Sermons

August 16, 2009

“The Scandal of It All”

John 6:51-58

Rev. Phil Blackwell

It is tasteless, language, to be honest. “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.” Come on, Jesus. Lighten up! Can’t we just hang out with you, do what you do, take to heart what you say?

No wonder people thought that the early Christians were cannibals. Eat my flesh and drink my blood. Can you imagine if they had had the Internet back then what people would have been blogging? “Watch out for the Christians! They are walking around with knives and forks in the hands! Don’t let your children out of your sight!”

The language here in the Gospel of John is intended to scandalize, the “scandal of particularity,” it has been called. The scandal is that we Christians insist that God came into full human existence in a particular person at a particular time in a particular place . . . the Incarnation, “God made flesh.” That is offensive to some, and just plain silly to others.

We hear people today profess that they have some sort of faith, but in a general sort of way. “I am spiritual, but not religious,” is the current mantra. “I believe in God, I recycle my trash, I’m nice to people. Isn’t that enough?”

And Jesus replies, “No, not even close. You must be religious in particular. You must get your hands dirty serving others. If you are going to be your brother’s keeper and your sister’s keeper, then you cannot choose who will be your brother or sister. You cannot float above it all; you have to get down to where things matter, where it is life or death. You cannot keep me at arm’s length, accepting me when it is convenient and you have nothing better to do. You have to take me into your hearts, inside deep down; you have to ingest me so that there is no distance between us. We are united. I am in you, and you are in me.” John uses that sentence a lot: “I abide in you, and you abide in me.” It is that close, that disconcertingly close, that disgustingly close . . .eat my flesh and drink my blood.

It is primeval. If you want to be as strong as a bull, you drink the bull’s blood. If you want to be as fast as a deer, you drink the deer’s blood. If you want to be as fierce as your enemy, you slay him and drink his blood.

It gets disgusting when we get particular. The people of Jesus’ day were already disgusted with him, even before he got to the part about the flesh and blood. He talked about being the bread of life coming down from heaven, and the people murmured, “Isn’t this the son of Mary and Joseph, you know the carpenter? Who does he think that he is, saying that he came down from heaven? We knew him when he was a toddler running around the streets; he is just one of the kids from the neighborhood, not the Son of God.”

And then, these particular words, flesh and blood. Flesh was burned on the altar in the temple. It was the smoke that would rise from the cooking fat that was offered as a sacrifice to God, prayers going heavenward. And blood was smeared on the altar, not eaten; that is not kosher. But blood was offered as a sign of sacrifice, too.

Then, here is Jesus claiming that his flesh and blood is an offering, too. It is God’s offering back to us. In this offering is life, life of a particularly vibrant kind, substantial kind, meaningful kind, that is, eternal life. Jesus is claiming to be God in the flesh. And there were those around him who were scandalized.

“Docetism” is the name of the movement within early Christianity that rejected the notion that Jesus the Christ was ever truly human. Docetism. They claimed that Jesus only appeared to be human, only appeared to suffer on the cross, only appeared to have died. That he really was purely divine, wholly godly, of a completely different world.

So, the early Church had to be more specific in its creeds. The Apostles’ Creed, one of the very first devised represents the earthly ministry of Jesus by a comma. “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord . . . born of the Virgin Mary (comma) suffered under Pontius Pilate . . .” Not much humanness there. When we get to the Nicene Creed in 325 we at least get “ . . . was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.” This is after the assertion Jesus was “true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father . . .” The Nicene Creed insists that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. So, from the very beginning of Christianity the scandal of particularity was offensive not only to Jews but also to some Christians.

