What if?

I am indebted to the writing of D. Mark Davis, Amy Oden (Gospel tab), Alyce McKenzie,and Delmer Chilton for their ideas and sermon paths.

Mark 9:30-37

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

This is the Word of the Lord.

“They did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”

At this point in the Gospel, Jesus had gone with Peter, James and John on a mountaintop and had been transfigured before them. He had cast a demon from a child – mind you, the other disciples had not only tried to do this and failed, they’d gotten into a loud and bitter argument with some scribes over the matter to boot.

The point is that the disciples, either in smaller or larger groups, had seen plenty of who Jesus was and is, had heard him answer hard questions countless times, and this is by no means the first time he has told them in detail, about what awaits him at the end of this road: betrayal, suffering, death, and ultimately, resurrection.

But what they are hearing clashes with what they think they know. The Messiah is supposed to come in glory and crush his enemies, not be given over into their hands and killed! It is as if Jesus is suddenly speaking in another language, or stringing together words in a nonsense fashion. It isn’t connecting.

But they’re afraid to ask. No one wants to pipe up, no one wants to look stupid. After all, they’re The Twelve, right? They’re the big dogs, the inner circle, they’re supposed to have all of this figured out. They have a reputation to uphold.

Or maybe they remember the dressing-down Peter got when he took Jesus aside… forgetting, of course, that Peter hadn’t been asking anything, he’d been attempting to correct Jesus’ misconceptions about himself. And maybe they are frightened of the answer, fearing that the man they’d abandoned their former lives to follow was, in fact, not who they thought him to be. Perhaps what terrified them was that Jesus was who they thought him to be, and to have that confirmed once and for all was an overwhelming thought.

I wonder… what if they hadn’t been afraid? What if someone – Peter or James or John, maybe, who had seen him glorified and shining like the sun, or even Thomas, who had a quiet determination to follow no matter what, or Nathaniel, who doesn’t get very many good lines in the Gospel narrative – what if one of them had asked?

What would they have asked?

“Look, Jesus, all this death-and-resurrection talk doesn’t square with what we’ve been taught. Explain to us how God can die.”

“How will you come in your glory if you are humiliated on a cross, Jesus?”

“Jesus, we expect you to save us from the Romans. How is all of this really going to help us where we really need help?”

“Um, Jesus, ‘rise again?’ What does that mean, exactly?”

Whatever form it takes, the question that the disciples are afraid to ask is the question that propelled so many early Christian attempts to construct a logical, intelligible, and horribly misguided, theology of who Christ is. Maybe Jesus didn’t really suffer and die (that’s called Docetism). Maybe only the human part of Jesus suffered, and the divine part was untouched (that’s called Gnosticism). Early Christians struggled almost endlessly with this question: what sort of deity lets himself get pushed into a corner like that, and does it on purpose? The early Christians needed an almighty God who conquers enemies, not one who suffers and dies.

If only the disciples had asked, we could have known the answers to the basic questions of who Jesus is, and of the nature of God. Perhaps then the church could have avoided millennia of heresies, conflicts, schisms, and bloodshed.

Or maybe the church would have found other reasons to have heresies, conflicts, schisms and bloodshed.

We are human, after all, and like the disciples, we have our own questions we are afraid to ask. No one wants to look uninformed, confused, or clueless. We withhold our toughest questions, within ourselves, within own churches, and within Christian fellowship. We pretend we don't have hard questions. Yet, if we are honest, the deepest mysteries of life elude us. Why do good people suffer? Why are humans so brutal to one another? Why does evil succeed? If God's own Son is betrayed and killed, then is anyone safe? Why did God set up a world like this?

The disciples didn’t ask. They avoided the hard question, and instead – or, perhaps, as an unavoidable result of avoiding the hard question – started bickering over who was the greatest: who the head disciple was, who was going to occupy the throne closest to Jesus, and on and on.

And in response to all of this – yes, all of the arguing, but I wonder if it was also in response to their lack of comprehension, and fear of asking the hard questions? In any case, Jesus sits them down in a circle and puts a child right there in the middle of them.

A child.

What is it about a child here? I’ve read plenty of sermons about the importance of childlike faith, about how I should focus on my inward life, on becoming more pure, more innocent, more humble, more spontaneous, more trusting. More childlike in my faith.

And there is no question that, in other portions of the Gospel narrative, we as Christians are told that we must become like little children. That childlike faith is important.

