You will be glad to know that this is the last Sunday that we get to hear the bread of life discourse from the Gospel of John. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” There is a distinctive understanding of Jesus and his relationship to God in the Gospel of John. Everything that is revealed about God and received from God is present in Jesus. Jesus himself is the divine conscious – the logos (word) made flesh. However, this fully divine one of God remains fully human eating, drinking, laughing, weeping, and finally dying. The message in John is this “God entered the world as a human being, and those who recognize and accept this radically new divine act receive the eternal life God is offering through him.”[2] It is about believing.
The way that Jesus is talking was hard for the first century listeners of these words to hear and it is hard for us in the twenty-first century as well. Eating flesh and drinking blood. Are we cannibals? Once when handing out the wine at the altar, as I was giving the wine to a young child’s mother, he was watching me closely, I said the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation and as I began to offer him the cup, he pulled back and said, “ug blood, I am not drinking blood.” And who wants to eat flesh? Jesus was losing membership.
What the Gospel is saying is this “Jesus is the bread from heaven who offers us eternal life.” And we, as a community of the faithful, celebrate “the memorial of our redemption” each and every Sunday, the Lord’s Day. The flesh of Jesus was his complete humanity. Jesus deified our flesh by taking it on himself. John insisted that we must grasp and never let go of the humanity of Jesus, that Jesus was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Jesus, as we have experienced over an over, is the mind of God becoming a person.
In Jesus we see God taking human life upon himself, facing our human condition, struggling with our human problems, battling with human temptations, and working out our human relationships – “Oy Vey.” Jesus is saying to us “Feed your heart, feed your mind, feed your soul on the thought of myself. When you are discouraged and in despair, when you are beaten to your knees and disgusted with life and living ---remember I took that life of yours and these struggles of yours on me.”[3] Give it up! Follow me.
Jesus also said we must drink his blood. Doesn’t that sound horrific? In the ancient Jewish thought the blood stands for life. It is easy to understand, as blood flows from a wound, life fades away. To the Jew the blood (the life) belonged to God. That is why Jews even today, do not eat any meat which has not been completely drained of blood. Now Jesus is saying “You must drink my blood -- you must take my life into the very center of your being – and that life of mine is the life which belongs to God.” When Jesus said we must drink his blood he was saying we must take his life into the very core of our beings into our hearts.”[4]
And at the Eucharist we not only receive but we present and offer to God all that we are. In fact, in our Rite I “words of institution” (page 336 at the top) it says, “And here (at the table) we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee….” This is how he is in us ---and we are in him. (Maybe that is where the saying “you are what you eat” comes from).
Being one with God, God being in you and you being in God is a very difficult concept. Young kids especially ask difficult questions. I heard it explained this way once. A Grandfather was walking along the beach on beautiful day when his Grandson asked him this question; “How can God (Jesus) be in me and I in him?” How would you explain it? What would you say? The Grandfather pick up a bottle and filled it halfway with Ocean water, then he put a cork in it and said to his grandson – “Imagine you are this bottle and imagine that the Ocean is God.” Then he tossed the bottle into the Ocean.
Jesus said to the disciples “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe." Some of the disciples (not the 12) drew back and no longer went with him. Jesus is losing membership, and this is the first time the 12 are mentioned. Jesus then gives them an option to leave too. “Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life: and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”[5] Well done Simon Peter. Having the faith, having come to believe is the difficult part.
We ask for help each Sunday in the Collect for Purity, Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.[6] It is not something that you can wrap your mind around, you have to wrap your thinking heart around it.
These twelve were united as a community of faithful by their willingness to follow him. They decided not to turn away but rather walk forward with Christ and that draws them together. “What a blessed word to remember as we agonize over mission statements, budgets, worship attendance or (all) the other preoccupations of churchy life. It is our commitment to follow Christ alongside others that makes us people of God.”[7] Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
References
Attridge, Harold W., Wayne A. Meeks, Jouette M. Bassler, and Stephen L. Cook. 2006. The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, including the ApocryphalDeuterocanonical books. Fully rev a updat Student ed. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco.
Bartlett, David Lyon, and Barbara Brown Taylor. 2009. Feasting on the Word. 1st ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Episcopal Church. 1990. The Book of Common Prayer: And administration of the sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the church: Together with the psalter or psalms of David: According to the use of the Episcopal Church [Book of Common Prayer (1979)]. New York, N.Y.; Harrisburg, PA: Oxford University Press; Morehouse Publishing.
Merton, Thomas. 1974; 1973. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. London: Sheldon Press.
Mitchell, Leonel L. 1991; 1985. Praying Shapes Believing: A theological commentary on the Book of Common Prayer [Book of Common Prayer (1979)]. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Pub.
O'Day, Gail R., and David L. Petersen. 2009. Theological Bible Commentary. 1st ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press.
[1] Adapted from The Rev. Jeanne Hansknecht. Occasioned by the 2014 Annual
Convocation at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia October 7, 2014. [2] O’Day, Gail R., and David Petersen, Theological Bible Commentary, 339. [3] Barclay, William. The Gospel of John. 224. [4] Barclay, William. The Gospel of John. 224. [5] Harper Collins Study Bible, 2026, [6] Book of Common Prayer, 355. [7] Feasting on the Word. 385.
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