Long
before the Last Supper, Jesus associated Himself with bread. In John 6, He declares Himself as the “Bread
of Heaven” and the “Bread of Life”, words which we associate with Communion. These are part of the “I Am” statements of
Jesus. Jesus has already introduced
Himself as the “I Am” to the woman at the well.
He did not tell her that He was the Living Water, only that He is the
source of living water. No, His
self-introduction to her was simply, “I Am” after she said, “I know that
Messiah is coming who will teach us all things.” Jesus identified Himself as Messiah and
God. This treatise about bread by Jesus
takes place after the feeding of the 5000+ people. A group went the next day looking for Jesus
and couldn’t find Him, but eventually caught up with Him in Capernaum. It may have taken a day or so to make that
trip by foot. They want to see what Jesus can do next, but Jesus shows them
that what they need is Him, not simply what He can do or even what He teaches. On this World Communion Sunday, when we come
to the table, we acknowledge our need for Jesus Himself.
Jesus is the gift of life and
sustenance. Jesus gives living water,
but He is the Bread of Heaven and the Bread of Life. The living water probably and rightly reminds
many of us what Jesus does for us in baptism.
In the picture of water, Jesus emphasizes the joy that comes from
life. But in Communion, we do not eat bread
with water, but with the fruit of the vine.
Though Jesus calls Himself the True Vine, He does not call Himself the
fruit of the vine. Rather we are to bear
the fruit as we are connected to Him. At
the Last Supper, Jesus tells us that the cup symbolizes the new covenant sealed
by His blood. Though I won’t focus too
much on the cup in this message this morning, both the bread and cup remind us
that Jesus is God giving Himself to us that we might have life.
The crowd following Jesus was looking
for what they could get out of Him. They
were not looking for Him. Jesus says, “You
seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were
filled.” Furthermore, we know this
because many of them quit following Him after this speech. Some wanted to kill Him. Even His disciples said, “This is a hard
saying.” How many of you have been in a
relationship with someone who was only out to use you? Maybe someone you thought was a friend, maybe
a family member, maybe someone you were genuinely trying to help, maybe someone
you dated? How did it make you feel
about yourself and about that person?
Did it affect your relationships with other people? No one likes being used, including
Jesus. Are you chasing Jesus because of
what you can get from Him or are you pursuing Jesus for Himself, for what He
willingly offers to you and wants you to have?
When the crowd hears Jesus tells them
they should desire the food that gives eternal life, not food that perishes,
they ask, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” In other words, what must we do so that we
can get this bread from heaven which gives eternal life? The answer is simple yet profound. “Believe in God and the One whom He has
sent.” Believe, as Ernst Haenchen puts
it, “that Jesus is the One sent from God, and in Him God is represented and
made presence.” There is only one work that we must do—believe in Jesus. Believe in who is He—that He is God, that
eternal life is found in Him, that He is Life.
Unlike the woman at the well who responds quickly upon hearing Jesus
say, “I am”, even running back to her village to tell others about the Messiah,
this crowd is slow to respond. Instead
of faith, they ask for another sign, another sign having to do with physical
food—like the manna that fell from heaven in the Old Testament. You see, this crowd knew the story from the
Midrash that in the last days, manna from heaven would again fall, but they
make some mistakes. First, they
attribute the giving of manna to Moses instead of to God the Father. Jesus corrects them and goes on to say that the
Father gives the true bread from heaven.
Now they decide it is something they want, so they ask Jesus to give
it. This is their second
misunderstanding. The Bread is
Jesus. He is the gift. He is eternal life. Jesus affirms the prophecy, but lets them
know that it is fulfilled in Him. He is
the manna. He is the bread of heaven,
sent by God the Father in the last days.
How much does Jesus have to prove Himself to you before you believe
Him? Do you want Jesus always, or only
when you are desperate or it serves your convenience or your purposes? Jesus is the gift! Jesus promises not to cast out anyone who
comes to Him. Like last week, we hear
Jesus promising resurrection and putting Himself at the center of it. Jesus affirms life and life to come.
