What Is It About This Bread? Why Do We Stumble
John 6:56-69
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
What Is It About This Bread? Why Do We Stumble
How many of you have heard of the Bull and Finch Pub? Does the name Norm Peterson ring any bells? How about Norm and Cliff? Bull and Finch Pub is where the popular sitcom series Cheers was filmed in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. It’s a feel-good series that became a household name – it didn’t start that way – rated 74th out of 77 shows in its first season it was almost cancelled. It went on to 275 shows and many awards. Why? It has quirky, real people hanging out at a bar – the regulars who became the most unlikely of families. They were beloved not in spite of their human failings and quirks but because of them. We welcomed them into our homes through the tv screens and loved them for who they were in all their vulnerability and genuine, bumbling humanity. The jingle that introduced the series summarizes it well:
..Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name
Human expectations are just that – as quirky as we are. When we read the gospel from John we gloss right over the fact that there is no crowd beating down the door anymore. The thousands have drifted away. They follow after being miraculously fed, but as Jesus’ answers to questions become more and more edgy and difficult, I envision it like a lecture hall slowly emptying out during an unpopular lecture. The only people left by this point are disciples. Who is able to accept this hard teaching ask the disciples? No longer questions or grumbling from the crowd at large or even like in verses 41 and 42 murmuring of the Jews in the synagogue, but now the grumbling is from disciples.
Jesus knows that they are murmuring like the Israelites in the wilderness grumbled to God for food – this is too much, did you save us to starved us in the woods? Now the disciples too grumble because this is more than they bargained for - this is hard, edgy, not what they expected of Jesus. Rather than console them, Jesus ups the ante. Are you scandalized, he asks? Does ‘this’ offend you?
I suspect Jesus isn’t only talking about his words of chewing flesh and drinking blood but more about the whole – ‘this’ is the whole discourse – are you scandalized by me? By who I am Jesus is asking? By God incarnate who brings you life? By eternal life? By abundant life?
Next I would expect him to say – if you have problems with that, just wait until you see what I have to go through next. It would be understandable to then see the disciples turn away knowing that they would be risking their very lives or might be expected to follow him to the cross. Instead, Jesus asks – what if you saw me return to my father – what if you saw me ascend? Talking, Walking with God – it’s too much
They’ve come into the bar for comfort of the familiar, but now the lines are messed up – their comfortable home base was yanked out from under them. Do you know what that feels like? You are in a situation where you just know what is supposed to happen and how it will all play out and then it tilts? The world seems to stop and it all feels wrong. Something you have counted on, relied on to happen in a pattern you’re used to, a person you relied on to be who you KNEW they were acted out of character.
The sarcastic bar character became loving, the jovial buffoon was suddenly wise. Much like in our pandemic world where sharing space and air - something so basic and taken for granted - is now a potential risk, we (like the disciples) stumble and look for a scapegoat. Often if the unexpected action is from a person – we turn on them. Jesus knew this – he knew some did not believe and one in their midst would betray him.
What is so hard? This is where hindsight does us few favors – how could they have problems with this? How could anyone betray Jesus? Two key concepts are at play here – believing and abiding. Both of these things are actions of faith and require trust – Jesus was asking them to imagine apart from their set expectations and trust in abundant life in a totally, radically new way.
Jesus weaves together what it means to believe not just that he is God but God in this interwoven twining relationship. Yes a God defined by relationship. The Spirit gives life, the words of the Word are the Spirit and life, and nobody comes to the Word except through the Father. ‘Believing’ in the gospel of John appears always as a verb, and John uses it 98 times – more than any other gospel. Jesus is telling us/showing us what believing is – it is living out relationship and in turn receiving that amazing gift of abundant life. The triune God, the Bread of Life modelling for us what God demands of us.
In John fashion, what we think we know from the other gospels is again shifted slightly – still true but viewed from another angle. We are introduced to Judas here for the first time in John – he is named in verse 70. As Karoline Lewis says, “There’s a reason Judas is introduced for the first time here, and why other disciples walk away before he does. This is betrayal. Not handing Jesus over but not being able to handle the intimacy of relationships that matter, but most importantly, our relationship with God.”
These were the closest, most devoted followers of Jesus and some of them left. Again, why? Surely they knew before this who Jesus was. But this abiding and relationship in abundant life - it was just too much. Believing demanded of them an intimacy and closeness with a God who was outside expectations instead of a royal power that could provide for them from a distance, this God wanted more – a relationship of closeness – an intertwining of self. Jesus was inviting them to be at home in him the same way he was at home in the father. There is an amazing vulnerability in allowing ourselves to be known.
Even before pandemic, we had very set definitions of personal space. Consuming the Bread of Life obliterates this space – Christ makes a home in the depths of us. As Loye Bradley Ashton writes, “ …the eucharist, reveals John’s theological understanding of God as the divine community reflected in the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son, Christ and God, Jesus and believer, and believer and God, all through the power of the Spirit.”
That, my friends, in the hard part – the challenge – why those faithful disciples turned away. What Judas was running from/denying, he betrays Jesus by being unwilling to be in relationship. Jesus calls on us to act out our belief by being God incarnate in and to the world. Maybe this will help us understand Peter’s answer to Jesus’s question of the 12 – “Do you also wish to go away?” Lord, we believe and know. He is stepping up to the relationship, showing a willingness to be known. Or at least try as much as any human is capable of trying to hold our side of the relationship. Peter has seen the abundant life in flesh. We know from other gospels that the 12 are not perfect, but God abides in them and in us. The Bread of life comes to us when we falter, when we feel ‘too known’. We come to the table to be renewed and strengthened again in the charge to act this belief.
Daniel Migliore says, “The Lord’s Supper discloses what human life by God’s grace is intended to be – a life together in a mutual sharing and love.” All of humanity is reconciled here by the Bread of Life called to abide in God and God in us. Migliore names the challenge that this unity demands:
self-giving
other-affirming
community-forming
In this way – through such unity, the Bread of Life welcomes all people home in the love of the triune God. After all this Bread of Life, communion who we eat, the bread that sustains us is a mystery of abundant life now and into the future. Not like our adventure novels where we can figure out the clues, but a mystery like love. Deep and lasting, open and vulnerable.
You can try to explain it all you want – where does it come from, how exactly does it work? We may never know – but the power and gift in the Bread is no less real and takes us beyond where our words can go. It takes us home to God who knows not only our names but our deepest, inmost selves - abiding in and with us and loving us still. Disciples, bumbling characters finding friendship and family in a bar, strangers, Presbyterians even. God abiding at the very center of our beings and sending us out into the world to share the eternal, abundant life in Christ. Share the Bread with all. Amen
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