God be in my mind and in my understanding. God be in eyes and in my seeing. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my heart and in my thinking. God be in life and in my leaving. Amen.
Flesh and blood, bread of life, human and divine - big stuff in this lesson. Yesterday as I was getting ready for the day, it was kind of like the Dunkin' Donuts guy, "gotta make the donuts, gotta make the donuts." This is how priests are on Saturdays, "gotta finish the sermon, gotta finish the sermon, gotta finish the sermon." I went to a funeral at 10:30 in the morning for a rather young woman at age 47, who had died and left behind three young children under the age of fourteen. As I drove out for the service, I was expecting a fairly heavy, downtrodden service and I was filled with sadness at the thought of what life was going to be like for this family without their mother. I was met with surprise when I got there because of a service of about 400, 200 were young people there to support those kids and to be there for them and love them through that day and through this time in their life. I think expected it to be such a place sadness because this was such a young person leaving behind so much, but I was met with was this room full of her presence, of this woman who had left world was still very much with us and among us. Flesh and blood there in the lives that she left behind. As the two people that spoke about her life shared stories, there was just so much laughter in the room, and there were tears. But there was such a sense that this person had embodied the love of Christ in her life. She had changed and impacted all those around her and that while her body might be gone, her spirit lived on in that room, in that family, in all of those lives that she had touched.
As I drove home I stopped by to see a friend and take communion, who recently had surgery. And we sat with this text and we broke bread together and we talked about her surgery and healing and how she was feeling. And we talked about what did flesh and blood mean to us? What did it mean when Jesus said, "bread of life." And we sat and we broke bread together and we had fellowship and we pondered and shared in this text. And then as I got home, ten days ago there were twins born out in California and we had been following this online, and one is healthy and at home and the other is coming along but its been a long ten days. Her little lung and liver were connected and so the lung didn't quite develop right and therefore they had to go in and do surgery as soon as she was stable enough post birth. And that surgery was yesterday morning very, very early out in California. So when I got home that evening, the emails had been flying and the prayer chain had been going and there was lots of sharing about all of the good will and good spirit and the prayers that had been pulsing through this little girl's life, through this community, through this family as they pray and we continue to pray. There must be on this web page, I don't how to describe it, there must be 200-300 people signed into this guestbook talking about who in their life is praying for this young child. And it's been miracle after miracle this week. Every time they said, I don't think so, its not going to happen, that heart just keeps going and the surgery she's come through and we feel that she has turned these major corners. And so once again, over and over yesterday, as I panicked about finishing a sermon, God put before me example after example of flesh and blood, human and divine and the bread of life among us.
But, let's not mistake that John's Gospel is always stirring and asking hard things of us. John isn't clear and succinct, John is poetic and magical and mystical in the way he describes and offers the good news of Jesus. In the way Jesus uses those words. Many scholars argue about this text and many people have used this text to argue that Christianity is about cannibalism, is about eating flesh and blood. That it's something bad and sinister. It's so shocking to think of it! To ponder eating and drinking the human body. But I think John knew what those words would do and they served a purpose. They forced us, forced us to expand our understanding and to think about what it really means to be followers of Christ. It's never simple with John. When we ponder what it means to talk about eating flesh and drinking blood, we have to consider how those words were met in Jesus' day; and in the community where the author of this Gospel was writing. And then, ultimately, we have to ask the question of how does that speak to us today.
Jesus' audience generally knew the stories of Moses and the manna from above that God fed those people with in the desert. They understood bread as food that nourishes and sustains. And they knew that from the laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, that blood meant life, it was equated with good rich life and it was sacred. And to somehow take in another's life by the drinking of blood, animal or human, would be a violation and it meant that one would be exiled from the community. All animals had to be drained of blood before they could be eaten. To this day this is the practice of our Jewish brothers and sisters who practice a kosher diet. So how could Jesus say such a thing? The same crowd who witnessed the feeding of the 5000 and had seen the miraculous signs that Jesus gave just couldn't understand what Jesus meant by calling Himself the Bread of Life and that they must eat of this bread for their eternal life. The bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh. He says this and they say they couldn't possibly believe it. This couldn't possibly bring them closer to God; it would only get them kicked out of the community of faith. They questioned Jesus' words as they did just about everything He said. And in these eight short verses, Jesus uses the word "flesh and blood" no less than ten times. He's clear, flesh and blood, visceral. And as readers 2000 years later maybe some of this language doesn't feel so shocking. We've been reading these texts for years and we know that Jesus did offer His flesh and blood for us that we might have eternal life by His death and resurrection on the cross.
