John
6:51-58
Eat
My Flesh; Drink My Blood
We had a great time on the LCM
Alumni Trip to Germany. It was
different, taking 40 year olds rather than college students. Still not sure which is less demanding.
One of the rules I live by while in
Germany involves food – particularly breakfast, which is always served as part
of a hotel or hostel stay. I tell fellow
travelers, if I don’t know what it is – I eat it. How else can I learn? And I regularly pass this bit of advice on to
my travel companions. For the sake of
full disclosure, I need to tell you that two of my most recent travel companions
seemed to suffer adverse consequences from something they ate. This didn’t completely destroy their journey,
but it made for some significant alterations in how they spent their day.
The dieticians among us would
encourage us all to realize how what we shove in our mouths has effects – on how
we feel as well as how we live life. We need
to be careful, regarding what we shove in.
Theologians and preachers should
take note of what dieticians know and practice.
Theologians and preachers would do well to point out to congregants the
ways in which our ingesting of biblical verses and confessions of faith will
alter how we spend our day; how we will live our lives.
Pull out your bibles, or open up
your app, or if you have neither of those, look at the few verses of John 6
printed in your bulletin. This Gospel
Lesson is all about how what we eat affects who we are and what we do.
We are in John 6. We have been reading from John 6 for five
weeks. And we’ve got one more reading from
John 6 next week before returning to Mark’s account of the Jesus story.
Over these five weeks, we have been
talking about eating. Mostly about
eating bread. I would not want to say
that everything covered in those previous lessons was merely stepping stones,
but the direction in which those stories nudged us is brought to completion in
the verses selected for today. What happens
here, and the response of the disciples (next week’s verses) seems to be where
all this is leading.
Have you found John 6 in your
bible? Bread, lots of bread, and plenty
of eating. And throughout this chapter,
three critical points have been made:
1.
We all need bread. The 5,000 would have starved had Jesus not
fed them in that lonely and deserted place.
2.
God does feed us:
a.
By miracles - like the feeding of the
5,000;
b.
By sending manna like hoarfrost in the
wilderness; or
c.
By the miracle of a single grain which
falls to the earth and dies and in so doing produces an abundance.
It has in
many ways all been a set up for what Jesus is now going to say about where his
followers are to get our nourishment.
Find verse
53. Let’s all read it together: “So
Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’”
Whew!!!!!!!! That almost needs to be read twice: “Very
truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his
blood, you have no life in you.”
Let me make
a few notes.
If the
Jews were disputing among themselves before he said this, one can only imagine
what they are saying now. Hebraic Law
(which we tend to selectively apply to modern-day Christian ethics) is very
clear about flesh and blood. These are
NOT to be consumed. You could eat meat
– provided that meat had come from the Temple, where the rituals of bloodletting
and life-for-life were followed by the Temple priests (who in this case could
also be referred to as “the temple butchers.” That is not meant to be derogatory,
this is what they did. They butchered
the meat.)
It is a
rather recent development in human discussion where “life” is somehow linked to
awareness or consciousness. Does anyone
know when that started to happen? I
think of Freud, but surely he as building on the work of others. Anyway, long before we associated life with
the firing of billions of synapses in the brain, Hebraic Law spoke of life
being located in blood. Even more than “in”
the blood, the blood itself was life. This
is why the blood had to be returned to God.
Priests where the butchers who knew how to honor God’s gift of life by
returning that life to God. The meat
left behind, once life had been given back to God, could be consumed. But not the life itself.
Even the
priests couldn’t get all the life (blood) out of the meat. So that is where the fire pushed out any
remaining drops. No rare meat in the
world of Jesus and his devout Jewish colleagues. You could eat the meat that had come from the
Temple, when you cooked it appropriately (in special and separate pans) but you
would never ingest raw flesh.
Look back
at verse 53. What does Jesus say? “Unless
you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in
you.”
Let take
another lesson from those wise dieticians.
Some of us like to eat raw meat, but it is pretty risky. Eating such provides all sorts of opportunities
for my life, my body, even my whole person to be affected and altered. You got to be careful, regarding what you
ingest.
What have
you been eating? Have you shoved in
whatever was set before you? Without thinking
of the consequences or possible effects?
How has what you have eaten affected you, changed who you are, and
altered the way in which you will spend your day?
(This is
the point in this sermon where we take facts and information and draw a
metaphorical conclusion.)
In this
long chapter 6 of John’s gospel, Jesus points out that what had been set before
to many of the Temple’s most faithful was something which might get them
through the day but would not bring to them the life God wants to give. They had consumed what was set before them,
without questioning if this was what ought to be ingested. Jesus suggests they consider an alternative
diet.
Which, of
course, brings this metaphoric leap to our conclusion for today: What do you
take into yourself? The familiar? The safe?
That which someone tells us we are to eat? For the sake of full disclosure, let’s make
sure to note how strongly each of have been instilled with an aversion to taking
in that which has the potential to change us or make us something
different. Are we not taught, by our
mothers, by society in general, and by countless would-be religious leaders NOT
to eat certain things?
Jesus
tells his followers what they are to ingest.
He uses the strongest possible language to associate what he is telling
them to do with the greatest of prohibitions spoken by the Temple leaders. He knows that eating this flesh and drinking
this blood will make them persona non
grata in many circles. He warns them
that taking his life into their own bodies will change who they are.
Why would
anyone do that?
Be
careful what you eat. Consider the
consequences before reading your bible or studying theology. Weigh the cost of joining on as one of Jesus’
disciples.
The Church
does a disservice to itself and the message of Jesus when some veiled threat is
associated with making these choices. We
need not speak of some punishment for deciding wrongly. The task of the Church is to lift up the
possibilities and promise and joy and abundance which comes from receiving the
life of Jesus into ourselves and experiencing the changes which come as a
result.
Verse
56: “Those
who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” What a joy, to “abide in” Jesus. But the part of this verse which brings real
life is the part where Jesus says he will abide “in (me)”.
I am
going to eat that flesh, and drink that blood.
Who will join me?
Just in case
anyone is worried about what is in this cruet, it isn’t blood. It is wine, though we do have grape juice as
well. In this container we have the fruit
of a vine. But it is for us the life of
Jesus. In the mystery of the sacrament,
it is for us his blood which we take into ourselves. And upon ingesting this really odd meal – our
lives are given the opportunity to become life.
Be careful
what you eat. It can really affect the
way you will spend the rest of your day.
Pay
attention to what you ingest. You will
be changed as a result.
Amen.
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