Eat My Body, Drink My Blood

Sermon prepared for St. Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, N.Y. August 25, 2024.

Today we continue our examination of the “staff of life,” on the fifth Sunday of what Martha calls “breadtide” and what Father Tim Schenk calls “breadapalooza.”

I’m tempted to begin my meditation by declaring – in the words of the awesome Oprah Winfrey – “I like bread!”

Bread has been on our dinner tables or baked at our camp fires since the dawn of human history.

Bread accompanied the life-saving meals of the soup kitchens during the Great Depression. My mind goes back 70 years (would you believe it?) to my staple diet of Wonder bread smeared with generous globs of peanut butter. 

Who has not enjoyed the fragrance of baking bread in near-by bakeries or in our ovens? 

Perhaps we sample bread so often that we no longer notice its specialness. Sometimes we deliberately avoid bread as a weight-loss tactic until we miss it too much. The longer we avoid bread the more we want it and the more we enjoy it. I remember my father’s reaction to plain white bread after he returned from three hardtack years in the World War II Pacific Theater: “It tastes like cake,” he said.

Jesus’ reference to himself as the “bread of life” is one of many biblical references to bread.

According to one source (which I have accepted arbitrarily because sources differ), the word “bread” is mentioned 361 times in the Bible; 280 of those references are in the Old Testament; there are 81 references to bread in the New Testament – and 62 of those references are found in the four Gospels. 

When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,” he was talking about our souls, not our stomachs. But he was not suggesting that coming to him was a solution to physical hunger. There are still hungry people in the world, and Jesus cares deeply about them.

As often as bread is mentioned in scripture it becomes clear that as metaphor, bread has multiple meanings. It fills our stomachs. It nourishes our souls.

All that seems plain enough. But in the Gospel lesson this morning we see many of Jesus’ disciples – we don’t know how many – can’t wrap their heads around this message. “This teaching is difficult,” they grumble. “Who can accept it?” (Jn 6:60)

When John uses the term, “disciples,” he of course doesn’t mean the twelve Apostles but the many people who follow Jesus from town to town.

These disciples have a tendency to take literally every word that Jesus speaks. They are “inerrantists” who are confused when Jesus tells stories about events that are filled with truth but didn’t really happen. They miss the deeper meaning of what Jesus says. They would probably be disappointed that the Good Samaritan was a character in a morality play, not a real person.

So when Jesus tells them that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them,” they can neither understand nor accept it. And off they go, these poor pigheaded people who no longer want Jesus in their lives.

The divine nature of the bread and the wine take on an even deeper mystery in the long history of the church.  The question is, does the bread and wine symbolically represent the body and blood of Jesus, or does it become the flesh and blood of Jesus?

In my Baptist days we regarded communion as a reminder of what Jesus did for us. We served communion once a month and the elements were carefully carved squares of white bread and grape juice. That didn’t mean we didn’t take the Lord’s Supper seriously. Years ago, when I was editor of The American Baptist magazine, I was looking for a cover illustration for World Wide Communion Sunday. I chose a loaf of Wonder Bread and a bottle of Welch’s Grape juice. Judging from the letters to the editor I received, readers were incensed and thought I was commercializing the Lord’s Supper. That was not my intent and, in point of fact, most Baptist churches used unwrapped Wonder Bread and uncorked Welch’s grape juice to prepare a service which symbolically represented the body and blood of Jesus.

Some Baptists, and I might have been among them, believed our practice of communion was God-approved, as well as our practice of waiting for people to become born-again adults before they were baptized.

We didn’t pause to think how heretical those practices were in the long history of the church.

I’ve just finished reading a series of novels by the late C.J. Sansom about a crookback lawyer in Tudor England. The novels follow Matthew Shardlake as he negotiates the hazardous rip tides of Henry VIII’s religious reforms. He solves crimes, offends the King and other exalted nobles but avoids the Tower. I recommend the series if you, like Martha and me, enjoy church and Tudor history. Sansom describes the social divisions, the rough-hewn pubs, the foul smells of London, and clothing styles of rich and poor so vividly that I’ve felt like I’ve been a time traveler in Tudor London.

But the series is a disquieting glimpse of what it was like to live in England when Henry VIII was vacillating between conflicting and confusing religious views. In order to divorce his Catholic wife and marry Ann Boleyn he declares himself head of the Church of England, endorses Lutheran reforms, encourages the reformers, destroys Catholic monasteries, and declares followers of the old way to be heretics. Common people and aristocrats struggled to follow the King’s new rules for worship so they can avoid being burned at the stake.

