"We Come To The Table To Be Fed" August 20, 2006 Pentecost 11 Proper 15

(First, read the text for this sermon: John 6:[41-50]51-58)

You and I are drawn here each Sunday morning. We assemble in this place. We pray, we sing, we listen, we speak. And we come to the table, in the center of our worship space, to be fed.

It is a high privilege for me to place bread in your hands, to meet your eyes, and to say, “This is the body of Christ, given for you.” Sometimes you come to the table with such hungers, and I am so glad to see you there, that it’s all I can do to keep my composure. A worshiper whose depression has been so smothering that it is a triumph for him just to be in public. Another who comes to the table alone, because her husband is in the hospital with a life-threatening diagnosis. Another, holding out her hands for the bread, still reeling because her son was sentenced to prison that previous week. Another, who has felt rejected because of her sexuality, coming to the table to be fed.

Of course, it’s not my table in the center of our worship space! I’m just a server. The host is Jesus the Christ. It is the Lord’s Supper, offered to feed our deepest hungers.

We read in the gospel of John that this feeding is literal! We’ve been reading from the sixth chapter of John the past couple of weeks. I printed last week’s reading in the bulletin to give some context to this morning’s verses. In last week’s excerpt, Jesus calls himself “the bread that came down from heaven,” and “the bread of life.” He contrasts that to the manna that God provided to our ancestors. (Remember the story of Moses leading the people in the wilderness? Remember how, at one point, they were about to starve to death, but then every morning they got up and gathered manna that had appeared on the ground overnight, food from God?)

But the manna was ordinary food, feeding ordinary hunger. Listen to how Jesus differentiates himself from that, in verses we read last week: Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the 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. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever;…” And now watch, as the “bread of life” metaphor suddenly and shockingly shifts, to be literally about Jesus’ flesh! Jesus continues, “and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

What?! Are we to be cannibals? The [Jewish leaders] then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "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.” All of this is extremely offensive to the Jewish leaders – because they are custodians of God’s holy law and, according to that law, the drinking of blood is horrendous! It trespasses against holy dietary laws that are given by God to keep the chosen people pure from the uncleanness that is all around them.

Jesus continues: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”

Isn’t this shocking? You and I do not have the same concerns for protecting dietary purity laws as did the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day. But don’t you also react to these verses with revulsion?

Indeed, many react with shock to learn that, for Lutherans, the bread and wine of Holy Communion is the true body and blood of Christ. Many of you might tell me that the bread and the wine “represent” or “symbolize” Christ’s body and blood. But that’s not Lutheran teaching! In the Small Catechism, Luther writes this about the Sacrament of the Altar: “It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine.” This is not the same as the Roman Catholic teaching that, at a particular moment in the mass, the bread and the wine change into Christ’s body and blood. Luther teaches that the bread and the wine remains bread and wine. But the bread and the wine is also the true, physical body and blood of Christ. In the Large Catechism Luther writes, “Now, what is the Sacrament of the Altar? Answer: It is the true body and blood of the Lord Christ, in and under the bread and wine, which we Christians are commanded by Christ’ word to eat and drink. And just as we said of baptism that it is not mere water, so we say here, too, that the sacrament is bread and wine, but not mere bread and wine such as is served at the table. Rather, it is bread and wine set within God’s Word and bound to it.”

As we receive Christ’s body and blood “in and under the bread and wine,” we eat and drink that Word from God, that Good News of God’s love and forgiveness and mercy. We receive that promise of salvation, which we in no way deserve. We come to the table and we are fed. Hear what Luther writes, in the Small Catechism, about the words that are said with the bread and the wine: “’given for you’ and ‘shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’ These words, when accompanied by the physical eating and drinking, are the essential thing in the sacrament, and whoever believes these very words has what they declare and state, namely, ‘forgiveness of sins.’”

According to the gospel of John, there is further, mystical reality. In the eating and drinking, we are nourished by physical intimacy with God. Listen: Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. It is deeply Trinitarian: you and I participate in the intimacy between God the Father and God the Son. We abide in Jesus, and Jesus abides in us.

And we are fed, as we bring our hungers to the table. We come in fear over the medical diagnosis, and God is intimately, physically present to us, in the bread and wine, and in the brothers and sisters surrounding us at the table. We come, fighting through depression and despair, and God is intimately, physically present to us, in the bread and wine, and in the brothers and sisters surrounding us at the table. We come, anxious about our loved one in Iraq, anxious about a child whose behavior has turned dangerous, anxious about a job that may not be there in six months, and God is intimately, physically present to us, in the bread and wine and in the brothers and sisters surrounding us at the table.

“By the Word in bread and wine, which are the body and blood of Christ, God nourishes our faith, forgives our sin, fills us with new life, and gives us power to witness to the gospel. As we receive Christ’s body and blood in the holy meal, Christ conforms our lives to his own. We participate in God’s new creation and are united with God’s people of every time and every place. The Lutheran confessions invite the church to celebrate communion every Sunday, because of Christ’s command, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ (Luke 22:19), in anticipation of meeting Christ, and because God wants to nourish us even when we cannot name or feel our hunger.” ("With the Whole Church: A Study Fuide for Renewing Worship," published by the Cvangelical Lutheran Church in America, 2005, page 44)

We come to the table to be fed, and we receive the bread of life, living bread, deep nourishment, mystical physical intimacy with God.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia