Bread for the body, bread for the soul

Sermon for Pentecost XIII, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: John 6:56-69

This morning’s Gospel reading sounds a little familiar, similar to the reading for the fifth Sunday in Easter at the beginning of John 15. In that passage, we heard Jesus say. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” This morning we hear, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The word “abide” appears again in our cycle of Gospel readings, representing a theme in John's Gospel. This time it is a more positive statement than what we heard about the vine. It says the same thing, though, that there is more than one way in which we can live in or dwell in Jesus. While one way sounds like we’re eating Jesus and the other sounds like we’re a plant, both are metaphorical, whether we are a part of Jesus or that he is a part of us. Contrary to what has been said negatively or positively about the literal consumption of Jesus, the metaphor was established in the other three Gospels, and is repeated in John slightly differently. The meaning of the metaphor is to abide, to live in, but it isn’t clear to us today what John meant by living or dwelling in Jesus. It’s hard to conceive of it when Jesus isn’t physically with us anymore.

Teresa of Avila, a Spanish mystic of the 16th century wrote that “Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” This is where we can start to understand what it means for Jesus to dwell in us; that his hands, feet, eyes, even his body becomes ours. This happens when we are moved by the Holy Spirit to do what he did, to love as he did, to act as he did, to set aside our wants and desires for his commands on how to live our lives. Jesus still ministers to the world through us who are physically present in the world. He abides in us when we bring his holy presence into the world, and we abide in him when we take to heart his desire for us to live a holy life of prayerful service. This abiding happens in two ways that we have read so far in John; one is to see ourselves as an extension of Jesus in the world, and the other is to come into the presence of his body and blood as the Sacraments on the altar.

Jesus makes a comment to his followers about his body being our bread that is not clear to them at first. He says that his bread is not like the bread from heaven that their ancestors ate and who also died. This is somewhat troubling because it sounds like they couldn’t survive on the physical bread, or manna, given to them by God. But Jesus is comparing the spiritual bread he brings to the manna that the Hebrews ate in the desert. The bread that Jesus offers nourishes the spirit and soul, and will keep their spirit alive forever. This bread is a holy presence on earth found in one person, rather than a gift from God that was found all around the Hebrews in the desert. If we’re walking in a desert or in a place that doesn’t support a spiritual life, it is important to understand what bread we need to ask for. Since our physical needs and hunger are taken care of, the choice is clear that we should ask for the spiritual bread.

The spiritual bread that we receive is the consecrated bread from the altar that feeds our spirit and soul. The sacrament of bread and wine that come from the altar, are spiritual food for us that revives us, and we receive it in a shared moment where we do not have to believe the same thing in order to receive it. This is a hard thing to believe, as the disciples said, because we struggle with a diversity of beliefs and experiences that distract us and can leave us feeling lost and insecure. Yet, It is the focus of our worship that unifies a diverse congregation, diverse in background, diverse in values, and diverse in beliefs. We share one faith in the body sacrificed on the cross, one faith in the blood shed, one faith where all of the differences disappear when we are filled with the spirit.

The catechism toward the back of the Book of Common Prayer states that sacraments are “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace,” where this grace comes as a gift from God. What this gift of grace does is to transform us, where we turn away from the things that hurt us, hurt others, and hurt our relationship with God, and toward a life of righteousness through abiding in Jesus. Living in Jesus, that is, living as he would have lived in this time changes how we see ourselves and the world. Our encounter with the sacraments of bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus at the high point of the Eucharist, is that moment when Jesus abides in us spiritually, pushing us a little further through that transformation. Our receiving the body and blood of Jesus is a spiritual meal that revives us during the hard work of changing ourselves, a physical reminder of grace given to us.

As we have read now for 3 weeks about Jesus being the bread of life in the John's Gospel, we have heard him  become more emphatic, more radical in his statements, and it is because the people around him just don’t get it. Jesus speaks with increasing emphasis that salvation as eternal life comes in the form of his teachings and way of life, not manna that God sent from heaven that we find all around us. Our daily life is surrounded by manna that we need: clothes, a home, food, a job for income, and while they support us, we often find that the meaning and purpose of our lives isn’t satisfied by them. It’s a struggle to see that our daily needs are not our spiritual needs because we are encouraged to bring to life our faith while living in the world, and not here worshiping. But, the bread of life comes to us in unexpected ways and in unanticipated forms when we are away from the altar. The question is, can we tell the difference between the bread of life and the bread we eat for life? How deeply do we understand when we need to be fed spiritually and when we need to be fed physically? That was the question that Jesus was ultimately trying to get the people around him to understand and answer. And that is the question that he looks for us to understand and answer.