Sermon for August 18th 13th Sunday after Pentecost

John 6 I Am the Bread of Life

OK, ready for a little National Geographic? Trivia Question: Which carnivorous mammal has the greatest recorded bite strength? I will give you a clue, it is not the human. Humans only have 162 pounds of bite force. This animal is from sub-Saharan Africa…measured with over 1000 pounds of bite force, it is…the spotted hyena. Also known as the laughing hyena. Hyenas have enough bite force to literally crunch through bones. You wanna know what that sounds like? I’m glad you asked. ‘Cause I found this youtube video…

Why do we start the sermon today with something as gross as a hyena crunching through the bones of a carcass? It’s not my fault, it’s Jesus’! Because Jesus said that is how we meant to eat his flesh. To devour it like a hungry animal. To gnaw and crunch on his flesh like a hyena with a bone. It all started when Jesus fed the 5000 and they came to him demanding more bread; more signs. What Jesus gave them, however, was himself, “I Am the Bread of Life.” And then Jesus gave them a teaching that would still be controversial today, “And the bread I give for the life of the world is…my flesh.” We have a name for that. That is called cannibalism my dear children and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. There’s this video of a CNN reporter interviewing an actual cannibal who is wearing a necklace of human jaw bones. It gets bad when the cannibal threatens the reporter to cut off his head and eat him because he talks too much. The reporter calls over his producer and says, “I think this might have been a mistake.” Yeah, you think!? Even today cannibalism is way outside the bounds. It’s like the worst a human could be, killing and eating the flesh of another human. And so the religious leaders and even Jesus’ own disciples rightly object, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And then again, “This teaching is difficult, Jesus! Who can accept it?” But Jesus doesn’t back off, or try and explain better what he meant, or somehow soften his teaching, rather he doubles down and makes the teaching even more offensive. You can’t see it in the English translation, but in verse 53 Jesus uses the verb common for eating, “Very truly I tell you unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.” But then after their objections, he doubles down and makes the teaching more offensive, using a different verb, instead of the verb for “eat” he changes it and uses the verb for “crunch or much or gnaw” like this hyena loudly gnawing and crunching on bones. And so verse 54 reads, “Those who gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood will have eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day. Gnaw and crunch on my flesh like a wild animal and drink my blood and then you will abide in me and I in you.”

Why, Jesus? Why make it so gross? Why would Jesus double-down like that? Why make it more offensive? Why not soften it up, make this teaching more palatable for people to digest. Why not? Well, I’m convinced it is because this teaching is a matter of life and death. That is, it is about our death and resurrection. And when it comes to putting the Old Adam to death, Jesus doesn’t mess around. He doesn’t soften things up to make it more palatable. This is about creating faith and Jesus doesn’t have time to mess around. And so he says it exactly as it is: If you don’t consume and take in Christ like a starving animal, then you have no part in him. Next week we’ll hear how most of Jesus’ disciples left him over the offense of this teaching; so Jesus clearly isn’t worried about crowd size. What he’s worried about is faith. Why does a starving animal eat with such ferocity and candor? Because it’s starving! Do we pretend we come to the Table already filled? Already able to forgive our own sins, able to choose to be saved apart from the work of the Holy Spirit? Do we come to this Table full? Or do we come to this table as beggars? Truly desperate and starving. This is what is at stake. Faith itself is at stake. And this is a matter of life and death, and so Jesus doubles down and makes his teaching even more offensive.

Martin Luther wrote so many volumes and volumes of books and letters and letters of correspondence, that when he died they not only took a death mask of his face, which was fairly common of someone noteworthy, but when Martin Luther died, they took a death “mask” of his hands as well, because when he died his hands were still locked in this position, the right hand as if it were holding a quill pen writing and his left as if it were flattening the page to write. I know, I got to see these in person when they were on display at Luther Seminary. Isn’t that cool? And so when Luther died, do you know the last thing he wrote? This is such a cool story. Luther knew he was dying, laying there in his death bed surrounded by friends and witnesses. He pulls a scrap of paper out of his pocket, scrawls something with a pen on the back of it, stuffs it back in his pocket and then dies. All those around him keeping vigil were like, “What did he write? What are the last words of the great Martin Luther, who wrote volumes and volumes of words? Maybe he recanted everything at the end?” So they pull out the scrap of paper, turn it over, and there on the back Luther had written, “It is true; we are all beggars.” It is true;  we are all beggars. How do we come to the table? How do we come to the throne of grace? Do we come as those already full, with all the answers if you’ll just get out of the way and let me show just you how religious I can be? Or do we come as beggars? As starving animals, as Jesus says. This is a matter of grace. It is a matter of our salvation. We do not come already filled. But like a starving hyena, we are to come to Christ’s body, as if this is the only thing in the whole world that can fill us…because it is.

And we do well to remember that the one offering his body and blood to us isn’t just some wild-eyed prophet, or even a mighty leader or important religious figure. He is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. And what more, as scripture attests, he himself is God. From the beginning, not one thing was made that was not made through him. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We are reminded of this when Jesus chooses very specific language to describe himself, “I Am the Bread of Life.” And we’ve heard that I AM before. Of course, Jesus uses it seven times in the Gospel of John: I am the good shepherd; I am the way the truth and the life; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the vine and you are the branches. But truly, that I AM claim should be even more offensive to us than Jesus inviting us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Because the claim Jesus is making goes all the way back to Exodus, to the story of the burning bush, where God calls Moses to deliver his people out of slavery. Moses finally asks God, “But who should I tell them sent me? What name shall I tell them.” And God answers, “I AM.” It is the Hebrew name YAHWEH. I AM. Or, I AM WHO I AM. That name of God was considered so holy that if you were the reader in the synagogue on the Sabbath you had a pointing stick so you didn’t actually touch the page and then if you came upon this holy name of God, you didn’t read it out loud, you substituted it with another name of God, like Adonai. But you never said this name, I AM, out loud. It was too holy. Here, Jesus not only says the name out loud, but makes claims that the I AM is indeed him. He, Jesus of Nazareth, is the great I AM who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush? And of course this is the greatest offense of all because it would have been utter blasphemy, a mere mortal to claim he is God. And so in our Bread of Life text they even question him, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now claim to come from heaven.” Because he is human, he must be lying, or delusional or plain crazy. But from heaven? The great I AM? Impossible. And yet through the ears of faith we hear and we believe. We believe that Jesus is the great I AM who spoke to Moses from the burning bush; we believe Jesus is the great I AM from before the beginning of all creation; we believe Jesus is the great I AM who is the Alpha and the Omega; we believe Jesus is the great I AM, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We believe Jesus is the great I AM who invites you to eat his flesh, to gnaw on it like you’re starving, and to drink his blood. For when you believe Jesus is the great I AM, then how can you not come to his body and come to his blood parched and starving? Where else shall you go for eternal life? Amen.