The True Food of Eternal Life.

John 6:52ff.  (May 17, 2015)

I.

It is still the day after Jesus miraculously fed the 5000 people.  He is in the middle of an intense conversation with some who were there and a few of the religious leaders who must have heard about it.  Mostly they are talking about bread, with the people insisting on taking Jesus literally, while he is trying to open their minds to understand it in a more figurative, symbolic, and spiritual manner.  You remember that last week Jesus said, “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.”

At that point he was talking in advance about his own death and resurrection, and what will become the Eucharist or the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  This will be the primary way he gives us to remember how he gives his life for the life of the world.

The religious leaders are trying to figure out what he means, so they discuss this among themselves.  “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  It sounds like a question revealing their own insistent obtuseness, like they’re still trying to take him literally.  But I wonder if they aren’t understanding more than we give them credit for.

In the book of the prophet Micah and elsewhere economic oppression is described in terms of cannibalism.  Micah rails against the leaders of Israel that they tear the skin off the people and the flesh off their bones, they break their bones and chop up their flesh and drop it in a stewpot to eat it.  The image of devouring and consuming is used to accuse the leaders of acting towards the people like predatory animals.  The leaders live off the people’s labor, they chew up their life, they suck the blood out of them, and leave them for dead.

This is something that these people knew about.  They lived in an oppressive situation conquered by the Romans, and under the rule of Rome’s clients and lackeys.  The whole point of colonialism and imperialism from the beginning until today is to extract wealth from the conquered people by any means necessary.  So, using high taxes and prices and interest rates and fees, and just plain forced labor, the rulers did just that.  It is easy to see how people would come to use cannibalism as a metaphor for this behavior.  The rulers may not have been literally carving people up and eating their flesh, but they were certainly systematically draining away their life.

Seen in this light, the questions the religious leaders raise about Jesus may not have to do with whether we can literally eat the flesh of Jesus’ body, but rather how and why would a teacher talk about himself in this way, as the exploited, consumed, devoured, victim?  A teacher might say, “I give you the bread of life,” as a way to talk about their teaching.  But Jesus says “I am the bread of life.”  He is saying that he himself is here to be consumed.  What good does it do to talk about one’s self in terms of this kind of abnegation?  Even if Jesus is identifying with the poor and the oppressed and the exploited, what does simply sharing in their lot and dying with them accomplish?  How does anyone win by being consumed, devoured, eaten alive?

II.

Jesus doesn’t compromise or pull back one bit.  In fact he continues to push the envelope even further as he has for this whole chapter.  He continues: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.”  Jews were not allowed to consume blood at all, not even animal blood.  So, in talking about drinking human blood this whole thing gets even more offensive and challenging.

The Lord continues: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…; 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.…  whoever eats me will live because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven… the one who eats this bread will live forever.”  And I imagine him pointing to himself whenever he says “this bread.”  

Jesus is speaking of a “true” nourishment that gives one “eternal life.”  He is using food and drink, eating and bread, and flesh or meat as metaphors for this.  But this true nourishment is in several ways different from nourishment for our physical bodies. 

Physical food nourishes physically.  When I eat a potato or an apple or a piece of chicken, the nutrients in that food are going to feed the cells of my body whether I think about it or not.  I can be watching TV or having an intense conversation while I am eating.  I will still be physically fed.  In the hospital people are fed intravenously without even being conscious. 

But when Jesus talks about the true food of eternal life, he doesn’t mean something we can eat that will make our physical body live forever.  There is no such thing as something we ingest that gives us eternal life without our having to think about it.  There is no drug or even mushroom that will automatically give us this eternal life.  

Even the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper does nothing automatically.  A person may eat the bread, but it they do not have the right attitude in their souls, it means nothing to them.  It could even be counter-productive, as the Apostle Paul warns.  It could actually damage them within if they were to take it cynically, superstitiously, in arrogance and self-righteousness, or if forced.        

The true food of eternal life requires the free and active participation of our soul, that is, our mind, our heart, and our will.  If our soul is  elsewhere, then the Sacrament is just a small piece of bread dipped in grape juice.  It’s barely a decent snack.  

To be fed in the soul requires attention and presence.  How we feel, what we are thinking, what we are hoping for and desiring, in addition to the words that are said and the actions done… these all matter and make the difference when we are considering the true food of eternal life.  Our inward disposition is what opens us up to receive this kind of food.

III.

The Sacrament is just the beginning of it.  But as a visible sign of an invisible, interior reality, the Sacrament points beyond itself and reveals an attitude we have to cultivate towards all of life, all things, and every experience.  The way we act towards this Sacrament is the way we act towards Jesus.  That’s what he means, in part, when he talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.  When we come to the Table we are coming to him. 

