WORDS OF LIFE

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON AUGUST 27, 2006

John 6:69 "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, or we have believed."

The opening to the gospel today is as stark and plain as what we have been hearing from St. John 6 for the last previous Sundays. Just to refresh our memories: John chapter 6 begins with the feeding of the 5,000, and a comment by the writer that they wanted to make him a king. Immediately Jesus teaches them about the Eucharist. It is as if he wants to remind them that his kingdom is not of this world. So he embarks on a teaching course. It is hard doctrine, and yet seems logical, as everything he says follows from one to the other.

Jesus starts by saying: "I am the bread of life which has come down from heaven."

He goes on to say: "Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man…..you have no life in you."

Further on he says: "He who eats my flesh… has eternal life."

Finally: "Anyone who eats this bread will live forever."

This is a logical teaching that Jesus is giving, as we go from one staement to the next. And at the end of it all they said: "This is a hard saying - who can listen to it?"

A modern translation puts the words of the disciples a bit better: "This is intolerable language- how anyone can accept it?"

What Jesus said about the Eucharist - about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and unless we do that we do not have life - is intolerable to modern people, just as it was to those who followed Jesus all those years ago.

How can anyone accept it indeed?

Especially if all that those people wanted was a king who would perform miracles and over-throw the Roman tyrants. If that’s all they wanted, the teaching that Jesus gives about his life in the Eucharist is intolerable language indeed. He is of course a king, a king who performs miracles, and he feeds his people with bread from heaven.

But the teachings that Jesus gave that day about Holy Communion, were not what many wanted to hear then, and even now.

It was as if Jesus wanted to sift the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares. Certainly he wanted to get rid of any notion about being taken as king. And so he reminds them that in their thinking they were far too materialistic. Nothing has changed!

He says: "It is the spirit that gives life. The flesh is of no avail.” He says that earthly things are no good; it is the spiritual that gives life.

Then it says: "After this many of the disciples drew back, and no longer went about with him."

The real issue is not that he is a king or miracle-worker - but that standing before them is the Word made flesh. For only the word made flesh can do these things and teach these things.

And so he says - in a reference to his ascension - "What if you were to see the son of man, ascending where he was before?" Here he hearkens back to something he said at the beginning of all this: "I am the bread of life which has come down from heaven."

What if you see this man going back to heaven? Yes it all follows on logically and it ends up at the beginning in John 1: "And the word was made flesh amongst us."

What today's gospel reading reminds us of is that one needs the eyes of faith to see the word made flesh, and to understand. And as it records, some of them just did not. So Jesus challenges the twelve apostles, just as Joshua challenged the twelve tribes in the first reading, when he asked them to make their choice.

So Jesus challenges them: "What about you?" We are not surprised that it is St. Peter who speaks up. Remember he had been chosen to be the head of the twelve, and he had been a witness to the transfiguration when he saw Jesus transfigured in the glory of divinity, and that was just a week after Jesus said to them: "Who do you say that I am?" And St. Peter said: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

So in a similar vein, but with even better insight, St. Peter says: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

At the conclusion of this great teaching about the Eucharist, we find that John 6 is not only about the Eucharist, but about St. Peter's growth in understanding. And it is about our growth in understanding as well.

We may find, like some of the disciples did, that the Christian doctrines can be difficult. Like St. Peter we may find that our Christian pilgrimage moves slowly - sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Indeed for many Christians Holy Communion is the only tangible reality we can grasp, because sometimes we are so buffeted by life and by disbelief.

In my years as a priest I have been astounded and delighted at the faith of so many Episcopalians who have had life's hard hand deal them enough to challenge any faith, and still their faith is there. All of us know that experience. Perhaps we are like some of those disciples.

But I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that we cross our fingers when we say the Creed!

Better to explore doctrine and face up to Joshua's question, than to ignore it by crossing our fingers.

People can get hung up about doctrine. John 6 does pose the question: How does the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ?

The important question is not how, but why. John 6 answers that question, and links the how of the bread and wine becoming the body of Christ to other words of Jesus that answer the why: "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

The whole purpose of Jesus' teaching about the Eucharist is to remind us that when we feed on him in Holy Communion we receive his very life - so that we may have life to the full. Life that is able to conquer death and tribulation in our daily life as Christians.

Finally in today’s Epistle (Ephesians 5) there is a reminder of another dimension to all this. The Eucharist, as well as being the life of Jesus offered to us, is an image of the church. Just as the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Jesus, become his presence, so the human body which we call the church has a divine nature. Like Holy Communion, the church is more than just a physical reality. It is more than a society of men and women who come together to pray and worship. The church, like the Eucharist, is the continuing presence of Jesus in the world. That is why the life of the church is linked closely to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is at the heart of everything the church does.

When you think about it, the church does not exist to necessarily make us good, improve the world, teach morals or ethics, to uphold our supposedly Christian civilization, or even to over throw it. The church may achieve those things - but it exists firstly and primarily to witness to the objective and adorable reality of God in the world, and to praise God's love as we find it in Jesus himself.

We exist as the body of Christ to bear witness to a fact - the most overwhelming of all facts - that the glorious reality of God is made present through the incarnation, and therefore upon all the altars of the church, and in the lives of us who come to God's altar.

So with St. Peter we eagerly and joyfully say: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life."