Grace, mercy, and
peace to you in the name of the one who gathers, calls, nourishes, and
restores. Amen.
Over
the last five weeks, the Gospel reading has been from John, with four of them
moving through Jesus’ “bread of life discourse” at the synagogue in Capernaum. Throughout
the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, Jesus has been saying that he is the
bread of life; that he provides the only food which truly nourishes; that he
gives us his own self, his own flesh and blood, to sustain us on our journey; that
we are actually to eat his flesh and blood in order to abide in him.
These
are, indeed, hard words, hard to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe. Line
54 states, “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life” and,
for most of us, we would read that as referring to the Eucharistic meal, that
Jesus is speaking of his presence in the Holy Communion. But if that’s really
the case, I don’t know how Jesus could have expected his listeners to “get it.”
The
last supper, the event which Christians subsequently viewed as the first
eucharist, the first Holy Communion, hadn’t yet occurred. The first record of a
liturgical re-enactments of that event, in something resembling what we call
Holy Communion, is found in First Corinthians which wasn’t written until around
55 years after Jesus’ death. So, although Jesus’ words “I am the bread of life”
are familiar to many Christians, in this passage, the disciples declare this to
be a “hard saying.”
In
the 6th chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus feeds five thousand plus, and compares
this windfall to the manna the Israelites had received centuries before when
they wandered the wilderness. Manna was God’s way of looking after the people
of Israel. They received the blessing
every day until they finally reached the land of promise. Then Jesus has a very
long monologue about bread of life, which starts out nicely but ends with the
command to eat his body and drink his blood.
It’s
frightening and messy. To think that we should have life at the expense of
another human being. That is tantamount to cannibalism as Jesus’ followers
reason it: not kosher, unacceptable in any reasonable, moral system of
thinking, and a stark breaking of the Law. They are “offended” by Jesus’
audacity. He is declaring himself to be manna, the “bread of life”. Just as
manna gave life in the wilderness, so also Jesus gives life.
Although
the crowd was initially enthusiastic about the idea of Jesus as one like Moses
who could provide this miraculous bread, they reject the identification of
Jesus with manna. They are rejecting him for who he is: the true bread from
heaven whose death he claims will be grounds for establishing “eternal life”
for them. And they begin to walk away. They begin to desert him.
These
are people who haven’t just joined him for the day. These were not mere
hangers-on and band-waggoners who walked away. Note that John calls these folks
not simply "the crowds," as in earlier passages, but rather
"disciples." They were real followers who had probably been around
for a while. The people in today's reading who now desert Jesus are precisely
those who had, in fact, believed in Jesus, those who had followed him and had
given up much to do so.
But
his words became too muddled and too offensive for most of his followers. It
got hard, they got tired of waiting for everything Jesus said would happen to
happen, they didn’t like what he was preaching, so they left. They gave up and
went home. A chapter that started with a huge crowd, ended with only twelve
still willing to stick around, and even then, one of them is destined to betray
him.
In
the original manna story, the people’s response to God’s salvation is mixed.
Although they initially herald the triumph of God in the Exodus, Israel
immediately begins to “grumble” or “complain” against God and Moses in the
wilderness. They do not trust God to take care of them.
Similarly,
the group following Jesus initially receives the miraculous food and heralds
Jesus as a prophet. But they also begin to “grumble” against Jesus following
his teaching about the manna. As in the Exodus story, the issue is not simply
the grumbling of the people but the lack of trust in God that it represents:
“some of you do not believe”. The faith that the disciples had put into Jesus
is waning and their trust in him is fading.
The
picture John draws for us in today's Gospel is not a pretty one, but it's
probably a pretty realistic portrait of disbelief, of disciples then and now
for whom the life of faith has become too hard. But the picture also includes
courage and faith.
Jesus
turned to his twelve, his closest group, and said, “well I guess you want to
go, too?” Peter responds, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of
eternal life.” Peter’s response to Jesus is not a word of despair or a
statement that they will have to settle for Jesus because there is nothing
else. Peter and the others who remain have been given the gift of knowing that
Jesus is the one who can give genuine life.
It’s
not that they weren’t plagued with doubt and fear. They suffered at times from
a lack of courage, and they, too, eventually deserted Jesus – and at the very
time he needed them the most. The difference was that they knew where to look
when things got hard. They trusted that they could look to Jesus and lean on
him.
The
words of eternal life are not always simple, cute, easy to hear. The words of
eternal life remind us that life is not always plain; solutions to our problems
are not straightforward. It is exactly because the words of eternal life ring
true that we cannot leave. Where would
we go? Who else will tell us the truth
about life? Who else has lived the truth
about life so fully?
John’s
gospel begins with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.” For Christians,
there is something about the Word that we cannot seem to find anywhere else. The gospel words of eternal life go straight
to the soul. Each week, through the preaching of the Word, we're offered again
and again the Word of eternal life. We're offered the chance to be encountered
by Jesus and his living Word. Through the speaking and hearing of the Word,
Jesus' real presence is made manifest in our world, and we are pointed to the
one place amid all the tumult and upset of this world and life we share that we
can look to and know for sure that we will find God in Christ there for us.
So
come now to hear and receive God's life-giving word, Jesus. Come today and
always to hear in Jesus the promise that you have infinite worth in God's eyes,
that your life has purpose and meaning, and that through you God intends to do
great things in this world. Come and receive the Word of eternal life, Jesus
the Christ, that you might believe in him and have life in his name.
Amen.
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