John 6:53-59 , We are what we eat and drink
11 Pentecost

For two Sundays in July and into the third week of August, our lectionary has passages from the Gospels about bread and the nature of bread. And again next week we will be reading and hearing more about the bread from heaven. If we think six Sundays take up enough and more time talking about bread and feeding, we are mistaken. Because even on the last Sunday in August we will hear and talk about what we eat and what comes out of us. So, what is it about the Bread from heaven that demands so much attention from us? Right from the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, until last Sunday, we see a development of the story from the impossibility of multiplying five small loaves of bread to feed thousands to the introduction of the Bread from heaven.  In today’s reading, there is this very crude and quite honestly, offensive description of what it means to receive the bread that came down from heaven. Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Over the centuries, this saying of Jesus has somehow lost most of its initial quality of shock and repulsiveness; nonetheless, it still remains one of the greatest and most profound mysteries of our relationship with Christ. When Jesus first declared the eating of his flesh and drinking his blood as requirement for life it was a scandal, an offense to all who heard it. I certainly cannot claim to understand the complete meaning of what it entails to eat the flesh and drink the blood of our Lord Jesus, but I am pretty certain that Jesus always meant this particular saying and demand of his to be a scandal, an offense to our sensibilities.

One of the bones of contention I have had with my husband is the fact that he never even tried to taste the type of cuisine I grew up with, which happens to be similar to most authentic Chinese cuisine. This is a battle I know I have lost long time ago, but it does make for a difficult visit to my relatives who don’t know how to cook the spicy Indian food that he is comfortable with. In my culture, people will often say to the guest at the end of the dinner, “now that you have drunk my water and eaten from my pot, you will always be my brother (or my sister).” I am aware that in this highly diverse society of ours where ethnic boundaries have become blurred, and all types of food are readily available on the supermarket shelf, we have to a large extend lost the meaning of identity that is often closely tied to food in ethnic or tribal cultures. For many groups of people around the world, for a foreigner to be able to eat and appreciate their distinct type of cuisine is to appreciate and respect their people and their way of life.

To eat the flesh and drink the blood of our Lord Jesus is to identify our lives with Him in the most intimate way, in a way that his flesh and blood will become the defining factor of our very being. As we come to the Lord’s Table Sunday after Sunday often we do not give too much thought to what it means to eat the flesh of our Lord Jesus and drink His blood. When we open the palm of our hands and receive the body of Christ, and when we sip from the cup to receive the blood of Christ our first thoughts are often that of the blessings we get at the table. There is a certain sense of comfort that we always feel as we come to the Altar of our Lord. And that is true, that the body and blood of Christ are blessings and our source of comfort from God. But, if the body and blood of Christ at some point does not manage to rattle our sensibilities and disturb our well-defined lives we have never really heard what Christ has to say about abiding in Him. As un-natural as it sounds to eat the flesh of our Lord Jesus and to drink His blood, that is exactly what He has called us to do in order to identify our lives in Him, which is to step out of our comfort and selfishness and follow his example.  

And the example of Jesus’ life is one that is marked by scandals and offenses. The scandal of Jesus’ sacrifice of himself is seen right from the time he set out to touch the outcast, the cursed, and the unloved of polite society. The scandal of his life was in his forgiveness of his enemies and in his readiness to heal and restore broken lives. It was offensive for many to see Jesus eating at the same table with tax-collectors and sinners. And it was even more offensive to see good economic resources like herds of pigs destroyed in order to save one single deranged man. Jesus reached out to even the repulsive corpse in the midst of hopelessness to do what is most un-natural- which is, bring back the dead to life. And of course, the most scandalous and offensive of all things in Jesus’ life is his claim that he is the life-giving bread that came down from heaven. People called it blasphemy. In other words, he is one and the same as God, which I think is something we struggle to understand even today. How can God come down to our level? But it is true that the Son of God came down from heaven to live amongst us. And His life of the Son was defined by hope, freedom, healing, and the life he made possible for all those who otherwise were imprisoned by what the world dictated and expected. In the way he lived his life and in his death, Jesus broke boundaries and walls between that which is holy and which is not, purging the unholy and scandalous with his holy presence.

The life that Jesus offers in Him is a life that must be recognizable as that which is different from what the world expects, and also from what we are comfortable with. To do the un-natural thing of forgiving our enemies and reconciling our differences; to engage in the uncomfortable act of embracing those who are different and foreign to us; to do the scandalous thing of being foolishly generous; and above all, to deny our self-sufficiency and instead trust in the God who loves us with an unconditional and everlasting love; these are just some of the qualities that must define our communion at the Lord’s Table.

Ultimately, the sacrificial offering of Jesus’ body and blood for us is meant to generate a communion that is holy, transformed by the love, forgiveness, healing, joy, and hope of Christ. At the Lord’s Table, we come seeking reconciliation and communion not only with God but also with our fellow beings. May we remind ourselves that it will always be a scandal to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, because it calls us to imbibe something that is completely against our nature, which is to identify with, and seek to live the sacrificial life of Christ. Amen.