“Eat His Flesh? Drink His Blood?”

John 6:24-35

Please forgive me for using some silly words as a way of entering into a very serious subject. The refrain of one of my favorite John Prine songs seems appropriate today: “Please don’t bury me down in that cold, cold ground. I’d rather have you cut me up and pass me all around.” You have to hear the entire song in order to appreciate its off-the-wall humor. Otherwise the words just sound gruesome.

Speaking of gruesome, let’s take a look at today’s sermon title. Eat his flesh. Drink his blood. Take away the question marks and you have what could be the title of some horror movie about cannibals and vampires. Historically speaking some folks did understand those words in such gruesome terms. In the very early days of the Church Christians were rumored to be cannibals. Non-Christians overheard or heard about the Words of Institution from the Lord’s Supper, “My body broken for you; take and eat. My blood poured out for you; take and drink,” put two and two together, and came up with five. In their minds they were picturing dead bodies being cut up and passed around for supper.

How absurd. You know, I know, we all know that upon his death nobody cut up the body of Jesus and passed it around. We are neither cannibals nor vampires. We are brothers and sisters in Christ who obey our Lord’s admonition to celebrate his Supper until he comes again. We do this in his memory. We do not literally eat his flesh or drink his blood. Never have. Never will.

The elements of Communion are plain old ordinary bread and plain old ordinary wine: wine not grape juice, but that’s another sermon for another day. The elements of Communion are special only because they are being used for a special purpose. They do not somehow become our Lord’s actual flesh or blood. The leftovers from the Communion Service do not have to be treated in any sort of special way within the context of our Presbyterian theology and practice of the Sacraments.

That theology makes it very clear that the real presence of Christ is not with us in either the loaf or the cup. Christ is with us - by the power of the Holy Spirit. His Supper is a means of grace for us. During it we remember – and celebrate - his death on the cross for us. We also remember - and celebrate - his resurrection from the dead. We receive a foretaste of heaven as the Communion Table represents the great banquet table in the realized Kingdom of God.

Why so much discussion of Communion today? It’s not a Communion Sunday. Our text does not take place at the end of our Lord’s earthly ministry but in the middle of it. Jesus does not speak in an upper room in Jerusalem. Jesus says what he says in a synagogue in Capernaum following the feeding of the 5,000. And yet those words echo those our Lord spoke in the upper room on the night of his betrayal.

If we carefully read John’s account of what took place in the upper room we will discover that Jesus does not utter the Words of Institution there as he does in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So what’s going on? Is today’s text a preview of that Passover meal? Does it reflect some unique expression of John’s particular theological and historical perspective? Nobody knows. What we do know is that in today’s text, Jesus uses language that is most often related to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We cannot interpret this text without understanding it in sacramental terminology.

So what did Jesus really mean in his various Gospel statements about eating his flesh and drinking his blood? Obviously he is not speaking literally. He was not advocating the cutting up and passing around of his body for supper. Nor was he advocating that his blood be drained from his body and used to wash down that supper.

In today’s text Jesus speaks in terms that parallel his words in the 15^th chapter of John’s Gospel: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” The key word is “abide.” The eating and drinking Jesus is referring to here is the process by which we take Christ into our innermost being – into our heart. It is something we do not do lightly. To abide in Christ is to have abundant and eternal life. When we accept his invitation to take him into our hearts, we are promising him that we are with him for the long-term. We are going to abide in him. He is going to abide in us. Our lives will be fruitful in terms of the Kingdom. In our lives we will incarnate Christ to the world. As William Barclay paraphrases the words of Jesus, “You must stop thinking of me as a subject for theological debate; you must take me into you, and you must come into me; and then you will have real life.”

Earlier I referred to Communion as a celebration of our Lord’s atoning death and life-giving resurrection. But in his command to eat his body and drink his blood, Jesus is also talking about his incarnation as the Word made flesh. William Barclay also paraphrased the words of Jesus in today’s text thusly: “Feed your heart, feed your mind, feed your soul on the thought of my [coming to you as the Word made flesh]. When you are discouraged and in despair, when you are beaten to your knees and disgusted with life and living – remember I took that life of yours and these struggles of yours on me.”

Jesus came as the Word made flesh to reveal in himself the very essence of God. As he walked among us he displayed the very mind and heart of God. He lived and taught the will of God, in the process showing us what it takes to be a real human being. He exercised God’s power in ways that gave health back to those who had lost it and freedom to those bound up in the chains of sin and evil. He exercised God’s mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and love.

Along the way he experienced the human experience fully. He laughed and cried. He knew love and acceptance. He also experienced hate and rejection. He got tired to the point of exhaustion. He knew what it meant to work for a living and pay taxes. He had to deal with economic and political realities. He sweat real sweat and bled real blood. He got dirty. He got hungry. He battled temptation. He dealt with the demonic. He suffered. And he died. His body was broken for us. His blood was spilled for us. He went through hell for us. And in rising again he made heaven a possibility for us. He was not and is not just one more topic of theological debate.

Getting back to Communion. John Calvin taught that it should be celebrated every Sunday morning as part of the regular worship service. His teaching – our Presbyterian teaching – is that the celebration of the Sacraments is equal in its importance to the preaching of the Word. There are those who have told me that Communion detract s from the sermon. No it doesn’t. In a sense it completes it. Communion is not an addendum to the worship service. It is part of it. When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he didn’t mean occasionally. The Lord’s Supper reminds of who Jesus is and what he has done. The Lord’s Supper reminds us that we are to abide in Jesus even as we open our hearts for him to abide in us. The Lord’s Supper is a means of grace in that it strengthens our faith and gives us the sustenance we need to truly abide in Christ.

In closing let us take to heart these words of wisdom from the 1973 Proposed Declaration of Faith: “We believe that at the Lord’s Supper the community of believers is renewed by the memory of Christ’s life and death, by his real presence by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the promise of his coming again. Christ makes himself known to us in the breaking of bread. He offers his body broken for our sake and his blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. We accept his promises and gifts and depend on his life to sustain ours. In turn we offer ourselves in thanksgiving to the risen Lord who has conquered death. So we celebrate his victory here and now and anticipate the joyous feast in his coming kingdom. Reunited around one loaf and cup, we receive strength and courage to continue our pilgrimage with God in the world.”

As Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Amen.