But that childlike faith isn’t the point here.

You see, the disciples were arguing over who was the greatest specifically because they viewed “greatness” in exactly the same way every human does.

In order to win, you see, someone has to lose. In order to lead, someone has to follow. One is only greater if another is lesser. Our culture, our politics, our advertising, and, all too often, even popular Christian theology is predicated upon seeing one’s self as better than another. It is a common language, perfectly acceptable in polite society.

And in that one profound act, putting that child (probably a toddler) in the circle of disciples, and then embracing that child, Jesus is telling us one simple fact: We have it all wrong.

Let me tell you about the value of children in ancient society: In Rome, when a baby was born it was laid at the feet of its father. If the father picked the child up, it lived. If the father ignored it, it was taken out of the house and left to die.

Now, Jewish culture was not that harsh, and more value was given to children. A father was bound by Law and tradition to teach the firstborn the Torah, teach him a trade, and get a wife for him. But there was no provision for female children, and nothing stopping that father from offering his children for sale as slaves if times got tough, and it did happen, because when you got right down to it, children, like women, were property. And outside of the family structure, children were pretty much invisible.

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Servant even of those who have no power, no position, no ability to help you get ahead in your life or career or ambitions. Servant even of those who cannot pay you back. Servant even to the invisible.

It is too easy to end this sermon talking about the invisible people in our society. We all know who they are: the homeless, the alien, the poor, the disenfranchised, those without equal civil rights, those who society as a whole treats as invisible. Obviously, at least in my eyes, we have a clear and compelling duty as followers of Christ to reach out to these individuals and groups and classes, to serve them as Christ served them.

It is much harder to end with a question: a question to all of us, yes, but especially to myself: who is invisible to me? Do I dare ask the hard question, in prayer, to have my eyes opened to the person, or people, I don’t see? To have my heart opened to the people I never notice?

How would history have changed for all of Christianity if the disciples had asked the questions, there on that road through Galilee, that they were afraid to ask?

And what if you and I had the courage to ask the questions we are afraid to ask… and what if we opened our eyes, and hearts, and lives, to the invisible people around us?

The Crossroads...

I am deeply indebted to the writings of D. Mark Davis and Matt Skinner, who I quote in the body of the sermon. And yes, I know the hymn I quote in here is the title of a sermon from March. It's OK. I like the hymn.

Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Jesus and his disciples are at a crossroads. No, I’m not speaking of the dusty road there in Caesarea Philippi, in the far reaches of the Judean province.

What we are eavesdropping on isn’t idle conversation between fellow travelers, you see. Through translation and millennia of cultural shifts, we’ve lost the passion, intensity and conflict swirling around that ragtag band of disciples kicking up the dust as they walked with Jesus that day.

Perhaps it starts mildly enough. Jesus asks his disciples what they’ve heard people saying about him – what identity are they giving him? The answers are safe and sensible enough. Much of what Jesus has said and done – calls to repentance, healings, meals served in the wilderness – readily calls to mind John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets.

It’s only when Jesus brings the question closer to home that things get really interesting - “But who do you say that I am?”

We’ve talked before about how the Jewish people in the first century were hoping for, praying for, seeking a Messiah, a Christ. And while today you and I readily identify Jesus of Nazareth as that long-awaited Messiah, Jesus hasn’t done anything that would look remotely like a Messiah to the people of his day. Jesus was a healer, a prophet, and someone who could do might signs and wonders, yes, but the expectation for the Messiah was that he would come to purify society, reestablish Israel's supremacy among the nations, and usher in a new era of peace and holiness.

So when Peter answers Jesus’ question, it’s not a declaration of what he, and the other disciples have seen, but of what they expect… and they’ve got it all wrong.

One of the commentators I read this week in preparation for this sermon suggests that the translators of the New Testament got it wrong, too, when they characterized Jesus’ response. Our reading says that Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.”

Funny thing is, in the original Greek, the word for “sternly ordered” is the same one for when Peter pulls Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him… so perhaps what Jesus did there was (and I am using Rev. Mark Davis’ translation of the Greed here) “rebuked them in order that they would say nothing about him.”

So if that’s so, it wasn’t that Jesus was trying to keep who he really was (and is) a secret, but that he wanted to stop them from spreading wrong information! It isn’t that Jesus is not the Messiah, the Christ, it’s that how they define what those words mean is dangerously wrong!

