13th Sunday after Pentecost

John 6:51-58

You are what you eat.  I think most of us have heard this line at some point before.  Usually it used to try to spur people into making more ethical or responsible food choices.  If we are what we eat, then it matters what food we choose.  Perhaps it encourages us to choose healthier options, to eat less or no meat, to buy local or organic, to avoid chemicals, additives or GMO’s.   It helps us to think more deeply about what we put in our bodies and how we are feeding ourselves.

For the first time perhaps in human history the majority of Americans struggle with food not because of its scarcity but because of its abundance and the sheer mass quantity of food options available to us at all times, much of which does not really nourish our bodies.  If we are what we eat, then are we letting ourselves get too filled up with junk?

Today in our gospel lesson however, Jesus offers us new food.  “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.”  Here Jesus has offered us something great to eat but he is talking about a lot more than physical food but that which nourishes our souls.  Because you are what you eat goes a lot deeper than what we put in our stomachs.

Perhaps we should instead say you are what you consume.  And here in this country we do a lot of consuming, of course of food but also of TV, internet, phone time, material possessions, sports, work, and so many other things but only a small portion of it actually nourishes our souls.  Some of it may seem nourishing.  May give us great pleasure for a short time but ends up being little more than spiritual junk food.  Like that proverbial bag of chips, where you eat and eat yet never feel satisfied and certainly never get truly nourished.

But Jesus offers us something else, living bread.  He tells us “Those who eat of my flesh and drink of 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.”  Jesus is today offering us something so much stronger and deeper than anything else this world can offer, his own flesh and blood eat.

Now we have heard these words so often in our lives as Christians that most likely they no longer come as a shock.  Most of you probably find this passage quite comforting.  If you are lifelong or long time Christians like me who have worshiped regularly at the Lord’s table since they were young, hearing the words body and blood of Christ conjures up comforting innocuous images of scraps of bread or communion wafers and cups of sweet port wine or grape juice.  Of the altar laid in fine linens and bread and wine served from beautiful chalices.  How many hundreds of times has someone held that wafer out to you and said “the body of Christ, bread of heaven.”  What could be threatening or scandalous about that?

But let’s set all of those fond memories aside for a minute and think about how terrifying and scandalous all this would have sounded at the time.  Here is Jesus, a real living flesh and blood person standing in front of them asking people to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  And all this would have been especially offensive since the Jewish people gathered there are specifically forbidden by the Torah from consuming any blood of any animal much less a human.  To them is would have sounded absolutely revolting and anything but pleasant and comforting.

We as experienced Christians have become so accustomed to the symbolic nature of this meal that we forget how it must sound to outsiders.  Yet some of the most severe persecutions of early Christians were in fact the result of accusations than they were actually a dangerous cult that performed secret cannibalistic rituals where they ate the raw flesh of their gods.  (Which actually was not outside of the realm of possibility in the Roman religious milieu of the time).

Now a days with 2 millennia of Christian history behind us, few would ever dream of accusing Christians of cannibalism or of taking this command literally, but even more dangerously, perhaps we have gone too far into symbolizing and sanitizing what is still a deeply radical claim. Even though Jesus makes himself present to us in the form of bread and wine at communion, he is still inviting us to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  

Even if we lay aside the revolting concept of consuming actual flesh and blood, he is still doing something radical. “Flesh and blood.” In Hebrew and in English designates more than just physical substances.  Taken together flesh and blood represent the whole living self, that which makes us alive.    Jesus is saying that he is giving over his whole self, that he wants to dwell within us, richly fully, with his whole being attached to our whole being, for all eternity, fully redeeming every part of it.

It is that kind of deep, total incarnational theology.  Jesus makes a home in us and we make a home in him.  This meal that we engage in week after week is more than just a snack, a quick spiritual morsel to tide is over until our next meal or until we find something tastier to feed ourselves.  It is not spiritual broccoli or a tossed salad to be served alongside a big steaming pile of spiritual junk food to make ourselves feel like we are being healthy.  This is the main dish.  The only food that counts and eating it alters the very nature of our being. 

Just like our ancestors, there is other food we can eat.  But it will not bring us life, only Jesus gives us the nourishment for eternal life.  He wants all of us, our whole being, forever, for eternal life, with a love that never fades.

And even now, this is still scandalous, dangerous good news because like we said at the beginning.  You are what you eat.  When we partake in this meal, we take Jesus into our very being, we invite Christ to dwell within us, to become part of us.  And we in turn become part of him.

When we partake in this meal, we too are transformed from sinful helpless humans into, “little Christs”, redeemed people sent to share God’s love to all the world.  You are what you eat.  And therefore, through this meal, you are holy, you are a beloved, cherished perfect child of God, capable of working miracles for the sake of the world.  All from this tiny scrap of bread and this little sip of wine. 

So remember this morning, as we come forward to partake in this holy meal that we are not just repeating an ancient symbolic ritual that we have done hundreds of times before, we are feasting on the very person of Jesus and this meal has the power to change everything.  Amen.