Readings
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
For the fourth Sunday in a row, we hear Jesus talk about himself as bread. The truth is that, for me as a preacher, it is beginning to feel like there’s only so much one can say about Jesus as bread and we’re nearing the limit.
Even so, today starts with Jesus saying that he is the bread come down from heaven and that whoever eats this bread will live forever. But the kicker is that he says that this bread is his flesh. Some religious authorities in the crowd are disturbed by Jesus saying that he is giving his flesh to eat. They wonder at how this can be.
Now before we’re too quick to judge these authorities, let’s be clear that at the time of Jesus there is no Eucharist/no Holy Communion. They are simply hearing Jesus speak. There is a legitimate question here. How can a human being give his flesh to eat? But even moreover, even then within Judaism, cannibalism was a taboo behavior. In many ways, Jesus’ words are both confusing and disturbing.
Hearing their deliberations Jesus responds by doubling down on his initial remarks and says that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood have eternal life. He goes on to say that his flesh is true food, and his blood is true drink.
But then he makes his essential point, that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood dwell in him and he in them. And finally, he reiterates his earlier claim that the bread that the children of Israel ate in the wilderness only kept them alive for a time and they finally they died, but that those who eat the true bread (Jesus) will live forever.
All of this is very familiar language for those of us who grew up in the church. So much so we might miss just how new and challenging Jesus’ words were. To us, this is about Holy Communion. It is easy for most, if not all of us to translate his words about flesh and blood into the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
Now for our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, and for many within the Anglican Communion, including our own Episcopal Church, this language of flesh and blood has led some to literally equate the bread and wine of the Eucharist to the body and blood of Jesus. So much so that some Catholics and Episcopalians feel compelled to worship or adore these elements if they have been consecrated.
But is this what Jesus intended when he spoke as he did in today’s Gospel? Are we being called to literally equate bread and wine with the body and blood of Jesus? Is Holy Communion to be taken as a one-way ticket to paradise?
Well, let’s look at his central statement again. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
What exactly does Jesus mean when he says, “eat my flesh and drink my blood?” That’s a worthy question. One for which we don’t get a direct answer. I do think that the author of the Gospel of John, however, has a clear understanding of what that means.
In ancient Judaism the understanding of spiritual and physical dimensions was different than the way we think about it today. For the folks who wrote the Bible there was no separation between body and spirit. For example, spirit was expressed as breath, and the body was where the mind and the feelings of a person dwelt. Ultimately how one lived out of one’s physical existence articulated the substance of one’s life.
So, in this context, the flesh and blood of Jesus is literally the substance of his life. It is the pattern of his living. It’s his ethics and morality. It’s the frame through which one experiences him as the Christ. In fact, the assumption of the author of this Gospel is that it’s the only way to experience Jesus as the Christ. As we talked about last week, faith in Jesus isn’t about intellectually acquiescing to a discrete set of statements about Jesus, it’s being open to the substance of his life and experiencing the power of his ethical and moral vision. In this way it becomes a vehicle by which we experience transcendence.
So, let’s go back to that central statement. Now it becomes perfectly clear what Jesus is saying. Those who embrace the substance of my life, in its fullness, dwell in me and I in them. In other words when we embrace the shape of the life of Jesus as our own, then our life becomes an incarnation of Christ. We become the flesh and blood that others may consume. We become the love of God embodied in the world.
This is a love that has no boundaries. It’s a love that sees beyond rules and regulations. It’s a love that recognizes every person as a peer, and every outcast as a neighbor to be let in.
So then, what do we make of our practice of Holy Communion? Is it a ritual that is bankrupt of meaning? I don’t think so. But it’s so much more than either the physical embodiment of flesh and blood, or a ritual gesture of remembrance.
When we gather for the Eucharist we are taking time to remember who we are and whose we are. Through ritual we embrace that we are called to embody the full substance of Jesus and become the presence of Christ in the world today. At its best, Holy Communion is both a transcendent and an imminent experience. It is transcendent in that we rise above our mundane existence and touch the substance of Jesus. It is imminent in that we do so in the context of a community gathered, reminding us that this is more than a personal spiritual experience.
For too long, Christianity has been about our ritual gestures and our intellectual premises. The world can, as the mystic and theologian Richard Rohr says, make a legitimate critique that the world does not trust Christians because we too often “love Jesus but do not seem to love anything else.”
If all we do is adore Jesus, but do not dwell in him and let him dwell in us we miss the point of it all. We’re not being called to be good ritualists. No, we are being called to commune with God through Christ in all aspects of our life. What we do here every Sunday morning is meant to remind and reinforce what Jesus is calling us to in this morning’s passage.
We, dear friends, are being called to be like Jesus and tilt against the patterns of religion that reinforce the injustices of the world. We, like Jesus, are being called to express a preferential option for the poor and the weak. We, like Jesus, are called to name and reject the idols of our society that perpetuate injustice and oppression. We, like Jesus, are being called to set aside our fears of those who wish us harm and be a prophetic voice in the world.
In short, we are being called to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus. We are being called to embrace the life, love, joy, and hope of Jesus. By doing so we engage in an act of communion that both informs and is informed by our Sunday morning celebrations. By doing so we become nothing less than the love of Christ in this world.