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Turn to the book of John. We’re going to focus on another place in the Scriptures where Jesus tells us, “How do we find more? How do we get? Where do we get more grace?” What is the conduit through which He applies grace to us? The places where He’s not hiding, the places where we can see Him and experience Him in some capacity.

So we’re looking at John chapter 6 today. We’ve looked at—just for the sake of those who haven’t been here for a while—we’ve looked at how God is not playing hide-and-seek with people in terms of how to find Him. Even though sometimes people in the world—and sometimes we, sometimes people in the culture—get sort of, “Where is He? What is He doing? How…” He hasn’t made it hard. He says, “I’m out there. You can see Me in all the stuff I made,” just like an artist. I can know something about the artist by what he paints or what she sculpts. Yes, not everything, but enough.

So that’s one place. But then, and that’s not the predominant place, He says there are other places:

Prayer: You get grace, you find Me in prayer.

The Word of God: I’m there. The Word of God—that’s a place that I’m trying to help you find grace, find Me.

Worship: I’m there. I’m in it.

And they’re not intangible; in many senses, they’re not even ethereal. You might think to connect with God, it’s got to be very transcendental in some fashion. He says, “No, it’s not about transcendental.”

Especially today, the one we’re talking about is the one that’s most non-transcendental, the least “spiritual” of all of them. It is in the sacrament of the Supper. It’s the most tangible, concrete, touchable thing we have that God has given us. Even though we can touch the Word of God, as it were, we mostly hear it. And prayer—we mostly speak it, and it’s an internal experience. And even with worship, it’s a felt experience and certainly collaborative.

But God’s trying to get to us; He’s trying to show us His grace and give us His power through a lot of different avenues. Let me stop talking and get onto the reading.

John chapter 6, verse 48 to start, right in the middle of Jesus’ experience with the disciples:

“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them:

“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 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 spirit and life. Yet there is 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 on, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

“You do not want to leave me 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 know that you are the Holy One of God.”

This is God’s word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever. Let’s pray.

Father, I pray that You would be in our thinking and feeling and doing today. That You would transform us by the hearing of Your word, by the experience of Your spirit and of the gospel of grace. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Do you ever linger on the idea of how much of our lives are consumed with food? I mean, it’s almost ubiquitous to think about that concept. We’re constantly talking, we’re constantly doing food. When I meet with folks for a casual meeting—”Let’s go get some coffee,” or “Let’s grab lunch,” or “We’ll go to the coffee shop.” Even just to do that, there’s a sense where if we’re together, there’s going to be food, right?

That’s why we go out when we want to celebrate. Next week is Mother’s Day. How much of next week celebrating mothers is going to be food-based? Probably going to get food. Even if it’s so she doesn’t have to get food for everyone else! Food is all just… it’s why we’re obsessed, as it were, with this idea.

I think it’s because—and I don’t know if it’s an innate thing or something we’ve just learned—but food is so central to our very living. We eat because that’s how we live. If I stop eating, I start to die. And if I stop eating for a period too long, my death has a name: hangry. I’m not just hungry; I’m exhibiting my hunger through a death-like experience, which is anger, unease, our brains get a little fuzzy. You need a cookie. That’s the essence of the Snickers commercial: you’re not yourself unless you get a snack. Have a Snickers, eat a cookie, something to get you back to the real life of who you are.

Jesus is doing the same thing. He made us this way—that we cannot live without food. He made us to need food. Even in the Garden, before we wrecked it, we still had a need—a symbiotic relationship with creation. A relationship where we had to grow, plant, manage, take dominion of the world, provide my meal. The life He gave us wasn’t this perpetual life where my system never ran dry. He made me to live in dependence on the world around me, dependence on Him.

Before sin, there was a collaborative experience: you give to the earth, and the earth gives back life to you—food. And so you eat it, and then you live, and then you work, and then you care. It was this beautiful symmetry of organic connectivity. And then it broke. Now, it’s hard work to get that food. Sometimes that food is eight dollars a pound! Hard work to get life in the process.

