August 18, 2024, You Are What You Eat, John 6:41-59 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ August 18, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Of all the teachings of Jesus, this teaching seems to have been one of the very hardest for his disciples to figure out. There were things Jesus did, like healing people on the Sabbath Day, that made the religious authorities mad – and people didn’t always get the point of his parables – but this teaching, that his followers had to eat his flesh and drink his blood, that was more than a lot of them could accept. When many of his disciples heard it, John tells us, they said, “This is too hard; who can listen to this?” And it was because of this teaching that a lot of his disciples turned their backs on him and stopped following him.

Because the truth is, it is a hard teaching. Probably the main way we in the church understand these words of Jesus is to apply them to the sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus gave us a sacramental meal as a sign of his continued, faithful presence among his people. He told us to share the bread and the wine whenever we gathered together. And he promised us that he will be physically here with us when we share the elements of bread and wine. He told us, “This is my Body. This is my Blood.”

And because it is a hard teaching, even the church has had to wrestle over the centuries with how we understand the Lord’s Supper. We don’t all understand it in the same way. In the Episcopal Church we don’t teach that the bread and the wine cease to exist at the moment of consecration, like the Roman Catholic Church does. But neither do we teach along with the Baptists that the Lord’s Supper is just a holy memorial, a remembrance of his sacrifice two thousand years ago. Our teaching is that we believe Jesus is physically present in the sacrament. We see and smell, we feel and taste the elements. We chew the bread and we swallow the wine. In a great mystery, we eat the bread and wine and we take our Lord Jesus Christ into our physical bodies. And our cells are nourished by him, as well as our hearts, and our spirits.

But this hard teaching of Jesus went even deeper than that. It was something harder for them to accept than the idea of a sacrificial meal. After all, the Eucharist had its roots in the Passover Feast, in the religion they already followed. There are always a lot of people who are ready to hear new religious ideas, but the problem was that what Jesus was offering them was not religion at all. Religion is about following a set of moral standards and ritual practices, and accepting a system of beliefs. Think the Ten Commandments. Think incense and Temple offerings. Think studying Torah, the holy Scriptures. That’s religion. But what was all this stuff Jesus was saying, about eating his flesh and drinking his blood? It made no sense. It was offensive, really. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with any good kind of religion.

And that was the bottom line. It actually didn’t have anything to do with religion – or at least religion as people understood it. What Jesus was offering was not a religious system; it was life itself, true life, abundant life. Life that can only exist if it’s nourished and sustained. Life that has to be fed. And the substance of what Jesus had to feed us was himself. In a world of judgment and condemnation he fed us his own forgiveness and grace. In a world of fear he fed us his peace. In a world of division he fed us himself in love. Jesus wasn’t there to hand down rules or teachings about forgiveness and peace and love. He was the real thing, to be taken in, to be tasted and digested, to become part of us; to transform us from within. Jesus didn’t bring us a recipe; he prepared a meal for us.

I love that way of putting it – it comes from a wonderful poem I found last week, called Eat and Drink, by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, that I want to read to you.

God is not a god of hearsay,

a virtual god, an outsourced god.

No remote, second hand, copy-of-a-copy god.

This religion isn’t about what you believe,

that paper religion, an idea you can think about.

This religion isn’t a recipe; it’s the meal.

Real food. You digest it.

Jesus is not explaining God. He’s feeding us God.

He is the bread of God.

You have to eat it.

It surrenders itself inside you,

becomes part of you.

Don’t just think about it;

don’t merely believe. Eat it.

Take him in, this Jesus bread.

Savor the aroma of his love, his grace,

the flavor of his trust in God and in you.

Wrap the mouth of your soul around him and eat.

See how he tastes on the tongue of your heart.

Bite off a chunk of that forgiveness,

chew it gratefully, and swallow it all.

Drink in that presence with you in every Gethsemane,

every Golgotha, drink it in and let it fill you.

Take all of who Jesus is into yourself.

Stuff yourself with him.

You are what you eat.

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Jesus serves us abundantly with the one and only thing we really need, and that is himself. “He doesn’t explain God to us – “ the poem says, “he feeds us God.” We are built up by his strength; we are filled with his peace; we are steadied by his wisdom; we are nourished with hope for the days and weeks and months ahead.

Jesus said, “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. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”

We’re living through a hard time right now, as a church family. I don’t think we’ve even begun to process the full extent of our losses, or of all the changes and difficulties and decisions that are ahead of us. I suddenly remembered yesterday the beautiful creche Joe Swan donated to the church – as far as I know it’s entirely gone, along with so many other things. But I know that God is with us. He prepares a bountiful table before us in the face of all our fears and all our sadness and all our anxiety. He is enough; he is all we really need. “Don’t just think about it;

don’t merely believe. Eat it. / Take him in, this Jesus bread.” says the poem. “Savor the aroma of his love, his grace, / the flavor of his trust in God and in you…Take all of who Jesus is into yourself.”