We eat what!?

 Pentecost 12, 2021 sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY

Text: John 6:51-58

Jesus is scandalous. He riles people up with his teaching, points out where they think they follow the law but don’t, and holds them to the faith that they claim to have. But this time, in this morning’s reading, Jesus tops himself with an outrageous idea. He says that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood consume true food. Eating him gives us eternal life. The people who hear him say that are upset and call him on his words. What does he mean, exactly? The idea of eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood is uncomfortable to hear and the image is distressing. Jesus’ followers and the early church theologians wrestled with that image, trying to reconcile it with the Son of God who brings salvation to the world. At face value, Jesus’ words are offensive and contradictory to who he is, and who we believe God to be. So what do we do with this image of cannibalism? How do we understand it? Where does it fit into our faith and practice of faith?

The problem we are confronted with is in Jesus’ words “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.” It is shocking to hear it when it is read literally. But, Jesus is not speaking literally, as we heard him say last week, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” No matter how you twist and turn those words, they make no sense on their own. The key to understanding Jesus’ words in the readings is in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, where he explains that “...the Word became flesh and lived among us.” This Word becoming flesh is an incomprehensible transformation that we understand to be Jesus’ mystical conception and birth. It speaks to the spiritual mystery of God becoming incarnate in Jesus, and living in the world. The mystery that John opens his gospel with extends to Jesus’ shocking words, blunting them because they refer to something spiritual. Jesus is not saying that we should physically feed on him, but that we should bring him into ourselves spiritually. The words Jesus uses are a spiritual parallel to eating food, where he becomes an inseparable part of us and of our lives. He spoke of this parallel when he said to the crowd at Capernaum “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

So, Jesus is speaking metaphorically, but still outrageously. He speaks of being the bread of life from Heaven, rising above the storm and walking on water, having faith as work for God, and being the food of eternal life. The spiritual food that he says he is will last forever, as opposed to physical food that doesn’t keep hunger away for very long. The problem is that no one who heard him understood that distinction, and they kept falling back to their experience of having eaten real bread because they were hungry. They couldn’t see beyond their daily life to see the presence of God and they couldn’t see beyond the person of Jesus to see God standing with them. He asked them to listen to him metaphorically, spiritually. Only a few had that "Ah ha" moment and they were the ones he said he would lift up on the last day.

When we push the mystical view of Jesus away in favor of a more literal nuts-and-bolts view of him and his words, we reduce Jesus to the same common, ordinary level that we inhabit. This can be as revolting as his words that seem to promote cannibalism, because we, and John, have faith in Jesus as God among us. While he may be like us in appearance, he lives and speaks on a higher spiritual level. Jesus is asking us to listen to him on that spiritual, mystical level, and not get hung up on the literal meaning of his words and actions. He is asking us to listen to the Holy Spirit of God speaking through him, not just to listen to him speaking. When we listen to him as he wants us to, words like eating his flesh and drinking his blood mean something different to the heart and soul than what they mean to the ear and mind.

This listening to the Holy Spirit comes into play during the Eucharist, when we hear the words of institution, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you,” and “This is my Blood of the new Covenant.” These words are said over bread and wine in a spiritual context that is affirmed by the proclamation “The Gifts of God for the People of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.” Feed on him in your hearts by faith. This is what Jesus was trying to get across to those who took offense to him, to feed on him by faith, not feed on him like eating bread. During communion, when we feed on Jesus by faith as we consume the sacraments, we enter into a spiritual space opened by the Holy Spirit where we are in God’s presence. This encounter is a mystery, like the mystery of the Word made flesh, or the mystery of the Holy Spirit sanctifying the bread and wine on the altar. It is a mystery that is part of our faith, something we don’t need to explain. It is by faith that we bring Jesus into our spirit and soul, for strength, renewal, life, salvation, truth, righteousness, and reconciliation as we hear in the Eucharistic prayers. Our spirit and soul are filled and we are renewed, ready to do God’s work again.

The Eucharist is where we find peace and unity as a diverse congregation with different attitudes, ideas, expectations, and lives. We are able to avoid division among ourselves and attitudes of intolerance because we don’t get hung up on words. We know that they can represent something deeper. Rather than taking life, our words, and the world at face value and being offended by what we think they are or mean, we can look beyond them to find the Holy Spirit and speak to it. We can live scandalously, outrageously in peace in a world that is preoccupied with immediately reacting to what we or others say or do because we understand what lies beyond them. We know and experience the mystery that is in the spiritual world we live in when we worship and receive communion, and we can bring that experience to the people around us and to the relationships we have.