Jesus is utilizing that experience by helping us understand Himself and the gospel through the process of eating and drinking. The people who heard Him were going, “That’s crazy!” Their response was, “This is a hard saying, who can fathom it?”

“What? I’m supposed to eat your flesh and drink your blood?” Keep in mind the oddity of that for an Israelite. A predominant element of the dietary kosher laws of the Old Testament was: No blood. Don’t eat the blood. Get rid of it. So here is a Jew, Jesus, saying, “Okay, here’s the deal: drink my blood.”

Jesus is saying, “I want you to find life in it.” We know there’s life in the blood. In the Old Testament sacrifices, they’d bring the sacrifice to the altar, and the priest would take a hyssop branch, dip it into the blood, and the family would get covered with the blood—to prove a point. You need to be covered by the blood.

But now Jesus says, “Not just covered by it; I want it to get in you.” It’s like the activity with your car. There’s energy in the gas, but it doesn’t power the car by covering the car with gas. The only time the car gets energy and movement from the gas is when the gas gets in the car, circulates through the car, and then explodes inside the car. Then we get movement.

That’s the same thing Jesus is describing. In order for you to be empowered, in order for you to find life, He’s describing an internal injection, circulation, and explosion.

He goes completely organic, completely biological, yet tangible. He says He’s the bread. You know the bread in the desert? They had the manna. That manna was only illustrative of what Jesus is saying: “I gave you an illustration in the past for what I am now.” That manna was incomplete. It came from heaven and it fed them in a place where there was no food, but everyone who ate it died. There’s nobody He’s talking to who was still living who ate the manna.

He says, “But I’m the bread who came from heaven, and if you eat Me, you’ll never die. You’ll have so much life it will perpetuate you.” Jesus is acknowledging that this is not simply a mental experience, a psychological experience, or an emotional experience. It’s a physical, biological experience. We are not disembodied; we are whole creatures.

He incarnates God into a physical reality, into a physical person. And here’s the wonderful element of His grace: He will forever be physical. No longer disembodied. His resurrected body is the form He will share with us going forward. He will experience life the way you and I experience life for eternity.

This Supper—the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine—is the place where the body and the mind and the heart meet. It’s a complicated little organic thing, and He gives us grace in this place.

For centuries, the church has fought over the level of presence. Is He physically present? Is it a memorial? Calvin said, “What greater presence can there be than the presence Jesus said He would be when He left?” The spiritual presence is the greatest of all presences that Jesus can have in our world right now. The Supper manifests that in its most beautiful expression because we get to participate in a collaborative experience.

It’s like an amuse-bouche—a one-bite hors d’oeuvre. What’s the purpose of a one-bite hors d’oeuvre? It’s supposed to get me ready for the rest of the meal. It’s supposed to tantalize me for what’s to come. That’s what this Supper does. It gives me life, it gives me celebration, it reminds me of what’s to come: Eternal Life. Where He’ll be right there.

While I’m waiting for the rest of the meal, the one-bite hors d’oeuvre helps me to live patiently. Like when I was a kid at a restaurant, it seemed to take so long. My parents would use the “crackers on the table” to give me a sense of patience for the main thing. Eat this because it’s going to give you life for the minute. Jesus says we need regular, regular time where we can get the cracker and the wine to tantalize our senses in a tangible, physical way.

It is the one conduit of God’s grace that is most multisensory:

We see it.

We hear it (the glassware and metal).

We touch it.

We taste it.

We smell it (the power of the wine).

All of my senses are affected. It’s supposed to be a drama. It’s affecting my tangible biological experience. Grace comes through those things.

Sin is an attempt in every case to get something that in that moment is going to give me life, hope, or confidence other than Jesus. If I lie to protect my reputation—to save my life—this Supper tells me everything I could ever need is in Jesus. I can give you that life. Your reputation with Me is unsullied because of what I did for you.

In the Supper, there it is. He says, “Do it all the time. Taste it.” Enough talk. Let’s eat.

Thank You, Father. Thank You for Your grace that You’re trying to come to us and give to us in so many different places. Let it ring true in our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. That this might be a small taste of what is yet to come. Do it for Your name’s sake. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.