Bread of Communion

John 6:51-58

Communion is one of those things that is just difficult to explain. One of the bloggers I summarized it as follows - there are just some experiences beyond our human ability to match words to them and this would be it. I could not concur more with someone about communion. It is beyond words.

I went through a period when I was becoming Catholic where I just couldn't understand transubstantiation, this is the Catholic belief that the elements become the actual body and the actual blood of Christ and it is a mystical moment. All of communion is supposed to be mystical. I just couldn't buy it. I was a science major and I know science and how could this happen. I had prayed about it for several months as I was getting ready for my confirmation and refused to be confirmed if I couldn't get my head around this idea. Then I went to a church service across the Hudson River in this large church and I prayed that God help me to understand. As the priest raised his hands and asked Jesus into the elements, I felt a feeling of God's presence so large, overwhelming, yet all encompassing and loving that it is beyond words. Tears poured out of my eyes and I felt so awed I had difficulty raising myself to go to the altar to accept the gifts. I did go through with becoming Catholic. I was not sure if that was transubstantiation but God's presence was there and that was good enough for me.

As I have come to understand more about the protestant stand on communion and in particular the United Methodist stance I have come to understand my experience a bit more. For us the scientific fact of it actually turning into God's flesh and blood is not the case. It is the out pouring of the spirit on those elements, God's presence in that space and our choosing to come to the table. Grace is beyond our choice. God's pull on our lives is always there, but we do have the choice to accept it. To come to the table in eager anticipation of being filled with God's love and in that love trying to walk God's path out of love. As our communion service say - "Make them be for us the body of Christ that we may be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by his blood." (UMH p. 10).

When Jesus used the metaphor of becoming the bread and blood of salvation he meant to be shocking. Some may have understood him to be literal but he was playing off a cultural experience of the time to ingest portions of Holy scrolls to remind oneself of how to live. To take in the Holy in such a way that it becomes part of you and you must live it out. To suggest that he was the Holy was truly shocking, but ingesting the Holy wasn't completely novel.

Jesus calls his flesh and blood to be true food or true spiritual fulfillment, and compares it to the Manna that left you wanting. He is promising here that the new covenant that includes him is going to be different to wandering lost in the desert and being given just enough to sustain life but not really satisfy. Jesus will satisfy our hunger if we choose to accept the grace that is offered us, that is constantly pulling us, causing us to be hungry for something. That restless feeling of needing more spiritually is a call to come to the communion table, to choose to be fed.

The absolute miracle is of communion is that when you choose to come to the table truly seeking Christ, truly wanting to be spiritually fed, Jesus has promised to meet you there. Not only has
Jesus promised to meet you there, but he promised to help you live out that life.

So how do you choose to come to the communion table? Is it a process devoid of any real commitment, or are you truly expecting to meet Christ? Are you coming feeling hungry and dissatisfied with your spiritual life or do you not have time to think of such things? What kind of life are choosing to have? A life without Christ, or an eternal life? Are you choosing to have Christ live in you, to answer that pull? To truly believe that Christ came to rewrite our covenant with God, no matter how outrageous it seemed at the time or even today? How do you come to the table?

The bread of life - metaphor or literal

John 6:35-51

When I read this passage I could not help but think -  this would be perfect for Bible Study!!!  This would be a great passage to gather my 17 different Bibles around with their varying comments and notes and the commentaries and just tear into it.  Ask the startling questions and take notice of the discord in it.  This is one of those passages that illustrate the disagreements in interpretation. Jesus is speaking himself to people, and people are interpreting him in many different ways.  Their understanding of scriptures, of his words and of his use of simile are all different, and Jesus is standing right in front of them.  It may sound selfish, but it gives me a whole lot of hope. Two thousand years later, we are still having the same problem with varying interpretations of the scriptures and different understandings of what Jesus is telling us.  God did not give up on us, Jesus did not give up on the people he was preaching to.  We are promised in verse 37 that “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.” He goes on in verse 39 to remind us that I should lose nothing at all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”

John reminds us that Jesus was sometimes difficult to understand. Jesus made many references that the people would understand but he also used a great deal of metaphor and simile and as any middle school English student can tell you these literature devices are not always easy to understand. For many years the Romans believed that Christians were cannibals, citing Jesus telling us to eat his flesh. Many people for the first three hundred years of the Church thought Christians were cannibals and deserved death.

Jesus does not give up on his listeners just as he does not give up on us.  In verse 41 we hear the complaints begin. How can this man claim to have come down from heaven? He is merely human! We know his parents! This is ridiculous.

Jesus refutes them and uses references to Isaiah and Moses to make his point. God draws us to Jesus, and Jesus brings us home to God. We can't do it on our own. We can't just decide to be drawn to Jesus, but rather God draws us to Jesus and all of us who are pulled towards Jesus will have eternal life.  Jesus is promising us that if we are drawn to him we will have eternal life!  He loves us too much to let us go any other way.

Jesus continued to explain his analogy to the Bread of Life to his listeners.  He did not give up.  I find the analogy of the bread of life to be interesting. At this time period at leas 50% or more of a persons calories were consumed through bread daily. But anyone who has every made bread can tell you this is not a quick process. If you lived at Jesus' time you had to grow the wheat, harvest it, mill it, and then store it without vermin getting into it. Then you have to add the yeast, sugar and water, mix in the flour and let rise, then you needed to knead it, and let rise again. Finally you bake it. This is a lengthy time consuming process.

Maybe Jesus was trying to help understand a greater truth in this.  Taking in God, understanding scriptures and living a life devoted to God is not easy.  It takes time and trials and a whole lot of work. You can't just go down to Stewart's and grab a loaf, you actually have to put effort in it.  Not only that but the person next to you may be doing it a little differently. They may have different life experiences, different references for those similes and their interpretation could be different. The person in your pew could have a different interpretation.  The point is that Jesus calls us, that he brings back to the father all that is given to him and he does not lose one.  That Jesus will raise up those given to him.  P

Perhaps we should take a few words from Paul's letter to the Ephesians that we read earlier and remember to love one another.  As Paul said in 4:32- 5:2 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.  Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children,and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  We are to remember that love and forgiveness of one another even when we see things differently.  This is the hope that I found in the passage this week.  We have not agreed in 2000 years on interpretation, chances are we won't in the next 2000 either, but we are called to be imitators of God and live in love with one another.  

Now of course if we really did do this passage for Bible study we would have some questions to share with one another.  So I leave you this morning with some questions to think about.  Why did Jesus choose to be the bread of life - why that metaphor? What does it mean that it takes so long to make that bread - what could that mean to your personal life? How are we pulled by God? How are we nourished? What does it mean that every one of us that feels called by God will not be lost? What did Jesus mean then, and for us now?