Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life…As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so also the one who eats me will live because of me.
The one who eats me will live.
These are strong words, and strange: it is striking that in the most abstract of the Gospels, Jesus speaks here with such concreteness. Why is it the flesh that matters? Why is it body and blood that we have to do with, in the Eucharist, in the story of salvation?
As I was thinking about this a memory popped into my mind—my little brother Michael, age about 3. My little brother Michael is now quite a big man; he keeps business executives in line at Ivey School of Business. But one day when he was 3 and still quite tiny, all skinny arms and legs and energy and the most contagious giggle I have ever heard; one day this little guy climbed up on our orange brocade stool wearing almost nothing but my mother’s grandest hat, and crossed his legs and crossed his arms and announced with a grin as big as his face, “I a wee, wee god!”
It was pretty cute—but it strikes me today that in his 3-year-old glee my little brother spoke true, both as to sin and as to grace, the great grace of God that wraps us round.
For 3-year-olds are not alone in claiming their tiny thrones. It is the problem at the heart of all history. Why did Eve take the fruit, after all? “And the serpent said, ‘You shall not die. You shall be as gods…” This is where the damage starts, the crack that becomes a chasm, the gap between our way and God’s, our will and God’s will, the loss of the closer walk with God.
I a wee wee god: and I shall sit on my own small throne and rule my kingdom of one, and I shall not turn with joy in my heart to the sound of God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.
This is the problem at the heart of history; it is the way our life is lost.
For God has made us for himself; all our fresh springs are in him (let the singers and the dancers say), and without him we are lost, even on a throne.
We are the hollow men, headpiece filled with straw.
I a wee, wee god.
This is, however not all. For my little brother in his three-year-old glee got it right, too.
So God created man in his image;
In the image of God he created them;
Male and female he created them.
In our bodies we carry the image of God. It is God who has made us and we are his.
It is always so much fun, when a baby is born, to see the faces of the parents in unexpected ways reflected in the child, a chin here, an eyebrow there; the ears; the nose. And as they grow, the way they share mannerisms, the way they say the same things; the way they smile or hold their head; kids, my Mom pointed out long ago, usually walk exactly like their Dad! Children are in so many ways the “spit tin’ image” of their Mom and Dad.
And this is not just because they share their genes, but because they share their life and their love. It is the life together, the home where laughter is shared and tears, day in and day out, the long ordinary years lived together in love: it is in the life together that the image is forged, little by little and deeply, without our really knowing it.
So, too, with God. It is God who has made us in the overflowing of his love, and we are his. We are meant to live in his love all the days of our life. It is in living with God day in and day out, listening to his Word, day in and day out coming to his table; it is in the daily walk with him that we become who we are meant to be. It is in the long love that we are formed in God’s image. In his image he made them in the outpouring of his love, so that we may grow more and more into the likeness of that love.
We are each of us the child of God, beloved and lovely, made to shine with His life, made to be lifted up in his Love to the very throne of heaven.
This is who we are. God has made us for himself.
This is what we have lost in clambering up upon our own tiny thrones, in preferring our own company to the walk with God.
This is what we have lost. And this is what Jesus comes to offer us once again.
I am the bread that comes down from heaven, Jesus says. The living Father sent me. I live because of him, “You, Father, in me and I in you,” as Jesus says later, in the high-priestly prayer (John 17:21).
Jesus, God’s own Word, God with us, in the flesh.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
If in the beginning we turned away from God’s own Word (“Did God say, ‘You shall not eat’?”); if in the beginning we turned away, now God comes to us in his own Word. Now God’s Word walks among us as the sound of the Lord God was heard walking in the garden in the time of Adam and Eve; God’s Word again among us so that we may no longer hide, but turn again; so that we may come back to him.
Jesus offers us in his own person the return to the presence of God. He offers us the living God with us, abiding with us, like parents with their children, like a family around a table, so that we may abide with him and live.
The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.
God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him.
In Jesus we come full circle, back to the closer walk with God, back to the life in the presence of God, back to who we are meant to be: made in the image of God, looking on the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining now in the face of Jesus Christ.
And it is in the flesh that it is accomplished.
If we will not lift up our hearts to God, God comes down to us: in our flesh God’s own life living. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, John says. Our flesh, these bodies, have become in Jesus Christ the dwelling place of God.
Why is Jesus so graphic? Because the good news is so real. Body and soul we are saved, lifted in the flesh once again into the life with God. It happens in Jesus, who abides with us in our life…and in our death. The one who eats my flesh, Jesus says, and drinks my blood: it is impossible to hear these words without seeing the body rent and the blood poured out. Jesus speaks here of his death. Unless YOU eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood: he speaks of his death at the hands of the very people he is talking to. God in the midst of us and still we turn away… the whole history of our forsaking God brought to a point on the body of the Christ.
It is not possible to eat this bread at this altar without coming up against this choice: for death, not for life; against the Word of God; our persistent turning away. O Lord, I am not worthy: that is the first word that this Eucharist must surely bring into our hearts.
But here is the mystery, the joy at the heart of our faith, and of all things.
It is we who shed Jesus’ blood, we who consume his life; all sin, all God-abandonment, is summed up in this. And yet it is for us that Jesus’ blood is poured out. This is my blood which is shed for you. The very moment of our loss, the denial of our God, becomes the cap-stone of God’s grace.
On the cross God with us even in our dying, his blood poured out like ours, our death now his. If we are God-forsaken, in the flesh he will be too. On the cross, it is finished, our death, this flesh, lifted up into the life of God, all the way. In the flesh we are saved, lifted in Christ bodily into life.
Lord, I am not worthy. But only say the Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God has said the Word, and he has dwelt among us; he has lived and died with us and for us, and we have seen his glory. We who have turned our faces away, looking now with unveiled face as in a mirror on the glory of the Lord. Now again created in the image of God: that is the possibility that is held out to us in the bread and wine today. Eat my flesh; drink my blood. In the flesh God comes to us, just as we are—so that just as we are, in the flesh, we may come back to him. To be again who we were meant to be: not I on my own lonely throne, but we in him and he in us, Christ shining in our eyes, in our bodies the life of Christ and his death for us; our lives speaking such a love. This is the hope given us today, in the body and the blood.
Just as I am, this new creation, I come, my Saviour God, to Thee.
