Eat my flesh
John 6:56-69
Everyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
lives in me, and I live in them. 57 Just as the living Abba God sent me
and I have life because of Abba God,
so those who feed on me
will have life because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven.
It’s not the kind of bread your ancestors ate,
for they died;
whoever eats this kind of bread
will live forever.” 59 Jesus spoke these words while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. 60 Many of his disciples remarked, “We can’t put up with this kind of talk! How can anyone take it seriously?” 61 Jesus was fully aware that the disciples were murmuring in protest at what he had said. “Is this a stumbling block for you?” he asked them. 62 “What, then, if you were to see the Chosen One
ascend to where the Chosen One came from? 63 It is the spirit that gives life;
the flesh in itself is useless.
The words I have spoken to you
are spirit and life. 64 Yet among you there are some
who don’t believe.” Jesus knew from the start, of course, those who would refuse to believe and the one who would betray him. 65 He went on to say: “This is why I have told you
that no one can come to me
unless it is granted by Abba God.” 66 From this time on, many of the disciples broke away and wouldn’t remain in the company of Jesus. 67 Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Are you going to leave me, too?” 68 Simon Peter answered, “Rabbi, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe; we’re convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (pp. 2297-2298). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.
I grew up in an Evangelical Christian context, which means that from a very young age I was equipped to share the good news of eternal life with any and every person who seemed willing to have that conversation. I was also taught that each of us is headed straight to eternal torment unless we got our beliefs right, which conveniently would get us into heaven instead. With eternal suffering of countless individuals on the table, this was a very serious mission, and I took it very seriously.
One of the tools given to this Jesus Army was the Romans Road to Salvation—which is a selection of 5 isolated verses through Paul’s letter to the Romans, explaining that all one needed to do to have eternal life in heaven was to believe in Jesus, say a prayer confessing your sinfulness, believe that you’re saved, tell Jesus you trust him, and on judgment day you get Jesus’s perfect record and you won’t be held accountable for your sins.
Is that what eternal life is? Maybe you’ve heard someone promise you heaven when you die if only you believe just right. So eternal life is being right forever?
Or is there more? What does it mean—eternal life? It sometimes seems the best we can do is imagine eternity as a continuation of this linear timeline as we experience it here on earth, personally I think it’s more of a release from the linear timeline. But regardless, we gotta ask: how do we get it—how do we have eternal life? In all of the Bible verses Christians have been swinging around for the last few hundred years to summarize how to live forever, evangelistic efforts have really under-utilized this crystal clear answer straight from Jesus’s mouth: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will live forever.”
Good news right?? Live forever??
Not unlike Jesus’s disciples who deserted him after this teaching, that’s a bit too heavy or complex for many of us to digest, so we Western Christians do what we can to simplify it. We prefer to make eternal life something we get through a transaction with God, that way we can be sure we got it right and move on with our lives without fear of what happens when we die—because again, that’s what eternal life is, right?
Jesus doesn’t look at eternal life in this linear way. He also typically speaks out pretty boldly against attempts to manipulate God by “getting it right.” He says this life that endures is something we feed on. It’s something we orient our lives around, not receive just once. And he says there’s nothing you have to do or say to get it—this life—except be willing to give up your self.
I think Jesus is teaching in this chapter of John that eternal life is a way of being while we’re here in these bodies. with our Mother Earth. There’s a way of having eternal life as a human that must be distinctly unique to us—and that’s what we’re here to do, isn’t it? To really live? To really human? And this life, it’s more than opening our eyes another morning—it comes from our spirit.
After he’s grossed everyone out with his yummy metaphor, Jesus names a duality of the human experience: the spirit gives life, but our life is in the flesh.
These bodies are a gift to us. Bodies are how we get to be a part of this whole material reality. They’re what connects us to the ecosystem of every other material thing, and they’re what separate us from one another. Bodies are what defines what is and is not us. My face is not your face, which is how we know who we are. My hand is not your hand, and that’s what makes holding hands so nice. These bodies are our physical boundaries—confined by the laws of physics to being in one place at one time. Limited to being me and not you. Our bodies are our experience of “me.” This is where our sense of self lives—in the flesh. And the flesh mostly has one goal: to survive. To just keep being me.
This impulse toward survival created a kind of superpower in us. Humans have this amazing ability to time travel—have you done it yet today? We can be sitting still in a pew, listening to someone talk or reading a prayer aloud or singing a song, when something from the past or the future beckons us and before we’ve realized it, we’re rehearsing the afternoon’s grocery list or the conversation we had in the car on the way here. How often are you sitting in your physical body in one place and time, and your mind is anywhere but here?
