Two men were once walking through a field when they saw an angry bull. Instantly they made for the nearest fence with the bull in hot pursuit. It soon became evident to them that they were not going to make it, so one man shouted to the other, “We’ve had it! Nothing can save us. Say a prayer. Quick!”
The other shouted back, “I’ve never prayed in my life, and I certainly don’t have a prayer for this occasion.”
“Never mind. The bull is catching up with us. Any prayer will do.”
“Okay. Here is one I remember my father used to say before meals: ‘For what we are about to receive, Lord, make us truly grateful.’”[1]
It is so great to be back with you! I have spent the last weeks away, just “being.” Not much “doing.” Just “being.” Relishing in God’s beauty, spending time in prayer and reflection, reading, sitting and sharing space and conversation with dear friends. Even when I went to the conference in Austin on ministry with our Hispanic brothers and sisters, I was able to simply “be.” I was not in charge of things, I was not making a presentation, I was not asked to make decisions or solve an issue—I was just able to “be”—to listen and learn in the presence of people gathered in God’s name. So I come to you today, rested and energized to “be” and to begin again working alongside you.
For the last five weeks we have been living in this discussion of Jesus as the “bread of life.” It began with Jesus blessing five barley loaves and two fish and feeding five thousand men and an unknown number of women and children. Our lectionary has carried us along through John’s discourse where Jesus tells his followers that he is the true bread that came down from heaven, that he is the “bread of life,” not the bread that temporarily fills and then returns us once again to hunger, but the one that fill us once and for all with eternal life. And then Jesus tells the crowd, including the religious leaders as well as his “disciples” who have been following him for a while, that those who “eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This 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.”
Up until now, following Jesus was exhilarating. Jesus has been performing signs and wonders, successfully challenging the authorities, and giving them hope that “this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” (John 6:14). The crowds even want to make him their king.
But today, Jesus presents them with a message that causes a crisis of faith. It is a difficult teaching that will become a turning point for Jesus’ disciples. Talk of “chomping flesh” and “drinking blood” would have caused alarm to begin with, but spoken within a synagogue, caused even more provocation. The crowd listening to Jesus would have heard his words as blasphemy, as an abomination, as a violation of the core belief about the Holy, and their proper relationship with God. Jesus’ words caused complaining or grumbling gongyzo, the same word used of the Israelites in the wilderness when they grumbled against Moses.
But the writer of John’s Gospel does not soften or reshape these words into something that is less troubling. Rather Jesus pushes forward. “Does this scandalize you?” Translations often use “offend” but the word is skandalizo is a more powerful word that means to cause to stumble, particularly in matters of faith. It is more than a mere offense to our sensibilities.
Instead of trying to minimize the outrage of believing Jesus’ testimony, he intensifies it. “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? He refers to himself as the Son of Man and by associates himself with Jacob’s ladder (cf. 1:51), the one through whom heaven and earth are ultimately linked. Jesus says to these disciples, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
We hear that “many of his disciples turned back” to their former lives, to their former beliefs as a result. After all their waiting and watching and wondering, they have grown tired. They can no longer see what it was about Jesus that caused them to follow him in the first place. And now, this teaching has gone too far and so they leave.
It can be easy for us to identify with the crowds that misunderstand and question Jesus. What can Jesus mean, “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me as I abide in them.” As at others times in reading the scripture, we can eagerly search for the metaphor. It would be so much easier to think poetically here. But I invite you to stay awhile and experience the very fleshiness of Jesus’ words.