But Henry keeps changing the rules. Toward the end of his reign he declares he no longer believes the Lord’s Supper is a mere symbolic representation of the body and blood and orders that his subjects believe that the bread becomes the actual body and the wine becomes the actual blood of Christ during the mass. The penalty for not believing is a hideously painful death.

Sansom introduces us to people who actually lived in Henry’s England, including Anne Askew, a young reformer who embraced, when it was safe to do so, the view that the wine and bread were merely symbolic. When Henry changed his mind she refused to go back to the old belief. Sansom’s vivid description of Anne being tortured in the tower and being burned at the stake is horrifying. I came away with a sobering view of what our ancestors lived and died through, and how blessed we are that we are free to decide what our faith and our practices will be.

The nature of the body and blood of Jesus are the very issues which confused the disciples in our Gospel this morning. And it must be said that it’s very hard to hear that we must drink Jesus’ blood and eat his flesh. It wasn’t only these literal-minded disciples who found it hard. The early Romans were appalled by what they believed was the “cannibalism” of early Christians. Even today, if you try to explain Jesus’ words to unbelievers they accuse you of being followers of Count Dracula.

In every time and place, Jesus has been misunderstood and his faithful have been ridiculed and often martyred for their beliefs.

Dr. Peter Claver Ajer, associate professor of New Testament at Bexley Seabury Seminary in San Francisco, writes that the drinking and eating of Jesus’ blood and flesh are “metaphors (that) best express oneness, intimacy, and the best way to be part of Jesus’ life.”

“The expression ‘feeding on Jesus’ (his flesh and blood) best captures the itimacy in the relationship,” Dr. Ajer writes. “To feed on Jesus is to absorb his teaching, his character, his mind, and ways; [and to] appropriate the virtue in him till his mind becomes our mind and his ways our ways; till we think somewhat as he would do if he were in our place, and can be and do what without him we would not be or do; and this because his power has passed into us and become our power.”

When we understand that Jesus is speaking to us in metaphors, much of the mystery of the miracle of the bread and wine is clarified.’’

But we will never understand the full meaning of this miracle. Nor should we.

I love the teaching of Professor and Orthodox Bishop Kallistros Ware.

“We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”

So let us relieve ourselves from the stress and burden of trying to figure these things out. Let us rejoice in the mystery and the wonder.

And let us never forget the full meaning of what Jesus did for us and what Jesus expects us to be.

Pastor and theologian Henri Nouwen sums it up nicely:

“For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women, and men to be loved.”

Beloved, Jesus is the bread of life. And God is love. Let us allow ourselves to be loved and to love one another and know that God’s love for us is unconditional and eternal.

And that is all we need to know.

Breadapalooza

Sermon prepared for Trinity Lutheran Church, White Plains, N.Y., August 4, 2024.

As a Christian layman, I’ve followed with interest the comments of many pastors on their preaching experiences.

One pastor says, “I have come to realize that most of us have only one really good sermon in us. We preach variations on that sermon all our lives.”

For pastors who are struggling to think of a new take on their foundational sermon, today’s scripture presents a special challenge.

Father Tim Schenck is rector of the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-sea in Palm Beach, Fla. His gentle church humor appears regularly on Facebook and Threads, and he is co-founder of “Lenten Madness,” an annual internet game in which participants get to vote on their favorite saints.

Father Tim writes:

“This Sunday begins five weeks of gospel readings from John 6 focused on Jesus’ statement, “I am the bread of life.” Some preachers dread the seeming redundancy of this every-three-years Breadapalooza aka Bread-tide. Some of us go on vacation to avoid … But here’s the gist of it in condensed form. Just to save you some time…

“Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life. Again, I say to you, I am the bread of life. Let those with ears to hear know that I am the bread of life. Verily I say unto you, I am the bread of life. Would you like a side of bread with your bread of life? My bread and butter is being the bread of life. Better bread than dead. I’m the best bread of life since sliced bread. You know where your bread of life is buttered. I am the bread of life.’”

Maybe this is a bit too dismissive, considering how important bread – “the staff of life” – is to our lives. 

Bread has been on our dinner tables or at our camp fires for many millennia. Bread accompanied the life-saving meals of the soup kitchens during the Great Depression. My mind goes back 70 years (would you believe it?) to my staple diet of Wonder bread smeared with generous globs of peanut butter. Who has not enjoyed the fragrance of baking bread in near-by bakeries or in our ovens? Perhaps we sample bread so often that we no longer notice its specialness. Sometimes we deliberately avoid bread as a weight-loss tactic and we miss it. The longer we avoid it the more we want it and the more we enjoy it. I remember my father’s reaction to plain white bread after he returned from three breadless years in the World War II Pacific Theater: “It tastes like cake,” he said.

