August 18, 2024

Walk in the Way of Insight:
A Sermon on John 6: 51-58

         Every now and again, we run across Gospel Readings that are, shall we say, awkward. Today’s fits that bill.  It’s one thing for Jesus to tell us that he is the living bread that came down from heaven, and that whoever eats this bread will live forever, but from a modern standpoint, things start going of the rails rapidly when Jesus repeatedly tells the crowd that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  And when I say repeatedly, I mean he says it three times.  

Now That’ll really make any party go.

         The horror of Jesus’s Jewish audience as captured in John’s Gospel is almost funny, but, to be fair, it’s far from unwarranted.  Think about it for a minute—Jesus is demanding that those two whom he is speaking must eat his flesh and drink his blood, or they have no life in them.  To his listeners, this must have sounded like cannibalism or a really odd death wish.  

         But this is what we get for being too literal—us, and Jesus’s crowd.  In the Ancient world, the notion that the physical form was the only way we encountered reality is simply untrue.  Philosophers from even before Plato and Aristotle would take that view as being shoddy and childlikethrought—that we could be so enmeshed in the appearances of the world, that we could not plumb its deeper meanings.

         The fundamental difficulty, of course, is that we American Christians in 2024 have one of two reactions to this very powerful—and very disturbing passage—when we read it or have read to us as part of the service, we can either simply nod to it as part of the Eucharistic formula, which we all know by heart, or we can try to briefly understand the reaction of Jesus’s audience.  

A literalist responding to Jesus’s invitation would be, quite appropriately, shocked.  Here is the rabbi that they crowd has heard so much about, and he seems to be speaking of cannibalism—killing and eating the rabbi to obtain his mana—not the manna fed to the Israelites on their journey from Egypt and into freedom, but the rabbi’s own Mana—that’s m-a-n-a—the rabbi’s own personal power and his mystical attributes.  In Jesus’s case, his miracles—or signs as John’s Gospel repeatedly refers to them are demonstrations not of Jesus’s own power—he’s not a showman, as witness his reluctance to do as his mother Mary asks him  and change water into wine at the Wedding of Cana—He does it, but not in a dramatic way; rather he quietly  demonstrates a significant change in the world while he is in it.

         During his ministry, Jesus is able to transform or transmute objects in a way that recognizes that the world of appearances– is the world we see through our sensory organs: sight, touch, taste, smell and so on. 

Since the coming of the Messiah was sometimes associated with Passover, the Passover meal had certain characteristics of the messianic banquet.  But in this passage he is, according to Biblical scholar Raymond Brown, showing that the banquet given to the five thousand just before Passover was messianic in a way that they had not recognized: It was a sign that Wisdom has come to give food for all who seek.  

 Jesus’s ability to draw forth from these objects what Aristotle would call their telos, that is, their innate essence.  Likewise, as Plato argued that there must be a suprasensible world above and beyond this world of appearances, so too Jesus is able to reveal the essence of objects in a mystical way.  

Now, I’ve used the word mystical twice already, and probably we should have a glance at it.  When we are discussing a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence, we are looking at a kind of reality that is not bounded by our physical perceptions or our experiential lives.  So, for example, the mystical food of the sacrament—at the very core of Jesus’s statements in this reading—is not looking at bread as baked loaves or wine as fermented grapes.  

Instead, we are looking past the appearances and looking at their true essences in Jesus’s hands.  And what are those essences?  Perhaps it is as simple as nourishment, not just of bodily hunger and thirst, but fulfillment of the need to be fed spiritually and emotionally—to be healed from the damage caused by the world, and to be embraced in the love of God.    

Jesus is acting here as the revealer, the divine teacher who has come to nourish those who are hungry and are willing to be fed.  When he tells his listeners that those who believe in him are shall never be hungry or thirsty, he is telling them—and us!—that under all theses metaphors of bread, water, and life—to say nothing of flesh and blood—he is referring to the same reality, a reality which once possessed makes women and men see natural hunger, thirst, and even death, second order problems.

We are the guests, after all, offered a seat at the table with Jesus, who offers to feed us, if only we are willing to join him at the table.  

But this isn’t just any meal—it is a mystical event, a meal that we recur to time and time again, because the meal never ends, and we are always welcome to return.  

Jesus tells those who are still listening to him that he is the living bread that came down from heaven, and that unless we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, we have no life in us.  We cannot just disregard this repeated statement, and so perhaps if we are wise we can turn to Wisdom for help.  Like Jesus, Wisdom calls all of us to eat her bread, to drink the wine she has mixed, and to join with those who know their frailties to sit at her table and to lay immaturity and live, and then, she offers another gift, inviting us to walk in the way of insight.

In other words, Wisdom, this female version of Divine Revelation, is seeking our good by teaching us to reach a new maturity and to live, walking in the way of Insight.  Or, more simply, Wisdom offers the simple—I’m afraid that’s me, and, quite possibly all of us—a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, but not just of the world.  

Wisdom offers insight, which means a better path to understand our own fragile and failing selves, and calls us to learn from her and reach the fullness of understanding.

         Yet what is the living bread from heaven? What is the blood of Christ that we share in Holy Communion every time we gather together?  We are sometimes drawn astray by our own literalism.  What do we receive when we eat the bread and drink from the cup? Is it a flat little wafer and an almost infinitesimal sample of St. Bart’s very good port wine? 

         No, we are brought into a mystical union with Jesus, because we align ourselves with his sacrifice for us, and receiving, we accept that mystical bond between each of us who eats and drinks at this feast.  By following Jesus in the drinking of his blood and eating of his flesh, we embrace the meal, and the gift of eternal life.  By joining the feast we share in Jesus’s mana, his life, death, and his sacrifice.  In a very real sense, it is an agape meal—a love feast.  

We encounter in the Eucharist the essence of Jesus, under appearances of bread and wine, but offering far more than that in the reality that is truly life.  So we return again and again, not because the effect of the food and drink Jesus gives us is temporal, but because at the feast we are united with all the followers and friends of Jesus, and the banquet includes us too.