Shelter Dinner
I Kings 3: 3-14    John 6: 51-58
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

The Jesus Seminar was organized in 1985 to discover and report a scholarly consensus on the historical authenticity of the words and events attributed to Jesus in the gospels. Over 150 scholars actually took a vote on the authenticity of these words.

I confess I am not convinced of the premise and promise of the Jesus Seminar.

But one member of the Seminar suggested this unofficial but helpful description of the four colored beads scholars used to indicate their votes about each of Jesus’ sayings:

One color (Red) meant: That's Jesus!

Another color (Pink) meant: Sure sounds like Jesus.

A third color (Gray) meant: Well, maybe.

The fourth color (Black) meant: There's been some mistake.

A respected colleague Bob Moon added his own category/color... “Things Jesus probably didn’t say, but would have if he’d thought of them.”

And for our Gospel lesson this morning, many people would add another color bead: “Things Jesus probably didn’t say, but even if he did, he shouldn’t have.”

For you see, today’s Gospel text is difficult. Few preach on it, especially in progressive Christian circles. In eight verses, Jesus talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood seven times!

Early Christ Followers were even charged with cannibalism, with being “flesh-eaters” because of these words and because of their practice of shared meals.

Today these words at communion can still evoke reaction. One person told me, “That “bloody religion” talk always disturbs me... I can’t believe you’re preaching on that... at Epworth?”

John’s Gospel itself describes strong negative reaction in the Jewish community at that time, including the negative reaction of the disciples when Jesus said, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

In the verse immediately following our text the disciples said:  “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  

Jesus said:

the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

The disciples said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

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.

“This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me.

“This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

In John’s Gospel, just after feeding 5000 people, Jesus makes clear that he not only provides bread, he is the living bread. At this, many of Jesus’ followers left, no longer wanting to be associated with him.

How much more quickly do we turn away from words like these? When we talk about a close relationship with God, about intimacy with the holy, we talk about heart, soul, breath, spirit.  Biblical language is visceral:  bone, flesh, marrow, bowels, joints, stomachs, sinew. The Greek word translated “eat” in this text actually means – chew, gnaw.

Jesus responds to real hungers.  Gandhi said, “To the millions who have to go without two meals a day the only acceptable form in which God dare appear is food.”

“You are what you eat.” Nutritional and ecological movements give renewed power to this saying.  Perhaps it is time we reclaim its spiritual truth.  As one Biblical commentator put it, “Whoever has removed eating from the list of profoundly religious acts will have great difficulty with our Gospel for today.”

Participation in the life of Jesus in our lives, is like food we eat, a part of our bones, the blood moving through our veins, the very structure of our cells.  Christ living in us. Not outside.  Christ within us can no more be separated from us than the food we take in to sustain our bodies.

Three testimonies this week I want to share with you:

First of all, I talked about the challenge of preaching on this text with a Jewish therapist friend.  Her response surprised me.  She said, “What’s the problem? It’s a metaphor.  Don’t progressives understand the nature of symbolic language? Taking in flesh and blood... doesn’t this mean Jesus’ life, flesh and blood, become part of you?”

Then, I had the privilege this week of participating in Berkeley Food and Housing Project’s First Annual Client Success Event.  This year 196 people successfully transitioned from homelessness to permanent housing with the help of services and staff of the Food and Housing Project.  At this event we celebrated the clients who have sustained permanent housing for more than a year..

One client who testified has successfully sustained permanent housing for five years after living on the streets for years.  His name is Larry Candies.  Larry said, “As a homeless person, you don’t know what you’re going to eat. You don’t know where you’re going to sleep, or if you’re going to wake up the next morning.”  When hunger is this real, when the vulnerability of life is this clear, you feed on the Word to survive and thrive and serve.  Larry does.  Blessed are they who know their need of God. Larry’s bread, his strength for the journey is the Word made flesh.

Being fed, feeding others is so elemental.  Shelter dinners are a vital act of service and fellowship for a core of members of this community.

Thirdly, I want to share part of an email testimony from a member of this community in response to this text. He wrote,

Hi Odette,

I thought more about your e-mail and the difficult passage John 6: 51-58. Even though I don't go to shelter dinners, in my mind they have a deeper significance, sort of a metaphor for what I think St. John was talking about in trying to capture Jesus' message.

I think of Jesus' message as extraordinary, running counter to cultural norms throughout the ages. John tends to equate Jesus with the Word. Eating the flesh I think of as infusing me with the Word, taking it in fully, and receiving sustenance from it. .... Similarly, drinking the blood seems like a metaphor for partaking of the Spirit that infused Jesus. ...  I think I am feeling much closer to God these days, feeling in God and God in me. ....

I find communion to be a mystical experience for me. It is more than a symbol. I actually feel nourished spiritually by the bread, and like I am getting a monthly shot or spirit transfusion by the grape juice...

In the same way the shelter dinners give refuge from hunger to the men who attend, the Word gives refuge to me from feelings of despair and depression that are so easy for me to fall into. It gives me hope. It reinforces my new ideas about what is really important. ... In short, the Word is nourishing me in a new way that I didn't know was possible.

Warm regards,  John

Jesus said to them “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Essential as food.  Intimate as eating and drinking.  We find life without end in the flesh and blood Word of God. Thanks be to God