One of my colleagues in the international liturgy group published a book two years ago entitled “Fragments of the Real Presence.” The title and the premise of the book were based on the first few verses of chapter 6 of John’s gospel – the passage we’ve just heard. Her particular take on it was to call our attention to the final command of Jesus in the story – “gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost,” a section of the story that I had never really paid attention to before. And as I was baking peanut butter cookies yesterday, for lunch today, I heard my mom’s constant refrain not to waste anything – to make sure that all the egg white was out of the cracked egg shell before setting it aside, to empty all the measuring cups and spoons so that nothing was just washed away, to scrape the bowl so that all the dough was used (which could be met by forming the dough into cookies or simply eating it apparently). Mom spent her whole life paying attention to the fragments, gathering them up, making sure that none of them were wasted.
Gather up the fragments left over – we have fragments of mom here – ashes, not even a body, certainly not the whole person she was. We have fragments of our family – not everyone gathered here together in one place, relatives, friends, not able to be here. We have fragments of memories, only parts of the story of her life that we have tried to gather together before they are lost.
And I suspect that all of us feel somewhat fragmented at funerals – remembering other funerals, other deaths, the leftovers from friendships and family gatherings that may have at one time felt whole but now are scattered around the country, or around the world, or throughout eternity. Perhaps the most jarring fragments scattered around at funerals are the pieces of our own lives – death and funerals remind us of our own mortality, a reminder that we may run out of time before we can gather all the sorts of fragments together that we’ve been promising ourselves we will do – as soon as we have a little more time.
One of the great gifts of living in a community where there are people of all ages is that it makes us appreciate how we are fragmented even in the course of our own life. Hanging out with mom over the past 14 months since our dad died was a reminder of how the world shrinks for the elderly, just as it exists that way for the very young. Mom’s circle of interaction was smaller in recent years, she delighted in the present and in what she was in the midst of – just like our children did when they were very young, the world was what was immediate. I found that reality particularly frustrating when the kids were small – I remember being in the coliseum in Rome trying to show them the glories of ancient Rome, they found a ruined alcove, probably once a section of ancient seating, and set up house, playing to their hearts’ content. In the same way, mom was less interested in the ever-constant crises of the world presented on the front page of the newspaper, and more interested in helping me with the dishes, making sure every piece of silverware was dried completely, every wooden spoon left out to dry, every towel hung back up. It made me slow down, pay attention to details, and see that fragments and leftovers are valuable too. How impoverished our lives would be without young children and the elderly – they make the rest of us slow down, pay attention to the little things, gather in fragments and be content with even seeing ourselves as those fragments in need of gathering in.
Fragments are at the heart of our Christian faith too – Teresa Berger’s book title is “Fragments of the Real Presence.” We never see the whole picture, and even if we did, we wouldn’t get it. We are only capable of seeing fragments, bits of the glory of God that would otherwise overwhelm us. Sometimes even the fragments overwhelm us. But this is a religious system based on using these fragments to make sense of life and death and us and God. Water, in a pretty fragmented amount, that symbolizes life and death and eternal life. Wine and bread, and in pretty skimpy proportions at that –truly fragments, that symbolize a death and our life - our communion, with God and with each other. Ashes, that symbolize the body, that represents – shows to human eyes - the whole person. Behind the ashes, behind the body – behind these fragments, is the mystery of the human person fully alive, the image of God. All of them point to a presence – intangible, unseeable, untouchable except through us and through created matter.
The preface of the Eucharistic prayer used for funerals contains a piece of an ancient Christian prayer, “for us, life is changed, not ended.” How can we even imagine such a thing without being able to see it, hear it or read about it? I suspect in the same way we know love – only in fragments, only through people and things and places and times which are not the same as love but fragments of the real presence of love.
Funerals are an attempt to gather fragments together, to fill up the baskets and make a whole something, or at least imagine something less fragmented for a brief while. But even in our faltering, whether gathering fragments up or being the pieces in need of being gathered up by others, there is the real presence of God and there is the real presence of love, neither of which, thank goodness, is dependent on our attempts at holding it all together. Let us at least be confident that what we glimpse in ashes, in bread, in wine and in each other are true fragments, worth gathering in and holding onto as symbols of the greater mystery that we both move toward and belong in, something changed but not ended.