Year B

John 6:35, 41-51

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

We Are What We Eat

“You are what you eat,” is a phrase that one hears from time to time. I suppose that in a very real sense, it is true that we are what we eat because our bodies are composed primarily of the food and drinks we put in our mouths, plus some things like oxygen that we draw from the air, nutrients like vitamin D that we make with the help of sunlight, and bacteria that enter from the environment. In this literal sense, we are what we eat and eating certain foods can make us healthier and better individuals. Athletes know that, if they want to perform to maximum efficiency, they need proper fuel — like a well-running machine needs. At the opposite end, poor eating habits have been known to cause heart disease, and too many calories can cause obesity. To be healthy, we need to examine what we take in for fuel not only for our physical bodies but also for our spiritual bodies. Today, we hear in the gospel that the body and blood of Christ will literally remake our bodies and give us power for life.

It all starts with the feeding of the 5,000 and more with five loaves of bread and two fish which we heard about last week. We heard Jesus challenging the crowd who came looking for him, questioning their faith and their struggle to find in the story of Moses and the feeding of the manna in the wilderness a key to understanding just who he is. You see, in John’s gospel, the central theme and what we see in story after story is people coming to Jesus seeking to understand who he is and where he came from. And, no other document in the New Testament is more explicit in its answers to those questions. Today, we have one of those moments when Jesus pulls back the veil and declares “I am the bread of life.” I am the bread that will satisfy; the new manna that has come down from heaven to save the people. To feed on any other bread, and not on me, the living bread is to search in vain for satisfaction. It’s not a secret formula for better living, it’s my body. My very life and I give it freely. If you accept it, your life will be eternal. You are what you eat!

Yet, the answers Jesus gives them turn out to be ironic or repelling to some who hear him speak. His startling announcement, “I am the bread of life,” sets in motion a rising tension, which will at last divide the crowd and even his disciples; a few will accept his radical claims but the majority will go away. Although his critics in the crowd that day did not fully understand who he was, they were correct in identifying him as the son of Mary and Joseph. Yet, they saw this as a means of cutting him down to size. Just who did he think he was? They refused to believe that a mere human could have come from God in this unique way. Later, in the early church, just about the time that John’s gospel was written, there was a group who taught that Jesus could not have been both God and man.

If he was God, if he had come down from heaven, he could not really have been human. He could not have had contact with humankind or the rest of creation because matter, they said, was evil. If he was human, that would make him as evil as the rest of us. They too were trying to figure out who he was. We can rejoice that God, in Jesus, becomes one of us which doesn’t belittle him but testifies to his greatness that just enriches our lives. Jesus did not see humanity as a limiting factor or something to be despised. To those who were complaining and questioning him, he responds by saying, no one comes to him-the Bread of Life- unless that person has been drawn to him by God the Father. We don’t come to faith by ourselves through our own reasoning or insights alone. We are invited by God’s Holy Spirit.

It is a gift that comes down from heaven that saves us by grace alone. It is grace that opens our eyes to see our sin and our need of the living God who is made known to the world in Jesus the Christ, the bread of life, the one who when we come to him, will never leave us hungry again. When-invited-we turn to him and our thirst is quenched from a living stream. And those who have been invited to eat of this living bread and drink the healing life-giving stream in the body and blood of Christ can do nothing else but bear witness to the abundance our Lord brings to our hearts and lives. To come to Jesus, to see who he really is and what he means for the world, comes to us as a divine gift of grace through revelation and without the church, there can be no witness to the Word made flesh, a witness found in the Scriptures and in Holy Eucharist. We are the community called to take God’s vision, this living bread out to our neighbor.

Paul, in the passage from Ephesians today, reminds us that to be a community that witnesses to the Word made flesh we are to be a transformed community. He lists virtues and duties that mark a community called by God.  Marks of the new life given to us in baptism. He tells us that those who believe in Jesus the Christ are to “put off” or “strip away” the old self so that God can give them the new. We are to strip away all “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” instead we are to put on being “kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Paul is calling for Christians not merely to worship God in Christ, but with the help of the Holy Spirit to imitate Christ in their own behavior, for the sake of Christ’s church and the sake of the world.

We imitate Christ in hope that with the help of the Holy Spirit we will grow into the likeness of Christ and that God will use us as instruments to bring in God’s vision of peace, justice, mercy and love. The very nature of love is to love and to grow in that love. “We live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” It’s hard to think of the cross as a fragrant offering but that fragrant offering is God’s gift to us and we are invited to be a part of that offering by the giving up of our lives. So here we are again ready to come to this altar for the living bread. It is here at the table of the Lord and in the bread that we come to know the true meaning of God’s grace. What a joy and a privilege it is to be here in light of the mystery of what is offered us. “I am the living bread from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Thank you, Lord for your grace to be your church, for we truly are what we eat.