SERMONS

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Do you recall the last time you sat down at a table, and stuck your fork into something so good that you knew at that moment it began with the words . . . “You start with a stick of butter . . .” Some plate of pasta, mashed potatoes, that piece of cake that stands up by itself.
Better yet, have you found yourself standing over a bowl with a stick of butter in your hands. The forbidden recipe on the counter. The healthy eating cookbooks on the shelf. Your recipe begins, “Start with a stick of butter...”

This is high adventure. This is another world. There is hesitation. There is trepidation. “What did the surgeon general say about butter? What was that about cholesterol, LDL/HDL? Maybe I should have a few sips of red wine about now . . . How many minutes on the elliptical trainer burn a pound of MY fat?”

The stick of butter and the bowl - it is a point of no return. The stick of butter and the bowl - it is a whole new ball game, separates the boys and girls, from the men and the women. No corner cutting, no miracles through modern chemistry, no fakers, no pretenders. For times and places when only the real thing will do, “You start with a stick of butter.”

Believe it or not - I sometimes think of Jesus as a stick of butter.

The Sixth Chapter of John’s Gospel is like a course in Eucharistic imagery. Jesus refers to himself as “the bread of life.” He invites the world to partake, to eat, this bread - to believe in him as completely as they might eat and digest bread, making it one with themselves. Jesus says it is something like the manna in the Wilderness, comes down from heaven, to feed God’s hungry children.

The manna in the Wilderness. When the Israelites were starving, fleeing the fleshpots of Egypt, wandering in the desert, and God fed them with manna - bread from heaving miraculously arriving in the desert.

Scholars cannot agree of what the manna was actually made. Exodus tells us that manna was gathered after the dew evaporated in the morning. Numbers tells us that manna had to be gathered before the heat melted it. It is also described as bdellium, a kind of gummy sap drawn from a tree.

Some have wondered if it was harvested from the secretions of insects - plant lice. Appetizing? Some believe that the name “manna” is derived from the question asked in Exodus 16.15, “When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another - Man Hu - what is it?” And that still seems to be what folks are saying about it today; what is it? what is it made of?

We might say that in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is standing over the bowl with a stick of butter. Jesus is recalibrating the conversation about bread from heaven. Jesus is making sure that the generations to come will not be saying, “What is it?” They will know what it is.

“The bread that I will give is my flesh,” Jesus says. “Which I will give for the life of the world.” This is a point of no return. This is a whole new ball game.

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”

The kind of “eating” Jesus is referring to is like crunching, grinding with teeth, chewing. It is physical. It is visceral. It is unmistakable. This is Jesus as iconoclast - icon/image, clast/breaker. His language is graphic, vivid, and visceral.

You see, lest we begin to get the idea that Jesus has simply come into the world with another variation on a theme, another sort of big-daddy on the mountain ancient Israelite religion, or another smarty-pants I know better than you sort of Greco-Roman cult, Jesus is breaking the old images.

I remember having dinner one night with a couple of young doctors; nice folks, well educated and traveled. One of them came out with an interesting statement. He said, “The thing that I have always appreciated about the religions of the East, Buddhism, is their appreciation of the body, of things physical. While Christianity seems to be such a body hating religion.”

I was quiet a moment, and then said, “Well actually, the truth is exactly the opposite; at least as far as Christ is concerned. The whole point of following Christ is discovering a person who so completely makes God real, that His very body becomes the instrument of sharing that divinity - the body of Christ the bread of heaven.”
We are not a people of a disembodied faith. Jesus is bringing things to their essential nature, that God is so much a part of our experience that we cannot escape him simply by trapping him with our minds or imaginations - we must have some bodily share in God’s presence; and Jesus gives his own body as that bridge.

Whether we like it or not, what we take into our bodies at this altar will always be something more than we can understand or explain. It is here that divinity that cuts through our lives. Beyond words, beyond explanation, Jesus is binding us to God with his flesh. We eat the supernatural bread, His flesh, so that this natural flesh might begin to look toward its source, it’s home, and be changed.

The stick of butter and the bowl. Taking the Body and Blood the Savior into our bodies, we add the irreplaceable ingredient. No pretending, no substitutes. This is a new world. All other ingredients and experiences in this life are measured in its light. As people of the sacraments, as partakers of the Incarnation, we pray that His flesh and blood will abide within us so that we might become more like Him. He is more than a good idea, or a religious innovation.

John’s Good News in the midst of the Holy Mysteries of the bread and wine is that “You indeed are what you eat.”

“The one who eats this bread will live forever.”