the memory of Jesus’ death and resurrection to show that God tabernacles amongst us; that God’s presence is always a real presence.
New Testament translations for the Greek word “scandala” literally mean a “stumbling-block or a snare that entraps us”.
The New Testament alerts us to the fact that a scandal is something that contradicts our existing standards.
It is anthropological; it is a determinant that operates almost unconsciously. A scandal closes us in.
It causes us to reject what it is that scandalises us.
The Real Presence and Transubstantiation as described in the Council of Trent speak to us not of scandal but reality, truth, “aletheia-not forgetting”.
VINCE HODGE
Paddington, Qld
