26 August 2012
Joshua 24:1,2,15-17 + Psalm 34 + Ephesians 5: 21-32 + John 6: 60-69
Now comes the end of the great Sermon at Capernaum. While the “Sermon on the Mount” may capture the imagination of many, and while it may have inaugurated the public ministry of Jesus; this sermon in John’s Gospel brings the whole mission of Jesus Christ to the point of decision, the point of no return, the point of entry into the very life of God. No one finds “Blessed are the meek or the pure of heart” troubling or challenging. No one walks away at the words, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for Justice.” These are not hard sayings. But “My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” is a whole different matter. This is not symbolic language. He is not proposing some metaphor. The REAL means REAL, not “sort-of-like” or “a symbol of”, or a “sign for”. He means, real! In some translations it says: “True.” In either case, the meaning is the same.
When in today’s Gospel Jesus hears their murmuring, he knows that they are beginning to wonder, and perhaps even understand what he is saying. To make sure that they do, he says: “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” What Jesus has to say here is a complete breakdown of the hard and fast distinction of heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material. It is the final and complete revelation of what has happened by the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh. God is no longer off there unavailable, distant, and separate from us. We are no longer confined to this time and space, to this life. The connection between what had been so distinctly separated is Jesus himself, and our passage, our Passover into the spirit and the divine is his flesh and blood. As he took on our flesh to be with us, we take on the divine life, by eating and drinking his flesh and pass into the life of God.
Jesus was no symbol. Jesus was not “sort of” human. Jesus was not a “sign for” the divine and the human separated. He was true. He was real from birth to death. If any of us has a chance to or wishes to become true and real, to make real what we are from the beginning, then we must eat and drink in order to become what Christ Jesus is, the life of God offered for us. This is a hard saying. What’s hard about it is that all the neat little categories fall apart. Heaven is no longer out there, a place we wait for until we die.
Eternal life is no longer something you get when you die. We are no longer living here in exile unable and bound by humanity and sin to a life that is less than perfectly holy touched by and inspired by the Divine Holy Spirit. How is this so? Because we are becoming what we eat – we are eating the very real, true flesh and blood of the Son of Man who has been with the Father from the beginning, come here to unite with us, and take us back to the very life of the Father
This isn’t symbolic. It is as real as the bread and wine of this altar. What we do here is no
“memorial service” that brings us together to act out the Last Supper like a group of actors gather in Gettysburg every year to act out a day in the life of this nation. What we do here is real. It is for now, not the past. It is to transport us in the very life of God so that we leave here not all warmed up and feeling good becasue we “remembered” the Lord’s Supper. We leave here transformed, transfigured, consecrated, into the very life of the Word Made Flesh. You can’t leave her the same as you came in.
Now this is not talk for children. It is serious revelation of the Divine plan and the Will of God for us. Children cannot understand this. Perhaps that is why some murmured and left. They preferred the life of an ignorant child, preferred to avoid the demands of and the changes in their lives that this revelation would demand. Parents, if you believe what is said to us in this Gospel, you cannot now explain this to your children, but you can lead them into the mystery of this creating in them a desire, a thirst for, and a wonder for what they may someday want to know. You must do that by your reverence and example, your absolute and unwavering commitment to this sacramental gift making it the first priority of every week without fail. A couple of years ago, a child was sent to me by their parent because the child in preparation for First Communion had expressed some revulsion at the thought of drinking blood. I sat with that child for a long time talking about grapes and juice, wine, blood, the Passover meal, and the blood of the Passover Lamb on the door posts of the Israelite’s. When I was finished, the child just wrinkled up their nose and looked at me as though I was some alien from another planet. But, the child went away curious and knowing that there was something deeper here, something more special and profound because their parents brought them to me, and I sat on the floor and talked with them for a long time. Someday the hunger for truth and a desire for the real will awaken in that child a readiness to know more and to become more than a little child.
Those of you leaving childhood and becoming adults must hear this gospel with profound wonder as you look at yourselves and ask: To whom shall we go?” That is what was happening to Peter and the Apostles, they were growing up in faith. No longer were they going to stay with Jesus because he worked signs and wonders that entertained them or made them seem important because they were “close to the man.” At that moment they began to understand that something about this Son of Man was going to change them, awaken in them the Spirit of Life, provide for them a food that would never leave them hungry, a food that would give them more than physical life.
Don’t leave because you don’t understand. Stay until you do. There is nothing out there that will give you everlasting life. There is nothing out there that will bring you closer to God and draw you deeper into God’s Spirit. When you do, people may come to look at you and discover that you are a Holy One of God.