And here is the crossroads I am talking about. The disciples are expecting a glorious earthly kingdom, a re-established and even more powerful Israel, the beacon of righteousness and Godly purity on earth, farther-reaching and even more powerful than the Roman Empire, which of course would cease to exist when the throne of David was restored with Jesus on it

But the road that Jesus walks goes in a different direction – straight to Jerusalem, and straight to a cross.

Jesus and Peter are on different roads, going different directions. In this sense, Peter and the others are not really followers of Jesus, not yet. They are followers of their own fantasies – fantasies of justice, peace, and the glory of God, to be sure, but when balanced against the hard reality of Jesus’ path – where the Kingdom is gained not through conquest and subjugation, but through the obedience and suffering and the death of its very King.

That’s why Peter argues – rebukes – Jesus, because in Peter’s eyes, Jesus has it all wrong, and the idea that a triumphant, conquering king, someone destined to sit on David’s throne, would do something as vile and embarrassing and permanent as dying on a cross was ludicrous! Dude, get your facts straight! You’re gonna be King, man, you’re gonna re-establish the Kingdom of Israel, baby, Israel 2.0, bigger better and badder than anything ever!

Peter’s road is attractive, even to Jesus – that is why Jesus calls him Satan, because wasn’t that one of the temptations Jesus endured in the wilderness? Matthew four, eight through ten: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’

“Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”’

Peter’s road is attractive, bright and shiny, but that’s just glitter. It rubs off, and the road leads nowhere. Peter’s road, as glorious as it seems, is one where the self is ultimately glorified: that throne of David, with Jesus on it, has just slightly smaller thrones right next to it, you see… that’s why so many times in the Gospels we see the disciples locked in arguments over who will be the greatest in that coming kingdom, because proximity is power, and to the self, things like power and influence, along with safety and comfort, are of supreme importance. So yes, Jesus can be king, but he better make doggone sure that I am right there next to him to advise him, y’see. I can be the assistant king… yeah, I like that.

But earthly thrones, no matter who establishes them, no matter how large an empire they rest upon, eventually topple and are replaced, because unlike things like love and grace, power is a commodity, and there’s only so much of it to go around… and there is always someone else wanting it. The Roman Empire fell, just so many empires and kingdoms before it and since.

Peter’s road leads nowhere.

It is Jesus, not Peter, which the disciples – and we – must follow. The formula sounds very simple, especially when taken out of its context. We hear it all the time: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Taken out of the fullness of its context, denial of self is nothing more than another way to walk Peter’s road: self-glorification. People can do this kind of denying themselves even without Jesus, and we do it all the time: deciding to forego an enjoyable meal or a new shirt in order to put some money in savings, diet and exercise… even at extremes like vows of poverty, one doesn’t necessarily need God in order to have very good reasons to do them, you see? And even if Peter’s road has a concept of Godliness at the end, it is a Godliness achieved with no actual help or direction from God; rather it is a godliness we attain under our own power.

The denial of self that Jesus speaks of is deeper – it extends well beyond mere self-discipline. Quoting Matt Skinner, Associate Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary here, “…[I]ndeed, it calls every would-be follower no longer to live on one’s own behalf and to forsake that which would promise security for oneself… [T]he self-denial that Jesus proclaims involves the renunciation of any obligation to oneself. In Eduard Schweizer’s words, “It indicates a freedom in which one no longer wills to recognize his own ‘I.’… A life of self-denial transcends merely advertising one’s posture as an obnoxious boast. More profoundly, one who follows Jesus continually enacts self-denial through living without regard for the security and priorities that people naturally cling to and that our society actively promotes as paramount. This enactment is not a matter of private piety but of public testimony, for the refusal of a certain way of living directly impinges upon one’s political identity and possibilities.”

The denial of self, the taking up of the cross – our own cross, and to the first-century person who heard or read these words, there was no confusion about what that meant – well, were it not for the call to follow Jesus, we would be talking about nothing less than self-annihilation.

But we are called to follow Jesus. Isn’t it interesting that, in this and subsequent passages, as Jesus reveals more about who he is, he at the same time describes what it means to participate with him?

Do you want to know who Jesus is? Follow him. Remember, it’s a way that is open to anyone. What’s the proper response to the truth that Jesus is God’s Anointed? Following him. And remember that we do not follow Jesus by ourselves. Part and parcel of the self-denial that Jesus calls for means that we are defined by our community, the Body of Christ, the now-and-coming Kingdom of Heaven.