Early Christians were accused of
cannibalism because of the Last Supper.
The recitation of Jesus’s words, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink of His blood, you will not have life within you,” caused outsiders
to believe that some kind of human sacrifice was happening. Even the Jews who heard Jesus say these words
were confused by them. They didn’t know
how they could possibly do this. In
fact, it was especially offensive when Jesus said that we must drink His
blood. Eating and drinking blood was
forbidden by the Mosaic law as recorded in Deuteronomy 12:23, “for the life is
in the blood.” Even in the Book of Acts,
as recorded in Acts 15, the prohibition against blood was one of three laws
that was passed on to the Gentile believers.
The life is in the blood. Jesus’s
blood had to be shed for us to give us life.
Today’s passage is the key passage on
which Catholics base the doctrine of Transubstantiation, that in the mass when
the words of institution are given, the bread, which is called the Host,
actually becomes the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. They take the words that Jesus says in this
passage literally. They do not take all
of Jesus’s other I Am sayings as literally as this one, such as “The True
Vine,” “The Good Shepherd,” “The Door of the Sheep”. However, the doctrine of Transubstantiation is
quite ancient. One of the earliest clear
teachers of this doctrine was Justin Martyr who died in 165 AD. As Reformed Protestants, we too believe that
Jesus is the Host at the Communion meal, but we generally do not call the bread
the Host. Our Host remains unseen by our
physical eyes, but He is still present.
We believe that Jesus feeds us with Himself without the bread literally
becoming the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. We believe the bread and cup are
representative of Jesus’s real presence with us and that this sacrament is more
than just a memorial ordinance. We
affirm that in this meal, the power of Christ is transferred to us. That being said, we welcome all baptized
believers to the table because we believe in the one body of Christ, and the
one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and because the table does not belong
to Trinity Presbyterian Church, but to Jesus Christ, who invites His own to
come.
So how do we eat Jesus’s flesh if we do
not believe the bread and cup literally become His body, blood, soul and
divinity? How do we eat Jesus’s flesh
and drink His blood if not literally? First,
Jesus says it starts with God the Father.
We can’t even begin to do this if God hasn’t drawn us to Jesus
first. Second, most of us do not eat
things while they are still alive. Even
if you eat something raw, you want it dead first. Once again, we see Jesus referring to His
sacrificial death. In verse 51, He says,
“And the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.” German theologian A. Schlatter taught. “What
we have to do with His flesh and blood is not chew and swallow, but that we
recognize in His crucified body and poured out blood the ground of our life,
that we hang our faith and hope on that body and blood, and draw from there our
thinking and willing.” We unit our lives
to Christ’s; for we have no life without Jesus.
Friends, to eat and drink of Jesus is to depend on Jesus for your very
life. And it is to do the will of
Jesus. When the disciples came back with
lunch for Jesus and saw Him at the well with the woman running away, they
wondered if He had eaten, but He replied, “My food is to do the will of the One
who sent Me.” In John 6:38, Jesus
affirms, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will
of Him who sent Me.” As Jesus did the
will of the Father, He was satisfied and lacked nothing. In verses 56-57, Jesus says, The one who eats
My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in Him. As the living Father sent e, and I live
because of the Father, so the one who eats Me will also live because of
Me. St. Ignatius of Antioch equated
eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking His blood to being united with Him through
martyrdom. St. Ignatius was bishop of
the church in which the apostle Paul was discipled, not during Paul’s time, but
shortly after as He was martyred in 110 AD.
Knowing he was going to be executed, St. Ignatius wrote to the Roman
church:
I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the
pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the
bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became
afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God,
namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.
In
these last days of his life, St. Ignatius declared that Jesus was everything to
Him. He needed nothing but Jesus nor was
there anything that mattered but Jesus. To
do Jesus’s will is enough. Follow
Jesus. Finish His work of being and
making disciples. Embrace the way of the
cross for the promise is eternal life and resurrection! May Jesus be everything to you.
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