The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost - August 23

Sure and Certain Means
John 6:56-69

As some of you are aware, each week we have children’s worship bulletins available along with the regular service leaflets. There are no age restrictions! Anyone can pick one up if you wish. They contain activities meant to illustrate or reinforce the Gospel reading for the day. This week’s particularly caught my attention. It includes one of those familiar activities (that I associate with waiting in the dentist’s office as a child) where you are asked to find the differences between two similar pictures.

Some of the differences are the sort of thing you expect in this activity. The sun is in a different place; Jesus is looking left in one picture, right in the other; Jesus’ and the disciples’ belts are different. But what caught my eye is that there are a lot fewer disciples in the second picture. Quite a few of the disciples shown in the first picture are totally missing in the second. This activity does more than illustrate a snapshot from today’s Gospel reading. It tells the story. In today’s reading from John there are fewer disciples in the picture at the end of the story than there were at the beginning.

If I had asked you before church today if there were any Gospel stories where people turn away from Jesus, would you have remembered this story? We think of all of the stories that describe thousands of people being drawn to Jesus, attracted by his words and ministry. But here people walk away.

A couple of observations. I’ll come back to why they walked away and what they missed. But first, as a bit of an aside, this story reminds us to avoid the temptation of looking wistfully to the past as a time when faith was stronger and people more godly… in contrast to the “godless desolation” of our present time. In this story, people who were actually in the presence of Jesus (!) walked away.

Why? There is one clue in John’s Gospel. They say to Jesus: Your words are hard to understand and accept. This teaching is difficult. We don’t like what you’re saying! It’s Jesus’ teaching about sharing his own Body and Blood that offends them. These days it might be something else… Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies…. Or welcome the outsider… We don’t like what you’re saying.

And we have other things we’d rather be doing. As I think about it, following Jesus pretty much always means giving something else up. Disciples in his day had walked away from family, home, work to literally follow Jesus. But it is always a choice to follow Jesus rather than do something else. And people often choose other things they’d rather be doing than following Jesus.

And finally, I can’t really speak for the disciples in today’s reading, but these days I often hear folks turn away from Jesus because he hasn’t answered their every prayer… he hasn’t fulfilled their need, done everything they asked of him. Why bother to follow? So Jesus turns to Peter and the twelve and asks: Do you also wish to go away?

Peter doesn’t quite answer the question that Jesus asks. If he had, he might have said: Yes, Jesus there are certainly days when I wish to go away. But I don’t, because BEING IN THE PRESENCE OF JESUS IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN BEING AWAY FROM HIM.

It’s about being wish Jesus. About sharing life with Jesus. Without Jesus life is empty. Full of activities, maybe, but empty. Little better than death. Being a disciple can be challenging, confusing, and difficult but it is always better than the nothing-ness of life without Jesus.

For Peter and the twelve, even when Jesus’ teaching was difficult to understand or follow, it was still always better to be with Jesus.

We’ve been in the 6th chapter of John for several weeks. This chapter encourages us to reflect on what we, in the church, have come to know as Holy Communion. This week I’ve taken one more step back and want to review the sacraments in general. The Episcopal Church is a sacramental church. For those of us who gather and worship in the Episcopal Church the sacraments are a part of our common life.

And, in the words of the Prayer Book, the Sacraments are “sure and certain” ways to find Jesus, to be in Jesus presence. Sure AND certain. No qualifications, no exceptions. The sacraments are sure and certain ways for us to be with Jesus.

This is not to say that Jesus is not present and active in other parts of our lives, in our civic lives, our relationships, in nature. But we do not always connect with him there. In the sacraments we may be sure that we will find Jesus.

It was interesting for me to be reminded, as I reviewed the sacraments this week, that the early Christians experienced the sacraments before they defined them. The church didn’t create the sacraments; the church discovered that it had been given the sacraments. The definition was shaped by experience.

When the church talks about sacraments, and Holy Communion is the one we encounter most regularly, we talk about them as being two things: Sign (or symbol) and instrument. The bread and wine and the ritual of Holy Communion are signs or symbols that draw to mind for us Jesus’ last supper and his sacrifice for us. But participating in the sacrament is also the means or the instrument to actually convey Jesus’ presence or God’s grace to us. They point to God; but they also convey God’s grace.

When we participate. Sacraments aren’t something that can be watched or read about. They are participated in.

So the Catechism defines sacraments as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” And the second part of that definition is just as important as the first part. Given by Christ. Sure and certain means by which we receive grace.

The Catechism also defines grace: Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our will.”

Which seems to me to be pretty much what the presence of Jesus did for the disciples. And what the presence of Jesus does for us when, by grace, it comes to us through the sacraments.

No matter what’s going on in your life, in the church, in the world around you. No matter what. Participating in Holy Communion is a sure and certain way to be in the presence of Jesus. And Jesus’ presence brings renewal, hope, life, peace, perseverance. All those things that the world cannot give. Given to us by God’s grace through the sacraments.

