John 6:53-59 ----------------- Susan J. Barnes
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church --- 17 August 2003
Today's gospel has a rough edge. It's an uncompromising, unblinking
assertion of the nature and role of the Eucharist. In looking at it, I
want to bring insights gleaned from last week's speaker, Professor
Michael White of UT, a specialist on early Christianity. In today's
short passage from John, Jesus says--actually he insists--that
participating in the eucharist is the only way to union with God through
Jesus, and the only way to eternal life. He divides the world between
those who do and those who don't partake. And he doesn't dally with
symbols: none of this "bread as my body" business. Jesus commands us to
eat his flesh and drink his blood. He says that four times in six
verses. Away with euphemism and metaphor. Scriptures like this one
fueled the rumors that early Christians were cannibals. Seriously.
So how does Michael White's talk give us a handle on this hard-core
passage? It shines light on the context of diversity and tension of the
early church. Michael reminded us that the first-century followers of
Jesus were gathered in incredibly diverse communities. Socially, they
were from every possible spot on the rigidly segmented scale, from slave
to master, peasant to artisan to aristocrat. Coming from around the
Mediterranean basin, ethnically, they were from every tribe and tongue
of the Roman world. Every theology, too: including the many sects
within Judaism, all of the foreign religions and mystery cults of the
vast Empire along with the Roman pantheon and the cult of the Emperor
himself. Huge diversity.
And with diversity came disagreement. Michael White said: "How do you
spell diversity? ARGUMENT" We cannot imagine the arguments that these
Jesus followers had within their little communities.
We cannot imagine. But the scriptures are full of clues. The epistles
are all about the arguments in communities Paul had founded. In fact,
if Paul hadn't tried to mediate those arguments from a distance we might
have nothing from him but Romans. Because he did, the epistles attest
some of the social and theological issues that are already being worked
out by Jesus' followers--but only some. So does the Book of Acts.
So there were diverse opinions within each community. In addition, each
community had its own character, its own issues. They were flung far
around the Empire. They were naturally different from one another. We
see this in the gospels, each of which came from a distinct community.
They also give clues about the arguments in the early church, but
differently--by inference. Unlike the Book of Acts and the Epistles,
which record the direct encounters and arguments of the disciples on
behalf of Jesus, in the gospels, Jesus nominally speaks for himself.
But Michael White showed how we can infer something about the character
of each of those communities, and of its own factions and arguments by
the way Jesus' words are framed. Take the time when Jesus sent the
disciples out two by two to heal. It's in all three synoptics. But
there's a difference. In Matthew 10:5-6, Jesus says: "Go nowhere among
the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the
lost sheep of Israel." Not so in Mark 6:1-6, nor in Luke 9:1-6, where
Jesus sends the disciples out with no restrictions. The conclusion?
The community of Matthew was completely and unusually engaged in and
with Judaism. This isn't news to you. Many other scriptures in Matthew
bear that out as you know from your own Bible study.
But it confirms the point that every local community had its own
struggles, its own issues, its own leadership. Friends, there never was
a golden age of agreement in the church. Never. There never was a time
when the church was free of controversy. The long history of church
councils--right down to the present moment--is about the larger church
trying to reconcile the diversity among her scattered communities. The
Good News is that 2,000 years later, we're still here, still diverse,
still struggling to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ as we
understand it in Austin, Texas, in Tanzania, in New Hampshire, in
Canterbury. Then as now, we need to be mindful of the particular
context of every community's decisions and actions.
Now we come back to today's gospel. In our struggle to be faithful,
this graphic passage from John is a beacon. It's unique in the
gospels. Jesus doesn't speak like that in the synoptics. It's not just
the words that are different, it's the insistence on the eucharist as
the tie that binds us to God in Christ. The other gospels give us the
event of the Last Supper, the institution of the eucharist, with the
gentle commandment "do this in remembrance of me". Not John. There's
no telling of the Last Supper, no "remembrance". No. "Eat my flesh.
Drink my blood."
In our teaching and preaching Merrill and I have discussed the things
that set this gospel, the last that was written, apart from the other
three. Its uniquely anti-Jewish rhetoric (which has had horrible,
unintended consequence in modern times) has led scholars to conclude
that John's community had been recently thrown out of their synagogue.
Ejected because their own Jewish brothers and sisters could not accept
Jesus as the Messiah, they rejected "the Jews" bitterly in return.
Jesus' followers in that synagogue had set themselves apart from the
others by their sharing the sacrament of bread and wine. Today's
passage suggests that in their brokenness, in their despondency and
distress, they gathered fiercely around the eucharistic meal. The
eucharist became the locus of their identity and the wellspring of their
consolation. It sustained them, strengthened them, and transformed them
into a new community. That community soon became much more diverse than
before, because--like Paul's communities--it was built not on a common
religious background but on a common meal.
That new community wasn't any more perfect than the last. The huge
tensions between factions can be inferred from other parts of the gospel
as we saw in Adult Ed. last fall. But they were bound by a new
reality. Eating the flesh, drinking the blood.
In the sacrament of the eucharist the followers of Jesus in John's
community met God in a new and powerful way. Through the grace of that
sacrament, in the mystery of communion, they knew God as a palpable
reality, a never-failing presence. No longer the distant, formidable
judge hidden in the Holy of Holies of the Temple, and speaking through a
complex code of law and its interpreters, God in Christ was suddenly
present to them--always, everywhere, but especially in the eucharist.
The Holy Spirit animated their gatherings.
Their unwavering commitment to the eucharist, based on that expierence
formed the unique theology of this gospel. In turn, it became a pillar
of the faith and a legacy to the whole church.
In the Eucharist, the Johannine community not only met God, they also
met one another in a new and powerful way. The grace of the eucharist
brought them together and bound them together. It enabled them to
transcend enormous differences of race, religion, and class--not to
mention gender. It enabled them to go through the fires of controversy
together, with their bonds forged, strengthened--as steel is--by the
heat itself.
We at St. Matthew's are separated from that remote community in every
imaginable way. But we are indivisibly united with them by one thing.
The mystery of the eucharist binds us to them as surely as it binds us
to one another. Like them and with them in the communion of saints,
week after week, we experience the real presence of Christ at this
table, in the bread and the wine. Like them we bring to this table and
lay upon it our brokenness, our personal tragedies, the struggles that
we have with people outside this community and with one another.
At this table we receive the grace of God's presence and the outpouring
of God's love. That's not a platitude. God's love isn't a sweet pat on
the head. It isn't warm fuzzies, it's not greeting-card sentiment.
God's love is a challenge to our normal attitudes and conduct. It is a
call to be our best selves. God's love is about radical transformation,
transformation that lifts us above the fray to meet each other on
another plane. God's love enables us to confront our fears, our
disagreements and share them with one another in trust and respect. It
empowers us listen to one another, to stand together before the fires of
controversy side by side, hand in hand, together submit to the heat that
will melt our defenses and bind us to one another anew, stronger than
before: a new creation.
That transformation, that new creation happens here, at this table. It
happens over time, through trials like those you have faced as a
congregation in the past, trials like the one our church is facing right
now. It happens when we come together, stand together, kneel
together. It happens when we try to be faithful, when we engage--because
God. It happens not through our will, but through our ongoing obedience in
submission to God's will.
