August 15, 2021 – Pentecost +12B

“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.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So 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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for 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. This 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

We have four Gospels in the Canon — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Three are called the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) – synoptic means that they are similar, and can be lined up in a similar synoptic alignment – they have similar styles, share some of the same stories and miracles, and show a similarity that is noticeable – even to the average non-biblical scholar reader.

The Gospel of John, however, is different. And many would say that John is different for a reason. Possibly, John is so different because it was dealing with a different problem than the other three gospels – and because John presents Jesus as “The Son of G-d” – so John has the highest Christology, or presents Jesus with the most “Divine” divinity. It seems that the gospel of John was written sometime close to the end of the first century. At this time, the Christian communities were dealing with the delay of the return of Jesus – and they were also combating different influence — like Docetist and Gnostic influences. Now, what was Docetism and Gnosticism? Docetism – very simply stated, Docetism was a heresy floating around at the end of the first century that put forth the idea that Jesus Christ only “appeared” human, but was actually only divine. It was a complete spiritualism of Jesus. Now, in my opinion, being a Lutheran and a person of the cross, if Jesus was only divine and not actually human, then the cross event is empty and meaningless, Amen? And then there was also Gnosticism – and the Gnostics believed that there were not just one G-d but two G-ds that existed – one an evil god of this world and a second higher more abstract G-d revealed in Jesus Christ. The Gnostics believed that they were privy to a secret knowledge about the divine – a divine secret knowledge called Gnosis. Since the body – the physical body – was a part of this physical earth, it was evil. For that purpose, Christ could not have been human, or he would have been part of the evil realm – so Christ could only have been a divine spirit. And if they were able to tap into that divine knowledge, then they would ascend to the spiritual realms. Because of these and probably other influences, many biblical scholars agree that the gospel of John was explicitly written to combat these heresies – since there are certain characteristics of this gospel that stand out – one or two of which really stand out in our gospel text this morning.  For example…In verse 53, Jesus says…

“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.”

Now, this does sound vaguely familiar, yet odd in its wording. In fact, does it sort of gross you out? I think it is really gross – this talk about eating his flesh…and drinking his blood. So, let’s flesh this out a little bit. In the synoptic gospels, when they speak about the Eucharist, like in Matthew 26:26, it says…“Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it, he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘take eat, this is my body’. The synoptic gospels use the Greek word “Soma” when they talk about Jesus’ body. Soma denotes the physical body – and all of the related parts – as an organism. So, within the Eucharistic understanding, (here not our Lutheran understanding because we believe that Christ is bodily in the bread) but for the sake of the first century believer, the bread is a representation of Christ’s body –  it represents the presence of Jesus, bodily in the bread. That word “Soma” – which the Synoptic writers chose, was only symbolic language. But that is the Synoptic Gospel understanding.

In the Gospel of John, when Jesus says “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man”, the Greek word used for flesh is “Sarx”, not Soma. The word Sarx is a more, how dare I say it, it is more of an earthy term when used to talk about the body – for it literally means flesh – the soft substance of the living body which covers the bones and is permeated by blood. In fact, the word Sarx can also mean corpse. Now, I don’t know about you, but what I am hearing is not symbolic language that the Gospel writer John is using – so there must be a reason he selects this term (the Gospel writer John). Why would there be such an emphasis on the flesh rather than the body of Jesus? But the Gospel writer John does not stop there — interestingly enough, in John 6:54 he switches the verb used to represent the concept of eating “Sarx”. Instead of the broad, term phago, he changes to the very pointed term trogon. Now “Phago” is a broad term to be used for eating, for it means aspects of “to eat” like “eat my words” or “I could eat a horse”. Trogon (τρώγω), however, “Trogon” has one very, specific, literal meaning: to gnaw, crunch or chew. It is a term with a single meaning. When John begins to use trogon for “eat” in John 6:54, the Gospel writer is removing the last kernel of doubt from his audience as to the interpretation of his words. The proper English equivalent of “Trogon” would be masticate: which is the scientific term for the act of chewing. Therefore when John writes that Jesus says: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man…” he is NOT suggesting that eating the flesh of Jesus is symbolic in any way. Taken with the fact that the Early Church understood these words to be literal as well, we then have a pretty strong case for the Lord’s Real Presence in the Eucharist.

So, eating flesh and drinking blood offer us some great benefits – even though we are not cannibals….

1. Holy Communion – the benefits are forgiveness of sins, life, salvation and a strengthening of our faith.
2. We have life today and become obedient to a life of abiding — us in Christ, and Christ in us
3. We will be raised on the last day – we will have life – which is the greatest possession anyone could want.

Pastor Dave