And so it is today. That is why we need to know what we are claiming, in particular. We say that Jesus of Nazareth is our own flesh and blood. In him we see the image of God most clearly. In his preaching we hear the word of God most compellingly. In his actions we witness the love of God most genuinely. Yes, worship the sun as it rises over the lake on a beautiful morning, if you want. Tend your garden and recycle your trash, if you like. Be nice to people, of course. But that is not enough to be a Christian. A Christian in particular claims that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

What do we mean by “Lord” and “Savior?” Ah, that always is a good, long discussion. We can confess it together, but we do not all mean the same thing by these terms. When we make this confession of faith I suggest that the discussion starts, it does not end. But whatever is our angle of approach on these terms for Jesus, we are agreeing that there is something particular about this one, Jesus of Nazareth, which has given us a new lease on life. There is something about Jesus that reveals us to ourselves. The more we get to know him, the more we discover ourselves. The closer we imitate him, the more exciting, the more meaningful, the more profound our lives become. So much so, that in some spiritual way our lives merge. Physical terms for that spiritual union include the ingesting of body and blood in the form of bread and unfermented wine (unfermented so that everyone is free to participate, some gluten-free bread so that everyone is free to participate).

We have some depictions of Jesus around the Chicago Temple. He is up here in the window above the altar, though it is so filled with characters and you are so far from it that it is hard to pick him out. When in doubt, we always can look at the top, and most likely we will see him there in glorious judgment. Here on the altar he is carved in wood weeping over Jerusalem because the people of the city do not know what makes for peace. Children sometimes will come forward and kneel down in front of the altar and touch him. There is another altar carving up in the Sky Chapel that shows Jesus looking out over the skyline of Chicago, 1952. He is still weeping, we suspect.

One of the most iconic images of Jesus ever devised is the one we have out in the narthex, Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ.” During the 1940’s and 1950’s it dominated, in large part because it was reproduced on wallet-sized cards with the Lord’s Prayer on the other side and given out to American soldiers as they went to war. Over 500 million copies of that image were produced during that time.

What we have in our possession is a chalk replica of the oil painting from the artist’s own hand. He was here at a men’s meeting decades ago and did the drawing on the spot as part of an illustrated lecture. We also have in storage the same image done by Sallman on a cloth drapery. Some day we may find a place to display it.

It is a very particular way of looking at Jesus. I have said, not to be disparaging but admitting that it is a very white, North American Christ, that he looks like a Presbyterian from Pennsylvania. If we go up to the second floor we can see a very different depiction, the distressed, truncated form of a Black Jesus hanging on a KKK cross. A few have looked closely at the figure and said, “That’s James Chaney,” one of the three young men murdered while registering voters back in the 1960’s, the subject of “Mississippi Burning.” The sculptor, Jack Kearney, said that he did not have Chaney in mind, but that is what some see.

Well, what did Jesus look like? The Bible says nothing in particular . . . no height, no weight, no color of eyes or hair. If we envision him we are likely to see him as our own flesh and blood. He actually looks Jewish in the Middle East, Asian in the watercolors of Watanabe, and go up to the cathedral on the zocolo in Cusco and Jesus looks very Peruvian.

Which only is to say that we cannot be Christians in general; we must be particular. And in that particularity there is both power and the potential for offense. We see Jesus through our own eyes and interpret his ministry in light of our own experience. In that lies the richness of the Christian community. What a gift we have in this particular congregation with its diversity to offer how each of us sees Jesus, our flesh and blood, through the songs, scriptural passages, stories, and traditions that have revealed him to us. And what an opportunity we have to receive what someone else offers, as strikingly different as it may be

      So, what we have in common as Christians in this world, acknowledging the rich diversity of our personal experiences, is a claim that some will find scandalous: Jesus Christ invites us to be intimately united with him. How intimate? Listen to the opening verses of this Charles Wesley hymn:

      Come, sinners, to the gospel feast, let every soul be Jesus’ guest.
      Ye need not one be left behind, for God hath bid all humankind.
      Do not begin to make excuse; ah! do not you his grace refuse;
      Your worldly cares and pleasures leave, and take what Jesus hath to give.
      Come and partake the gospel feast, be saved from sin, and Jesus rest;
      O taste the goodness of our God, and eat his flesh and drink his blood.

That intimate. That tasteless. That life-giving. Christ is alive . . .not in general, but in particular . . .in our lives, in our decisions, in our conversations, in our best thoughts, in our actions. The invitation is here . . . let us say “Amen” to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
August 16, 2009