August 18, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL
Proverbs 9: 1-6 + Psalm 34 + Ephesians 5: 15-20 + John 6: 51-58
After a while with this Gospel, you might begin to get the idea that this quarrelsome group chasing Jesus around are really more interested in having an argument rather than a conversation. A conversation might lead them to some answers. But no, they want to know how. Any of us with even a little faith know that understanding how God works is the final test of our ability to live with ambiguity and mystery. People who cannot live without knowing the how and the why God words are not long in a relationship with God.
Jesus knows that the language he is using with them is going to offend and upset them. It’s a challenge to let go and rethink what they thought they knew about God. Only then can God do something new, and that’s exactly what’s happening here – something new. Even some of his disciples push back. Next weekend we will hear their grumbling. This whole chapter is about believing without knowing how.
There is a shift in this sixth chapter with these verses. Now John introduces the Eucharist. His description of the Last Supper has more to do with washing feet than bread and wine. So, it is here in these verses that John gives us the institution of the Eucharist. No longer are we told that eternal life comes from believing in Jesus. Now we are told that feeding on his flesh and drinking is blood is what gives us eternal life. John’s use of the word “flesh” is very important. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use the word “body” when they record the Last Supper words of Jesus. What is important to know is that there is no word for “Body” in the language of Jesus. “Flesh” is what he meant and said.
When he speaks of this Bread that came down from heaven, there is almost an echo of the Incarnation again and the entrance of the Word into the world as “the Word became flesh.” This is the same flesh given to us as the living bread that came down from heaven.
When that quarrelsome group objects to eating flesh and drinking blood, Jesus never backs down. He never explains it away. He means what he says, and he waits for the believer to accept. With that said, Jesus move on to speak of what happens to the one who will eat and drink. They will abide in him, because belief in him is impossible without a close, personal relationship with the Son of Man who is in heaven. This “abiding” proposes an almost unheard-of intimacy – a kind of living another person’s life and it is his life, divine life that is without end.
At the beginning of this section it is about believing without knowing how. Now, it is about believing without seeing. The Body of Christ is his flesh. It is his flesh given for the life of the world. His Blood poured out takes us through the whole mystery from that moment when the word was made flesh in the womb of a young virgin in Nazareth until his death and his blood is poured out. For this reason, it is the Body of Christ – the anointed risen one we receive. Abiding in him then is an invitation to enter into all of his life with its joy and sorrow, its laughter and pain, and ultimately even to enter into his death through our own suffering and death. If we stay with him through it all. If we believe and abide, we will rise from everything, even death itself. If you can believe without seeing when someone says “The Body of Christ” and placed the Bread of Life, his very flesh, into your hands, then say Amen