16 August 2009

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14 (10)
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Gosh, no wonder the people listening to Jesus in the gospel this morning got themselves all tied up in knots. Six times in a couple short minutes Jesus talks about us eating his flesh!! And Jesus doesn’t use just the one nice Greek verb we translate “to eat”. In John’s gospel for today, Jesus uses a really, really coarse verb: to gnaw. “Unless you gnaw, munch, chow-down on my flesh you have no life in you.” Eeeuww. Gross! Pastor, did you have to say that? Hey – don’t blame me – those are Jesus’ words, not mine. The Swedish bible gets at what Jesus is saying even more graphically – “unless you eat my kött,” says Jesus, “you have no life in you.” Now kött is the stuff that meatballs are made of – meat that’s all ground up. It’s really quite a fitting word – we human beings grind Jesus to pieces – mostly because of his totally annoying insistence that above all things we love one another as Jesus loves us – unconditionally . . . . . well, we can’t and won’t have that. How could we lord it over one another, how could we acquire and maintain power over one another, how could we keep one another under the heel of our boot, how could we keep one another in fear – if we have to love one another like Jesus loved that crazy bunch of dolts he ran around with? We Pastors, who have been ordered to preach that unconditional love stuff, no matter what, we hear time and time again: “All that love stuff, it’s not practical. It’s figurative, not literal. It’s an ideal, but you can’t live there.” I guess there’s some truth there – Jesus did the unconditional love thing – and look what happened to him: he was ground up like so much beef gone to the slaughter house and made into hamburger.

In Martin Luther’s time, people went to church to earn brownie points – merit badges – whatever. And people did go to church – to avoid mortal sin and acquire merit. However, they stayed away from taking communion by the droves. This eating of the ground up body of Jesus, (remember, back then only the clergy drank from the cup) was something to be . . . . feared, dreaded, avoided – like the plague. See, you had to be properly prepared – all your sins confessed and forgiven – you had to be in a so-called, “perfect state of grace.” And if you sinned in any way, shape, manner, or form between the confessional and the altar rail – heaven help you. Actually, heaven really couldn’t help you; that was the point. Not in a state of grace? Well, you had just eaten to your damnation. Communion was also thought to be so special that it should only be received on certain holy days. (Side note: that particular keep-it-special train of thought was a product of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 – you can’t get much more papist than that, folks – and the Lutheran tradition teaches that keep it special is a bunch of bunk. It’s in Luther’s Large Catechism – I didn’t make it up.)

Luther also reminds us in the Large Catechism that it was at the Cross where God established and proclaimed for all time that humankind, even at its worst was, and is, and forever will be – forgiven – even, or perhaps most especially, the humankind that desires the death of God. But we weren’t at Calvary to see it with our own eyes, to fully take it all in with our very bodies, says Luther. So – in the sacrament, that event is brought to us: Christ’s crucified, broken, chopped up body – for us, in our own place and time; the blood pouring from Christ’s wounds – for us, here and now – that we know the entire forgiveness of all our sin. Hidden in, with, and under the bread and wine – here and now, the heart of God, Jesus, God’s body among us, God’s body dying of love, God’s body ground up by the bullies who deem love impractical – God’s loving body, ground up like the grains of wheat that become flour for bread, God’s body smashed to bits, like the grapes that become wine. Calvary, right here among us – to be received into our very own bodies.