First Reading:
15Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Second Reading:
51 I am the living bread that came down from
heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread
that I will give for the life of the world is my
flesh.
52The Jews then disputed among themselves,
saying, How can this man give us his flesh to
eat?
53So 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. 54Those who eat
my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them
up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my
blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my
blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living
Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me
will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down
from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they
died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.
There are few things we Americans love to hate like food and
nutrition. Of course food is one of the necessities of life. Sooner
or later we have to eat and for most of us the options of what we eat
are wide open. We eat lots of different stuff for lots of different
reasons. And it seems like our choices about food are often based on
convenience and cost as much as health and nutrition. I was hungry
and it tasted good… that's what was put on the table in front
of me. We've all heard the saying that you are what you eat
.
I laughed this week when I read somewhere that according to that
logic, the average kid in the United States is about 10% Chicken
nugget.
With all the debates about health-insurance reform going on all over
the news, I have to admit that I've been a little surprised I haven't
heard more about the food and nutrition industry… after all,
the food we eat has a lot to do with our health as people and as a
nation. And as a nation, we think about food a lot, some might even
say that we obsess about food… Business Week Magazine said that
Americans spend 40 billion dollars annually on diets. Millions of
people have tried a string of weight loss programs… Adkins,
South Beach, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Volumetrics… there
are hundreds… and when I looked on Amazon.com earlier this week
13 of the top 100 sellers were books on food or fitness, with titles
ranging from The Omnivore's Dilemma to The End of
Overeating. But perhaps the most telling are the little books
that have come out that are titled Eat This – Not That.
They have a general section on how to eat healthy
but the real
meat of the book is a series of pictures that seems to have more or
less given up on people choosing to eat healthy and said ok, if you're
going to eat at fast food restaurants, here are the things on their
menu that are the least-bad. These books are flying off the shelves.
We have the one that's geared toward kids and I think it's funny that
the book's dedicated to all parents who are trying to make smart
choices for their children.
I guess there's always a hope that
someone will be able to tell us what to eat, and when to eat and how
to eat so that we can look and feel better than we did yesterday.
And, of course each of these ideas comes in an attractive package
bundled especially for you. But when it comes right down to it, it is
good to pay attention to nutrition because the quality of food we put
into our bodies directly affects what we're able to do. There is
truth to the old adage that you are what you eat.
But I'm not a dietician… I'm not nutritionist. I only bring up
food because for the last four weeks, the gospel texts in the
lectionary have centered on bread. It started when John the gospel
writer recounted the feeding of 5000, and then Jesus began to talk to
the crowd about the bread of life which came down from heaven and he
made the extraordinary claim that he is the bread of life… and
then in today's reading he switched the metaphor. The bread he gives
isn't made of flour and water and oil… the bread he gives is
his flesh. Make no mistake about it he says, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in
you.
Eating flesh and drinking blood, not things we usually associate with a Sunday morning drive to church… especially when it's not a communion Sunday. It's hard to read this without thinking about communion and it always has been… There were literally wars, people fought to the death over how to understand communion in light of this scripture text. Some held so strongly to the understanding that the bread and the wine of communion actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ… otherwise, according to this passage, how would any of us have life at all? Others, including the founders of both denominations this church is a part of, held the position that Christ is present in the celebration of the sacrament but that presence is not dependent on the bread and the cup becoming the body and blood. The bread and the cup don't change, but those who take part in the sacrament do because we are renewed in our identity as followers of Christ, both as individuals and as communities; and we're also strengthened, nourished and sent out for service.
For the last 15 or 16 centuries the most common phrase to describe a
sacrament is some variation of how St. Augustine of Hippo described
it: an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible
grace.
And on one level, this passage is about the sacrament of
communion. If you read the entire gospel of John, you'll find that
there's not an account of the meal at last supper. And yet way back
in the first century, communion was already being celebrated in the
communities where John's gospel was written and proclaimed. Some
scholars think that this passage represents John's version of the
institution of communion. Where Luke said take and eat, do this in
remembrance of me, John said my flesh is the true food and my blood is
the true drink, those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal
life. It's quite possible that those scholars are right… this
may be John's command to celebrate the sacrament. But when I read
this passage, that's not all it is.
You see, talking about eating flesh and drinking blood is provocative. It's offensive language. It's designed to get people's attention… I don't think there are many of us who would be willing to take the words literally, and as I understand it, any observant first century Jew wouldn't even consider it. Eating human flesh and drinking blood were both specifically prohibited by the law. The idea of it would have been as offensive to them as it is to us, and yet these are the words handed down to us in the scripture, so how do we understand them?
Eating and drinking are intimate acts. Like nothing else, when you eat and drink something they become part of you… The food enters the body gets broken down and distributed throughout all of the cells and tissues so that every part of you gets what it needs. The first century hearers of the story didn't know about the South Beach Diet or Weight Watchers. They didn't know about the roles of individual cells and micronutrients, but they did know that what they took into their bodies sustained them and nourished them. So Jesus tells them to take himself into their bodies.
Just a few verses earlier in the gospel, the crowd remembered the manna in the wilderness and this time, Jesus reminded them. Yes your ancestors ate manna from heaven for 40 years, but a whole generation decided to wander and to die in the wilderness rather than trust and follow where God led. An old tradition says that when it came to the wandering generation, their spiritual lives mirrored their physical lives. Manna may have provided physical nourishment, but according to Jesus it was not the bread of life. His flesh was the bread of life.
Now the word flesh is used in two other places in the gospel of John. Once is while Jesus spoke to Nicodemus. The other is at the beginning of the gospel when we're told that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. As Christians, it's not an idea; it's not a set of principles or guidelines or a code of ethics we live by. The center of the Christian faith is this person, Jesus of Nazareth; flesh and blood who walked the earth some two thousand years ago and who we also believe to be God. His flesh, his incarnation is the bread of life because his life and his ministry make up the most accurate picture we have of the character of God.
Likewise, we don't see talk of Christ's blood anywhere else in the gospel of John. In general, in the first century, blood was understood to be the life – carrying essence of a person or an animal. It could only be given by God. That's part of why drinking blood was forbidden… God had already given each living being its own essence… we wouldn't need bring someone else's into our bodies. For the people who were in the story, it would have been hard, if not impossible to figure out what the command to eat flesh and to drink blood meant… but for the people who heard the gospel, they knew it wasn't just any blood they were being told to drink. It was the blood of Jesus of Nazareth – God who became flesh. His life was violently taken from him but three days later, he rose from the dead, showing that he is God and that he is indeed worthy of all the hope and praise and honor we could possibly give. This is the life they are being told to take part in.
There's definitely a sacramental feel to this passage, but it's bigger than just participating in communion on a monthly basis. The call is to bring everything about the life Jesus lived into our lives and into our way of being in the world. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to bring to our attention his incarnation and ministry as well as his crucifixion and resurrection… It's to think, to pray, to study so that we know the life of Christ and then to let our actions be led by his life and his direction in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, so that our very lives might become a visible sign of an invisible grace.
In a day and age such as the one we live in, when the options of how to live our lives are laid out before us like a restaurant's menu, we need intentionality about what we choose to take in… just as the quality of food we eat determines what we are able to do, the quality of our connection with Christ determines who we are able to be as his followers. His entire story is one of self-offering for the redemption of the world… It started with the incarnation and hasn't ended yet. Bon appétit. Amen.
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on August 16, 2009.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
