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!

There Is No "Kid's Table"

This is the sermon for World Communion Sunday, and I am addressing one of those passages in the New Testament that has always scared me. As a result, I'm only including that text with the sermon; however, if you'd like complete readings for the service, you can add Isaiah 58:3-8 and John 6:1-15.

Did you know the first meal ever eaten on the Moon was Communion?

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation. About the other things I will give instructions when I come.

This is the Word of the Lord.

When I was growing up, we’d spend Thanksgiving with Mom’s family in Shelbyville, Tennessee. The whole family would be there at Helen and Clay’s, driving in from Atlanta, Huntsville, and who knows where else. The kitchen table would be groaning from the weight of the food, and by the time Thanksgiving dinner was served, the smell had driven us half crazy with hunger. Then it would happen: the grownups would sit at the nice table in the dining room, and all us kids would have to go and sit on the carport! At the Kid’s Table!

Don’t get me wrong, now. It was an enclosed carport, and it was warm, and there was plenty of food, and I really enjoyed spending that time with my cousins and all my extended family. But every year, I’d be jealous of that dining room table. The Grownup’s Table. Oh, how I’d dream of the day when, at long last, I was finally old enough! Old enough to sit at the grownup’s table.

Funny thing is, as we all got older, we found that we didn’t really want to sit at the grownup’s table. We preferred sitting out on the carport, where we could talk about the things that interested us. Sure, one or two of us tried the grownup’s table, but we always ended up back down on the carport.

The years have passed, and we don’t go to Shelbyville anymore. We gather in Huntsville, and the kids’ table is for our kids, and the grownups’ table doesn’t have to be as large as it was to hold us all. But we’re all there, still the same cousins, at the table with our parents and aunts and uncles, the same conversations, same jokes, same massive amounts of food.

And yes, the children who sit at the Kids’ Table still dream of the day they’ll sit at the Grownup’s Table.

I start here because I think, though Paul never sat at the kids’ table for an American Thanksgiving meal, he understood the feeling of close, familial fellowship – the familiarity, comfort, and joy among those who share a common bond of blood and history. He understood this, and what’s more, he saw that this level of familiarity, love, and the bonds of blood and experience was an integral part of the Christian worship experience.

If you think about it, we can trace the history of Christianity through Christ to the earliest experiences of the Hebrews becoming a nation by way of meals. The night that the Angel of Death visited the Egyptians, passing over the Hebrews because of the smeared lamb’s blood on the doorposts, the soon-to-be-freed slaves ate a final meal in captivity. As they sojourned in the desert, God fed them with manna. As they entered and settled the Promised Land, their calendar was populated by feasts and celebrations.

And Jesus used the unleavened bread and the wine of the Passover meal to start a new food-centered tradition, Communion, Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper.

It was a common practice among many cultures to begin a meal with a ceremonial breaking of bread, and to conclude it with a ceremonial offering of wine. Since Jesus had done the same thing with the Seder meal, beginning with the bread before supper and using the Cup of Blessing afterward, it made sense that the Lord’s Supper be celebrated as part of what came to be known as the Agape Meal.

The idea was that the church, which met in those days in the houses of believers, would break the bread of communion, then sit down to a common meal, sharing food and familiarity, telling jokes and stories and singing songs around the table, growing in love for one another through the language of food and drink, and conclude with the sharing of the Cup.

Well, that was the plan, anyway. In the church at Corinth, things got a little out of hand.

We aren’t sure what all was going on, but it seems to have started out innocently enough. Like I said before, these churches met in the homes of believers, and usually these were the homes of the rich folks. The homes would have been built with rooms opening out into a courtyard, and the main dining room would have only been large enough for perhaps 20 people. The rest of the church would have gathered at tables in the courtyard. It was simple logistics, you see.

Now, either everyone at the Corinthian church was expected to bring their own food, or the food was being served first to the people in the main dining room – and, of course, in a society where class mattered, the friends and affluent associates of the home’s owner, the elite, the preferred were the ones seated in that room. Those in the courtyard would have been much poorer; in fact, many of them would have been slaves. If they were to bring their own food, there would have been little or none; if the food was being provided by the homeowner, by the time it got to the poor folks there was none left. Either way, you see, those with the influence, money and power were gorging themselves and drinking too much while the poor could only look on. The common loaf, which was to break through the barriers of race and class and gender and privilege, had been thrown aside in favor of the status quo of Corinthian society. The common cup, meant to be the lifeblood of community, of love and support and a common history, had been kicked aside while the privileged people became drunk, and the marginalized felt their throats parch.

Seeing this, Paul knew that this was no more the Lord’s Supper than a snow-cone in July is Thanksgiving dinner. His words were harsh, because they needed to be harsh. They were frightening because the Corinthian elite needed to be scared into seeing, perhaps for the first time, just how far they’d come from the pure joy of fellowship into the seedy loathing of class envy.

I have to tell you that, even knowing all of this, Paul’s words in this passage have always scared me. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves.”

I’ve always worried about what it meant, in our context, to eat the bread or drink the cup in an unworthy manner. How is it we are to discern the body? Does God require perfection before we can approach the Table? And what does it mean for the person who stands behind the Table to officiate the sacrament? Surely there is no way that I am worthy to do this thing!

Of course, there isn’t any way I am worthy. There’s no way any of us can be perfect enough to “deserve” the sacrament. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? The Lord’s Supper isn’t about being worthy – it’s about being family.

I’ve been in churches all of my life. I’ve seen the Lord’s Supper performed as an ordinance and a sacrament, I’ve been welcomed to the Table and, in some churches, excluded. I’ve seen plates passed around as we sat, I’ve stood in lines and I’ve knelt at altar rails, I’ve drunk from the little cups and from a large common cup, I’ve had grape juice and I’ve had wine, I’ve dipped communion wafers and chunks of French bread and sections of pita bread into a cup, I’ve had communion with Ritz Crackers and Dr. Pepper once. I’ve even seen a church run out of bread and juice, but the elders scrambled to find more so all could take part.

I have never, even once, seen a Kid’s Table. I have never, even once, seen the “in” group take communion while others sat in the courtyard, hungry. Even where I was not allowed the elements, I was able to receive a blessing from the priest, which was, in its own way, taking part in the sacrament.

On this World Communion Sunday, we gather at this table as a family, and we gather in the presence of the Body of Christ. Not here, in these elements, but here, in this gathering. We are the Body… and not just us, but every church in every city in every country on every continent, as the bread is broken and the cup is passed in whichever way that congregation chooses to do it, all of us, every one – we are the Body!

In the ancient cathedrals of Europe, we are the body. In the mud huts of the Congo, we are the Body. In the sleek, modern churches of suburbia, we are the Body. In the cinderblock home churches of the inner city, we are the Body. In the well-known churches that broadcast their worship services, we are the Body. In the underground churches in China and the Middle East, we are the Body.

And there is no Kid’s Table, no benches in the courtyard. All are welcome. All are family.

World Communion Sunday

I'm probably not going to have a sermon to post this Sunday. Since it's World Communion Sunday (and because I promised one of the members who is studying this sort of thing at a Christian college) I'm going to take the opportunity to teach about the differing theological views surrounding the Lord's Supper/Communion/Eucharist. I'm very likely going to do this at the Table, which means an outline and notes rather than my customary manuscript.

So, for those of you so inclined to share: what is your take on the Lord's Supper/Communion/Eucharist? Transubstantiation? Consubstantiation? Ordinalism? Something more or less than these? Please take this opportunity to educate a part-time preacher on what the loaf and cup mean to you.