In smallness there is greatness: Homily for June 3, 2018, Corpus Christi

Last week, the New York Times had an essay by a man who is not a household name, but he should be: N.R. Kleinfield, also known in the newsroom as “Sonny.” Kleinfield was retiring after 40 years of writing for the Times, and his farewell essay reminded me of why I loved his work so much.

In a nutshell, Sonny Kleinfeild didn’t write about celebrities or power brokers or people of influence in the most influential city in the world. He wrote about everybody else. The locksmith. The plumber. The cleaning lady. An adult learning to swim. A man who died without anyone to claim him. They’re the people we overlook, or look beyond, or forget about, or don’t notice. But Sonny Kleinfield noticed, and remembered, and told the world they mattered.

Last week, he wrote of them:

“So many of my subjects get labeled ordinary people. I find that diminishing. To me, they are extraordinary. An authentic richness fills their souls, and they have a keen sensory awareness of the way the world works. I spent months with a kindly retired lawyer who regularly visited a dying stranger because no one else did. He taught me the limitless depths of the human heart.”

I bring up Sonny Kleinfield this morning, on this extraordinary feast, because the kinds of people Kleinfield celebrated and honored are also the kinds of people Christ came to dwell among. Shepherds. Fishermen. Widows. Carpenters. Tax collectors and sinners.

And it is profoundly fitting that he gave to them, and to us, a lasting reminder of his real presence in our world through something as small and insignificant as an almost weightless piece of bread.

The God who came to us as a baby in a manger, an outcast, comes to us again and again in a small host, barely the size of coin.

It reminds us: he is the God of the small, the forgotten, the overlooked. The kinds of people Sonny Kleinfield covered.

But in this very smallness, there is greatness.

In a few minutes, we will come forward for communion. What do we receive? A wafer? A thin sliver of bread?

That doesn’t begin to describe it.

We receive Jesus Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity.

We receive the one who walked on water and calmed the storm.

We receive the one who gave sight to the blind and made the crippled walk.

In something immeasurably small, almost without weight, we receive one who carried the weight of the world, and the wood of the cross.

Do we understand that?

Do we grasp the enormity of this gift?

The Gospel we just heard could not have been simpler, clearer: “This is my Body.”

This is the Body of Christ.

When we approach to receive that Body of Christ, words fail. All we can say is “Amen.”

Yes.

Yes, I believe. Yes, I am ready. Yes, I want what this sacrament gives to me, in all my unworthiness and all of my want.

Amen.

Yes.

In a little while, we will carry that “Yes” into the streets.

We will carry Christ down Queens Boulevard and around our church and we will say to all who walk by: “Look! God is passing!”

He is the God who loved the world so much he became one of us—and then loved us so much that he stays with us in this small white host, this slender shadow of who he really is.

He is not here for the rich and the powerful, the mighty and the famous.

He is here for the small and defenseless, the overlooked and forgotten. He is here for all who are broken, all who feel defeated, all who need healing and hope.

He appears so small.

But in that smallness is greatness beyond measure.

Because only a great God like ours could become bread to feed our souls and nourish our hearts and give us the grace to go on.

What a wonder this is. And what a mystery.

This feast completes a trio of feasts that carry us back into Ordinary Time—Pentecost, Most Holy Trinity and now Corpus Christi, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

They are all feasts swirling around the mystery of God’s presence in our world.

Today the mystery is this contradiction: God’s overwhelming love, contained within a humble host.

It is stunning to consider: here is God in the palm of your hand.

Sonny Kleinfield liked to write about the significance of those who seemed insignificant.

If you want the ultimate proof of that, look no further than the host you will receive. A gift so great—but then again, so small.

It is almost beyond our understanding. And yet, we see and we believe. And we remain grateful for this gift, something so extraordinary in the appearance of something so ordinary.

The Body of Christ?

Yes.

The Body of Christ.

Amen.