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost - August 16

Communion
John 6:51-58

The Episcopal Church uses the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year lectionary. The Scripture readings that are prescribed for Sunday mornings follow a three-year cycle. Each year the Gospel readings focus on one of the three synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. This is Mark’s year. But Mark’s Gospel is short. So in the middle of the summer we take a break from Mark and read from the 6th chapter of John. (We also always read John during Easter season.)

The sixth chapter of John is often called “The Bread of Life” chapter. It includes the familiar language where Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” In this morning’s passage, Jesus describes his flesh as true food and his blood as true drink.

This is the portion of John’s Gospel that we look to to reflect on what we have come to know and experience as Holy Communion. It’s an interesting contrast and complement to what we find in the synoptic Gospels. The “words of institution” that we hear each Sunday as part of the great Eucharistic prayer come from the account of the Last Supper in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus breaks bread and shares the cup and says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

John’s Gospel includes an account of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples but the focus is on the foot washing. There is no mention of bread or cup. But Jesus talks a lot about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in this sixth chapter of John. The language is stark. You can imagine why his followers were startled.

As we look at this chapter with respect to Communion, it’s worth noting that it takes place in the middle of Jesus’ life and ministry. It is not a memorial. Not something to do “in remembrance of me” after I’m gone. More something to do “with me” now. Eat. Jesus says. Eat. And receive eternal life.

One commentator said that the main temptation for preachers this Sunday will be to try to EXPLAIN the Eucharist. But that is a temptation to be avoided. This is not the time to try to help people understand consubstantiation, or transubstantiation. Or memorialism…

His eagerness is not that they understand how or why it works, just that they EAT. He offers to share himself with them. Just eat.

Thinking about this reminded me of something written by Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, an author someone who has been very active in children’s Christian formation in the Episcopal Church. When I was growing up, children weren’t “admitted” to Communion in the Episcopal Church until after Confirmation. (Have you ever considered how weird that language is!?)

In her book, Offering the Gospel to Children, Pritchard writes:

Imagine if, until your child was six, you never kissed her, but only let her watch older people kissing each other. Then when she had learned to read and write, (and incidentally, had already passed the age when her imagination was most eager to grasp non-verbal expression and make it a part of her deepest self) suppose you sat her down with a special curriculum entitled “Kisses and hugs: signs of love.” She would color pictures of people hugging and kissing and read exemplary stories about families and answer questions about why we choose this way to express our love. Finally, on a special day when you were sure she understood enough about hugging and kissing to be truly “ready” you would hug and kiss her for the very first time. She would wear a new party dress, and Grandma would come to lunch and bring a present, and she would feel so proud and special.

 

Or would she?

Sacramental actions work directly on our emotions and imaginations: the intellect is only a supplement, important in its own turn for full integration of the experience, but secondary in its contribution to our understanding. 

My main point today is not to talk about children receiving Communion (although I do agree with Pritchard). It is to encourage adults to EXPERIENCE communion with childlike imagination. Don’t worry about what it means or how it happens or which description of the sacramental transformation of bread to body is right. Approach Communion as an experience. Open your emotions and imagination to that experience. The experience of Jesus sharing himself with us. Right now. In this life.

As you undoubtedly know it is common in many strands of Christianity to speak of whether or not someone has “accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.” It’s often asked in a challenging tone of voice. Have YOU accepted Jesus Christ as your PERSONAL Lord and Savior? The focus of that question is on the act, the choice, to bring Jesus into your life. Most Episcopalians are uncomfortable with such brazen evangelicalism… but there are several ways we might respond.

One is to recognize and say that every time we willfully and joyfully receive communion… we quite literally accept Jesus into our bodies and into our lives. We choose, we act, to receive Jesus into our lives. We consume the real presence of Jesus.

 “Real presence” is a good Episcopal term. But do we mean it? In Communion we consume the real presence of Christ.

Jesus promises that when we eat his body and drink his blood we will receive life. We will receive eternal life. We will share in his eternal life. And I will raise them up on the last day, he says in today’s Gospel, but that seems almost an afterthought. When Jesus offers himself, he offers his life, eternal life, shared with ours. The experience of Holy Communion is taking Jesus into our lives.

As one of the old prayers in the Prayer Book says, “Grant us gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of… Jesus Christ and to drink the blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.”

Martin Copenhaver is a preacher and professor from the UCC tradition. In a published sermon on this morning’s Gospel, he writes:

So what's going on here? Well, for one, the imagery employed by Jesus in this passage forces a kind of "in-your-face" confrontation with the incarnation. Gone are the abstract, almost disembodied terms about "abiding" in him that Jesus used earlier. Now he uses such starkly corporeal images that we cannot escape the implications of incarnation. Jesus was not a disembodied spirit. To encounter Jesus is, in part, to encounter the flesh and blood of him. The startling images he uses are meant to get our attention in that way.

In this passage, however, language is pressed to its limits to express the indissoluble participation of one life in another. For those who receive Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from a believer's life than last Tuesday's breakfast can be plucked from one's body. It is the ultimate communion--the coming together, the union of the Savior and the saved.