Sermon for Sunday 16th August 2009

“I’ll head up first. The topping lift is on the left and the halyard on the right. Don’t forget to tighten the kicker and the outhaul. I’ll bear away to port and sheet in the main in, then we’ll tack and put the genny up.” If you have ever sailed those will be pretty straightforward instructions. But if you’ve never been on a boat you would think I was talking complete nonsense. The same is true of so many things, from music to football, economics to bellringing, you need to understand both the activity and the language that goes with it.

Listening to the gospel reading this morning, someone who had never been taught about Christianity and the church would find Jesus’ words shocking. There is something cannibalistic about his instruction to eat his body and his blood. But although this passage is rather more graphic than other similar bible passages, we are not shocked or offended. Because we know about holy communion. So when we hear Jesus talk about flesh, and about him being living bread – we think of the bread of our communion. And when he talks of people needing to drink his blood, we take it as referring to the wine. We understand the message that we need Jesus within as if he were our food.

Jesus was speaking before the last supper and his resurrection. John’s gospel was written at the time when the first Christians were already celebrating communion. So he would have known that his readers would interpret the texts as we do. But that does not take away from how shocking Jesus words would have been to his Jewish audience. The Jewish laws made them particularly sensitive to issues around food. They recalled that God had saved their ancestors by feeding them in the wilderness. And Jewish kosher rituals ensured that they never consumed the blood of animals. So Jesus’ claims would potentially have been extremely offensive.

But Jesus, as ever, knew what he was doing and saying. He needed to take people completely out of their current mindsets and reshape them to be as God intended them to be. Because people were avoiding the strength of his message. They were intrigued by his teaching and convinced by his miracles, but they wanted to come, listen and then go on as before. Happy to have him as their leader even, but on their terms and conforming to their way of doing things.

Jesus’ dramatic message was that the only way to come close to God was through him. That however faithful their past attempts had been and would be in the future, they were bound to fail due to human weakness and vanity. The message is the same as that given later in the well known words from John 14 – I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me you will know my father also.

The temptation that we still face today is the desire to mould our faith to our own lifestyles and preferences rather than the other way around. The gospel of Jesus Christ can be watered down so that it becomes comfortable and palatable. But the message of Jesus is that at times authentic faith will be distinctly uncomfortable. It challenges our assumptions and habits. It will demand that we change our ways of thinking and our priorities in life.

But we are not left alone to do this by ourselves. And this is where the heart of Jesus’ message lies. God gave us Jesus Christ for the very reason that left to our own devices we lose our way in life. With Jesus within we can withstand the onslaughts; we can see what is important and ignore the trivial. In speaking of his blood and body, Jesus emphasises the sacrificial nature of his love. That he has been through all that we go through and worse, much worse. Hated, rejected, tortured – and still loving us all. With the depth and strength of that love, we are entirely safe. We just need to be drawn to him.

Inviting Jesus within is an act of faith. That faith is God given. Our gospel last week reminded us that this initiative of faith is not ours but God’s – ‘No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me’.

Today Jesus is giving us the instructions we need to respond to God’s gift of faith... He uses the analogy that to live our physical lives we need food to survive – to live our spiritual lives we need the food we are given in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Not physical food, because those needs we can satisfy our selves, but spiritual food because we need to be constantly fed by Jesus. This food is not simply an offer that we may choose to take or refuse. The message of Jesus is that this food is as essential to our lives with God as real food is to our survival.

Jesus uses metaphors and analogies because it’s so hard to put into words how it feels to have God inside our lives. Making love central to everything we do. When Ann and I came back from France on the ferry, we sat near a young family with

two deaf parents. They did not have the words to express themselves fully to their children. But the love pouring between them and the children and between the sisters and brother was evident for all to see.

Our sharing in this service of holy communion, not just the bread and wine, but the word, praise and prayer as well, is one way in which we get beyond words as God reaches out to us. Through our worship God’s love pours out to us and between us. We receive the spiritual food we need to live, not just with ourselves and each other, but with God. We may not, for the time being receive the wine as well as the bread, but the intention remains the same – the bringing of God right into the centre of our lives. Reminding ourselves on a weekly basis, that we are reliant on God and on God’s presence within to be whole.

On commentator wrote of today’s gospel - “The message of Jesus is that feeding on him is our only hope … We live wholly dependent upon the life of Jesus, which is the life of God, the source of all life.”

© Robert Jenkins August 2009