Peter’s road is beautiful, but Peter’s road leads nowhere.

Jesus’ road is the Way of the Cross… but, to quote the old hymn, the Way of the Cross leads home.

The Choice...

My thanks this week to the writing of the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, Lindy Black, and Charlene Fairchild, among (I am sure) others.

I have to say that I am going to miss the "bread" passages. As I have written each week, I've been challenged to try and find a fresh perspective. I don't know whether I succeeded in those efforts, but the journey has been enlightening.

John 6:56-69

"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." He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father."

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." 

This is the Word of the Lord.

I don’t know how they ended up in the synagogue from the lakeshore, but there they were, shocked, puzzled faces turned toward Jesus as he invited them to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood and to live in him.

The noise in the little synagogue was deafening. Not only did you have the folks who had eaten of the leaves and fishes the day before, now enraged that Jesus was claiming to be greater than Moses, incensed that Jesus claimed to have come from and be returning to heaven, apoplectic over Jesus calling God his Father… you had the rank-and file disciples, dozens of them, perhaps more, who had been following Jesus for months – perhaps years – now throwing up their hands in disgust and frustration.

“Dude, I mean, Rabbi, I just don’t get what you’re saying. I mean I hear the words, and I know what each individual word means, but when you put them together they make no sense!”

But the fact is that there is nothing more to say. Jesus has laid it all out for them, if they will listen: “I am the bread of life… I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…”

So all Jesus said in response was, “Fellas, if you’re scandalized by this, you are gonna have a real hard time with what’s coming up.”

It’s funny. The people who went and found Jesus so they could see another miracle, get another meal? You’d expect them to leave; in fact, I’d be surprised if any of them had stayed around this long.

The ones our reading refers to as “disciples,” though… maybe they weren’t in the boat when Jesus calmed the storm, maybe they hadn’t seen him walk on water, or turn the water into wine at Cana, but they had seen lepers healed, they’d seen strength return to withered limbs and sight restored to blinded eyes, they had heard Jesus speaking the very words of the living God!

Why would they leave?

I guess up until now it had been fun. Maybe they had nothing better to do… maybe they just followed Jesus around on their off days, I don’t know. What I do know is that now they are faced with a choice: understand that Jesus Christ, in fulfilling the Law of Moses, is in fact calling them beyond that Law, beyond a system of rules and regulations and into a relationship with the Living God.

There’s no doubt that this is the hard choice, the dangerous choice, the scandalous choice. It involves moving beyond everything they have ever known, and everything the society they are surrounded by expects from them, and moving into the now-and-coming Kingdom of God, embracing a sacrifice on their behalf which hasn’t even happened yet.

But it’s that, or…

Go back to the familiar, the safe, the popular, the accepted.

And though they had seen the miracles, had eaten the bread and fishes, had heard the words of God… one by one, or in groups of three or four, these disciples chose…

And soon, all too soon, the synagogue – not a very large room to begin with – felt cavernous in its emptiness. A sandal scuffed the gritty stone floor, and it echoed. Jesus turned to those who remained. Where there had been dozens, perhaps a hundred or more… there were twelve. Some of them looked at the open door. Others looked at the floor, or off into space.

“How about you?” Jesus asked, softly. “Do you want to go, too?”

In my imagination, the question actually confused Peter, because (do you notice?) he never says “yes” or “no.” For him, and for the others, the question is moot.

Oh, no doubt they are sickened by the graphic words Jesus has used… the idea of gnawing on his flesh, like an animal tearing at the carcass of a fresh kill, is a difficult image for anyone to take.

But these men know things that they can no longer pretend to be ignorant of. Maybe the others, those now walking back down the dusty road to their villages and homes and comfortable old lives, can rationalize it and explain it all away, maybe they can ignore it, but these twelve cannot.

Jesus is asking them to make that same hard choice. Like Joshua standing before the newly-formed nation of Israel, and challenging them to “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” the choice facing these remaining disciples is between the comfort and tradition of the life they had always known, and going against all of that, going against their vary culture, becoming social and religious outcasts, all based on the word of a man who claimed to be from God… who demanded they gnaw on his flesh, and slake their thirst with his life’s blood.

