I suppose the seeds of this sermon were planted more than a month ago. It was then that I was reminded by those outside our denomination that many in the wider Church do not understand Jesus’ teaching nor the multi-layered purposes or instructions of Jesus’ teachings, particularly in John’s Gospel.
For those of you who have been on
vacation, we have spent four weeks on Jesus’ teaching that He is the bread that
has come down from heaven. This further revelation began with the
miraculous feeding of the 5000 in John’s story, but it bookended by the
re-creation described by John in his Prologue—In the beginning was the Word,
and the was with God and the Word was God. Everybody remember that from
Christmas or the Feast of the Incarnations. The other bookend that frames
John’s Gospel is Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. That is THE
SIGN that confirms Jesus is who He said He is. John presents all three
unique experiences of Jesus as a trifold event. It is part of the reason
why we remind ourselves when we gather for worship that we remember HIs death,
proclaim His Resurrection, and await HIs Coming Again as we remember His
blessed Passion and precious Death, His mighty Resurrection, and glorious
Ascension. Everybody remembers our liturgy, even if you have been
traveling, right? Good.
Now, remember how hard this is for
us to wrap our head around when we are paying attention to Jesus’ teaching and
wondering about the response of the crowds, and of the disciples, and of the
Apostles. We have almost 2000 years of post-Resurrection history and
reflection! It is no small wonder the crowds and the disciples do not
fully understand Jesus’ continued instruction. Jesus has been speaking
about bread. But while speaking of bread on one level, He has also been
claiming to be the One sent from God and that He is the center of God’s plan of
salvation history. And though He feeds 5000 from a few fish and loaves
and ends up with more leftovers that He had when He started, and all of this is
done with no intercession for God to act, like Moses, most miss the
significance of the sign.
Jesus begins this pericope with a
reminder of what He has taught the crowds. He is the bread that has come
down from heaven. But then He pushes the metaphor, summing up to the
audience and us of His centrality to God’s plan of salvation. Whoever
eats of this bread will live forever. Jesus has chastised the crowds and us
that we seek full bellies rather than the power and mercy and grace of
God. Like woman at the well or those that followed him to Capernaum, we
are interested in satiation rather than the things of God. We would
rather full bellies, slaked thirst, and no pain, right? Then comes the
fun part. Jesus insists that the bread is His flesh, which He will give
for the life of the world.
The Jews, John tells us, begin to
argue sharply. It is, of course, understandable why they find this a hard
saying. They question how Jesus can offer His flesh for them to
eat. Though there is no explicit command that we should not eat one
another, few have been willing to argue that the lack of such a commandments
means that we can. I am not aware of a Rabbi arguing that when God gave
Noah all living things and green plants to eat, He included other human beings
in that instruction. In fact, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as some
of the prophetic books, describe cannibalism as a horrible curse and a final
sign of Israel’s faithlessness. Cannibalism was an anti-sacrament in a
way — it described at outward act that resulted from a depraved inward
heart-attitude. Turning completely from God and remaining unrepentant
despite His warning would result in such horrible behavior. Now, this
prophet, the One who John the Baptizer has told his disciples to follow, the
One who has worked the amazing signs, claims He will give His flesh as bread
for the life of the world. How can He be claiming such a thing!
Jesus, of course, ignores the
sharp arguing. A few experts like to argue that Jesus pushes through
because He does not understand the threat to Himself. John, for his part,
always reminds us that Jesus knew the hearts of those whom He engaged, and
Jesus warned those who followed Him that He would be put to death and raised on
the Third Day. Jesus even instructs that the ones who should know His
identity best will be the ones who put Him to death. Jesus knows what He
is doing. He is forcing those hearing Him, including you and me, to
understand His mission. We can decide to accept or reject His teaching,
as always, but there is cost if we reject Him and a blessing that exceeds all
that we can ask or imagine if we accept Him.
