Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga
August 15, 2021
Year B, 12 Pentecost, Proper 15

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” says Jesus. 

In Winston Graham’s novel, Poldark, the hero, Ross Poldark, a country squire, stands in court to defend one of his servants, Jim Carter, who has been found guilty of poaching.  Jim was poaching – caught red-handed in fact – but Poldark is aghast at the so-called “merciful” two-year prison sentence that has been handed down in his case.  Poldark believes that they are “savage laws” which “send a man to prison for feeding his children when they are hungry,” and accuses one of the magistrates in the case, the Rev. Dr. Halse, of such savagery.  Poldark fumes at the clergyman: “The book from which you take your teaching, Dr. Halse, says that man shall not live by bread alone.  These days you’re asking men to live without even bread.” 

What Poldark touches on is a kind of religious hypocrisy which demands that people look after their spiritual well-being while failing to provide them with the basic physical necessities of day-to-day life.  It is not a hypocrisy of which Jesus was guilty. 

In fact, Jesus’ whole discourse about the bread of life, which we’ve been hearing in the Gospel of John for the past three Sundays, all starts because he fed the 5,000 with very real bread (and a few fish).  The people are so filled by that miraculous feast that they’ve come searching for Jesus again to see what else he can offer.  And what he offers this time is a much more metaphorical bread that goes beyond the kind that’s still sitting in their bellies.

Jesus’ identifying himself as the bread of life does more to confuse than to enlighten his listeners and leads to more questions than answers, though.  But that’s because his aim is not to make people understand something about himself on a purely intellectual level.  Jesus isn’t really explaining something about the bread of life but proclaiming something about who he is and the radical difference he makes in our lives.  He isn’t instructing us in knowledge but promising us a whole new reality.  And he wants to get us to bite.   

The words Jesus uses to describe eating aren’t just about politely sitting down at a table but of scarfing down your food, gnawing on this bread, getting every bit of nutrition out of this flesh.  If you’re hoping to work this all out with logic and knowledge, it’s just too confusing and rather gross.  But if you approach Jesus’ metaphor with the wisdom of the heart, things begin to be a little clearer.  Jesus wants us to taste and see.  We are asked to come to the table, take a taste of what Jesus has to offer and let understanding follow. 

But what table is Jesus talking about?  What bread does he mean?  How is his flesh “true food” and his blood “true drink”?  What, exactly, are we meant to taste and how do we go about chewing on it? 

The answer is the Eucharistic feast in which we participate each Sunday.  The Jesus of John’s Gospel invites us to the table at which we receive the bread that somehow, mysteriously, miraculously becomes Christ’s flesh.  We scarf it down, eat it up with abandon, that we might continuously abide in Christ and he in us.  And Jesus’ imagery in his long discourse in John’s Gospel is surely meant to emphasize for us the importance – the necessity even – of this communal meal, this communion of our shared life together in Him. 

But we must not lose sight of the fact that Jesus’ metaphorical language comes directly on the heels of his literal feeding of the 5,000.  Yes, come to Jesus’ table to receive the bread of life, but know, too, that God-in-Christ is deeply concerned with our bodies being nourished as much as our hearts and our souls.  That’s why it’s actual bread we share during the Eucharistic feast, not just a symbolic gesture.  It might not serve as your lunch for today, but it is relevant that this is real bread (even if it doesn’t always taste like it!)[i].

And when we lose sight of that connection between the real and the metaphorical, we stray away from God’s path, God’s will for us and for all humanity; we risk falling into the sin of hypocrisy as surely as did Poldark’s Dr. Halse. 

And some Christians today are tempted into that sin.  Save your souls, we might rightly proclaim.  But are we equally invested in saving the bodies of folks who suffer because they don’t have access to good health care?  Are we committed to helping the black and brown bodies that this season has shown to be more at risk in our society?  We do well to invite others to accept Christ as their Lord.  But are we prepared to share our resources as readily as we share our beliefs with them?  Christ is the bread of life, as the scriptures have taught us.  But do we work to nourish people soul and body?  Do we do all in our power to provide for those who have the least, to protect those who are most vulnerable, to welcome in those who have nowhere else to go?  And when the the answer is “no,” as it so often is, we must strive to do better.

“Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” says Jesus.  Christ’s body and blood are here in the bread and wine we find at the communion table.  Come and taste and see how good He is.  But do not look for Jesus here only.  This table is just the beginning. The Eucharistic feast points to all the other places where we find the body of Christ offered to us and are invited to partake of it.  And it reminds us that, as members of that same body in the world, we are called to nourish and sustain others as we have been fed.   

Thus, we pray that we have grace not only to “receive thankfully” the abundant life that we are given in Jesus Christ but also “to follow daily” his example, giving of ourselves that others might receive, in soul and body, the abundance of God’s blessings as well.  Amen. 

[i] It has been said that it takes more faith to believe that a communion wafer is bread than to believe that it is the Body of Christ.