Genesis 3:1-8
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
John 6:48-58
[Jesus said:] I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Judeans then disputed among themselves saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Sermon
This Gospel reading seems more appropriate for Halloween, or a zombie party, than for worship. Jesus tells us ‘eat my flesh, drink my blood,’ and not politely, either. The language of eating here is likened to the way a dog gnaws on a bone, to work on it, chew it up for all its worth, getting all the flavor possible out of it. And drinking his blood? It’s no wonder early Christians were called cannibals!
This story from John is one of those which demands we don’t just leave our faith in our heads or on the shelf. Jesus has a human body, blood, flesh, and bone, just like ours, and when he talks about the meat and marrow of life he refuses to let us see faith as an escape from reality. “Eat my flesh, drink my blood” = have my life for your life. This is not simply a life of easy discipleship which only offers comfort, but a challenge to grow and to abide with God down to our very bones, in the same way God in Jesus abides with us down to the bones. Once we walked with God in the garden, but ever since we rejected that, God has been haunting us, chasing after us, leading us and dwelling with us in prophets, in history, in a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud, in the law given to Moses and in the tent of the priests set up among us. God has been abiding with God’s people for a long time.
In our earliest faith history, we have this beautiful, good creation, brought to order out of chaos, raised up from the earth to care for the earth, and creation seems to turn against itself when the crafty serpent tricks humanity into doubting God’s word and taking good and evil into our own hands. Suddenly, in light of this knowing, we discovered shame, invented hiding, covered our bodies and widened the gap between us and God, distrusting both our own goodness and God’s ability or even desire to see us as we are.
It only takes a little question, it seems, to bring down our house of cards. A little hiding, a little secrecy, to take away our sense of security. Like leaven in bread, a pinch is all that is needed to spread throughout the loaf. And the serpent’s distrust snuck into us, infecting our power to live in right relationship, and we felt it, we knew it, in our bodies. As we so often carry our life experience physically, in our shoulders, backs, faces, innards and grey hairs.
It is in this same body that Jesus lives. Muscle and sinew, skin and sweat, blood and tears, given and shed for us. For all of our hiding, Jesus openly gives himself, gives all of himself, for our life. In that gift of himself, these bodies, these histories, that we carry and that we hide, will be restored.
But for now, in our broken wilderness of Lent, we travel together with Christ as best as we can. In these mid-week gatherings we celebrate our kinship along the journey at the same time that we are met with our historical, human failures. Because even as we gather, even as we are sharing supper fellowship, we are a broken community. The Gospel reading from John for tonight is time and again connected with God’s gift of self in the Eucharist, yet we are not able to celebrate Eucharist together in these mid-week services, because our historic and doctrinal divisions run too deep.
So we grieve the divisions between us even as we celebrate the ways God brings us together. All of those basic human needs - food, water, shelter - can be met by God in and through our fellowships. In spite of our historical divisions, God continues to free and unite us to serve our neighbors, and one another, in the name of the Christ who abides with us, even down in our bones. Because the love of God among us and for us is not hidden on account of our brokenness, is not weakened, but is glorified as God’s creative spirit again and again brings us new life and bears the fruits of God’s kingdom among us. The love of God runs deeper than our histories. So until that day when he comes again in glory, and we can finally live fully into the reality of our unity in Christ, we work the works of love and of hope, like leaven in bread, infusing the world with the promises of God to make all things new.
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