We speak often of Jesus as the Bread of Life that feeds our soul, that nourishes us, that sustain us. It's a great metaphor. And from the Synoptic Gospels we hearken back to Jesus' final days when He brought together all of His disciples for a Last Supper. Where He offered bread and wine as signs of His blood and His body and to take them in remembrance for the life that He was going give. We are a sacramental community and we believe in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist. We gather around this table at the beginning of each month and we lift up our hands and we take the bread as the words are said, "the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven." And as we take that cup, "the Cup of Salvation, the Blood of Christ" we take that cup in and we take that bread in. We don't think of this as body, we don't think of this as blood. However, it's been a long debate and is it just a ritual, just a remembrance at that altar? Is that all we're doing? Remembering is important and it's and enormous part of what we do and when we gather. But isn't it more than just remembering? Doesn't something happen there? But do we really believe that bread and wine on the altar turn to flesh and blood? Most of us don't. We'd say, of course not, it still tastes like bread, it still tastes like wine. This is just a remembrance. We're honoring that death and resurrection of Jesus with the Holy Eucharist, but its symbolic. It's symbolic so we will remember; we'll know how to live.
When we take flesh and blood of Jesus, the bread and wine of the Eucharist into our bodies with a faithful heart, I believe the Gospel of John says very clearly, something in us changes. That gathering at the altar isn't just symbolic, or just a reminder. It is the actual presence of the Holy, and abiding within each of us that changes our very make-up. When we feed on the bread of life we are spiritually, emotionally, and I believe, even physically changed. Jesus didn't ask us to remember His lessons and go lead a great life. As one friend often points out to me, Jesus' message is pretty simple, love God and love your neighbor. Why do we have to go to church and talk about all the time? Don't you think we can just go do it? I don't think he quite gets it. We come together to experience the Body of Christ. We come together in community so that we can know what it means to hold Christ together and among us. We come together to give thanks, we come together to ask for guidance and direction. We come together to be moved by the spirit of Christ through music, through words, through meditation, through silence. We come to be in the rhythm with the flow of life. With flesh, with blood, with pulsing through veins. It's very visceral. God became flesh in Jesus. God was sent into the world through Jesus incarnate, in the body. Jesus went into the world so that we could have some understanding of what God was in body. And incarnate goes on when we understand that we come to that table and in our body we take in the spirit and love that God holds for us and that we are changed. Its not just a memory, something really happens. God so loves us that God sent Jesus to us and so God in turn lets Jesus move into us so that we can go out and love as Jesus has loved us. Jesus abides in us as the Father abides in Jesus. Jesus wants to live, wants to pulse through our veins and be in our skin and when we are believers, we come to that alter and we say the Great Thanksgiving and we say that communal Amen, something happens. It's a mystery and I can't put the right words around it, but we aren't only taking in bread and wine in a ritualistic remembrance, we are taking in something that abides in us and changes us so that we can see the world and experience the world differently. So that we can be Christ to one another in those moments, be it at the end of life or at the beginning of life, in our joys, in our suffering, in hospitals, in healing, in new jobs, in new schools, in old friends and new friends. With all of that, that bread and wine, goes into us meets our hands and we are changed. And in that we acknowledge that what John says to us this lesson today is that, flesh and blood, body, bread and life, that we have to take Jesus fully, not just an idea but an actual way of life, a very visceral change in who we are. That's the good news and the challenge of this lesson. Amen.
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