Jesus warns His audience, both
then and us today, that unless we eat of the Son of Man and drink his blood, we
have no life in us. John uses esthio, to eat, in a common
way. But the emphasis on the blood would have been even more challenging
to those hearing His words. The reason that Israel offers sacrifices for
their sins is because God instructs them that life is in the blood. All
of the Old Testament sacrifices point to Jesus’ eventual work on the
Cross. But Israel understood on various levels that the life in the blood
offered to God atoned for their own sins, which should cost them their own
lives, apart from the mercy and grace of God. The cool part of the verse
for us word nerds, though, is that the last verb, ouk exete,
is present indicative, meaning “y’all do not have.” To possess life, in
this case zoe rather bios, one must eat the flesh
and drink the blood of Jesus.
I know some like to lower the
sting of the words. Even if we claim the words are purely metaphorical,
which they are not, it offends us, and we are liturgical Christians! But
think how much energy has been poured in to trying to explain what Jesus really
meant. Romans went trans-substantiationly; congregationalists went
zwinglian; we Anglicans and Lutherans chose con-substantiation to explain what
happens at the Eucharist. Some of us give up and say it is a Holy
Mystery, but the elements become His flesh and His blood. Right?
Whatever a denomination determines is happening, Jesus is pushing us a bit to
understand that we have to eat His flesh and drink His blood to possess
life. And that word I just mentioned, zoe, is
important. Bios, as all our doctors likely know, is the word
that gives us biological sciences, the study of life. Plutarch uses the
term to describe the lives of those whom he writes about. Those lives, as
he describes them, end with their deaths. Zoe, by contrast,
means kinda the opposite of death. It means existence, and it is usually
written about as the opposite of death, however death was perceived in the
ANE. For our purposes, such a distinction makes sense. We have both
bios and zoe, right? We have a life that ends, but thanks to Jesus’ work
at the end of this book, and the other Gospels, we know death cannot take the
zoe that God has given us.
I see some confusion. That
is the teacher’s fault. How about this? When Jesus speaks of God
being the God of the living and not the dead, he is talking about those who
still possess their existence, even though they seem gone from our
perspective. Better? Ok. Good. The implication is that
zoe in some way transcends bios in the way we were created. To begin to
possess the life that God intended for us to have, according to Jesus, we have
to eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood! If we do not eat His flesh
and drink His blood, we do not have zoe within us, even if we have bios.
Jesus emphasizes that in the next verse, right. Look at verse 54.
Whoever eats His flesh and drinks HIs blood has eternal life, and He will raise
them at the Last Day!
The fun part of verse 54, though,
is the introduction of a new eating verb. Trogo is one
of those words that has no English equivalent. Some translators will go
with gnaw or chew. Some may choose grind. I also like one
translators use of savor, but that lacks the effort implied by the verb
trogo. Jesus chooses an excellent verb here because of the effort it
implies. But it is better, we would say, because of the metaphorical
teaching behind the initial image. Jesus original audience, and we this
morning, have focused on the offensive language of cannibalism. That is
certainly implied by Jesus’ instruction in this passage. But, as is so
often the case, there is more behind the initial image.
The best analogy I could come up
with was the idiom “something to chew on.” When we use that phrase, we
generally mean that somebody has given us something to think about, something
that will take time for us to consider. Jesus has been instructing us now
about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, a hard enough teaching, but He
has given and will give other hard instructions. Let’s start with the
easy instructions, say the ones in the Sermon on the Mount. Does Jesus
really mean that the humble are blessed? I mean, has He heard of this
world? Everyone strives for their fifteen minutes of fame or to be an
internet influencer. Does Jesus really expect us to be poor in
spirit? Maybe that is a bad example. The meek will inherit the
earth. Wait, does He know what meek means? Conquerors get control
of the earth, not the meek. Let’s think of more challenging
teachings. What does it mean to love our neighbor as ourselves? Who
is our neighbor? Is Jesus serious when He says we must love our enemies?
When people steal from us, does He really expect us to offer our cloak,
too? If we did that, we’d all end up poor, beaten, and naked.
Hmmm. That sounds a lot like His physical condition when He was
crucified, come to think of it.
