Welcome to the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. This morning we jump right into the middle of a long and complicated story that began with Jesus feeding the 5000 but has taken some interesting twists and turns. So, this morning we’re doing something similar to jumping into the middle of a TV series that’s been on for several weeks and we don’t have a clue as to what is happening. Therefore, I need to catch you up with the story.
According to John, after Jesus fed the 5000 the crowd tried to make him their king, but he slipped away to a quiet place where he could pray. Then, when evening came, he took a stroll across the lake toward his home base in Capernaum. But, first, he caught up with the boat carrying his disciples across the lake. The next day the crowd gathered once more in Capernaum hoping Jesus would give them more bread. That leads to a conversation about bread from heaven. You know, like the manna Moses provided, or, rather, God provided in the wilderness. They wanted manna, but Jesus offered himself as the bread of life came down from heaven.
Jesus told the crowd: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Jn. 6:35). That declaration sets up the conversation we heard this morning.
Jesus contrasted the manna God provided in the wilderness with the bread from heaven that he embodied. While the manna sustained the people during their journey in the wilderness, they eventually died. The bread he offers leads to eternal life. You can receive this bread from heaven by believing in Jesus. That is, if you put your trust in Jesus, then eternity is yours (Jn. 6:35-51).
What we’ve heard today from John 6 builds on this earlier conversation, but what Jesus says in this passage is something of a curve ball because he makes a claim that makes the crowd and future readers of John’s Gospel a bit uncomfortable. That’s because he claimed that this bread from heaven that brings eternal life is his flesh. If you want to receive eternal life, you have to eat his flesh. Yes, you heard that right! So what should we make of this?
Although John doesn’t tell the story of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, the other three Gospels do tell that story. During his fast, the tempter suggested that he might want to turn stones into bread to deal with his hunger. Jesus responded by telling the tempter that there’s more to life than bread, but now Jesus tells us that his flesh and blood are the true life-giving food and drink. If we connect what Jesus says here with the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, we can understand why early Christians were accused of practicing cannibalism!
I mention the Eucharist here because John’s version of the Last Supper lacks an account of the words of institution. Therefore, while this chapter doesn’t speak directly of the Eucharist, it has been interpreted as John’s version of the Words of Institution. Therefore, when he speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, Jesus offers a definition of what happens when we gather at the Table.
Now, for obvious reasons, we’re not celebrating the Lord’s Supper this morning, but our hymns and songs carry a Eucharistic message. So the next time we gather at the Table, which will be at Northminster on September 1st, perhaps the words we hear in John 6 can help us better understand why we gather at the Table.
Getting back to our story, we find the crowd debating what Jesus was saying about eating his flesh. Since they seem to be thinking in literal terms here, they want to know how you can consume his flesh and blood without, you know, becoming cannibals or vampires. But is that what Jesus has in mind?
John provides a clue in verse 56, where Jesus tells the synagogue in Capernaum: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I abide in them.” If we put our emphasis on the word abide, I think we have our answer. We can get a better sense of what Jesus means here by turning to John 15, where Jesus gives his disciples their final instructions before his arrest and execution. He tells them:
Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing. (Jn. 15:4-5).
Jesus uses different imagery in John 15 but the meaning is the same. In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches. If they are going to bear fruit, they need to stay connected to the vine. This is what it means to abide in Christ.
So, if we partake of Jesus’ body and blood, we abide in him. If we abide in him, we have eternal life. In John 15, Jesus tells us that we abide in Christ by keeping his commandments. That is because, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”(Jn. 15:10).
What are these commandments Jesus wants us to keep? He revealed one of those commandments back in John 13, where he told the disciples after he washed their feet: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn. 13:31-35). If we turn to 1 John, we find another word that supports this message about abiding in God’s love. The author of that letter writes: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:6b).
I believe this is the best way to read Jesus’ words in John 6. If we follow his commands, especially the command to love one another, we abide in him. If we abide in Christ, we experience union with God, which is eternal life.
Now, when it comes to John 6, whether John or Jesus had the Eucharist in mind is difficult to say. However, I do believe these words about eating the true bread, which is Jesus’ body, and partaking of the true drink, which is his blood, have implications for how we understand what takes place at the Lord’s Table. We don’t have to take these words so literally that we must envision the bread becoming Jesus’ actual flesh and the juice or wine becoming his actual blood. However, we can read these words spiritually, so when we gather at the Table, we experience Christ’s presence at the church’s meal. While the Eucharist serves as a memorial of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, it’s more than simply a meal of remembrance of something that happened long ago. When we gather at the Table we get to abide in Christ spiritually and taste the blessings of eternity. As the Psalmist puts it: “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).
Now, Presbyterians, as Pastor Dan shared in a recent letter about his visit to Geneva, look to John Calvin for inspiration. When it comes to Calvin’s interpretation of John 6, he lets his readers know that we don’t actually ingest Christ’s literal body and blood when we partake of the communion elements. However, he did believe that when we receive the communion elements by faith, the Spirit of God delivers to us the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That is, as we partake of the means of grace, ministered to us through bread and wine, we receive into our lives, by the power of God’s Spirit, the forgiveness that transforms and empowers the life of the believer. Having received forgiveness, we can abide in God who abides in us. So, Calvin writes:
[T]he Lord intended, by calling himself the “bread of life” (John 6:51), to teach not only that salvation for us rests on faith in his death and resurrection, but also that, by true partaking of him, his life passes into us and is made ours—just as bread when taken as food imparts vigor to the body. [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV:17.5].
Building on what Calvin shared, I offer this word from a contemporary scholar, Barbara Lundblad:
The Eucharist is a moral and mystical meal, a subversive and sustaining presence. Jesus longed for his followers to know that he would abide with them forever. He would become part of them as surely as the bread they ate and the wine they drank. How that was possible Jesus never explained, but the promise to abide was as real as the taste of bread in their mouths. [Connections, p. 245]
So, when we gather again at the Table, let us partake of this sacrament of the body and blood of Christ received in the form of bread and wine (or juice), so that we might abide in Christ forever.
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Acting Supply Pastor
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
August 18, 2024
Pentecost 13B
Image Atttibution: Bread of Life, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54927 [retrieved August 17, 2024]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgangfoto/2337441318/.
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