A Fourth Church Sermon by Judith L. Watt

Sunday, August 16, 2015 | 8:00 a.m.

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 111
Proverbs 9:1–6
John 6:51–58

We are on the road to heaven now if today we walk with God.
Eternal life is not a possession conferred at death; it is a present endowment.

William Sloane Coffin
Credo

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Jesus’ words are pretty graphic. He uses this graphic terminology three times in a few short verses. Second time: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.” Third time: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me.”

What’s more, in these verses John’s choice of words for eating changes. In verse 54, he chooses a word for eating that has the meaning of gnawing, like an animal gnaws on a bone. One of the commentators explains that the word connotes gulping, smacking lips, eating with one’s mouth open, gnawing. That’s the invitation. Gnaw on my flesh. Drink my blood.

This week I saw two video clips that brought this concept home. The first was a clip of my grandson in Spain who is now eleven months old. He is sitting in his high chair, just beginning to eat finger foods, and the clip shows him with a cube of watermelon in his hand. He has the cube of watermelon clenched in his hand for dear life. When he takes a bite, you can hear the crunch of the watermelon, and you can hear him swallowing the juice. He hasn’t quite gotten the concept of how much to put in his mouth, so he had too much watermelon in that little mouth of his, and he had to deal with the sudden onslaught of juice that came with the bite. You could hear it going down his throat. He’s got such a hold on the remainder of the watermelon in his hand that it is squeezed into two pieces. He eventually lets go, and I could almost feel how much stickiness was on his hand and between his fingers. He lets go and then examines the bits of watermelon on his high-chair tray, picks the two pieces up again, and turns them over, examining them. At one point in the clip, as his mouth is stuffed full, you hear him vocalize with a big “mmmm.”

Gnaw on my flesh. Drink my blood. Examine me. Slurp me down your throats. Smack your lips. According to one of the scholars, the passage shoots through layers of respectability. Even in that day Jesus’ words had a high degree of shock value.

The second video is one that Hardy posted on Facebook when he and his family were recently in Korea. One food item that some people in Korea eat on occasion is octopus, and sometimes it is served in many little pieces, having been cut into those little pieces when the octopus is still alive. So the pieces are still moving. In the video, there is a whole plate of these little octopus pieces, and you can see them moving. Hardy has his chopsticks and picks up one of the pieces and puts it in his mouth and chews and chews fast and furious. Then his kids want to try it. I couldn’t believe they were brave enough. Hardy says, “OK, you can try it, but you have to chew hard and chew fast right away.” And he demonstrates. Like this. Each one of his kids takes a piece of octopus, still moving, and puts it in his or her mouth and chews and chews and chews. And then swallows.

Gnawing on Jesus. Consuming Jesus. Eating his flesh. Drinking his blood. How would we do that? What does it mean? My first reaction is “Ick.”

All the commentators spill a lot of ink over these verses. Are the words symbolic? Is Jesus referring to the Eucharist or isn’t he? Why would he choose such words when literal drinking of blood was prohibited in Judaism and perhaps also in early Christianity?

Here’s what I think. I think that unless we wrestle with Jesus, gnaw on who he is and what he means to our faith and what difference his life made and still makes, unless we take him in and spit him out and take him in again, it’s true that we can’t have eternal life. And by eternal life, I don’t mean some life waiting for us in heaven, after death. I mean unless we take Jesus in, gnaw on what we believe and what we don’t believe about him, chew on what he says, consume his words, we can’t have the eternal life that comes from knowing that God is here, all the time here; and here in your heart, all the time here; and here in the world, no matter what happens in the world; and here in your head, even when none of it makes sense and even when the world’s events conspire to lessen our faith and to make us wonder if God has gone away, or worse yet, to wonder if God has died somehow or maybe just to wonder if the concept of God, ever-present sovereign, here with us, has become a concept that is irrelevant.

The words of Jesus as written by John were written in a time when a good portion of the earliest Christians were Jewish Christians. So they had continued to worship, as followers of Jesus, in their synagogues right alongside their brothers, and maybe sisters, in Judaism. Everything—both Judaism and Christianity—was in flux then, evolving. And in the time of the writing of John’s Gospel, the earliest Christians had experienced a horrible event: the sudden edict that they were expelled from the synagogue, no longer able to worship with their Jewish peers because of their Christian belief in Jesus. It was a crisis for those Christians to lose that connection. It was a severe break. And so John’s Gospel has words of strong assurance. It’s as though Jesus is saying to them, “I am the real deal, over and above Moses.” “I am the living bread. The bread I offer I will give for the life of the world. And it will last forever, not like the manna that fed the people in Moses’ time. That food didn’t last, and those ancestors of yours didn’t last either. In other words, I’m not a miracle worker. I don’t perform magic. I offer myself for the life of the world—my flesh for the life of the world—and if you don’t take me in and chew on me and realize that I am in this world and in everything and in every incident and in you, there is no way possible you will have the kind of eternal life that comes from knowing there is no longer any separation between you and God, none—no space, no separation, no matter how unworthy you feel and how much you doubt and how far away you’ve wandered. If you gnaw on me—participate that closely with me—you become part of me, part of God Almighty, and I, God, become part of you.” The message is that there is no distance between the Lord and the faithful. The real Jesus is too close for comfort. The reality of God—the reality of Jesus—can be held in the hand and eaten. And it will last forever. It will sustain forever. It is bread that lasts.

