Listen again to this part of the passage just read. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
This very long interchange between Jesus and his contemporaries can’t be any plainer, at least not for a metaphor. And this disturbs everyone. Even many of his closest disciples! So much so, that many of them start to fall away. In this scene, we find them talking among themselves, complaining in disbelief at the moxie of his claims. Then Jesus calls them on it, asserting quite plainly just who he is.
Pretty incredible isn't it? For someone to make such claims. What if, later today, you were introduced to someone and that someone said, "Hi, I am the bread that came down from heaven." You would look at this person and you would say, "I'm sorry, what did you just say?" Anyone who seriously made such claims would easily be labeled a kook, a nut, certifiable.
C.S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity, makes the following statement about Jesus: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic--on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg--or he would be the devil of hell.
You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."
So, where does that leave us? I guess C.S. Lewis offers us a challenge we can’t dodge. I’m not sure we can sit on the fence with this one. Yet I know there are those who still struggle with the theology of the Eucharist—just what are they receiving. I’m not sure Jesus is too concerned about that uncertainty. He just wants to feed us, to nourish us with holy food.
I believe that this holy consecrated bread that we receive this morning is given to us to remind us who we really are and whose we really are. It is the food of God’s kingdom which is our true home—God’s manna in the wilderness of our lives that reminds us day by day that we live because God does not necessarily provide what we want, but exactly what we need: some bread, some love, some breath, some wine, and a relationship with our savior, Jesus, who came down from heaven to bring life to the world.
The German theologian Helmut Thielicke told of a hungry man passing a store with a sign in the window, "We Sell Bread." He entered the store, put some money on the counter, and said, "I would like to buy some bread." The women behind the counter replied, "We don’t sell bread." "The sign in the window says that you do," the hungry man said. The woman explained, "We make signs here like the one in the window that says ‘We Sell Bread.’" But a hungry man can’t eat signs.
I have been for many years an advocate for offering “Open Table” at the Eucharist—that is, all are welcome, no matter who you are or where you may be on your faith journey; no one is ever excluded. Why?
First, because Jesus never turned anyone away. Remember the rich lawyer who asked Jesus how to gain eternal life? Jesus told him to love God and his neighbor and himself. The young man said, “I do all these things.’
Then Jesus asked him to sell all he had and to come and follow him. The Gospel tells us that the young man “walked away and was very sad because he had great wealth.” But Jesus never told him to go. In fact the Gospel that he looked at him and loved him.
If you have ever attended a church when at the time of communion, you were told you can’t approach because of your denomination or marital status or for any other reason, you know how that made you feel.
I believe people are hungry for some modicum of experience with God—often not even aware of where or how to find it- and who are we as the clergy or the church to withhold that. A hungry person can’t eat signs. They need to be fed with the Bread of Life.
Comments