Sermon 8/20/06
Flesh and Blood - John 6:51-58
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I’ve heard it recommended before that new Christians who are just beginning in faith should start studying the Bible by reading the gospel of John. People who recommend John’s gospel as the place to start argue that it contains the core of the faith, containing such best-loved verses like the famous “John 3:16.” But personally, I couldn’t disagree more. I think John is the most confusing of all the gospels, the most complicated and complex, the most philosophical and abstract. For several weeks this summer, the texts from the gospel of John deal with Jesus teaching with imagery centered on bread. Today he calls himself the bread of life and living bread, and he talks about eternal life, and I, like the crowds who gathered to hear him, find myself a bit confused and trying to decode Jesus’ words, searching for his meaning. His language is rich with symbolism. What is Jesus telling us?
On the other hand, while I find John’s way of presenting the gospel to be challenging, when I was a student of Ancient Greek in college and seminary, I found John’s gospel to be my favorite. John uses the simplest words in writing about Jesus, and he uses them over and over again! His gospel made for quicker homework in Greek class! In today’s text, for example, look at the repetitive language. Bread, eat, blood, life, flesh, heaven. Somehow, Jesus says an awful lot with a very few words. Our scene today picks up where you left off with Pastor Jeff two weeks ago, shortly after the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. After being fed fish and bread by Jesus, the crowds have been following him around, hoping to get another meal. But Jesus, knowing that only the promise of getting more food or seeing another miracle has motivated them to come to him, hopes to offer them something else instead, something he considers infinitely more valuable. That’s where we pick up our story today.
Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This statement causes a bit of a stir. What does Jesus mean by saying that his flesh is the bread of life? “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they ask. So Jesus continues – “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” Finally, Jesus finishes by comparing what he offers to what their ancestors offered, which the crowds had been asking him about. What they gave you, Jesus says, was perishable. They ate the manna, a gift from God, but they still died. What Jesus wants to offer is different – the living bread means eternal life.
But the crowds don’t seem to get it, because his language is so confusing to them. This language about eating flesh and drinking blood sounds, well, like cannibalism. Today, we might recognize this language as something that sounds like what we hear when celebrating Holy Communion. We know that we say we are taking part in Christ’s blood and body when we share the cup and bread of communion. But Jesus hadn’t yet shared this ritual with the disciples, and even the early Christians were accused of cannibalism by outsiders who didn’t understand their practice. But as we’re pretty sure that Jesus wasn’t advocating such a lifestyle, what is he talking about?
Here, as in so many other places throughout Jesus’ teaching, I think what Jesus is trying to tell us is what an extremely intimate relationship God wants to have with us. He’s trying to convince us that God wants the deepest kind of relationship possible with us. He’s used signs and wonders and teachings and healings all as ways to tell us the same thing: God who created us loves us and wants to be our God, wants to have a real, meaningful relationship with us.
We use the words “flesh and blood” today to describe our most intimate relationships – our family ties, our biological connections. To say that someone is your “own flesh and blood” indicates that they are family, at least biologically, tied to you in their make-up, made of part of the same stuff you are. When Jesus uses these words to describe himself, he’s saying that he wants to be flesh and blood to us – as close as possible. In fact, John starts his gospel by telling us that Jesus is the “word become flesh” – an incarnation – God become human flesh and blood in order to get as close to us as possible. In fact, Jesus says, when we take part in this Jesus-as-flesh-and-blood, he will abide in us and we will abide in him. Abide in this sense means literally to “stay at home” or “remain at home.” So when Jesus talks about having this flesh and blood relationship with him, he’s talking about being at home in us, and us being at home in him. And when we say we want someone to “feel at home,” we mean that we want them to be completely themselves, completely comfortable, completely at ease where they are. Again, Jesus is talking about intimacy and relationship. He wants to be at home in our lives.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? An intimate relationship with God? Being at home with God, God being at home in our lives? Why wouldn’t we want this kind of intimacy? But usually, we act and behave and live as if the last thing we want from God is intimacy, or relationship. In fact, our whole way of living as human beings suggests that we find intimacy rather difficult. As a pastor, I confront this struggle in many different ways. This spring, one of my former members of Conference Youth asked to interview me for one of his college classes. He’s just starting to wonder if ordained ministry might be what God is calling him to do with his life. In his interview, he asked me what I most liked about being a pastor. I answered him saying that what I like best about being a pastor is that people let me into parts of their lives that they would never normally let people into. I get to be there at all the most special times of someone’s life. At birth and baptism. As part of their education as they grow up. At confirmation and faith formation. At weddings, poking and prodding in pre-marital counseling. And yes, at illnesses and tragedies and deaths. I get to be part of it, part of the times of life we are often loath to share with others. We live in a very individualistic society. We function in small units, self-contained. We’re private people. Today more than ever, we tend to live more on our own and not in communities. We’re very hesitant and suspicious of people who want to get involved in our business. And unfortunately, somewhere along the way, we’ve included issues of faith and spirituality into our list of things that we don’t like other people prying into. We consider them private matters, taboo and off-limits. And so, I fear, we’ve made our lives so personal and so private that even God is not welcome to pry in, to examine us, to search us over.
In the midst of this, Jesus asks to break in, to make a place, to become our flesh and blood. Another expression we use is “you are what you eat.” Jesus talks about eating and drinking this flesh and blood he offers. We’re meant to feed on God, to take into us what Jesus is offering – living, life-giving bread. In this way, we can indeed become what we eat – eternal life offered by Jesus. Jesus contrasts this to the bread the Israelites ate in the desert – it was nourishing, but fleeting. Jesus offers what will last. In our world of private lives, in our culture of loving everything quick and disposable and fleeting, we very rarely seem satisfied, or fulfilled, or content. What we’ve been feeding on doesn’t seem to rid us of hungering and thirsting for something else, something more. Jesus offers us life. His own life, his own flesh and blood, knowing that it can satisfy us, if we’ll accept his offer.
God so loves us, desires to be known to us, that God became flesh for us, that we might live side by side. God so loves us that God wants to abide in us and us in God. God so loves us, that God wants to be like flesh and blood to us. Let us feast with God, who satisfies our hungry hearts.
Amen.
All sermons written by Rev. Beth Quick - please give credit for material used.