Jesus Christ is the Word of God.  Therefore, the way we act towards him is the way we act towards God.  God created the whole universe by the power of the Word and Spirit, so in still another sense the way we act towards God will be reflected in and expressive of the way we act towards everything that God has made.  Which is to say, everything.  This act of coming to the Table should be the model for how we act towards everything: the gratitude, with humility, with openness, and seeing the living presence of God therein.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  Purity of heart means that one’s soul is focused and consistent.  It means we have the same attitude of love towards everything: from God, to God’s creation, to humans, to particular people, to ourselves. 

If in the Sacrament we are conscious that we are consuming and thereby becoming God… if we realize that we are actually chewing and swallowing Jesus, and therefore God, and that God is thereby becoming us… and that we are a part of this mutual self-offering as we give ourselves up to this food which has given itself up for us… then we start to see God.  Then we “discern the Body,” as Paul says.  Then we become “partakers of the divine nature,” as Peter says.

The Lord gives himself up for us, but in eating him we are also giving ourselves up to him.  We are usually not conscious of it but we are always giving ourselves up to whatever we put in our mouths.  We are becoming whatever we eat and drink.  

God designs the whole creation as a mutual self-offering in love of one for the other.  It is an expression of the circle-dance of love that is the Trinity, which overflows into nature and the circle of life.  That’s the way it’s supposed to work.  And it is this continual self-emptying which Christ embodies when he takes on our flesh, our meat-existence, our mortal, physical nature, and embraces it with love.

In the Sacrament we are also giving ourselves up to his death, which is to say, our own death; we are letting his sacrifice in love become a part of us.  We ourselves become infected with his self-emptying and so inspired to participate in him by participating in his giving of life for the life of the world.  

IV.

But.  If our inward disposition is all about what we get, if it is extracting, gaining, feeding, and destroying, if it is all about dominating, robbing, sucking, and squeezing all the life out of something purely for our own benefit or satisfaction, that is, if we approach the Table, that is, if we approach life with a dominating, cynical, cruel, self-righteous, self-centered, possessive, killing, and annihilating attitude, without thankfulness, without humility, without appreciation, without seeing the presence of the God of love… then we are agents of death and servants of the Evil One.

Jesus chooses, in the very manner of his death, to identify with the losers, the exploited, the dispossessed, and the oppressed.  Crucifixion was a punishment reserved by Rome for political crimes.  It was the consequence of being seen as trying to upset the extractive, dominating regime of the empire.  When Jesus says “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” he is placing himself firmly among those whose flesh and blood was being actively devoured by the powers that were in charge.  He is standing with those whom the empire would consume, chew up, and spit out.

That is exactly the image depicted on the crucifix: God in Christ lifted up in sacrifice, intentionally offering his life for others, consciously giving his life for the life of the world, purposely taking away sin by reconciling God to people and people to each other.  Where others see a pointless death of unspeakable brutality, we see the One we eat weekly and whom we seek with all our hearts to emulate and to be.  Where others see a lynching victim and react in horror and fear, we see in the same picture the depths of God’s love.  We can see in this different way because we know he is not some hapless other.  He is who we are because we have eaten him.

In this creation, we are all both consumers and consumed.  We can treat that as dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest, get-it-while-you-can, and dive into the fray with Objectivist ferocity, killing and devouring, stealing and hoarding, with no care for anyone but me and mine.  We can eat our burgers with no consciousness that this was once an animal.  We can look at a beautiful mountain and plan only to destroy it to grab the coal within it.  We can look at another and see only their benefit to us, and strive to exploit, rape, kill, or do whatever else is necessary to realize that profit.  We can see the whole world as objects to be manipulated.  And we can therefore perish in the catastrophes that such godless behavior has always drawn down upon itself.

V.   

Or.  We could choose to live forever.  By realizing that we only have life when we live in cooperation and harmony, in reciprocity and mutuality, in balance and sharing in the blessed and very good world that God has made.  In deep gratitude.  In profound humility.  In selfless and self-emptying generosity.  In astonishing joy.  In unwavering trust.  And in divine and overwhelming love. 

To eat the bread of the Sacrament is to participate in the life and love of God.  It is to finally realize that God’s blood, shed on the cross, has sanctified again the whole place.  So that now we may see that the whole place is charged with the life of the One who made it, redeemed it, and sanctified it.  Because of what we experience at this Table our eyes are opened to the living Presence of God everywhere.

At this table, in this bread and in this cup, we are eating the flesh and drinking the blood, that is, we are receiving the life! of God, and with full hearts, open minds, and strong wills, we are offering up what we have received, who we are, for the life of the world.             

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