‘Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today, and Forever’
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 15, 2021
Proverbs 9:1-6 • Ephesians 5:15-20 • John 6:51-58
For five weeks now our Gospel passages have taken us through a long discourse about bread. They started, if you remember with the feeding of the five thousand, and have continued with Jesus telling us that he is ‘the bread of life’ and that ‘whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’. Today we hear him say:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
Whoever eats of this bread will live forever;
Those hearing those words for the first time were startled. After all, who is he to claim to be living bread that has come down for heaven? What makes him think he’s so special? But Jesus goes further. He says:
“the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:51
My flesh? That’s getting a bit graphic isn’t it? And then Jesus caps it all by using a very earthy word for how we should consume this bread to gain eternal life. ‘To eat’ sounds polite and refined. The word Jesus uses is quite the opposite: this is chewing, audible munching, getting the food stuck in your teeth sort of eating.
‘Those who chew my flesh and slurp my blood will have eternal life’.
Many of those listening to Jesus recoil in shock. Wouldn’t you? Hang on a minute, this teaching is too hard! During the first centuries of Christianity, one of the frequently heard claims was that the Christians practiced cannibalism, eating their children. One can understand the confusion. In our Eucharistic language we still eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, even if the words flow over us, comforting and nourishing in their familiarity.
How challenging was Jesus intending to be? I think very. He was being followed wherever he went by huge crowds who were wanting to see signs and miracles. He needed them to know that while being a spectator can be entertaining, it is in no way sustaining. He was trying to teach them about eternal life, and they weren’t listening. The food he was offering was not highly processed, dissolve-on-the-tongue kind of food. And while it might have been easier to hear if Jesus had compared Wonder Bread to crusty sourdough: he doesn’t. His comparison is more between filet mignon and an undercooked piece of brisket.
If his audience couldn’t take his teaching, so be it. Let them go home. Maybe they’d understand later.
Being a person of faith is a life’s journey. It’s not a quick purchase of something that pleases the senses, that’s brought home and put on a shelf to be taken out on Sunday mornings. And while there is much comfort and nourishment, the conversation, sometimes even the wrestling, needs to continue for us to keep traveling the way. Our faith develops over time, taking us deeper into understanding and the enormity of what is being held out to us to grow into. What is on offer is not eternal life at some point in the future. This is eternal life in the here
and now, and for ever.
Through the Gospels, Jesus directly gave us our two most important sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist. Baptism is that first act of choosing to accept the love of God that is for each one of us. The Eucharist that we practice each Sunday is the recognition of the welcome and hospitality of God, again for each one of us. In the Eucharist, we are all invited to the holy table to participate together in the being of one body with each other, and with the Risen Christ, with God, God’s-self.
During those long pandemic months, Holy Innocents did as well as we could, celebrating the Eucharist together virtually: engaging our memories with our imaginations; knowing that God was with us, individually and corporately. I know that for me, and I hope for you too, that I was nourished and comforted every week by that act, one might even say, leap of faith. It was the best we could do.
The first time we were able to gather in person however, I wept my way through the distribution of the bread. I had thought it would be powerful, but I had no idea of how moving it would actually be. We were sharing Jesus, not in some abstract way, but in the flesh itself. ‘Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today and Forever,’ to quote a title of a Suzanne Toolan song.
The first time I heard this song was after visiting the Mercy Center, Burlingame. I’d bought the CD, a live recording from Trinity Cathedral, Portland, and played it on my drive home. When they got to this song, I had to pull off the road, tears streaming down my face. I was full with Jesus, the slow steady build-up of the choir, the soloist, and the organ and the orchestra had opened me up and there was Jesus with his arms open wide.
Jesus promises eternal life in the here and now. Do I understand what that means? No. But I know enough to be certain that it’s about being really alive. Alive to the incomprehensibly all-inclusive love of God that fills every part of creation. Alive not just on our own, but together, knowing that we are all invited and all belong.
We can’t just show up. Just watching is nice but will not get us anywhere. Nibbling it daintily is kind of missing the point. What is asked of us is that we get down and really chew this bread of life. That we engage completely with this powerful transforming love that is there for all creation. That we breathe it in, feeling it animate our hearts, our souls. That we organize our lives around this energy, allowing it space to move within us and between us. That we breathe it out into the world, animating our hearts, our hands, our feet, our voices to be agents of God’s transforming love. And not just as individuals, but as one body in the Risen Christ.
Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today, and Forever. Let us eat this living bread that comes down from heaven. Let us live it as loudly as we can.
That is what Jesus asks of us.