Sermon By The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Click link above for the audio.
August 19, 2012 – 12th Sunday After Pentecost – Year B
1st Reading: 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm: Psalm 111
2nd Reading: Ephesians 5:15-20
Gospel: John 6:51-58
May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
A few months ago, my refrigerator decided it was time to retire to the old fridge home in the sky. So, I went looking for a new one, and was I ever in for a surprise. First of all, everything is stainless these days – all shiny and very expensive. And, these kitchen appliances have changed – there were refrigerators with wifi and stoves that looked so complicated I’d be lucky to figure out how to cook up my Spaghetti-Os or ramen noodles (being the sophisticated cook that I am).
I’m not alone in my bewilderment about the change in kitchens these days. Megan McArdle, a journalist writing for the May 2011 edition of The Atlantic, writes, my husband and I “now have enough high-end cutlery to stock a small restaurant — and a sense of shame at how rarely we use any of it. Almost everyone I know seems to have the KitchenAid mixers and Cuisinarts they got for their wedding still sitting in their boxes, to emerge at Thanksgiving, if ever.” McArdle goes on to add that each expensive kitchen gadget “comes with a vision of yourself doing something warm and inviting: baking bread, rolling your own pasta, slow-cooking a pot roast.” Gourmet kitchen equipment promises a warm and wonderful feeling, even if you rarely touch it.
We seem to be seeking something, yearning for something.
We have heard Jesus these weeks talking about being the bread of life. The authors of this gospel move Jesus from his feeding the 5,000 to his feeding us – in a deeply personal, and even disturbing way.
In the passage we read this morning, Jesus says to his disciples, “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.”
Normally, I am loathe to include any type of translation of the original biblical language in a sermon. I had to sit through Koine Greek classes, but that doesn’t mean I need to inflict that pain on anyone else. But here, it is important – vital even – to understanding what Jesus is saying, and why everyone reacted so shockingly to it. Four times in this passage (John 6:54, 56, 57, 58) we read of “eating” Jesus’ flesh. Almost all translations of John 6 use the word “eat,” and is the correct translation for most of the time Jesus is talking about his being the bread of life. But starting in verse 54, for most of what we heard today, the Greek word that is used is not so tame. The writers of this gospel use the word τρώγων rather than the previous use of φάγητε. It literally means munch, gnaw, chew, or crunch – generally a term reserved in that kind of gnawing one animal does of another animal. That type of eating returns us to that base place of pure visceral pleasure. It is all consuming as it is consumed. It is raw, wild, emotional, lusty and messy. That’s what Jesus is asking us to do – to gnaw on him.
This isn’t your ordinary kitchen table meal. This isn’t a nice restaurant up the street or in the city, this is down and dirty, gnawing on the bone, eating with hands feasting! It is the kind of eating one does when they are physically starving, something that thankfully few of us gathered here today have likely experienced in our lives. But we all know the feeling we have when we are really really hungry, and how that can sometimes bring us to woof down and gulp our next meal. Food and drink never tastes so good as it does to someone who is starving.
There are other ways we are hungry – we hunger and thirst for knowledge…or is it wisdom? Solomon asks for wisdom in the passage today from 1 Kings, but it would seem to me that he is already wise to have asked for such a gift. I wonder how many of us would do the same. There are many who are bright beyond their years, but as they say, “knowledge acquired is not necessarily wisdom dispensed.” Anyone who has ever watched the TV show “Big Bang Theory” will tell you that. And so we often thirst for wisdom like our King Solomon.
And there are many here who have at one time or another felt spiritually or emotionally starved – longing for something that would fill the emptiness of the heart and soul.
Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually we humans walk through this life reaching for the things we hope will fill us, but often coming away just as hungry as when we started. Sort of like waking up in the middle of the night hungry – you go the kitchen and shove down some popcorn, then the previous nights left overs, maybe some ice cream…and even after eating half the kitchen, you just don’t feel satisfied. Your consuming, but you are never really filled.
The Gospel of John is telling us we need look no further than Jesus to be fully filled. In the passage we heard today, this feast that Jesus offers – a feast of his own flesh and blood – is a life giving meal that fills all our senses, our heart, our minds, our very soul.
We will not go away empty.
