Metaphors

I wonder if Australia is the only place in the world where an absolute lemon is cactus and a dark horse a fair cow, and everyone has an uncle called Bob? I wonder what your thoughts are on the following expressions.

   Stunned mullet

   A few roos loose in the top paddock

   A few stubbies short of a six-pack. ... 

   Have a sticky or have a captain cook…

   Or nice Budgie smugglers Tony Abbott…

Much Australian parlance is metaphor. What is a metaphor? Simply put metaphor is symbolic language. In metaphor, one experience or reality is understood or explained by comparing it to another. Metaphor is the use of symbol to make meaning. An important thing to understand is that a metaphor taken literally is an absurdity. For example, to interpret the metaphor “it’s raining cats and dogs” literally is an absurdity, as is “to throw the baby out with the bath water” and “beating a dead horse”. Metaphor is the only path into today’s lectionary. Yet, if we enter the deeper meaning of these metaphors an experience is offered. One could say “it’s raining hard”. However, “raining cats and dogs” offers an experience, really heavy rain.

Metaphors and the Gospel of John 6:56-69

The point of today’s reading in John 6:56–69 is precisely metaphor. John states in that ‘the Spirit gives life; the flesh is unprofitable’. What John means is that we must understand the use of metaphor in experiencing Jesus; to take a metaphor literally is an absurdity, worse, its death. A literal understanding misses the point about Jesus. Informed by the Spirit it is only through metaphor we grasp the meaning of Jesus. The invitation today is to elevate our minds from the literal to the symbolic, from the finite to the infinite.

I am not trying to be abstract. Metaphor is how religious and spiritual language works. If one wants to experience inner aliveness or vitality or meaning or purpose, we have no option but to embrace metaphor.

It is precisely at the point of metaphor that division and conflict occur in the John’s Gospel. There is conflict between Jesus and the pharisees who overemphasise literalness.  Later in John 6.40-51 the conflict around metaphor is between Jesus and other Jews. Now the conflict is within the group of Jesus’ own followers – Jesus’ use of metaphor causes offense.

The offense is related to fear, fear that Jesus is asking them to let go of their traditions. Instead, Jesus is asking that their heritage be transformed into metaphor, into symbol. I suggest we do the same.

The Eucharist as a metaphor for life

In the meditation on the bread of life in John 6 and in our Eucharist, we are asked to enter metaphor. We are asked to transform our life into the life of God and transform our actions into actions of God.  Jesus said: “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”. The elevation of the bread during the Eucharist and the elevation of Jesus in the ascension is an invitation to elevate our consciousness from the literal to the symbolic, from the physical to the divine.  The finite, the physical, is an expression, a symbol, of the Infinite. 

The bread and wine are symbols of finite reality, symbols of the whole creation, symbols of our lives. The elevation of the bread and wine and the elevation of Christ transforms our finite lives into the body and blood of God, into the manifestation of God’s presence.

Our finite lives are transformed to the body and blood of Christ, a manifestation of God. Our finite actions are transformed into lifegiving actions of Christ.

What does this mean practically?

Seeing our lives as a metaphor for the Eucharist is to transform our life into the life God of life, our actions into actions of God. Thus, whatever we give to others will be the body and blood of Christ. Whatever we receive from others is, similarly, the body and blood of Christ. Every encounter we have with others, within creation is an Eucharistic celebration. Every encounter is then a sacred encounter.

e.g. When I share in an authentic conversation with another, the story I share with them is the body and blood of Christ and they receive it. In offering a listening presence, the listener gives the speaker the body and blood of Christ.

Concluding comments

When the theologian and scientist Jesuit priest Teilhard was unable to celebrate the Eucharist, he made everything his Eucharist in the way indicated above:

Since once again, Lord I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail. I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.

My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day.