Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 15B)
August 18, 2024
Text:
John 6:51-69
Even Jesus
has people leave when He preaches about eating His flesh and drinking
His blood. It isn’t just a peculiar Lutheran
teaching. It is Jesus’ teaching. “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” (John 6:53-54; ESV).
This offends the Jews who are following Him. “This
is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (v. 60). And they all desert Him. All but the Twelve. It’s not so different today. The world rules this teaching archaic
and foolish. Christians… even
Lutherans… even you… find the saying hard. Next to justification by grace alone, through
faith alone, in Christ alone, it is this very issue that divides so much
of Christianity since the Reformation.
It is not just a question of the Lord’s Supper, but of the very
incarnation of Christ, His taking on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin
Mary, so that we can say our God is a Man, Jesus of Nazareth. So what Jesus says in our text about His
flesh and blood is an offense both to human reason and pious Christian
sensibility. Our God is a flesh and
blood God. He is a Man. And we eat Him. Really. With our mouths, we eat His body, and with
our mouths, we drink His blood. And
in this way, by this eating, He gives us eternal life and marks us for bodily
resurrection on the Last Day.
Do you
find that teaching offensive and hard to hear?
Join the club. Everybody
leaves but the Twelve, and I suspect the Twelve thought it was a hard
saying, too. But, as Peter says on
behalf of them all when Jesus asks whether they also want to leave, and as we
sing with him in the holy liturgy, “Lord,
to whom shall we go?” We really
don’t know what else to do. For “You have the words of eternal life, and we
have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God”
(vv. 68-69). And here’s the thing about
believing in Jesus. When you believe in
Jesus, you believe His Word, no matter how hard it is to hear or accept. Because this Man is God. He cannot lie. So when He says He is flesh and blood, and
you are given to eat His flesh and drink His blood, you believe it, whether you
like it or not. Because He says so.
This text,
John 6, has been an endless source of contention in the Church, really since
Jesus said it. Is it about the Lord’s
Supper? Is it not about the Lord’s
Supper? Pick your team. Well, of course it’s about the Lord’s
Supper. John preached this text and
wrote it down for the congregation of believers gathered around the altar to
eat Jesus’ body under the bread and drink His blood under the wine for their
forgiveness and life. It doesn’t
take a whole lot of imagination to figure out what Jesus is talking about. But it’s not only about the Lord’s Supper.
As we discussed last week, according to our Confessions (FC SD VII),
there are two ways of eating Jesus’ flesh.
The first is by faith when we hear the Gospel in all its forms, and the
second is orally, with the mouth, when we receive the Holy Supper. So it’s not an either/or, it’s a
both/and. And when our Lord says you
have no life in you if you don’t eat His flesh and drink His blood, no, that
doesn’t mean we should commune infants on the day they are baptized. He doesn’t exclude infants or catechumens who
don’t commune from eternal life. They
receive Him by faith in their Baptism and as they hear and learn His Word. We Lutherans are really good at talking about
the real presence of Jesus in the Supper, but we aren’t very good at
talking about His real presence in the Word and in the water of Holy
Baptism. Jesus is really in the
font when you are baptized, the flesh and blood Jesus, in the water because
His Word is in the water, washing you clean and forgiving your sins, giving you
new life by virtue of His death and resurrection. And it is really Jesus speaking to you in
His Word, in Holy Scripture and Absolution and preaching. That is why the Word is so powerful. It does what it says, because it’s not mere
sounds out there in the air and vibrating off the walls, but the speech of
Jesus Himself, the Word of God made flesh.
And we don’t mean He’s here in these gifts just in some sort of
spiritual, non-literal way. We mean the
Man, who is God, the very Son of the Father, Jesus Christ is present
in all His fullness. Flesh and blood
Jesus is here.
And since
that is the case, it really shouldn’t surprise us that it is true of the
Supper. We know Jesus is bodily present
in the Supper, His flesh under the bread, His blood under the wine, actually
not from this text, but from the Words of Institution. That is where we get our doctrine. There Jesus clearly says of the bread, “This is my body,” and of the wine, “This is my blood” (Matt. 26:26-28; Mark
14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20; 1 Cor. 11:24-25).
