“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.” ⁵²The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³So Jesus said to them, “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. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” John 6:51-58

Biblical scholars, I realize, can show that behind these verses a controversy rages in the early Church about the nature and import of the Lord’s Supper, a controversy which John the evangelist is attempting to settle with his record of Jesus’ discourse about giving his own flesh and blood that the world might live. But even as I plodded through the work of these scholars, ranging from Augustine and Luther to some of my very own professors and colleagues, there welled up inside of me a mighty complaint. “So what!” I wanted to scream with each new twist in the scholarly debate. “So what!” What does this talk of flesh and blood and heavenly bread and even with the Lord’s Supper really have to do with the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of everyday living? What does it have to do with the things that really matter, our hopes and fears, loves and hates, our living and our dying? What does it have to do with us, here and now, two thousand years later, struggling just to make ends meet?”

When I come to the Biblical text, you see, I don’t come for academic or theological controversies, but rather to find both counsel and comfort in dealing with this life; and, even more, I think, I come to the text for meaning, not meaning in the sense of answering all my questions, but meaning which makes life worth living. And so like the crowd in today’s lesson, I also grow frustrated with Jesus’ abstract words about eating and drinking his body and blood when what we really need is something more concrete, solid, meaningful. “How can this man give us his flesh?” they rightly ask. Or, in other words, “Stop talking nonsense, Jesus. We need something a little better than your empty, abstract, metaphorical promises.”

 To this angry demand, Jesus responds by insisting like a petulant child on the point he has already made. “I am telling you the truth,” he says, both to the crowd gathered around him in Capernaum and those gathered in our congregations. “I am telling you the truth: if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in yourselves. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…. For my flesh is the real food; my blood is the real drink.” (Meeting The Carnal God, August 10, 2015, …in the Meantime, David Lose)

There was an ancient connection – at least one that the early followers of Jesus may have been familiar with.  There were cultures, many religions where animal sacrifice was common – even for Temple worship animal sacrifice was common and ordinary.  But for Temple worship, the sprinkling of blood and the offering of the animals served a cleansing purpose – the sacrifice cleansed them from their sins.  But in the other ancient sacrifices of animals, when they offered animals for sacrifice, not the entire animal was burned on the altar.  But, the whole animal was offered to the “god”.  They believed that the “god” entered into the flesh of the animal that was offered.  So when the worshipper ate the flesh, the worshipper was then “god-filled”.  Having eaten the flesh of the animal, the “god” had entered into them.  It was a dynamic, mystical, religious experience.  Thinking back to the vampire movies, vampires need to drink blood to live.  The blood is their life-force.  Now think about the words of Jesus.  Jesus is not saying that we need to be “cannibals for Christ”.  Instead, Jesus is saying that we need to “sink our teeth” into him – by drinking his blood and eating his flesh, Jesus then abides or “dwells” inside you and me. 

You see, the flesh of Jesus is his full humanity – Jesus is God incarnate – God in the flesh. In giving us Jesus God becomes one of us – taking on all of our struggles, all of our quirks, all of our humanness.  So when we touch our flesh, we need to remember that through Christ, our flesh is blessed, because God blessed all flesh through Christ.  God blessed all flesh – now that is something we need to discern.  Christ asks us to do some discernment in the Gospel lesson – to discern his very presence, his very “essence” when we partake in Holy Communion.  When we eat the bread, and drink the cup, we need to discern what it means to take Christ into our very beings.  It is not just ordinary bread and wine.  It is the very essence of Christ – his life – his life-force – his presence that, when taken into our bodies, courses through our veins and sustains our flesh.   For the vampire, blood is their life-force.  They cannot exist without it.  There is no substitute for the consumption of blood – they can’t live without it.  We should think the same about the sacrament of Holy Communion.  It is not just ordinary bread and wine.

Pastor Dave