Today we finally get to where Jesus—as presented by
John—wants us to be with what we’ve been reading the past few weeks, anybody
figured out where that might be? That’s right . . . the Eucharist. Communion.
The Lord’s Supper. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal
life,” Jesus says, “and I will raise them up on the last day.” And if that’s not a reference to
the Lord’s Supper, I’ll eat this iPad. Of course, we should have seen it
coming: in the very first lesson we drew out of Chapter Six—the feeding of the
five-thousand—John describes it this way: “Jesus took the loaves, and when he
had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.” And it has the
same flavor as the the four-fold formula found in the other Gospels—take, give
thanks, break and give—only it’s missing the “break” part. But for the
sharp-eyed it’s there, and all this talk of Jesus being the bread leads up to
the stunning statement about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
In fact, in John’s gospel there is no formal institution of
the Eucharist as there is in the other gospels, where it is associated with the
Last Supper. And because it is
associated with that last meal, “on the night when he was betrayed,” as Paul
put it, it is in those other Gospels associated inextricably with his
sacrifice, his death on a cross. Here, in John, it’s not so much . . . in fact,
as some biblical scholars a lot smarter than me have figured out, this scene
happens in the middle of his ministry, which in John is three years long, and
so is at least a year away from his death.
And so, the closest thing to the
institution of Communion in John is much less about death than life, a theme that comes up
over and over in the bread discourse. Of the 98 times “life” is mentioned in
the Gospels, eleven—over ten percent
—are in this one chapter of John. And when we think of eating the flesh and
drinking the blood of Jesus—of course
it’s just a metaphor—we have to ask ourselves “Just what are we being asked to
eat?” Well, Jesus puts it this
way: “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” And here, the Greek
word we’re translating as “true” isn’t in the sense of a statement that agrees
with fact so much as “genuine” or “real”. My flesh is genuine flesh, it’s the real
deal. And by extension, is everything that isn’t his flesh questionable? Is it
counterfeit, dishonest, false? Is this a backhanded swipe at what popular
culture feeds us?
Well. Let’s drill down a bit more into
this notion of the character of Jesus flesh and blood, what it might mean when
Jesus says his flesh and blood are true.
And to do this, we can look at John’s conception of just who Jesus is, his Christology, as theologians
like to call it. And the thing about John is that his Christology is notably
higher than that of the other gospels. For John, if Jesus isn’t actually God the
creator in human form, he’s awful darn close. To the other gospel writers, he
is Son of God in the same sense that King David was: the Messiah anointed by
God the Father.
But for John, Jesus is himself divine, and the best place
to see it is way back in the first chapter. “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with
God, and the Word was
God.” What we ingest when we eat of Jesus’ flesh and drink of his blood is the
Word of God, who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” And this has enormous
symbolic weight for John: prophets are known to ingest the Word, to take it in
so they can digest it and spit it out again, clothed in humanity, in terms that
even we might
understand. Thus, our eating of the Word is the beginning and empowering of our
own prophetic
ministries.
And another thing: what we eat and drink
becomes a part of us, and so in our eating of Word become flesh, it not only
dwells among us
but within us as
well. The word becomes flesh and dwell within . . . As Jesus himself says, when
we eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, we abide in him and he in us. And
just as he lives
because of God—whom he calls “Father”—so do we
live because of him.
This last is what I call the chain of God, which is preeminent in John’s
gospel: God endows upon Jesus certain characteristics and Jesus, in turn,
passes them along to us. In this case it is life itself. Jesus is the Word made
flesh, and he’s dwelling among us because he’s been sent. It all leads back to
God . . . everything Jesus was and is and will
be is because of his relationship to God. In the same way, everything
we are is also
because of God, Jesus says, through our relationship to him. God bestows it on
Jesus, Jesus bestows it on us.
In 1945, Aldous Huxley—yes, that Aldous Huxley, author
of Brave New World—wrote
a book of “comparative mysticism” called “The Perennial Philosophy.” Though the
term was coined by Gottfried Leibniz—yes, that
Gottfried Leibniz—Huxley popularized and expounded upon the notion, and gave
numerous examples of it from scriptures of the world including, of course, the
Bible, as well as other sacred writings. The Perennial Philosophy can thought
of as a stream flowing through, or a structure undergirding, all major
religions, and most minor ones as well. A common denominator, if you will,
spoken of in every faith, albeit using different words and concepts. These
religions include, but are not limited to, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism,
and Christianity.
It must be emphasized that Huxley was
not saying these religions are the same, or even equivalent, just that they
have a common baseline, consisting of three main ideas: first, there is a
divine Reality substantial to—over, under, around and throughout—the the world
of things and lives and minds. Second, within each human being is an entity—a
soul or ”divine spark” or atman as the Hindus call it—that is similar to, or
even identical with, this divine Reality. Lastly, a person’s final end is the
knowledge of and access to this immanent divine Reality.
And Jesus uses metaphors to speak of
this reality, especially here in John, and this “mutual abiding” is the primary
one. His abiding in us—and we in him—seems to be the equivalent of the third
idea in the Perennial Philosophy: our final end is knowledge of and access to
the immanent divine reality. And according to Jesus, abiding in him and he in
us is how we produce fruit in our lives: “I am the vine,” he says, “and you are
the branches. Those who abide
in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can
do nothing.”
Way back in the first sermon on the
bread discourse we talked about “believing in Jesus,” and I opined that believing in Jesus meant not
just a simple affirmation that what he says about himself is true, but that it
means the whole shebang, an immersing of our lives in him, aligning our lives
with him. Giving up our own lives for him. And this week, we see the results of
believing in him, of “coming to him,” to use another metaphor: abiding in him.
We believe in him, that’s the process, we give up our lives, ourselves, our
egos, just as he gave up his life and self and ego, and we come to abide in
him. And those who abide in him—and he in us—bear fruit in this life, never mind what
happens in the next.
Jesus said “Those who eat of my flesh
and drink of my blood abide in me and I in them,” they realize and have access
to the indwelling Christ-spark within. And it seems to me that that is our purpose: to bear
fruit. And is that what Paul lists as fruits of the Spirit? Is it our
purpose—as some Wisdom teachers would say—manifest these fruits into the world?
Compassion, loving-kindness, patience, generosity, self-control?
Now, as a response to the Word made
flesh let’s symbolically bring that flesh of Christ to our friends and
neighbors.
No comments:
Post a Comment