John 6
Throughout this year, I've been gathering with
a small group of pastors and reading women's
theology from around the world in a
conversation guided by Deanna Thompson, who teaches theology at Hamline
University and is a member of Gloria Dei, one of our sister congregations here
in Saint Paul. It's been a good reminder of things I've learned two decades
ago... How important it is for us to hear images of God that come from women's
voices and experiences... Even here at Christ, where we hear women preach a
lot, we still can be a little over-focused because of our tradition, liturgy
and songs in male images for God. This small group was a good reminder and
challenged me, not only by the images I knew but some that were totally new.
Like this story Deanna shared with us about a book for her upcoming semester course called Holy Fast, Holy Feast[1] about medieval sisters who would eat nothing but the communion wafer (they ate no other food at all)… Why? Because of the depth of their belief that within this body of Christ was all that they needed to live.
Now, my first reaction to this story was... Ugh. I wish these sisters could have known that God is present in all of creation... A blueberry, a potato, a bowl of oats... God is present there, too. But on the other hand, these devout sisters certainly took the images of John 6 totally to heart... For them, eating the bread of life was not only "you are what you eat" in the ways that serious nutritionists and healthy people know to be true... But it was an extreme desire to become more and more like Christ. I imagine that they thought, “If all I eat is Christ, I cannot help but become more like Christ.”
And this is another way these sisters captured a part of the heart of John's gospel—that they took in very deeply how life with Christ begins right now, in real time, in the present, in the everyday. It's not just a future promise... Although eternal life is mentioned in John 6, it’s really about a deep relationship with God that is past, present and future. It begins, it's renewed every time we share Christ, and it never ends... Now and even beyond death.
Maybe at this point, it's good to say out loud that this passage from John is gross at some level. Chewing on flesh, drinking blood... Particularly for the vegans in our midst, this is hard to stomach. You’re not alone if you get a visceral response. This practice of eating the body and blood of Jesus was very suspicious for the neighbors of Christians from the very beginning... What are you doing? What are you saying? It was at about this point of Jesus insisting that people eat him that disciples started flooding away from Jesus... Maybe because we're so used to the idea of communion or because we rely heavily on metaphor, we don't feel it as shocking... But many of us have seen the shock through the widened eyes of a child or heard with a newcomer who hears the words "This is my body, this is my blood..." for the first time, and turns in surprise to another, "Wait…. what did the pastor just say?"
Another problem in the part of the story we read today is how exclusive it can sound, and how it has been used to exclude.... “Unless you do this, you have no life.” Generally, we don't like ultimatums, and we don't like it when it sounds like the God we know in Jesus as "the great includer" appears to be setting up walls... So what do we make of this? How is this good news?
Here’s where I go next... Backward.To the manna God provided... For those who were really hungry. Aren't we really hungry?I think back...to the life-giving power of God to provide for a weary-to-death prophet a loaf of bread and a jug of oil and an angel to say, "Eat, faithful, frightened ones, because otherwise, you won't have enough energy to go all the way on this journey. And then, after a little more rest, again that invitation, "Wake up & eat, you’ll need this, this is what’s going to sustain you for the days ahead."
This particular part about Jesus own body and blood is very physical. It's as physical as feeling your baby's spine across your stomach before birth... I remember the sense of wonder realizing that I could feel each of the bones of my baby's spine, her body forming and moving within my body...It's as physical as the fear that shoots through my nervous systems as a fleet of flashing lights and sirens goes around me on all sides, and I stop & watch as another young Black man is taken away in handcuffs, and I feel like I can't drive away because the life of every person involved, but especially his, is so valuable and fragile and hanging in the balance in these violent days.It's as physical as resting a hand on the paper-thin skin of your grandmother's forehead as she is in the midst of her last labored breaths.
Another friend of mine recently lost his mother...just 68 years old...also cancer.
He’s a pastor... And the reflections he's written have been very beautiful, about his mom and dad, who have both given their lives to music and church and to witness to the inclusive love of God. After his mom’s beautiful life and her beautiful funeral came this beautiful story and image... Of taking her funeral flowers and putting them on the compost pile because that is how death brings new life. But you know what he told me privately? Actually, this is as low as he’s ever been. Yes, the flowers were beautiful but the compost still stinks. Death stinks, it’s still ugly and horrible. My friend doesn't want to be lifted up right now, what is powerful for him about Jesus' promise of eternal life is that God comes down. There is no depth so great that Christ hasn't or won't go there.
Jesus promises to be in the bread and cup because we are forgetful people. We need to be reminded again and again through life's joys and fears and deepest grief that God abides with us all the time. God never leaves us. Even though there is nowhere where God is not, God-in-flesh is as close as the sweet Hawaiian bread or gluten free wafer we're about to chew on...
We consume Christ and become Christ, not fully we know... But more fully, so that the way we love and abide with one another would day after day show Christ to the whole, broken and beautiful world.
Manna fell to people who we're starving.
The actual body of Christ is for us because of God's deep love for our actual body, our actual blood. The actual blood on the sidewalk two blocks from my friend's home after the most recent shooting this summer matters to Christ and so it matters to us.
And we come together to receive the body and become the body so that we will more deeply sense how we are all so connected... In death, in life, in the middle of sirens, at the birth, at the compost heap... We are the body of Christ, part of how God comes down and lives in and with us.
Susan Hylen who writes for Working Preacher this week says...
"Those who abide with (Christ) share in the creative force of the God who brought all things into being."[3] This is a wonderful invitation to new and eternal life, and we will keep practicing because that kind of creative, body and soul force is ongoing, needed, daily…
Deanna, who gathered us to talk about women and
life and faith, also has incurable cancer. She's been living with stage four
cancer or in one of three remissions for the past nine years. When you have
cancer that is so invasive that breaks your back and pelvis bones, it's
serious... She’s written three books about her experiences and the newest one
is just out.[2]
She writes in that one that she spent that first Christmas-with-cancer picking
out her burial plot with her husband...and never expected to live to today.
We don’t have to have a good attitude for Christ
to come down… in fact, God comes to us just as we are, bad attitude and all.
Come and eat the bread of life today…
Christ promises to be here, so that we can
recognize Christ everywhere.
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