Maybe you read about the Maurice Lennell cookie business being closed forever. Maurice Lennell cookie fans are devastated—and scrambling to buy up the remaining packages that exist. Those cookies carry with them tradition and memories of all sorts, but even they haven’t lasted. That food doesn’t endure, just as the manna in the wilderness, as saving as it was, didn’t endure. The food that Jesus invites us to gnaw on and consume is the food that lasts, and that’s the food of taking Jesus in, knowing that God is a part of you, everywhere and always.

There is a joke I’ve heard my Catholic friends tell about the Eucharist: It’s not so hard to believe that the wafer they receive is Jesus’ body; actually it’s way more difficult to believe that the little thin wafer they receive is really bread. I find that it’s a lot easier for us to believe that Jesus is God—something other than us, distant from us—than it is for us to believe that God is human, chose to become human, is actually part of us. We love to spiritualize everything. It helps us distance God. But to believe that God is in us, that something of each of us is divine, that the divine is in everyone, that God is here with us all the time—that’s another story. To grapple with the concept that there is a spark of the divine in us—the same spark that originated in creation eons ago, that connects us with the cosmos and the universe and the God who created that universe, that we are all part of that—that’s hard to swallow, no matter how much we chew on those thoughts.

Meister Eckhart, a theologian and German mystic born in 1260, said, “Every creature is a word of the divine.” That’s you. That’s me. Each one of us a word of the divine because God so chooses to become one of us if we will let it be so. Eckhart also said, “Until you realize you are God, you will not be happy or free.” I’m not God by myself, equal to the God above all gods, but I am of God and God is in me. You, too. It’s what Jesus is saying. Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Get down and dirty with me. Wrestle with me, but know that I am God and I am here with you and ready to be closer than close to you, to become part of you. The very God of creation wants to become part of you and me.

Perhaps it all has to do with waking up. Waking up and living, not as unwise people but as wise people, like the words from Proverbs and Lady Wisdom spell out. Turn in here, even you who are simple. Come, Lady Wisdom said, eat my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed, and lay aside immaturity and live and walk in the way of insight. Maybe it all has to do with waking up and receiving. Waking up to a world crying out for love and reconciliation. Waking up to your interconnectedness with the whole of creation.

Calum, a longtime and former pastor here, once told a story in one of his sermons about a guru. A guru asked his disciples how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun. One said, “When you see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it is a cow or a horse.” “No,” said the guru. “When you look at a tree in the distance and can tell if it is a neem tree or a mango tree.” “Wrong again,” said the guru. “Well then, what is it?” asked his disciples. “When you look into the face of any man and recognize your brother in him; when you look into the face of any woman and recognize in her your sister. If you cannot do this, no matter what time it is by the sun, it is still night.”

Eat my flesh. Drink my blood. Know that I am in you and you are in me and therefore connected to the world and all that is in it. Could it be that’s what these verses mean?

Vicky and I attended a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, a couple of weeks ago, and one of the songs sung at that conference keeps going through my head.

By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one. The air that is my breath is the air that you are breathing, and the air that is your breath is the air that I am breathing. . . . The water that is my blood, my sweat, tears from crying, is the water that is your blood, your sweat, tears from crying, and the rising of the tide is in our veins and in the ocean wide. . . . The earth is dust, the earth is clay, flowers blossoming and fading; we are dust, we are clay, we are blossoming and fading; every color, every sound, every place is holy ground, every living thing, can you hear it loud, can you hear it sing? . . . The fire in my heart my soul flame burning is the fire in your heart, your soul flame burning; we are spirit burning bright by the light of day, in the dark of night, we are shining like the sun, like the moon, like the holy one—by breath, by blood, by body, by spirit, we are all one. (Sara Thomsen, “By Breath Finally,” from the album By Breath)

Finally, from Julian of Norwich, another mystic, her words of reflection on finding revelation in something as tiny and simple as a hazelnut:

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.

Amen.