18 August 2024 Pentecost 13

1 Kings 2.10-12; 3.3-14   Psalm 111   Ephesians 5.11-21   John 6.51-58

As we explore and think about this next section of Jesus’ discussion with the crowd about ‘bread from heaven’ and ‘eating his flesh and drinking his blood’, you may be tempted to simply sigh a deep ‘ho hum’ and wonder what it all has to do with your life here in a disturbingly unsettled world in 2024. 

The crowd are becoming angry, they see Jesus’ words as ‘foolish’, but Jesus responds, insisting that he is ‘telling the truth’, “if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in yourselves. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…. For my flesh is the real food; my blood is the real drink.”   And the crowd, and we, realise he is being serious, this is not metaphor, this is not abstract speech.  Jesus really means it.  Jesus would give us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink.

And when the crowd hear it, they edge ever so gently away, because what Jesus is saying has always been regarded as ‘abomination’ by the law and the prophets.  And we too, may shrink back, because it doesn’t fit with our reasoning, and, quite frankly, it sounds quite gross, and more like cannibalism than Christianity.  These words, which we hear every time we celebrate Eucharist, are often heard without much attention being paid to what they are really saying.

I read about an occasion when a minister, while celebrating Eucharist, was carefully reading the words of institution in a very solemn tone, and when he recited the words ‘this is my body, broken for you, this is my blood, shed for you’, he was interrupted by a very loud ‘Ew, yuk!’ from a small child in the congregation.  Such might be the response of anyone new to our liturgical practices, if they are not also familiar with our scriptural texts.

Over the past three weeks, we have been looking at John’s sixth chapter, connecting it to our faith, and the sacraments, and the way they create and nourish our faith.  And this morning, we finally come to the heart of it all.  In these verses we see what is at stake for Jesus, and how much we are worth to him.  Jesus is offering us his very flesh and blood, the flesh that will be stretched upon the cross for our sake, and the blood that will flow freely from his hands and feet and side, also for our sake.

Today, Jesus makes it all too clear what the bread of life and the food from heaven means.  He gets very basic in his imagery so as to confront us with the claim and promise of the carnal God, the God who became incarnate, who takes on flesh and blood and becomes just like us, so that we may one day be like God.

In Jesus, in the Word made flesh, in the sacraments, the Word given physical, visible form, we meet the God who will be satisfied with nothing less than our whole selves.  This is why Jesus speaks of giving us his flesh and blood, because ‘flesh and blood’ is the Hebrew idiom that refers to the whole person, hearts, minds, spirit, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, concerns, everything.  In Jesus, the whole of God meets us to love, redeem, and sustain the whole of who you are, good, bad and otherwise.

Jesus is the God who comes for our whole selves.  And in one sense, this sums up John’s testimony to Christ.  Throughout his Gospel, John uses images which describe the relationship of Jesus and those who believe in him: Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep; Jesus is the vine and we are the branches; Jesus abides in God and we abide in him.  But in this passage, the language is stretched to its limits in order to express the indissoluble union and inextricable participation of one life in another.  For those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins.  He cannot be taken from the believer’s life any more than last Wednesday’s dinner can be removed from your body.  This is the promise which God makes to us in the Sacraments: to be one with us and for us forever, to stick with us and even in us no matter what may be.

 Every time we celebrate Eucharist, God comes to us to offer us a promise made so concrete and solid so that we can touch, and feel, and taste, and eat it.  In these common, physical elements, we have God’s promise that God not only cares about our births, and deaths;  our marriages, and jobs; our successes, and our failures; but that God has joined God’s self to them and to us through Christ, the Word made flesh and given to us.

So Come, Come and eat and drink this promise.  Come prepared to meet the God who meets us exactly where we are.  Come and receive the real food of Christ’s own body, the real drink of Christ’s own blood, so that you might have support in living in this very real, and difficult world.  Come, finally, to meet the God who offers us life itself, life in Christ both now and forever.