The good news about His
instruction here, thinking particularly as those who think of Him as not just a
Savior, but the pattern for holy living, He is encouraging us, in a sense, to
chew on Him, to grind on what He teaches, and to savor those new tastes that
inform us about His character and the character of His Father.
You know this on one level.
How many times do you come to the Eucharist without joy? Good. I am
glad to see that nobody raised their hands. God wants us to be honest
before Him. Sometimes we go to that rail with bad news. Sometimes
we go to that rail following a challenging diagnosis or injury. Sometimes
we go to that rail having been stabbed in the back by a co-worker or the
subject of gossip with a friend. Sometimes we go to that rail lacking
various things we are convinced we need. Miraculously, though, Jesus
meets us there. All that He demands is that we are repentant before Him
and at love and charity with our neighbors. That’s it. There is no
faith-scale we have to hit. There is no test we have to pass. Though
we may not understand the particulars well, especially when newer to the faith
or immature in our relationship with God, but time and time and time again we
go to the altar just as we are, repentant of our sins and at love and charity
with our neighbors, and chomp on that wafer, His flesh. We grind that
bread in our teeth because, like Elijah last week, things are not the way we
think they should be. And we don’t like it. That’s not what we
signed up for! We want the glory, but we do not want the cross!
More amazingly, as we listen to
Jesus’ instruction this morning, those of us who chew on HIs words, who
wrestling with His instruction, abide in Him just as He abides in the
Father. Think about that for a second. It seems like Jesus was
chewing on the Will of the Father when He dwelt among us. It is almost as
if He would rather that Cup given to Him had been passed in the Garden of
Gethsemane. It’s almost as if part of the Messianic temptations were to
trust the Father, despite the circumstances that Satan used to try and sow
doubt! One of the seeming corollaries to Jesus’ instruction is that the
chewing, the grinding, the wrestling forces us to experience grace of God in
our lives and world around us much in the same way a foodie tastes the spices,
the texture, the aroma, the plating and who knows what else. Because we
are chewing, because we are wrestling and working to abide in Jesus, and
because He has been raised from the dead, we know that God will instruct us,
teach us what we need to know, give us a different perspective, whatever we
need, because we are sharing in HIs purposes, His redemptive plan.
Admittedly, we are like toddlers and seldom get what we want as quick as we
want, and we might want the wrong thing, but God, through His Holy Spirit
dwelling in us, will instruct us in what we need to know.
Then comes the big promise.
Whoever does this. Whoever chews on His instruction. Whoever feeds
on this bread, Jesus, will live, in the Zoe sense of the word, forever.
We will share in the same life as Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebecca,
Jacob & Rachel, Elijah, Jesus, and all those Adventers and believers in our
families whom God has brought to Himself, even though we see them no longer.
My brothers and sisters, I
understand the challenge of today’s pericope and my efforts to keep it somewhat
brief. No doubt you sitting there have reflected a bit differently now on
the importance of the Incarnation, God taking on human flesh and dwelling among
us. Some of you have likely learned something new about the importance of
the Eucharist in your own walk with God. As John will say near the end of
this Gospel, there is not time enough to exhaust what Jesus’ is instructing us
today. There is always more to chew, more to ponder, in the mysteries of
God. But on this day you have, I hope, been prompted by a priest and by
the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, to consider the challenges, to consider the
teachings of Jesus from a number of perspectives. My hope and prayer for
all of us is that, as a result of all that and maybe a few conversations later
this week, we will all come to savor better what Jesus has done for each one of
us. And fortified in that knowledge, reminded of His Will to reach every human
being and draw them into His saving embrace from the Cross, we will go back out
into that wilderness out there, committed and obedient daughters and sons,
intentional in our efforts to pattern our lives after His. And dwelling
in Him, dwelling in the love His Father has for Him and He for us, we can
approach that work with confidence and mercy, knowing that the life, the Zoe to
which he has called each and every one of us, will be ours not just for today,
not just for next week or month, not even for next year, but for eternity!
In His promise and Peace,
Brian+
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