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Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 18, 2024
Proverbs 9:1-6, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we hear what might just be the most shocking thing Jesus ever said: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” There is the graphic language of eating flesh and drinking blood, which, on the face of it, sounds more like something you’d hear in a zombie movie than a worship service. Then there is the exclusivity of Jesus’ statement and his total lack of equivocation: Unless you eat his flesh and drink his blood, Jesus says, you have no life in you. Life is found in him alone! And just in case anyone was to think that maybe Jesus just phrased things poorly, in his very next breath Jesus repeats all of this by saying that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink, and those who eat and drink of it have eternal life. He really means all of this!
But what, exactly, does he mean?
There are different ways of interpreting Jesus’ words here. Even within Lutheran Christianity there are different interpretations. Some, including Martin Luther himself, have argued that what Jesus is saying here is all about the cross. With this shocking language, Jesus is pointing ahead to the sacrifice he would make for us on the cross. He is the one whose flesh would soon be given and whose blood would soon be poured out in order to make atonement, in order to make things right between sinful humanity and a holy God. This was all foreshadowed in the Levitical system, the sacrificial system we read about in the Old Testament – only now, instead of it being a bull or a lamb or a turtledove, it would be the Son of Man giving himself as the final sacrifice. By eating and drinking this in, by consuming this gift, by taking it in through faith and inwardly digesting it (as we talked about last week) we receive eternal life.
Other Lutheran theologians argue that this passage is all about the Lord’s Supper. They point out that John doesn’t include an account of the Last Supper and the institution of the Lord’s Supper in his gospel – probably because he knows it has already been covered three times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and so instead John is sure to document these words of Jesus to help us understand what is happening when we share the Lord’s Supper, to help us understand that we are indeed eating and drinking the true body and the true blood of our Lord Jesus, who gives us eternal life.
There are important reasons for both interpretations, and I don’t want to gloss over them, but I also think both can be true at the same time. This shocking language from Jesus is primarily about the cross. Jesus is no doubt pointing ahead to the sacrifice he would soon make. But it is also true that in the Lord’s Supper we are connected in a powerful way to what happened on the cross. It is in the Lord’s Supper that we receive the body and blood which were given on the cross for our salvation. As St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthains: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” Jesus is no doubt pointing ahead to this too.
Speaking of the Last Supper, you may have heard about the controversy at the Olympics opening ceremonies in Paris a few weeks ago. As part of the performance art there was a depiction of a banquet which bore an uncanny resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” only instead of Jesus and the apostles there were drag queens striking similar poses. There is some question as to whether the resemblance was intended or not, but even if it wasn’t, the artist’s explanation wasn’t much better. He insisted that what he was really depicting was the feast of Dionysus. To be fair, because the Olympics originated in Greece, it does make some sense to give a nod to Greek mythology, but Dionysus is an interesting choice. Dionysus doesn’t represent strength or speed or victory. Dionysus represents revelry, drunkenness, promiscuity, and pleasure seeking. The Roman name for Dionysus was Bacchus, which is etymologically related to the word debauchery. The Bacchanal feasts of ancient Rome and the Dionysian feasts of ancient Greece were notorious for intoxication and gender bending and orgiastic indulgences – all of which were depicted in not-so-subtle ways in this performance art. This Dionysus-inspired display perfectly represented what St. Paul is referring to in our second reading from Ephesians when he warns against evil days and foolish people, and saying, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.” This is exactly what the Ephesians had left behind when they became Christians.
This part of the opening ceremony represented less than two minutes of the otherwise spectacular four-hour event celebrating French history and culture, but the specific Greek mythology this artist chose to depict is telling. The motto or mantra of these worshippers of Dionysus was: “Nothing is true; everything is permitted.” Even if the artist didn’t intend to mock the Last Supper (which I find very difficult to believe), this is the ethos he was promoting, and this is the ethos that is increasingly gaining a foothold not only in France but in all of Western civilization. We are seeing a resurgent Dionysian paganism where nothing is true and everything is permitted, and those who worship at this table are in grave spiritual danger.
A couple of Sundays ago I was at my Doxology conference in Kansas City, and in the Sunday morning sermon, which was on the Bread of Life just as it was here that week, the preacher said something which stuck with me. He said, “False gods always consume their worshipers. Only the Lord Jesus gives himself to be consumed.” This just rings so true! The idols people turn to for comfort or peace or pleasure always end up devouring them. Those Dionysian false gods have a way of consuming their worshippers. We see this in how promiscuity so often leads to depression or disease. We see this in how drug and alcohol abuse destroys people from the inside out, making them a shell of their former selves. I’ve personally watched this happen, and I know many of you have too. We see this in how people spend their lives chasing one pleasure after another, and when that inevitably leaves them feeling empty, they fall into despair. The celebrity chef and food journalist Anthony Bourdain seems to be an example of this. He was wealthy and famous. He went all around the world eating all the best foods. As an atheist, he believed this was what life was for – to eat, drink, and be merry. He ended up taking his own life – in Paris of all places, the culinary center of the world. Dionysus consumed him. It’s awful. He was a charming and insightful and wonderful man. This is the danger. False gods always consume their worshippers. Only Christ gives himself to be consumed.
This, my friends, is what this shocking-sounding gospel reading is all about. When you get right down to it, what Jesus is saying here is more than an abstract theological claim about the cross or an abstract theological claim about the Lord’s Supper. Instead, it is a powerful proclamation of the kind of God Jesus is. Jesus is the kind of God who, instead of consuming us, gives himself to us to be consumed. Jesus gives himself for us on the cross, and he gives himself to us in the Lord’s Supper. He is the only God like this, and so he is the only God who can truly give us life.
In a world that wants to eat you up and spit you out, the Lord Jesus comes as one who gives you his own body and blood to eat and drink. This isn’t cannibalism, which is what the early Christians were accused of by their pagan neighbors. This is the promise of Christ dwelling in us as we receive his gifts, given in Word and bread and wine. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” Jesus says.
In a world that wants to eat you up and spit you out, the Lord Jesus gives you himself to eat and drink, that you would have life. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever,” Jesus promises. “Whoever eats me will live because of me,” he says. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the early church fathers – so early that he knew the apostles personally – wrote that the Lord’s Supper is “the medicine of immortality, because there in the eating and drinking we receive the Lord’s true Body and Blood just as He had taught in Capernaum.”
In a world that increasingly believes that nothing is true and everything is permitted, Jesus comes to us as the way, the truth, and the life.
Christ comes to us with his cross, where we find forgiveness for all the times we may have sat at the table of Dionysus. He comes to us with his Word, which guides us in the way, teaching us to lay aside immaturity and walk in the way of insight, as it says in our first reading, teaching us to be careful in how we live, not as unwise people but as wise, as it says in our second reading. Christ comes to us summon us to his table, which is set with his true Body and Blood. He comes to feed us with true food and true drink – the medicine of immortality. Jesus comes to be consumed by those who worship him, that we would have life in him.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church