Text — John 6:51-58

51 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.”

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  53 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.  54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;  55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.  58 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.”

In my sermon two weeks ago, I raised the question, “Is there anything we can really count on?”  Everything we have in this world we lose, and everything beyond this world is uncertain, so the only decent option left that I can see is to live with trust, in spite of uncertainty, and that, I argued last week, is how Jesus tells us to live.

Today I’m going to elaborate on what that way is, starting with Jesus’ statement: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”

The early Christians were accused of being cannibals because they ate Jesus’ flesh and drank his blood.  That charge seems silly to us, but it really wasn’t so far-fetched.  This language is rooted in ancient rites of animal sacrifice, and human sacrifice.  Animals sacrifice was a major feature of Jewish temple worship.  We know from the Bible that human sacrifice, even child sacrifice, was practiced in the ancient middle east by Israel’s neighbors. 

But let’s go back even further, to a thousand years or so before Jesus’ time.  Homer’s epic poem, The Iliad, is the story of Greek warriors going off to fight the Trojan War. 

As you read the Iliad, you can’t help but notice that, on what seems like every second or third page, there’s an occasion to sacrifice a “hecatomb” of oxen.  That’s a hundred oxen.  So we’re talking about a lot of bloodshed.  Why did they do this?

In the Iliad, it seems to be a way of honoring the gods, gaining the gods favor, and it strikes us as a very naïve, superstitious, and even ridiculous practice.  But what drove this practice?  Were these Greeks so simple-minded, as to believe that the gods simply liked the smell and taste of roasted meat, and that if you didn’t provide them with a sufficient number of porterhouse steaks or Big Macs they’d turn against you?  I don’t think believe that interpretation gets us very far in understanding what animal sacrifice was all about.

What happened to all this flesh, after all?  The meat wasn’t just burned up.  The soldiers ate it.  This was how the life of animals, their flesh and blood, was consecrated for human consumption.  Killing animals for food in ancient times was performed as part of a religious ceremony — a far cry from the what we do with animals today, which is horrid.  The animals were offered to the gods — the gods who gave the animals their life and strength — and then this life and strength was transferred to the people who ate the sacrificed animals.  The ceremony was a way of acknowledging and confessing that the gods, animals, and humans are all connected with each other and that life is transferred from one to the other by eating.

With that in mind, consider the basic Christian story.  God came down from heaven and became flesh, in Jesus of Nazareth.  In Jesus, God entered the trials of human life.  He was rejected, mocked, abandoned, crucified, and died — which covers most of the bad things that can happen.  This life of Jesus, from a human perspective, especially from a modern perspective, looks like a failure.  It looks futile.  It looks like a “death in the gutter.”

But God raised Jesus and placed him (in the words of the Apostles’ Creed) at the right hand of God the Father — as close to God as you can get.   Jesus’ life looked doomed.  It ended badly.  But Jesus’ name is now the name honored above every other name.

That’s the basic outline of the story.  Here are the high points of what Christians conclude from this basic content.

First, Jesus’ death is real.  Death for everyone is real.  We’re not going to avoid it.  We can expect it.  But the fact that Jesus died proves that, when we die, or someone we love dies, it doesn’t mean that something has gone wrong with life.  Death is part of life.  Death is one of the ways we follow Christ.  We may not all be Christians, but we’re all going to follow Jesus in that way at the very least.   

Second, when we eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood, we eat and drink not only his flesh, in the sense of his actual body.  In the New Testament, the word the word “flesh” has a much broader meaning.  It means all that human life consists of. 

So, when we eat Jesus’ flesh. we eat what he experienced, we eat how he lived, we eat what he taught us , we eat the prayers he prayed, we eat the life he lived, what he considered important, the way he treated people, and so on.  By this eating and drinking, we take into ourselves the power and life of Jesus.  We become his living body.  It’s not a coincidence that the Church is called Christ’s living body.

Third, this eating and drinking unites us with all who have eaten Jesus body and drunk his blood and become his body before us.  We eat and drink our spiritual ancestors, our parents, grandparents, our spouses who have died, our children who have died. 

This is why I’m all in favor of celebrating the Eucharist at funeral services, as we did at Elaine Bates’ funeral in February, and Howard Thody’s father in June..  It brings us into physical contact with all who have eaten Jesus body and drunk his blood and become members of his body in the past.

And this eating and drinking unites us with all who will eat Jesus’ body after us.  Someday none of us will be here, but there will be other people here, and they will eat us, who are Christ’s body today.  That’s a comforting thought. 

There are many ways to look at life, but here are two worthy of consideration. 

In one view, we are flying through space with nothing fixed to hang on to.  Nothing is certain.  We die in the gutter. 

In the other view, the one I’m advocating, we don’t die in the gutter.  We die with Christ.   Christ dies with us.  Our lives are caught up in something beyond us, something bigger than we are — what we call the living Christ, the heart and soul of all creation. 

I believe that the second way, the Christian way, is the better way, the more life-giving way.  It takes us where we need to go.  It gives us hope.  It gives us a way to live with trust. 

I wasn’t born believing this.  I didn’t think it up on my own, in a vacuum.  I was baptized into a community that taught me how to see this way.  If I die with Christ, I will rise with Christ.  Whatever happens, my flesh, that is, my human life, is not lost, or worthless, or in vain.  My life is part of Christ’s risen life.  I admit I’m short on details on what rising with Christ means.  But I don’t need the details.  Maybe I’m better off without details.

This conviction in me isn’t always rock solid.  I lose heart sometimes.  I don’t want to fail at things I do.  I don’t want to be rejected, even with Christ.  I don’t want to die — at least not anytime soon — even with Christ.  Still, this conviction is my primary foundation, and it tells me to look for other people — you — who are also drawn to this conviction, so we can help each other live this way.

This is what the church is — people who eat Christ’s body and drink his blood, with the faith that our lives are raised, on the last day, into Christ’s risen life, into the heart and soul of all creation.