Summary: Our faith is about much more than simply "believing in" Jesus as a compelling teacher or leader -- though he certainly was both. We experience Jesus, by taking his very life upon and into our selves. We do this in part by way of our communion with him in our participation in the Eucharist.
In today's passage from John, we join Jesus as he comes to the end of a preaching-and-teaching tour, on both sides of what was called the Sea of Galilee, or the Sea of Tiberius. A large crowd continues to follow him everywhere, entranced by the very physical, very down-to-earth miracles he is performing among them -- primarily, at least at first, healing the sick. He follows such healings with a miraculous feeding of well over five thousand people with just five loaves of bread and two fish.
The crowd, living in desperate times, and hence desperate for strong leadership both earthly and spiritual, responds by trying to make him king. Jesus will have no part of this idea of being appointed or elected to be some earthly ruler. He hides from that crowd, instead spending the night on a mountain, praying. When his disciples depart by boat back over to Galilee's other shore, Jesus joins them -- by walking on water! When they get to the shore, there is another crowd -- or, really, the same crowd -- waiting for him.
It is then that Jesus begins the extensive teaching that leads to the Corpus Christi passages we are looking at today.
Why are you following me, Jesus seems to be asking. What is it you want? What is it that you think you want? Are you following me because you are looking for some kind of magic man, a miracle worker who's going to wave his hand and make all your burdens go away? You see miracles and signs, and so you want to follow me.
In today's passage, Jesus is confronting, with borderline belligerence, this crowd that won't let him alone. And, really, he doesn't want them to leave him alone. He is not trying to drive this crowd away from him. And yet ... it seems that he does just that, by refusing to back off an inch from his outrageous use of metaphor when addressing people who seem incapable of processing metaphor, incapable of distinguishing between metaphorical terms and literal terms, poetic language and literal language.
Okay. What is it, then, that he truly wants from that crowd?
"I am the living bread," he says.
"... the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
"... 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 ...."
So, say the crowd, among themselves. This rabbi we've been following, looking for some real deliverance -- he wants us to do what? "... how can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
But Jesus doubles down: "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 ... my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."
These are gruesome images, to be sure -- poetic language or not. Why such images? Why does Jesus not modify his delivery in order to make his message more accessible to an audience that seems rather dull? What is being said here through this unabashed, unapologetic doubling down on these horror movie locutions?
"... 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."
Abiding in Jesus: this is key.
"... whoever eats me will live because of me."
"This is the bread that came down from heaven ...."
Jesus is deliberately using vivid (to say the least) imagery here to give forcible expression to something that cannot be expressed in any other way. In order to be a follower of mine, Jesus is saying in effect, in order to truly live in me, in order for me truly to come alive in you ... you must eat me. My flesh and blood are truly food. I can't put it any other way. This is that serious.
"Eat" is a vivid, forceful image for ... for -- well, if Jesus can't say it any other way, who are we to say we can? Nevertheless! Here goes!
When we "eat" something, we transform what we are eating into something else. We transform something that exists independently of us and outside of us into something that nourishes us, something that changes us, something that gives us renewed life and energy. What Jesus is for us is ... food. Drink. Jesus is here to change us. Jesus is here to transform us. But to be transformed by him, we have to trust him enough to take him into ourselves the way we take in food and drink. For his eternal life, his "God-life" among us to work upon us and in us, we have to "eat" him and "drink" him.
Jesus is, for us, bread, yes bread. He is for us wine. He is for us, life. And to renew our life in him, we must ingest him continually. "... 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."
And the crowd -- most of them, anyway -- misunderstands.
However we take these brutal, gruesome, uncompromising images, we can all agree that Jesus is serious. Serious about something, anyway. He is being challenged on some of the most difficult imagery in scripture, and he refuses to back down. Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Or else! Or else you have no part in me. Not only that, you have no life in you. Period. Wow!
This is what he has to say to those early followers, those early would-be followers and riders of the fence.
Where are we with this, today? What does Jesus' stance with that crowd have to do with us, today? What about us, today? What are we looking for? What do we expect this Christian faith to do for us? What brought us here in the first place? What do we see in Jesus that keeps us following him, back and forth across that lake that's almost an ocean of misunderstanding, or whatever kind of "lake" it might be that stands in our way? Are we looking for signs, wonders, miracles? Well, we got 'em -- but they may not be what we think we're looking for.
What does this centuries-old witness to what was present in Jesus demand of us, today?
Following Jesus calls for more than just a quest for miraculous deliverance. And yet, the outrageous command remains! What we do here in this house of worship today is just as outrageous, even gruesome, to that world outside our parking lot -- just as outrageous and gruesome to many, and yet, ultimately, consummately sensible to us!
Eat his flesh.
Drink his blood.
Or we've got no life in us!
Yes, but how can we do that, sitting here, 2,000 years removed?
We have before us, any time we choose to partake of it, this Blessed Sacrament. However our various traditions may name it: Mass, Eucharist, Holy Communion, The Lord's Supper -- through this ritual, we partake in the very life of Christ, the very presence of Christ.
Jesus is here.
We can take upon us and within us his very life, his flesh and his blood, we can wrap ourselves around him, we can take him into ourselves and be transformed, day after day after day, our lives becoming physically and spiritually renewed, through communing with him as often as we will. We can believe that. We do believe that -- why else would we be taking this little wafer or this little morsel of bread, this little sip of wine, or juice?
Jesus is here! We are in his presence! We do come forward and take his very life upon us and into us! Yes, we do that! Yes, we did that! We are taking his very life upon us and within us. We can believe that. And, in believing that, we don't let it end here, in this house of worship.
We will take his life upon ourselves, within ourselves. And then let us take his life out there, into the world, a suffering world, a world burdened with hunger and want, with wars and rumors of war, with poverty and racism. May we take the life of Jesus upon ourselves and take that life out there into that sin-sick world. May we be an offering, as he was an offering, an offering of healing, an offering of new life in the face of encroaching death.
With this bread and with this cup, we take his life and his sacrificial death and his new life upon ourselves and into ourselves.
And where will we go from here? Amen.