The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.
Pentecost 12, Year B
John 6:51-58
Dear Heavenly Father, send us your Holy Spirit so that we may believe in Jesus the Bread of Life. Amen.
Some of you may remember that back in the 1970’s, a soccer team crashed landed while flying over the Andes Mountains. After quite some time had passed, they realised all rescue efforts had been abandoned, and they had run out of food. How would they survive? After much debate, they decided to eat the flesh of those who had died. As horrific as that seems to us, because they ate the flesh of others, they survived.
Thankfully we don’t need to resort to such drastic measures for our daily survival, yet Jesus tells us that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no life in us.
Is Jesus telling us to strip his flesh from him and start eating it?
What about his blood? Wasn’t drinking blood forbidden by God?
Wouldn’t this type of eating and drinking make us cannibals?
If we were to interpret this Bible text literally, we have a problem. In fact, in the days of the Roman Empire, the early Christians were often accused of being cannibals because they said they ate and drank the flesh and blood of Jesus!
How can we eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood? He’s no longer here in the flesh! How are we to have life if he doesn’t give us the opportunity to eat his flesh and drink his blood? What exactly does Jesus mean?
Let’s think bout it…flesh, blood, body, bread of life…perhaps Jesus is talking about the Lord’s Supper! And this is what many people conclude Jesus is talking about, but this is not necessarily so.
This actually raises more questions: does this mean that only those who eat and drink at the Lord’s Table will go to heaven? What about all those who have never tasted this Holy meal? Have they no life in them? What about baptism? Doesn’t baptism save and give us the promise of eternal life? Or, what about faith – aren’t we were saved by faith alone? Is the eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper now necessary for life and salvation?
If we were to interpret this eating and drinking as only referring to the Lord’s Supper, we have some problems, so it can’t be that. It could be alluding to it though: perhaps a bit more on that later.
So, what is the answer to understanding this text? How can we still eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood?
If we study John’s gospel account carefully, we see that whenever John referred to the flesh of Jesus, he was referring to his humanity. Remember he says right at the beginning that the ‘Word became flesh and dwelt among us’. The eternal Word of God became a human being.
Therefore to ‘eat’ the flesh of Jesus is in a sense to ‘swallow’ the truth about him; that he is the eternal God who helped create the world, but that he also came into this world as a human being; that our eternal, powerful and loving God wore human skin and had human bones. Now this is a stumbling block to many people. Many find it hard to believe because our ideas about God don’t always fit into human skin. In a sense, this is hard for many people to ‘swallow’.
Blood on the other hand usually has to do with sacrifice. For the Israelites, the only use of blood was in sacrificial rituals to make things holy and to atone for one’s sin. Therefore to drink Jesus’ blood is to believe that he came into this world in order to sacrifice himself for our sin.
This is also a stumbling block. For starters, many think that they are pretty good and haven’t done much wrong, so therefore they don’t need anyone to die for them. They don’t think it’s necessary for Jesus to spill his blood for them. On the other hand, even if we do recognise our sinfulness, we often struggle to bear the thought that Jesus would willingly suffer cruel punishment and die in our place.
But this is the most natural way to understand this difficult passage. To ‘eat’ Jesus’ flesh is to believe that he is true God, begotten of the Father in eternity, and also true human being. To ‘eat’ his flesh is to swallow his humanity and divinity.
To ‘drink’ his blood is to believe he has purchased and freed us from all sins, from death, and from the slavery of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death. To ‘drink’ his blood is to swallow his willing sacrifice for our sins.
There is no other food – either physical or spiritual – that will save us and give us eternal life.
This is the good news - the gospel of Jesus Christ - but many people find it hard to accept, too hard to ‘swallow’.
We can see how this relates to eternal life, but what benefit can this possibly give us in our everyday life?
Well, when we believe that God wore human shoes and human skin, we can be strengthened and comforted by the fact that as he lived among us, he suffered as we do. He knows what it is like to be human with all our frailties. We can be comforted that we are not alone in our suffering.
Jesus felt every temptation as we do; he felt every emotion of growing up; he felt the pain of humiliation, beatings and insults; he even felt the loneliness of dying. In this way we can boldly go to him as one who understands. Even if our troubles do not go away from us, he promises that as we abide in him in faith, he will also dwell with us. He will stay with us in our troubles and give us the strength and endurance we need. He will give us hope in the middle of our despair.
In the same way his sacrifice on the cross and his pouring out of his blood for us expose the reason why he came. His death on the cross exposes our own sinful nature that we don’t like to admit to. Yet if we cannot admit our own part in his reason for dying, then his death means nothing to us. If we don’t see our sin, then there is no reason for us to look to Jesus.
Yet it’s there on the cross, as we look uncomfortably at his suffering and death because of our guilt, that we also receive our greatest comfort. When we see our own sin hanging off his torn flesh, we also see his blood dripping down to cover up our sin. When we are ashamed of what we have done, that’s when we see our shame die with him.
We also look to the empty cross as a reminder of Christ’s glorious resurrection. Jesus rose again without any sign of our stains and blemishes. They were left on the cross. As we see how he still lives victorious from the grave, we receive hope that our own current struggles and pains and grief will die with our own death, and we will be raised to a life without pain and grief and sickness.
As we are joined to Jesus through baptism into faith, we now live with him where he is now. Since he has already gone through death for us and stands at the right side of eternity, that’s where we already live by faith. In this sense we have already crossed through death to life eternal. By faith we already live forever! Our own death becomes a doorway that opens to show us we already have started our eternal life with Jesus.
This ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ we do by faith. We ‘chew’ on the meaning of his incarnation, his suffering, his death, his resurrection and ascension. We may not swallow it all at once, but we suck on his words, chew on them, and contemplate their flavour and meaning. As we drink in his gracious words of forgiveness, peace and hope, we taste and see that the Lord is good.
So, why do we need baptism and the Lord’s Supper if this is how we understand this text?
Well, it’s through these divine gifts that Jesus communicates the benefits of his incarnation, the benefits of his suffering, his death, his resurrection and his ascension to us through faith. They are the means by which Jesus gives us these things in a very real way.
It’s by faith that we are made one with him through baptism. In this way baptism is the physical means by which he grafts us into his body to become one with him and he with us.
It’s by faith that we digest his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. In this way Holy Communion is the physical means that strengthens our faith, especially in times of doubt. Although many may argue Jesus is not here because he lives in heaven, he truly comes to us in his holy meal. It’s here that he gives us his true body and his true blood for us to eat and drink in such a real and special way that we don’t become cannibals. It’s here where Jesus comes to us and abides with us in a physical way.
Therefore it’s through these gifts of Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar that Jesus gives us the benefits of his flesh and blood. Through faith, they are powerful, life-giving and life-changing means by which God still comes to us in the flesh and gives us forgiveness, life and hope.
In this way, as we eat and drink Christ’s flesh and blood, as we drink on his life-giving words, and as we continue to chew on his life, death and resurrection, we will live. But unlike the surviving soccer team mentioned earlier, we will live forever.
Therefore, in faith, keep eating and drinking Jesus Christ; the God made flesh who came to sacrifice his own blood for you and I. If we do, we will not only survive, but we will live – forever.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus the Bread of Life. Amen.
3