Recently I heard Tara Brach, a Buddhist psychologist and one of my favorite meditation teachers explain that it is actually a survival mechanism that our minds do this—no, you’re not the only one. When we settle down to sit still and be attentive to this moment, our brains flip into what’s called Default Mode Network: the mode your brain goes into to figure out what’s going on now and am I safe and how does this experience fit into the timeline of ME.
I get quiet and my brain sucks me into My narrative. My life. My identity.
Can you believe this? Can you believe our brains are wired AGAINST us experiencing the bliss of being present in this very moment? Can you believe that our biology is what keeps us from peace?
It’s amazing! This function of our brains is what keeps us alive and makes us so intelligent. And it’s also what kills us.
When we look backwards and forwards, we write stories about ourselves. We further and further identify with the stories about who we are and who we are not, and before long we’ve imprisoned ourselves in a box of our own making. Experiencing ME as a separate self is the burden of loneliness we all carry as we make sense out of who we are. Letting go of these stories is not easy.
You wonder why Jesus wasn’t concerned by the people who abandoned his difficult teaching? The friends and disciples he wanted seem to be the ones who were willing to adopt a new and disturbing belief: whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.
Who could accept this? Surely that’s not really what it means? Then how do we receive the eternal life of Christ?
His invitation is to be freed from the lonely prisons we built for ourselves. We each make ourselves a small, limited box that feels safe at first because when we’re in there, we know who we are, we know how the world works. That box is an expression of what we believe to be true about the world. Its walls are made of stories and beliefs, crafted into a container, where beliefs hold your life, but also limit and control it.
Eternal life is stepping out of that box. Eternal life is freedom from the stories that make us cling so tightly to our sense of separate self. Eternal life is trusting Jesus enough to give up your self, and believe that life might be even more magical and free than you ever imagined.nFreed from our limiting beliefs about who we are and how the world works and what is possible and what is impossible.
His invitation is to feed on his life in the way that he lived it—feasting on the love of God.
For some of us this could be too much to stomach. Maybe there are parts of who I think I am that I’m not willing to give up. Maybe we’re so attached to our material identities that we aren’t hungry for eternal life. Maybe if we can’t stomach the bread of life it’s because we’re already full.
But those who are hungry? are fed—and they are fed eternally and abundantly. Those who will admit their longing, their heartbreak; those who grieve the suffering of this world, the pain of loss and distance between us and those we love, the challenges of aging—those of us desperate for something bigger than ourselves, desperate for something more than this person I think I am and the roles I fill; desperate for something to breathe the electricity of connection into these bodies of separation—we are the ones who sigh with Peter “Where else can we go, Teacher?”
Where else can we go? We feel the doubt and use it to press in closer to the magic and mystery of this life—the beautiful wondrous truth that the meaning in all of it is that we are in it together.
Because you see the whole point in experiencing separation is that it drives us back to union. Reunion—coming back together. Communion—sharing the things that seem to separate us with one another so that we are no longer alone in them. Choosing not to be kept apart by the limitations of this material life.
As much as it is human nature to carefully construct an identity, so it is human nature to expand beyond ourselves—beyond limits of our bodies and minds—
You are more than your biological processes. You are more than your next heartbeat, more than the oxygenation and filtration of your blood. You are more than the neurons firing in your mind and in your gut. You are more than the digestion of this morning’s breakfast. But Just as each individual process in your body works together in harmony to create life, so it is when we are in relationship with one another.
You are an embodied experience of Love longing for communion.
My time at St. Andrew’s began because of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last fall I was complaining about how hard it is to find communion during the pandemic, and Mary Lynn promised me Eucharist at St. Andrew’s. I came to take a wafer, but immediately after sitting down I was greeted by a six-feet-away Anne Cass and warmly welcomed by Helen Davies. Quickly I saw an opportunity to offer my gifts in worship and I haven’t missed a Sunday since.
I have been moved and molded by many of the individuals in this congregation, but the transformational experience was the community itself and finding my place in it. This is a room full of beautiful individuals, but your togetherness? Now that’s a superpower.
And to think my draw here was toward holy communion. I came for a communion wafer, but what I leave with is communion in the Body of Christ.
This kind of community is the bread of life. This kind of belonging and love and service and taking care of one another and asking for support when we need it—this is the bread of life. This is an intoxicating taste of the kind of love that makes you lose track of yourself in another person—the kind of connection and relationship that frees us from ourselves. The love that is heartbeat of the entire universe. Eternal life.
Maybe eternal life is remembering. As you come to the table, may you remember that Christ offers you relief from the tight grip around who you think you are. Remember that love can free you from yourself. Remember that it is totally safe to get swept up in this love. Remember that we are better when we take down our walls and take someone’s hand. May you remember as you eat his flesh that you are partaking in heavenly food, participating in heavenly life, and may you savor the taste of the boundlessness of this love that binds us all together.