Jesus’ reference to himself as the “bread of life” is one of many biblical references to bread.

According to one source (which I have accepted arbitrarily because sources differ), the word “bread” is mentioned 361 times in the Bible; 280 of those references are in the Old Testament; there are 81 references to bread in the New Testament – and 62 of those references are found in the four Gospels. As Father Tim says, the bible is a virtual breadapalooza.

When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,” he was talking about our souls, not our stomachs. But he was not suggesting that coming to him was a solution to physical hunger. There are still hungry people in the world, and Jesus cares deeply about them.

As often as bread is mentioned in scripture it becomes clear that as metaphor, bread has multiple meanings. It fills our stomachs. It nourishes our souls.

In Exodus, bread does both. The hungry, kvetching, unruly Israelites are angry at God and angry at Moses. They have been wandering through the wilderness for too long and are asking Moses, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” They are bored and hungry. They are beginning to wonder if things were really so bad under Pharoah. At least they had bread to eat every day because Pharoah needed to keep them strong and healthy to do his work. This monotonous shuffling through the desert sands is going to kill us all, they say. And it’s all Moses’ fault.

Moses is in a mood like our fathers’ on a long road trip when the kids are quarreling in the back seat and Dad shouts, “Don’t make me stop this car!” 

Moses is particularly frustrated because he knows that when the people are angry at him they are actually angry at God. And that, as our dads might say, is a very bad choice.

But God has not abandoned the people and God has Moses’ back. The Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.”

Then one morning a layer of dew fell around the camp. 

When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.  This is what the LORD has commanded: Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer per person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.” The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.  (Exodus 16:14-18) (An omer, according to Wikipedia, is about 3.64 litres.)

The biblical record even tells us what manna from heaven is like: “it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.” (Exodus 16:31)

“And the Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a habitable land.” (Exodus 16:35)

This form of bread feeds the bellies of the Israelites, just as it brings them closer to God who provides for them. 

Last Sunday the bread-centric scripture told of the feeding of the five-thousand with loaves and, incidentally, fish.

The five-thousand persons on the hill point to Jesus’ readiness to use his moral authority and divine power to serve persons in need. 

I'm curious what we would learn if we could organize the five-thousand into demographic categories. Except for the boy with the basket of food, we don’t know the age or economic classes that were present that day, although we can deduce they were all male. Even the most open-minded gospel writer would not have seen the need of counting the women present. When both genders are factored in, it’s possible Jesus fed ten-thousand that day.

Whoever and how many they were, we know beyond doubt that Jesus never turned his back on any one in spiritual, mental, or financial need. 

And we can be certain that, because society in Jesus’ day was organized much like ours – that is, 1 percent of the people held most of the wealth – Jesus’ primary concern was for persons living in poverty.

In that sense, the five-thousand were a microcosm of the world we live in today. The difference is that today, when we ask ourselves how we are going to feed hungry crowds, we’re facing millions, not thousands.

We tend to put those millions of hungry persons out of our thoughts because we don’t see how we can help them. We take comfort in Jesus’ observation that the poor will always be with us because it almost makes poverty seem like an acceptable reality. We share Philip’s despair as we count all the mouths to be fed and wonder where the bread was coming from.

But God had a way then. And we must believe that God has ways to feed the millions who are hungry today. In practical and realistic terms, the United States and the rich nations of the would have the means of eliminating hunger world-wide. That we allow let the complications of domestic and international politics to get in our way is a reality that makes Jesus weep. Because if Jesus is the bread of life – and he is – our souls should be so perfectly nourished that we would respond to Jesus’ call to feed the hungry, provide clean water for the thirsty, provide shelter and clothing for the destitute, and seek justice for those in prison.

“Where is this bread of life, this heavenly manna to be found?” asks Richard Futrell, pastor of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Kimberling City, Missouri.

“It’s as near as the manna on the desert sands in the wilderness,” Pastor Futrell writes. “It is as near as your Bible; open it and read it. It is as near as the Church, where the Word is preached; come and listen. It is as near as your baptism. It is as near as the pastor who absolves you. It is as near as the Lord’s Supper of bread and wine, Jesus’ body and blood.”

\Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35)

With the bread of life in our souls we become intimate with Jesus. With the bread of life in our souls, we hear the words of Jesus with utter clarity:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to set free those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” -Luke 4:18-19

With the bread of life in our souls we know beyond doubt that this scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing.

And we will never be hungry again.