We Eat a Lot: A Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Yes, I know, I'm on vacation.   Got a pained but supportive look from my lovely wife when I agreed to fill in this Sunday. M+

Preached at Good Shepherd Church, Stayner, Anglican Diocese of Toronto.  Texts for today, the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (B):  1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

⁵³So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  (Jn 6.53)

Last year our nine year old granddaughter visited us and I was showing her around All Saints church in Collingwood.   The day she visited happened to be when we were setting up for one of our Friendship Dinners when we feed the community.  We talked about why these dinners were important to us.  Then I took her into the church and she pointed to the altar and asked what it was for.

I explained that it’s a table where we prepare a meal that we share on Sundays when we gather for worship. She thought about that for a moment and then said, “You guys sure like to eat a lot”.  And she was right.

It’s true that Christian life tends to revolve around a shared meal.  We talk about table fellowship and about hospitality, and it’s fair to say that our life as church is formed and shaped by common meals and even by the humble coffee hour.   Eating and drinking together forms us as community.  Providing food to others through food banks and soup kitchens has become an important part of our sense of mission.    As Pope Francis has said, “First you pray for the hungry, and then you feed them.  That’s how prayer works”.

I think it’s fair to that we all of our church understanding about food and meals comes from our worship.  We’re taught to feed others because we ourselves are fed at God’s table.    For certain parts of the Christian family, including we Anglicans, the common meal - Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Mass, Communion - is a central part of our worship, at least when a priest is available.   We hear the story of the last supper, we hear Jesus’ command to eat and drink, and we know that somehow the bread and wine are connected with Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross for us.

Now how exactly this all happens is a bit of a mystery and we Anglicans have never felt the need to carefully explain it.   Does the bread and wine somehow become the physical presence of Jesus?   Maybe], we say.  Is the bread and wine to remind us about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins?   Maybe, we say.     

Some Anglican churches treat the Eucharist with great ceremony and reverence, maybe even with bells and incense.  Other churches treat communion with less ceremony, though there is still reverence.  However it is done, when the priest says something like “the body of Christ” and puts the wafer in your hand, you are free to decide what the priest’s words mean.

For those of us who have been going to the communion rail for a long time, our familiarity with the liturgy gives us an advantage over the folks in today’s gospel who balked at Jesus’ words, that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6.53).   Jesus’ teaching here is just too much for many to accept.  

First, it just sounds weird, and we can understand why they would say “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  (Jn 6.52).   Secondly, as Jews, they found this teaching offensive.   In Jewish law, it was forbidden to eat any meat that had animal blood left in it (Deuteronomy 12:23; Leviticus 17:14; 19:26).  So, Jesus’ words were not only creepily cannibalistic, but they were also blasphemous.

However, for those who wanted to try and understand these words of Jesus, they were given a clue when he says that he is “the living bread that came down from heaven” (Jn 6.51).  This is a reference to the manna that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness, literally bread that fell from heaven to keep them alive, but as Jesus says elsewhere when he feeds crowds, real bread will only keep you alive from day to day.  Knowing Jesus and believing in Jesus are what matters, because Jesus is himself “the living bread that came down from heaven”.   

So the bread and wine of communion are really about Jesus coming to us as the son of the living God, who wants to give us what his father offers.   The Father as creator offers life and love, and the Son is the means to that life and love.  If we understand eternal life as the friendship of Jesus, then we are I think at the heart of what communion represents.  Taking communion is as much about believing as it is about eating., it’s as much about accepting the friendship of Jesus as it is about drinking.  In receiving communion, we receive Jesus, we become closer to Jesus, and we come to share his love for the world, which is why we in turn feed people.

All these things are worth us thinking about, even if we have been coming to the communion rail for many years.    They are especially important for us to understand and to explain at a time when fewer and fewer people know the firs thing about the Christian faith.  There are lots of people, people we probably know, who would think our talk of eating Jesus’ bread and drinking his blood are just as weird as those first Jews thought it weird when they heard Jesus.  Our faith can seem deeply weird until we explain it as relationship with the living and real God who loves us and who wants us to live fully and completely.

Let me finish by connecting what I’ve said with the chalice.   I’ve made the decision as your new priest to reintroduce the chalice to our worship.   I know that very few of you will feel comfortable drinking from it because of SARS and because of Covid, and that’s fine, you’re under no obligation to drink from it.  You are however welcome to just let your fingers touch the base of it, as a way of saying that you want to know Jesus fully, that you want to accept what he offers, which is the love, life, and friendship of God.   We may believe these things already in our minds, but touching the silver cup or tasting the wine are ways to more fully enter into the wonderful mystery of communion.   Jesus offers all of himself, body and blood, to us. May we accept all that he offers, so that we may become all that he wants us to be.