Sometimes when I read the Gospel lesson for a given Sunday, I have to remind myself of the deeper meaning of the words. When I read the lesson for today where
Jesus talks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, I had to remember this is not about literal cannibalism but about something far deeper. Today we will to go back to our catechism to help understand the discussion about Jesus’ words for this day.
Let us pray. We ask gracious God to open our hearts to the true meaning of Holy Communion, this becoming one with you and what that means for us as your people. Open us to you, O God we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
John, our Gospel writer does not repeat the story of the Last Supper like the other Gospel writers. John is doing what he so often does. He is not giving the actual words of Jesus. He has been thinking the Last Supper now for thirty five plus years. Words of what Jesus said: and now, led by the Holy Spirit, he is giving the Inner Significance of Jesus words. John is relaying the essential meaning of the words through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
These words place us in the middle of an argument between Jesus and the crowd and the Jewish leaders again.
This discussion about following Jesus, about Him being the bread from heaven and eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Jesus means what He says, He said it not once, but twice to make sure we hear His words.
Think about it, when was the last time you really paid close attention to the words of Jesus when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper or the Sacrament of the Altar as Martin Luther refers to in the small catechism?
Here we are in this fourth week of talking about the bread of life that we finally encounter the heart of it all. In these verses we beginning to recognize just what is at stake for Jesus…just how much we are worth to Him. In these verses, he offers to us his very own flesh and blood, the flesh which will be stretched upon the cross for our sake, the blood which will flow freely from his hands, feet, and side, also for our sake.
Let’s start with some basics as we work through this understanding of the The Eucharist, Holy Communion, The Lord’s Supper or the Sacrament of the Altar. We read these explanations in Martin Luther’s catechism:
What is the Sacrament of the Altar?
It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink.
Where is this written?
The holy Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and St. Paul write: Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples and said: “Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.”
In the same way also He took the cup after supper, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
What is the benefit of this eating and drinking?
These words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” show us that in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.
To go one step further, the Augsburg Confession, one of our Lutheran faith documents, says, “the true body and blood of Christ are truly present in, through and under the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper and are distributed and received there.” Think of it this way: If you have a piece of clay and you take a bit of mud and add it to the clay, the mud becomes part of the clay. This is the idea of Real Presence of Christ in the elements of the Holy Communion meal. Jesus becomes a part of, in through and under, the bread and wine. The technical word is consubstantiation, that is, like concurrent, parallel with, assimilation in.
It doesn’t end there however. When we participate in this Sacrament, the real presence of Jesus becomes a part of us.
It would be like a really good book you have on your bookshelf at home. If the book just sits on the shelf and never gets read, it is external to you. Once you read the book, the great lines and thoughts that are a part of it, things that stick in your memory, then that book becomes a part of you.
When Jesus speaks of giving us his flesh and blood, the words “flesh and blood” is a Hebrew idiom which refers to the whole person, hearts, minds, spirit, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, concerns, everything.
In Jesus, you see, the whole of God meets us, to love, redeem, and sustain the whole of who we are, good, bad, and ugly.
Flesh and blood constitute human life, so Jesus claims that he is giving his flesh and blood through death so that people might have life. This act of sacrifice, this offering of his very self, is a testament to his love and devotion to us, and it fills our hearts with gratitude and reverence. This meal is not primarily about the the bread and wine it. Its primary focus is about Jesus himself as the food of eternal life from the Father.
John has something different in mind with the phrase “eternal life.” This life is available to believers in the present and not only in the future. Jesus says “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life” (John 6:54) and “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47). The verbs are present tense. The life Jesus brings, is here and now is in each of us.
God comes for our whole selves. In one sense, this sums up all of John’s testimony to Christ. When we receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to our bones and courses through our veins. He can no more be taken from us than last Tuesday’s breakfast can by plucked from our body.”
This bread of life is not about flour, water and yeast.
Jesus is about God dwelling among us. It is about a gift from Jesus, from God to give each of us life, life eternal. God loves us that much. This is the promise which God makes to us in this Sacrament; to be one with us and for us forever, to stick with us and even in us no matter what.
In a few minutes we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and in this meal, God comes to us once again to offer us a promise made so concrete and so solid that we can touch and feel, taste and eat it.
For, here, again, in these common physical elements, we have God’s promise that God not only cares about our births and deaths, our marriages and our jobs, our successes and our failures, but that God has also joined God’s own self to us, through Christ, the Word made flesh and given for us.
Amen,