But for these disciples, this is not some blind choice, like picking a door on “The Price is Right.” It’s funny: they had seen and heard and experienced exactly the same things as those who had walked away. They’d seen a dead child live again, seen demons forcibly evicted from the bodies they possessed, watched five small barley loaves somehow keep feeding and feeding and feeding until thousands of people could eat no more…

Somehow, though, for these disciples, when Jesus spoke about being the bread that came down from heaven, it all clicked. Not that they had perfect comprehension, mind you – there would be many times to come where they would falter and miss the point – but in this moment, when Jesus asked the question, for them it came down to a matter of putting their future into the hands of the One who had been there for them in the past. And for them, the choice was already made.

Peter spoke for all of them when he spread his hands and said, “But where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe… no, we know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

The choice was made.

For far too many people, believing in God is like believing in UFOs or believing in the Loch Ness Monster – they acknowledge the probability that God exists, and that’s about it. Nothing really changes for them because nothing needs to change.

The easiest, most comfortable place to be is where the majority of the people that day in the synagogue at Capernaum were: straddling the fence between commitment and rejection, relying on Jesus just so far as the fulfillment of their perceived needs go, but unwilling to lay aside those “needs,” take up their cross, and follow Jesus.

But God calls us to get off the fence – pushes us off if necessary, like Jesus did that day on the lakeshore and in the synagogue with his hard words. For the Twelve, just like for you and for me, the decision to go all in, to place our lives and eternities into the hands of the One who gave us life in the first place, is one that we make anew every day.

In many ways, on some days the Twelve weren’t all that much different from those who turned away from Jesus. The Twelve made mistakes, lost faith, missed the point, and when things got really dangerous that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, they scattered.

But when Jesus rose from the dead, they saw him alive. And when the wind of the Holy Spirit blew on the day of Pentecost, they were there, the tongues of fire rested on their heads. Perhaps the difference between the disciples who stayed and the ones who left began when they chose their path that day in the synagogue.

Harry Emerson Fosdick put it like this: “He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.”

May we be like the Twelve, who though they didn’t understand it, didn’t know where it was going, and had a lot of ideas and expectations that were almost exactly wrong, chose the pathway of eternal life, looked to Jesus, and said, “Who else could we go to? You have the words of eternal life.”

Flesh and Blood...

I am indebted to the work of the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary," and Rev. Lindy Black for help in composing this week's sermon.

For those of you offended by the graphic language of the audible gnawing of flesh... that's kind of the point.

John 6:51-58

"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."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Sometimes, getting a little distance between yourself and a given situation allows you to gain perspective, to look at the big picture, to examine a situation logically, without the emotion of the moment getting in the way.

Sometimes, though, that distance actually serves to cloud perspective, blur the big picture, and confuse logic.

Two thousand years removed from the day on the lakeshore, it seems that, for many Christians, we suffer – at least in part – the latter fate when it comes to what Jesus is telling us in our Gospel reading today.

Though, to be honest, it’s easy to interpret what Jesus is saying here in a merely Eucharistic manner – in the language of the Lord’s Supper. After all, even though our Reformed Theology does not interpret the elements of the Lord’s Supper as being altered in any substantive manner in the ritual of communion, we use the language of the Body and Blood at the Lord’s Table. “The Body of Christ, broken for you…” “The Blood of Christ, shed for you…”

This passage has been used as an argument for the Catholic and Episcopal theology of transubstantiation, where the elements of communion become in some manner substantially transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ, as well as for the Lutheran theology of consubstantiation, where the fundamental substance of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the bread and the juice, or wine.

And after all, hasn’t Jesus been talking this whole time about bread?

Well, yes. And to those of us on this side of the Resurrection, it’s a very familiar conversation, manna in the wilderness, bread from heaven, Jesus as the Bread of Life. It is a comforting, reassuring picture for those of us who have taken the name of Christ. And please understand that there is nothing wrong, and everything right, about that picture! We have the words, as well as the testimony of the body of believers and the affirmation of the indwelling Holy Spirit to help us make those connections.

Yet there is more… and the picture is violent and troubling, but it is a picture of liberation.

The people listening to Jesus that day were getting their face rubbed in the picture, you see. Jesus’ words were challenging them, pushing them to expand their understanding of the Almighty, to open their hearts to a measure of love they had never imagined, an inconceivable truth.

