Sermon August 16, 2015

Christ Church, Eureka

Lets look carefully at this conversation with Jesus and those who were
listening to him and trying to make sense of what he was saying. It was,
frankly, outrageous. Jesus wasnt creating a simple metaphor to make Holy
Communion understandable. He was either saying something so deeply
essential to life that he could only give glimpses of it in extreme language
or he needed intense psychiatric care. He was throwing down a serious
challenge then and now that we need to consider carefully whether to
take up and carry each day.
As weve read through the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John
during these past few weeks, weve seen a Jesus who is not easy to
understand. Weve met a Jesus who, frankly, is unnerving.
Through Johns account, weve seen Jesus who:
Takes a tiny offering of bread and fish and feeds a multitude
of people, leaving plenty of leftovers.
Walks across a wildly stormy lake in the middle of the night,
then transcends time and distance to move a boatful of
terrified people instantly to the shore.
Promises, in the face of starvation and famines all over the
world and throughout the centuries that those who trust
him will never go hungry.
Announces that if people eat his flesh and drink his blood
they will live forever.
John has not presented us with gentle Jesus, meek and mild who just
wants us to be nice people. He shows us Jesus who, in every way possible,
makes it abundantly clear that his whole life, his teachings and miracles,
his suffering, death and resurrection are central to life as he wants to give it
to us. He longs to guide us as we make the daily choice to live and share
the life he offers.
The Jesus to whom John introduces us does not use the body and blood
language merely for attention-getting shock value. Rather he uses such
graphic language to help us glimpse the powerful Reality it invokes.
Certainly it does have all kinds of shock value. UCC pastor Martin
Copenhaver tells the story of one Sunday in his congregation as they

celebrated Holy Communion. The communion table was draped, as

always, in starched linen and set with silver chalices and plates and crystal
flagon And On [this] occasion, he writes, when I repeated Jesus familiar
words, This is my body, broken for you; this is my blood, shed for you a
small girl suddenly said in a loud voice, Ew, yuk! The congregation looked
horrified, he continues, as if someone had splattered blood all over the
altar which, in effect, is just what the little girl had done with her
exclamation.
Its an appropriate response, primarily because the child was taking it all
with the kind of seriousness that is worth emulating. The language of eating
Jesus body and drinking Jesus blood reflects an overwhelming truth. In
ways we cant begin to comprehend, Jesus life and death among us give
us the inner resources to bring down the otherwise impassible barriers of
fear, pride, resentment and so on that are between us and God and
between us and others. Some barriers we construct ourselves. Some are
built by cultural, financial, and other factors. But by Gods love and our
cooperation the barriers can be broken. The hungry can be fed. We can
live and share now in the eternal love and life for which we are created. We
can only be part of the ongoing breaking down of those barriers if we enter
into the depth and reality of relationship that is implied when we are invited
to eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus, the Christ.
Please bear with me. There really are no words to say what Im struggling
to convey. I went to the Catechism in the back of the Book of Common
Prayer to see if those descriptions could do a better job, but no such luck.
The compilers of that review of the faith are stuck with ordinary words, too.
They tell us that By his obedience, even to suffering and death, . . . we are
freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God.
True, as far as it goes. It is also true as another part of the Catechism that
tells us the grace of Holy Communion is received by faith. But to
understand it?
Ive been trying to find my own words, my own images, and not having
success. I am as certain as it is possible to be that in that bread and wine
that are consecrated as we gather and remember and pray together, the
incredible love and reality of God is powerfully present to us. We are being
fed and nourished with what we need to break down barriers and to carry
that love beyond the walls of this church. I am deeply persuaded that the
essence of Jesus Christ is in that sacrament in ways we cannot understand
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but can receive anyhow. As we continue to be so nourished, if we receive

the nourishment with the willingness to be changed, we will continue to
grow into the image and likeness of Christ and love as he loves. I am
grateful for the language of Body and Blood, because they reflect a Reality
so intense, a giving so complete that they challenge me to take more
seriously what we are doing, what we are receiving, and how we are
responding.
The passionate love that flared forth in the creation of everything that has
ever and will ever exist is the same Love who then entered that creation as
one of us. That Love is given to us, in part, through that bite of bread and
sip of wine. We cant prove it, and we cant fully define or understand it, but
we can choose to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and keep on living
into that overwhelming, challenging love.