Today’s lesson ending our journey with Jesus from the
feeding of the 5,000 to now just the 12 is meant to be shocking and
revolting. The word for eating that
Jesus uses is not a kind of polite eating, rather it is the word that we would
use for a pack of wolves consuming their prey.
What Jesus said in our lesson for today was so disgusting and offensive
that he finally drove away all the remnant of the 5,000 and was left only with
the 12 disciples. Jesus even asked the
12 “are you going away too?”
Our question for today is what is the Holy Communion? And the answer is right in the name, “The Holy
Communion.” Communion is about people
coming together to find unity. Holy
means special or set apart. So Holy
Communion is a different, special way of coming together and finding
unity. But different
from what? It is to be different
from all the other ways that we humans have come together before. Human communities always get their power from
being over against someone else. We are
most unified when we are chewing someone up and spitting them out. Community is at its most powerful when it
comes together, chooses a common enemy, and attacks them.
Jesus came to give us a completely different way of
finding communion or unity. He wants to
shake us up and getting disgusting and graphic with us is his way of shocking
us out of our usual pattern of finding unity only over against something that
is other.
Jesus tells us that the only way to true life with
each other in a Holy Communion is to chew on his flesh and drink his
blood. I think that what this means is
that we have to admit our complicity in his death on the cross. We have to admit that we are by nature
killers and that our only hope is to be redeemed by our Lord. The Holy Communion is the opposite of the way
of the world, which is ganging up against someone else to find our unity. Jesus way is to let himself be ganged up
upon. He allows himself to become the
focus, the scapegoat, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the
world. What is the sin of the
world? It is our way of gaining false
transient communion at the expense of someone else.
This is exactly what Jesus told Pilate. “For this I have come in to the world, to
testify to the truth. Everyone who
belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
The Jews didn’t think they made human sacrifice, the Romans didn’t think
they made human sacrifice. But the truth
is that they sacrificed Jesus. The high
priest said, “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man
die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed. The Jewish and Roman system of justice chewed
Jesus up just as surely as if they were cannibals.
Every human institution will ultimately cannibalize
itself. That is the insight that the
cross and the sacrament of Holy Communion are trying to show. It is also where the sacrament gives us
something different. It offers us the
way of Jesus who willingly went to the cross, to let himself
be chewed up by human violence. He also
came back to forgive us and to offer another way of unity: His way of love and service. This love and service is at the very center
of the church. The church is to be a
holy communion; a gathering of people which is unique because it is based on
forgiveness. Jesus allowed himself to be
devoured by our violence in order to save us from it.
The Holy Communion is a totally different way of
coming together based on the Body of Christ.
It is true bread and true drink.
The body and blood of the one who came to shock us, to challenge us, to
forgive us and to call us together into a Holy Communion, a totally different
way of coming together that lasts.
There is only emptiness and futility in our way of
unholy communion; just more trouble and false hope. Jesus came into the world to really show us
the Father, to take His Father out of the costume that we have put on him. Jesus said the Father and I are one. Whoever
has seen me has seen the father. Jesus
way of Holy Communion is an invitation to all of us to
come home. To live together again in
unity and peace with Father, Son and Spirit
51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats
of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of
the world is my flesh.” 52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this
man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So 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. 54Those who eat my flesh
and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;
55for my flesh is true
food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in
them. 57Just as the living
Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live
because of me. 58This 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.”