Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

August 23, 2009

1 Kings 8 1-6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43

Psalm 84

Ephesians 6:10-20

John 6:56-69

              Today we hear our fifth and final lesson about bread from John’s Gospel.  And to this I say, “Amen.”   This has been a relentless run of teachings on the same subject.  Each new teaching has been more challenging than the last, and Jesus has been more urgent in his desire for us to believe in them.  In today’s lesson followers of Jesus’ finally have the nerve to tell him what they really think. “This teaching is difficult,” they tell him.  It has been clear right along that Jesus’ teachings have been too difficult to understand, too offensive to hear, and too challenging to believe.  People have been leaving Jesus right and left because of his difficult teachings.  Today it looks like only his inner circle of disciples have remained with him.  Not because they have any better understanding of his teachings, or are less offended by them, or less challenged to believe them.  Peter tells Jesus that his disciples will stay with him because “we have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

              Nevertheless, Jesus is not able to get his other followers to stay with him because they will not believe that Jesus was the bread of life which came down from heaven; they cannot imagine feeding on anybody’s body and blood, no less Jesus’ body and blood for any reason, no less to have eternal life.  What Jesus is asking them to believe comes perilously close to violating their purity codes, their dietary rules and the social mores.  So, this teaching is difficult, indeed.  It is more than incomprehensible to them; it is shocking and it is scandalous.  Jesus’ teaching looks too much like cannibalism, a major taboo in any civilized society.  It gets in the way of the very thing Jesus wants them to believe.  A difficult teaching, indeed.  But feeding on Jesus body and blood has always been a difficult teaching.  One which has always kept non-believers away from the church and the altar.

              In fact, feeding on the body and blood of Jesus became a major impediment for our Christian brethren during the Protestant Reformation.  Reformers began to explore new ways of understanding the theology of Eucharist.  And so, while our Roman Catholic brethren continue to celebrate the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Jesus, our Protestant brethren are communing on bread and grape juice as a memorial to Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, in remembrance of why Jesus died for us. 

              Lutherans and Episcopalians emerged with a completely different theology of Eucharist.  We believe that Jesus is very real and very present in the elements of bread and wine, but we do not presume to know how that happens.  We simply believe in a God who can make that happen for us.  For Lutherans and Episcopalians bread and wine do not literally become Jesus’ body and blood as he does in Roman theology, but Jesus is not absent in the elements of bread and wine, either, as he is in the theology of reformed churches.  It is not so much about what we believe; it is more about the way we believe.  Whether you believe THAT Jesus is, or is not in the bread and wine of Eucharist does not concern us.  We could argue that forever.  Rather, we believe IN Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine of Eucharist.  And there is a huge difference in believing THAT something is true, and believing IN the truth of something.  And it is Jesus’ difficult teachings over the last five Sundays which have helped us arrive at our way of believing.

              Five Sundays ago, our first teaching about bread began with Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000.  That was pretty simple and straightforward.  Jesus took five loaves and 2 fish and turned them into enough food to feed the enormous crowd who showed up to hear him teach that day.  People could believe that the miracle happened because they literally experienced it and benefitted by it, but the sad truth is they could not believe in the bread of life who came down from heaven to feed them eternally.  And because they could not believe in Jesus, they could not believe in what he was saying.

              So most of the people in the crowd went home that day; it was enough for them that their stomachs satisfied.   But those who stayed followed Jesus across the lake the next day, not because they believed in him or what he was saying.  The followed him because they were hungry again.  So this is a teaching moment for Jesus.  He tells them the food they hunger for is different from the food which feeds their stomachs.  That food does not last.  It is the bread of heaven they need to feed on.  That will feed them for eternity.  This teaching is a little more difficult, and it has implications which they are not ready to consider.  So, not surprisingly, many of them leave and go home.

              But for those who stay, Jesus takes his third teaching up another notch.  He compares the food he brings from heaven with the manna God sent to Moses and his people in the wilderness.  And this teaching is clear as can be.  People ate the manna, and they died anyway.   But those who feed on Jesus live eternally.  Now, this is a really difficult teaching.  It requires Jesus’ followers to move from a literal understanding of bread to a metaphorical understanding of who he is as the bread of life.  And it requires a leap of faith which will bring people to believe in him  So, in an attempt to help his followers come to the place of belief, Jesus tells them that God has led them to him to hear such teaching and now it is up to them to believe in him.  This teaching makes even greater demands on Jesus’ followers and the numbers of followers diminish even more.  But Jesus can take heart in the fact that the people who are left appear ready to take the leap of faith into the spiritual meaning of his teaching.

              So in his next lesson, Jesus really pushes the envelope.  He tells his followers that the bread he will give for the life of this world is his flesh.  “But how can this man give us his flesh to eat?” his followers ask incredulously.  Their question only provokes Jesus to come down even harder with another difficult teaching.  “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” says Jesus.  And now he is asking his followers to take even a bigger leap of faith into the mystery and meaning of his teaching.  Jesus is not referring to his literal flesh and blood; nor is he talking about feeding our material bodies.  Jesus wants us to feed on him so that he can  become present in us and sustain us in the life God has given us to live eternally.  Jesus is the bread of life which feeds our faith; we can believe in that.  Jesus is the bread of presence which feeds our soul; we can believe in that. We can believe in this food which will feed us for eternity, even as we live our life in this world.  It is not enough just to believe THAT what Jesus is saying is true; we could argue the truth of what Jesus is saying for a lifetime.  We must believe IN who Jesus to live in the truth of what he is saying.

              Jesus’ final teaching about bread in our gospel lesson today is the most difficult of all.   Jesus tells us “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.  Even Jesus cannot save us by his flesh alone.  And yet Jesus’ images of eating his flesh and drinking his blood keep his followers from understanding his metaphor and making the leap of faith to believe in him.  This is a difficult teaching because they remain stuck in a material world of flesh and blood, with a literal mind which cannot deal in metaphor, and a physical body which only knows how to sustain itself by the food of this world. 

              And I can’t help wondering if these are these are the same reasons why so many followers of Jesus have left his church over these past several decades.  The teachings of the gospel continue to be difficult in a world which seeks its own level of material comfort, its own guarantees of security, and its ever fleeting happiness.  These teachings are difficult in a world where people want to question everything and believe in nothing; a world where people can shout each other down in order to close off vital means of communicating with each other for the purpose of teaching and learning and understanding, and yes, even taking an occasional leap of faith. 

              I am sure it doesn’t surprise Jesus that so many of his followers have left the church.  Jesus knows his teachings are difficult.  They require us to think outside the boxes of this world. They require a soul which is not empty of God and not closed off to the life we have been given to live eternally.  They require a leap of faith where belief IN God is more important than arguing our beliefs about God.            When Jesus’ followers begin to leave him today’s gospel, Jesus asks his disciples if they plan to leave him, as well.  Peter answers for the small band of disciples who continue to follow him and serve his purposes for them:  “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

              Two-thousand years later, I believe Peter speaks for us.  Because now we are the small band of Jesus’ followers who are still here, listening to the difficult teachings of Jesus.  Because we know the difference it makes in our life.  And we come to this table today believing in the presence of Jesus in this sacrament. We come to receive the presence of Jesus.  We take his life into our own life so that we might not be consumed by the devices and desires of this world, enslaved by the needs of our body, driven by the distractions of our mind or the passions of our heart, living the empty promises of an empty soul.  We know these are difficult teachings, but we believe in them because we believe in him, and in the One who sent him.  And at least for today we can’t imagine that the day will never come when Jesus’ teachings are too difficult for us.