Here was this human being standing in front of them… granted, an extraordinary human being, someone who could perform great signs, who spoke the oracles of God… but a person, nonetheless. Bad enough he claimed to be better than Moses, but the crowd really got steamed when Jesus went so far as to say, “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.”

Our reading says the people “disputed.” The Greek word there actually carries a much stronger connotation – one of physical fighting! The crowd had erupted into violence! They were coming to blows with one another over this! Jesus had better say something quick to calm them down!

Well, Jesus did speak... but...

Have you ever actually seen someone throw gasoline on a fire? The closest I’ve come is starter fluid on flaming charcoal, but I’m willing to bet that it’s a pale comparison to what Jesus’ next words could have done to the crowd…

But they stood there, stunned, frozen, aghast, sickened and horrified.

“Eat my flesh… drink my blood?” Could he really be telling the crowd to roast him up and make a feast of him, like some band of ancient pagans? No wonder they stood there gape-mouthed, speechless!

But it goes further than even that! Jesus is not merely using the language of cannibalism, he is using words of violence. “Eat my flesh?” The Greek, trogein, is generally used of animals gnawing audibly on their food! No wonder we so quickly retreat to the comfort of the language of the Lord’s Supper! No one wants to dwell on such an abhorrent image!

And I can, in good conscience, do nothing to lessen the dreadfulness of the language… I dare not, because of the Cross.

Why would Jesus use such violent, such graphic and bloody language, when he knew it would offend and enrage the crowd, when he no doubt knew that even we, who call ourselves by his name, would recoil at these words?

Yes, it is a visceral, bloody, discomforting picture that Jesus paints for us in our reading today. Out of the mouth of any other person in history, it is the language of hyperbole, of gross exaggeration, of wild and fevered fantasy.

But not that many days after Jesus speaks to that horrified crowd, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords will, of his own free will, and out of a deep and abiding love for humankind, bear the torture of the scourge and the humiliation of the crown of thorns, take up his cross, and as his blood drains from him, Jesus will allow death to gnaw at his flesh until he appears to have been consumed.

The cross is offensive. The very idea! That the God of all creation would hang, naked and bleeding, until his life is drained from him, and do it as an act of love for that creation… it’s ridiculous. Gods don’t die, and they certainly don’t die to redeem humankind to themselves.

Besides, even if God could die, why choose such a slow, torturous and humiliating method? Why the cross?

Because, quite simply, it is in that act of submission to the will of God that death itself will be defeated in the Resurrection. It is in that act of unrestrained, vibrant love that humankind will at last be reconciled to God. Jesus not only said the offensive, shocking, gruesome and horrifying thing, he lived it… and he died it! And through it all, Jesus demonstrated for us, lived for us, the truth of what God’s love for you and for me and for the whole world is!

Oh we have done our best to calm it down over the millennia, distilling it into theological statements and doctrines and creeds. In fact, the very community that the Gospel of John is written to had been struggling with a Gnostic heresy which said that Jesus hadn’t really been human, he had just appeared human.

But make no mistake, Jesus stood before that crowd as a real person, with real flesh and real blood, and that real flesh and blood was sacrificed as evidence – stark, shocking, irrefutable evidence of God’s love – a violent, passionate, burning, all-consuming love.

God’s love is the kind of love that finds us at our lowest point, on our worst day, takes our hand, lifts us up, and guides us through.

God’s love finds us in the darkest corner of the farthest reaches of our separation, when we have done the thing we swore we would never do, when we have done our best to alienate ourselves from our Creator, when we have consciously and willfully done the worst we could do, God shines a light, destroys that darkness, and brings us out, forgiving us before we have even asked for it.

God’s love knows no bounds. God’s love doesn’t wait for permission, doesn’t pay attention to propriety or convention, is not at all interested in cultural mores or acceptable standards. God just loves.

Yes, it is really that simple.

The Gospel – the Good News – is that Jesus really, truly came down from heaven to live among us as the fleshly love of God – the wildly passionate, recklessly abundant, vibrantly inclusive love of God.

The Gospel is that Jesus really, truly died upon the cross, giving up his flesh and spilling his blood, to save us from our sins.

The Gospel is that God really, truly raised Jesus from the dead, brought him out of the grave to a new and eternal life.

The Gospel is that God, through Jesus Christ, really, truly has just such a future in store for each and every one of us.

Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. May we, every day, walking in faithful fellowship in the Holy Spirit, keep the feast!