Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
August 15, 2021
15 Proper B
Some years ago, I was doing a Bible study on this morning’s
gospel lesson with a group of bright, theologically astute middle school
students. You have really not lived
until you have talked with 7th and 8th graders about
Jesus and what sounds a lot like cannibalism.
They were appalled at Jesus’ words “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The kids were as horrified as the people in
John’s gospel this morning and were no less shy about voicing their disgust.
In order to prevent a major rebellion among the kids and
rescue our conversation, I asked them to think of ways to express the depth of
a relationship or to describe great love.
They came up with ideas like devouring a novel, or sayings like “I could
just gobble that baby up.” They talked
about the way having a meal together was about more than just eating and
nourishing their bodies-this after they had just consumed a mind-boggling amount
of pizza and a large pan of brownies while we talked. Thinking about relationships and love naturally
brought them around to thinking about food.
In John’s gospel, there is no last supper where Jesus takes
bread, breaks it, gives it to his disciples and says “Take, eat, this is my
body given for you.” Jesus does not take
wine and say “Drink this all of you.
This is my blood, given for you.”
Those things happen in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that meal is described
in 1 Corinthians. But not in John’s
gospel. In John’s gospel, at the last
supper, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.
So when Jesus talks this morning about eating his flesh and drinking his
blood, he is up to something else, something even more outrageous.
Jesus is describing a relationship so organic and so
intimate than only the language of eating and drinking will suffice to explain
it. Jesus is describing a relationship
in which his followers are made one with him.
Through out John’s gospel, oneness with Jesus is a theme. Jesus will use the metaphor of the vine and
the branches later in John’s gospel when he says “I am the vine, you are the
branches. Those who abide in me and I in
them bear much fruit.” (John 15:5).
Jesus also says “In a little while, the world will no longer see me. But you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my
Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (14:19-20)
And “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy
may be complete.” (15:11) Over and over
again in John’s gospel, Jesus uses language that shows how deeply he and his
followers are connected. But none of
that language is as jarring as the language about eating flesh and drinking blood.
This morning, we also hear about God’s great love for David
and Solomon, and if this passage gave us all we know about David and Solomon we
could easily assume that they were perfect, easy to love people. God says about David “If you will walk in my
ways, keeping my statues and my commandments, as your father David walked, then
I will lengthen your life.” And God gives
Solomon the wisdom and discerning heart he asks for, plus a bonus of riches and
honor all his life. Solomon must be one
faithful guy. However, God seems to be experiencing a bit of divine
amnesia! Has God forgotten about David
and Bathsheba and the way David had Bathsheba’s husband killed in battle so he could
take Bathsheba as his wife? And in the verses
just prior to this morning’s reading from 1 Kings, Solomon has made a marriage
alliance with Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and he marries Pharaoh’s daughter. He
finishes building his own house before building God’s house, which means the
people had to make their sacrifices at the high places, the places of pagan
worship, since they had no temple of their own. We are told that Solomon, too,
sacrificed at the high places. Has God
completely forgotten what these two men have done? Or is God’s love so outrageous that God loves
these two men despite their faults?
Being connected with God, being loved by and loving God,
does not make us perfect. David and
Solomon clearly were not always perfect or right. Jesus’ disciples were not always perfect or
right. Jesus never asked or expected his
disciples, past or present to be perfect.
What the love of God and the depth of connection with Jesus give us is not
perfection, but an identity, an identity that transcends our own successes and
failures and is rooted entirely in the love of God. In the Episcopal Church, our baptismal
covenant spells out what that life of connection looks like. In the baptismal covenant, we are called to
corporate worship, to stay connected even when we have done wrong and would
prefer to flee, to seek and serve Christ in all people, to respect the dignity
of every human being, and to use our words and our lives to proclaim the gospel-the
good news that in the death and resurrection of Jesus we are all connected and
that love and life are more powerful than hate and death.
These days, the stresses of Covid-19 are working hard to
drive us apart and make us each more concerned about our own welfare and our
own desires than the common good. Arguments
over masks, vaccines, and what is safe and what is not are rampant in our
community and all over the country, making us look a bit more like David and
Solomon on their bad days, wanting to satisfy our own desires, than perhaps we
would like. In the midst of the stresses
and strains of our current life, we hear Jesus tell his followers that real
life, the depth and richness of eternal life, comes from a connection with him
that can only be described with the language of eating and drinking and that and
our true identity comes from that connection.
As horrified as those middle school students were at Jesus’ language
about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, much pizza and many brownies
later they realized that, as Christians, their identity comes from their
connection with Jesus and that their actions are a reflection of that
connection.
Amen.