Yet, for all the verses we have heard these many weeks about the body and blood of Jesus as life giving, this fourth gospel lacks something the others have – an institutional narrative. Meaning that in all the other gospels – what we call the Synoptics because of their similarity – Mark, Matthew and Luke – during their final meal together – the last supper – Jesus asks those who follow him to eat the bread that is his body, and drink wine that it his blood, in remembrance of him. The Gospel of John has no such narrative – this is as close as we get – Jesus out walking among the people and his followers as he talks about his body and blood.
Why is that?
Maybe the Gospel of John moves us away from the last supper scene, “because the authors did not want us to be stuck at the table.”1
Now, I love to eat, and most especially, I love to go out to dinner with good friends. And when I do, while it is nice for the food to be good, we are certainly not gathered together for the sustenance of what is on the plate. We are gathered together for the sustenance that comes from our relationship with one another, and we linger around the table long after the meal has been consumed – embracing the relationships and being nourished and fed.
But as Christians, we cannot get stuck at the table… we are not called to linger, but to go out from this place.
You see, the type of eating that Jesus is imploring us to do in this gospel isn’t fine dining, with shiny chalices and linen table clothes. It isn’t that type of social occasion. Jesus is asking us to get messy. In our kitchens today, how many of us actually get our hands dirty and in the mix? How many of us like our Christianity the same way – all clean and shiny… not to actually engage in, not to get into the messiness – not to dig our hands in. But to look good.
All neat, no meat.
Every week we come here to this table to consume – to eat and drink of the body and blood of our savior Jesus Christ. We say this in our closing prayer, right? But like our shiny kitchens, our Jesus is neatly packaged into small circular wafers with a pretty cross on it, our wine in shiny silver chalices. Aren’t we losing ourselves in the neatness? Perhaps. We sure have in our history of Christianity gotten lost in the endless fights over what the Eucharist is, how to do it, who can preside at the table, and who is welcome to receive. This passage reminds us to be ever vigilant that we not lose our way – focusing on the form, rather than the substance, on the beauty of the table, rather than on the meal itself. So, whether it is a piece of a loaf, or a pressed wafer, it is and always will be the body of Christ.
And one might also wonder why we consume the Eucharist every week anyway. I mean, couldn’t we do it once, and it would “stick”? Dieters often say, “Once on the lips, forever on the hips.” With Jesus – “Once on the lips, forever in the soul,” right? Jesus doesn’t say, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them, but only for a week at time.”
True, but the gospel of John is about incarnation – about the Word being made flesh – and in the Eucharist, we experience the real presence of Christ in relationship with us. The eucharist is relational and incarnational…. Or perhaps it is relational because it is incarnational. And one doesn’t “do” a relationship in a single moment, opening our hearts once, and that’s it. We need to open our hearts to the other in relationship every day, every moment, for the relationship to grow, to deepen. Those in committed relationships know this. The same is true of our relationship with Jesus. We eat the bread and drink the wine as often as we can – not because it is weak, and can’t sustain us, but because as humans we are weak, and must work at our relationships, and we must renew ourselves and our love every chance we get.
And, there’s more to it for us as Christians.
We eat and drink of Jesus often to nourish and sustain us because we are the body of Christ alive in the world today.
And, here’s the kicker…
..that means we are the ones who must be consumed by others!
When we are fed, we must then feed, and in feeding, we are fed. We return to the table to be renewed to continue our work in the world, but we must not linger there, because there are starving people in the world – starving emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.
We cannot get stuck at the table. We cannot be all neat and no meat. We need to get messy, get our hands dirty, experience Jesus with all of our senses, and our hearts, minds and souls. We need to let Jesus course through our bodies, and then go out and feed others – we need to be the body of Christ in the world.
Don’t worry about there being enough to sustain you, Christ is always there to be gnawed on, to drink fully, to renew and refresh us for the work we are called to do. So come to the table to eat and drink – to consume the Word made flesh – to bring Jesus into the very core of your being.
And, then leave the table to allow others to consume the body of Christ that you are – to love, to serve, and most especially to feed those who hunger and thirst – that they may know the fullness of relationship of God in Christ through you.
Amen.
1 http://preachingtip.com/archives-year-b/pentecost-year-b/proper-15-year-b/