Recently, while visiting family in Southern California, I happened to see one of Jasper Johns’s flag paintings in the Broad collection in L.A. Famously, these paintings of the US flag prompt the question: Is it a flag, or is it an image of a flag? The implications are not entirely semantic if you assign a high value to the meaning and purpose of a flag, as many of us do. It matters, for instance, if you care about how a flag should be treated. I’m not sure I know the answer to the question of whether the painting is a flag or an image of a flag, but I’m pretty sure it’s the question that matters.
I was reminded that nearby in L.A., there hangs another famous work that prompts questions too: René Magritte’s 1929 painting called, “The Treachery of Images.” It is a rather large and realistic illustration of a pipe, of the kind that grandfathers once smoked. You would almost expect it to be an advertising poster for tobacco or for pipes for your grandfather. Except that in big, neat script beneath the image of the pipe are written in French the words, “Ceci n’est past une pipe.” This is not a pipe.
The explanatory label at the L.A. County Museum of Art says that the painting is a “treatise on the impossibility of reconciling word, image, and object, it challenges the convention of identifying an image of an object as the thing itself.” The label goes on to say that “the painting prompts the viewer to ponder its conflicting messages.”
It is possible that the details of the observance of the Feast of Corpus Christi could amount to a treatise on the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object. For, at the end of this Mass, we will place a consecrated Host in a monstrance for all to see. With the greatest possible ceremony, I will lift that monstrance, held beneath the folds of a humeral veil, and carry it in procession, surrounded by torches, preceded by thurifers swinging thuribles to create a smoky haze of sanctity, accompanied by singing, and, if you do your part, met by deep bows of reverence and adoration as we go. Then I will place the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Christ on the Altar for our adoration, to offer our prayers, and to beseech and to receive God’s blessing, before returning the consecrated Host to the Tabernacle.
Much could be said about the meaning of the ritual, this community, and God’s work in the world. Perhaps in a progressive parish like ours, in the twenty-first century, such medieval ceremony prompts the congregation to ponder conflicting messages. Perhaps it will be impossible for some to reconcile Word, image, and object. Perhaps some will find that the Procession and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament challenge us to wonder if we are mistaken to identify a sacramental sign of Our Blessed Lord as the Holy One himself. To put the question simply: Is this Jesus, or is it just a kind of sign or image of Jesus? Ritual so confronting in its extravagance might well prompt the question: Is this the Body of Christ, or is it just a representation of his Body? I happen to think it is a vital question, and that it’s not just the question that matters, but the answer, too.
Lately, I have been trying to underscore the nature of this parish community as a Eucharistic community - a community formed first and foremost by the Mass. And I have been saying that what this means is that we gather as Christ’s Body, to be fed by Christ’s Body, so that we can feed Christ’s Body in the world. Such a statement is deliberate in entwining Word, image, and object; resorting, as it does, among, other things, to St. Paul’s teaching that we believers, gathered together, amount to more than just a smattering of Episcopalians; we are, in fact, members of the Body of Christ, just as there are other members all around us in the world. And that this is not just an image or a metaphor, but that we are the real thing; and our neighbors are the real thing, no matter how lowly we may be. In some meaningful way we can be said really to be the actual object of the Body of Christ.
But I look at you, and I look at me, and I think: Really? This is not the Body of Christ. I look at the people we feed so many days of the week in this place, and I think: Really? In, oh, so many ways, we and they don’t look much like the Body of Christ to me. But it is a mystery of God’s love and grace that God allows such inadequate members to be assembled into so marvelous and so holy a thing. And despite my doubts when I look at us, I feel absolutely confident that we are and must be the Body of Christ in the world. And when I look at the often bedraggled souls who we feed in this place week by week, I am doubly convinced of it.
Perhaps some people will look at what we do here, when we take that bland, flat disc of bread and place it at the center of the golden rays of the monstrance, and bow to the Presence we believe inhabits such a lowly form, and they will respond with dubiousness. You may examine the evidence, and see only the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object; and you may conclude, as you gaze at the Host in the monstrance, that this is not the Body of Christ.
If there was a surrealist artist among us, the artist might render a painting of the monstrance-encased Host held up by veil-draped hands, and place the words in big, neat script below the image, “This is not the Body of Christ.” For that, I think, is the great concern and critique of the sublime expression of religion we will soon enact here: that no amount of ritual can change the view that the object in the monstrance cannot be what we say it is, cannot be who we say it is; that this is not and cannot be the Body of Christ.
But to take that view, and to enlist the surrealist artist to spell out those words would be either to fail to learn a lesson from the likes of Magritte and Jasper Johns, or to learn it too well - I’m not sure which. Those artists expect us to ponder conflicting messages in so complex a world as ours.
More to the point, in focusing our attention on the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object, we are forced to admit that the Host is an object that conforms imperfectly to our images of both Savior and Bread.
And if we had a surrealist artist among us who could paint for us that image of the monstrance-encased Host held up by veil-draped hands, I’d think that the words he’d write out in big, neat script would be these: “This is not a piece of bread,” since to so many in the world, that is precisely and only what it appears to be: a piece of bread.
The observance of today’s feast invites us to consider the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object in the time and space that are immediately available to us. In this holy place of mystery and love, and in this holy moment of time, the convention of identifying an image of an object as the thing itself is challenged, as we lift up and adore a lowly object that to the eye is so plainly nothing more than a bland, flat disc of Bread.
But this is not a piece of bread. And you are not a smattering of Episcopalians. And bedraggled, hungry souls are not the dregs of the earth. Though many are bedeviled by the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object, since, after all, this is all a matter of faith; you assembled members… those hungry souls… and that bland, flat disc of bread… these are the Body of Christ.
On this Feast of Corpus Christi, we gather as Christ’s Body, to be fed by Christ’s Body, so that we can feed Christ’s Body in the world. So, let us adore for ever, the most holy Sacrament: not just an image or a sign of Christ’s Body in the world, but the very real thing.
This is not a piece of bread.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
The Treachery of Images by René Magritte