John wants us to go deep. In this Gospel, Jesus tells us that he is the only food that will nourish us. That, as the good shepherd does, he will lay down his life for us—giving his very flesh and blood to sustain us on our journey through life. John wants us to hear the word “abide,” as being as real as “flesh” and “blood.” John wants us to hear that Jesus, the incarnate Word, calls us to a living relationship where we take him into our lives. To “chomp on” Jesus is to take in, digest, and be fed by God’s Word. Here Jesus calls us to remember not Moses or manna, but the prophets of Israel. Jeremiah prayed, “O Lord…on your account I suffer insult. Your words were found and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name.” (Jer. 15: 15-16) God said to Ezekiel, “Do not be rebellious like that rebellious house, open your mouth and eat what I give you…eat this scroll and go, speak to the house of Israel…Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey” (Ezek. 2:8; 3: 1-3)
Because Jesus is God’s Word incarnate, to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” is not only to discover life’s meaning, but to receive life itself, what the Synoptic Gospels call the kingdom of heaven. Feasting on the Word is the way to “have eternal life.”
While the words Jesus speaks can cause us concern just as it did his disciples, in remaining and accepting this claim, we are called into a deeper relationship where God lives in us and we live in God. Since blood was understood to be the very foundation of life and belonged to God alone, Jesus is telling us that we must make him—and the One who abides in him—the very center—the very foundation of our life, belonging to God alone. To be a follower of Jesus we are called to take in, to put on, to live in Jesus as Jesus lives in us.
This will cause us to see things in a different way, to live our lives in a different way—filled with Jesus who abides in us and we in him. God not just beyond all that we can imagine, but being within us as close to us as our very pulse, as the flesh that supports our bones and muscles and organs and the blood that gives us life.
Of the four gospels, John’s is the only one in which Jesus does not sit at table on the night of his arrest and speak the words that institute communion. He doesn’t say, “this is my body, given for you, take and eat of it all of you, do this in remembrance of me…” Instead he says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
Here, in John’s Gospel, following the feeding miracle and the bread of life sermon, Jesus doesn’t speak of remembrance; he speaks about transformation. And in this transformation, we are equipped, as Paul tells the church in Ephesus, to put on the whole armor of God, to fasten the belt of truth about our waist so that we may proclaim the gospel of peace, live our lives in the way of love, and respond to each and every person as a child of God—including our very self. When we eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood, when Jesus abides in us, lives in us, we are saturated with God’s mercy so we can be grateful for this life and face its barbs and its bite, we can stand alongside those who suffer, and we can experience its wide ranging joy. When we abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in us, we are filled with the nourishment that transforms our lives and gives us the power to bring that transformation into the world.
When Jesus turns to “the twelve” and asks them if his words have caused them also to wish to turn away, Peter responds, “Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter responds as many of us do, to the words of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus that can cause us to doubt, to wonder at times if our beliefs are misguided. But then we experience that which causes us to fall on our knees before something that we cannot explain, that feeds us and fills us and for which we long—God’s light, and love, and mercy and grace.
Every time we gather at this table to celebrate the Eucharist we experience this love. We come giving thanks and offering ourselves at our most basic humanness– sometimes looking back over our shoulder at a charging bull, not knowing whether we will make it to safety.
We come to this Eucharistic meal hungry not only for the living food, but for each other. We need each other, not only in a spiritual way—but in a real physical way where our longing for relationship meets that same longing in others. And in this time of receiving and giving, we experience that which can be the beginning of our sharing once we leave the table and go back into the world.
From a Eucharistic prayer in a liturgy at Iona:
So as we do in this place what you did in an upstairs room, send down your Holy Spirit on us and on these gifts of bread and wine that they may become for us your body, healing, forgiving and making us whole; and that we may become, for you, your body, loving and caring in the world until your kingdom comes.[2]
We long for the bread of life that comes down from heaven to be food for the world. We give ourselves to God who is present with us from the moment of our creation, through joy and suffering, through success and failure, in wandering and arrival. To God, who delights in us and desires much more for us than that which fills us only momentarily. To God who offers us life eternal—to be with God as Christ is with him, and with each other as Christ is with us.
As we gather this day, around the table to eat the body and drink the blood of the true bread that comes down from heaven, we are filled. To whom else can we go? Here we find eternal life and for this that we are about to receive, Lord make us truly grateful.
[1] Anthony de Mello. Taking Flight.
[2] Andrew Prior (https://onemansweb.org/this-terrible-eating-of-bread-john-6-51-58.html)