Pastor Cristina Airaghi

August 26, 2018

John 6: 56 – 69

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Bread of Life

I attended St. Louis University and that was our fight song, our official song, so it’s a little hard to transition from that energy because I feel like I am now at a sporting event where we run around screaming with pom poms and I didn’t think to bring any pom poms with me.  So, take a minute with me and transition to unpacking the text a little bit and then I have an exciting story to share about bread.  So that’s where we’re going this morning.

So the Scriptures use many different images to express the intimate relationship between Jesus and his followers and John gives us many of the most familiar:  I am the vine and you are the branches.  Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep.  The living water offered to the Samaritan woman at the well.  And the bread of life, here in Chapter 6.  And we only hear the end of Chapter 6, which covers the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus walking on water and this beautiful statement from Jesus, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

In John, the central event of Jesus’ last meal is the foot washing in Chapter 13.  So the discourse about being the bread of life in Chapter 6 is the place where the institution of the Eucharist is lodged for John, because for John all of Jesus’ life, not just one particular event at the end, instituted the sacrament.  Jesus’ whole life, his body, broken and shared for all, invites into a more abundant life. And often in John, the audience misses the point.  So his narrative pattern becomes encounter, misunderstanding and invitation to deeper insight.

And we hear that pattern today in the section we read: we hear this striking statement about eating flesh and blood; we get complaining followers, disbelief and rejection by many in the crowd, and a wee bit of a gruff statement from Jesus, “Does this offend you?”  I would think such statements certainly would have offended people in the crowd.  They didn’t know what the Eucharist was; we do because we are reading it after John has written this beautiful Gospel.  At the time, there were very clear restrictions and social norms about what you could drink and eat.

But as in John, the opportunity for deeper insight is lost to the crowd.  In Heb