A Lot to Swallow

Holy Innocents, Corte Madera
August 23, 2009 John 6:56-69

Once upon a conference, we were asked to identify what Christian feast day we would be if we could be any one of them. I jokingly said “Halloween.” Then I found that the next step was to begin to design a liturgy for that personal feast day. The group got into the spirit of the thing and I asked "OK- what would be a good hymn be for my Halloween liturgy?" Someone immediately began to sing “Eat my flesh, drink my blood…” Everyone laughed of course, but it did high-light the fact that it is a phrase that conjures up more vampire than messiah.

This hymn repeats the words from the Gospel of John verbatim- and in a hymn the words sound less shocking- less earthy and challenging. But as we know, Jesus never shrinks from being earthy or challenging. Instead he kind of rubs our face in it: “Eat my flesh and drink my blood. That’s a lot to swallow…

We have been going along on what I think of as the Summer of Bread for six weeks now, delving into the Gospel of John and it’s mysterious and profound meditation on the Bread of Life. Although the Gospel of John does not have a last supper breaking of the bread event, what is called the words of institution of the Eucharist, it does seem to have this very long and very significant reverie on the Eucharist.

There are many thoughts as to why this is. I read one source that felt that those words, “This is my Body which is given for you…and the rest of that section of our Eucharistic prayer, which first appeared in the letters of Paul : I Corinthians 11:23, was so sacred that the words were meant to be kept secret knowledge. But a half a century of so after Paul, the words were included, though slightly changed in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But no where in John.

Our Summer of bread begins with a miracle: the feeding of the five thousand, the followed by Jesus patient and persistent attempt to try to explain the deeper significance of this “sign.”

Then comes the first of three references to the Manna from heaven that God sent to the children of Israel during the Exodus in the wilderness. As is so often the case in the Gospel of John, a line is drawn between the traditions, miracles and feast days of the Old Testament and the revelations of the new- the manna was bread from heaven indeed, but after eating of it you still lived and died as you would have anyway. The Bread of Life is something altogether different- something above and beyond mere nourishment for the body. It is bread that will bring you a kind of utter transformation- a kind of radical real time abundance that Jesus calls eternal life. The people plead with Jesus, “Sir- give us this bread always.” The next week’s reading answers the hungry crowd with the beautiful words, “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.

This leads up to last week’s reading, when Jesus first uses the word abide - “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” In case anyone did not catch the distinction between manna from heaven and the bread of life, he makes it again. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” He says “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood ABIDE (or LIVE) in me, and I in them. Abide- is trannslated from the Greek work menos which has many meanings: abbide, remain, stay, live, dwell, last, endure, continue, await, wait for.

To abide in Jesus is all of that. He urges us to remain with him, stay with him, live with him, dwell with him, endure with him, continue with him and await him.

Finally, in this week’s passage, the last in our Summer of Bread, we are led to several essential elements to compete this long teatise on the Bread of Life.

The only reference (veiled though it is) to the last supper is heard nin the words, “Jesus knew which one would betray him.” Even this has a Eucharistic tone, because the only breaking or giving of bread in the last supper in the Gospel of John, consists of Jesus handing a morsel of bread to Judas, just before Judas betrays him. I have always felt that this underlined the universality of the mercy and grace of God- even when we are betrayers, God’s mercy is available to us, God will feed us still, the body and the blood are there for us still.

But with Jesus’ continued urging to eat his body and drink his blood, like so many of us, who read the teachings of Jesus, some of the disciples recoil. “This teaching is difficult- who can accept it?” They ask. And many of them desert him. Anticipating further betrayal, , Jesus says to his faithful twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”

And it is the bumbling Peter, another one who exemplifies the faithlessness in all of us, who sees that there is no where else to go. Who proclaims that Jesus is the Holy One of God. Who says, “You have the words of eternal life..” And so we are harkened back to the beautiful prolog of John- Jesus is the word of God- the word made flesh. It is Jesus the word made flesh that is our bread- the word that is spirit and life. To me this is the meaning of the incarnation- the word made flesh- Jesus living the word of God. And if we truly allow Jesus to abide in us, and we in him, that spirit, that word will be incarnated in us. I beleive that the meaning of the incarnation of God in Christ is incomplete without the the incarnation of Christ in us. Of Christ abiding in us. Of Christ remaining with, staying with, living with, dwelling with, enduring with, continuing with and waiting, always waiting, for us.

Amen.