He’s not being cute. He gives no
indication that He is speaking figuratively.
Surely we can agree that Jesus knows what He is saying and He knows how
to speak clearly. And why does He give
it, this flesh and blood? “For you” (Lk. 22:19), and “for many for the forgiveness of sins”
(Matt. 26:28). And this goes very nicely
with what Jesus says in our text this morning from John 6: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my
blood has eternal life” (v. 54), for as Dr. Luther reminds us in the Small Catechism, “where there is
forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.”[1]
The Words of Jesus are what make the Sacrament so powerful so that it forgives
sins and gives life and salvation, because the Words make Jesus Himself
present, flesh and blood, orally received, in your mouth, down your throat,
because that is what He promises.
And you
receive Him orally, by the way, whether you believe it or not. It’s just that if you receive His body and
blood without believing it, you receive it to your harm, as St. Paul
teaches us, “Whoever, therefore, eats
the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of
profaning the body and blood of the Lord… For anyone who eats and drinks
without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor.
11:27, 29). This is why we practice
closed Communion, out of love for our brothers and sisters who have not been
fully catechized concerning the Supper, or have a different theology of the
Supper. Because there are serious
consequences for eating and drinking without discerning the body. Again, St. Paul: “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (v.
30). I know you don’t like it, and I
know it doesn’t sound nice, but you have understand that the practice of closed
Communion is from the Bible and it is done out of love. And it never, ever means that we don’t want
someone at the altar with us, nor is it to say the person isn’t a Christian and
saved (they may even be a better Christian than I am, which isn’t saying
much). It is simply to say that there is
a process by which they can join us for the Supper, and that process is
catechesis, teaching, confession of faith, and pastoral care. And we say this not just to guests, but even
to our own children. You have to wait
until you are catechized, taught. If the
Supper were just bread and wine, it wouldn’t matter. Who cares who receives it?! But because it really is Jesus’ true body and
blood, and because of what the Spirit teaches us in the words of St. Paul, this
is powerful stuff. We don’t get to play
around with it. It can be deadly. That’s not just me saying it. It’s Jesus, and St. Paul. If you have issues, you’ll have to take it up
with them.
But for
those who believe what Jesus says of the Supper, it is a meal that imparts
forgiveness and life and every grace and blessing, because it imparts Jesus
Himself. There are two sides to this
coin. There are the Words of Jesus,
which put Jesus, flesh and blood, in, with, and under the bread and wine. And then there is the faith that receives
these benefits. Dr. Luther reminds us
just how bodily eating and drinking can do such great things: “Certainly not
just eating and drinking do these things, but the words written here: ‘Given
and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’
These words, along with the bodily eating and drinking, are the main
thing in the Sacrament. Whoever believes
these words has exactly what they say: ‘forgiveness of sins.’”
So there
you have it, a real, flesh and blood Jesus for real, flesh and blood
sinners. Which is to say, for you. It is a real, flesh and blood death. “And
the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John
6:51). It is the flesh of God that hangs
upon the cross. It is the blood of God
that pours out of His head, His hands, His feet, His side, and every pit of
flesh ripped off by Roman scourge. It is
flesh and blood that is crucified, dead, and buried. And it is a real, flesh and blood
resurrection. Touch, see, my hands and
my side. It is I (Cf. Luke 24:39; John
21:27). Or better, I AM. Our God must be a flesh and blood God to die
the flesh and blood death of flesh and blood sinners. And He must rise from the dead flesh and
blood for this very reason, to raise you flesh and blood on the Last Day. And that is the very Promise of our
text. Beloved, Jesus says to you this
morning: Eat my flesh. Drink my
blood. In this way I forgive you all
your sins and give you eternal life. And
I will raise you up on the Last Day. For
real. In the flesh. Don’t be offended. Don’t leave.
These are the Words of eternal life.
Alleluia. Come and eat. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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