Sermon for Pentecost 11
August 16, 2009
John 6:51-69
Pastor Curt Dwyer, St. John’s Lutheran Church, Lafe AR

Grace, mercy and peace be yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dear Friends,

  A back to school review: We’ll start with History. Define the “Monroe Doctrine.” No? (has to do with the expansion of European powers in North or South America.) Geography; what is a moraine? (pile of dirt and rock left by a glacier) .OK, how about English; spell the word ‘query.” How many adjectives in the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog? (3) OK, better. Now math; what is the square root of 81? (9)

  School starts this week. Marmaduke, Paragould and Greene Co. Tech all start on Wednesday. I’m guessing that most of the other schools around are starting then too. Colleges are getting back to it shortly as well. We go to school to learn lots of words; words to explain history, words to express our thoughts, words to define mathematical functions. Lots of words. You could argue that you go to some schools only to learn a skill like welding or plumbing; but even there you have to learn a specific vocabulary to deal with the specialized tasks that those skills involve. Even art and music use words, don’t they. You can’t appreciate a beautiful painting unless you have some words with which to describe it, and you will have a hard time playing music if you don’t know what all those Italian words (like ‘forte’ and ‘pianissimo’) mean.

  These words are necessary; our schools are necessary. We need to learn about our world. But we need to learn about more than just this world around us. We need to learn more words that just those needed to discuss math, or literature, or art, or welding.

  We need to learn the words of eternal life. WE have been following a discussion for the past few weeks that Jesus had with the crowds that were following him. You might remember the miraculous feeding of the 5000 that we read about a few weeks ago. Following that miracle, the crowds kept following Jesus around, looking for more and greater miracles. If He could feed them like that once, he might feed them again. And if he could feed them like that, what else might he be able to do? There was even talk of making Him a king.

  But then, Jesus turns the tables on them. The crowds were worried about daily bread; Jesus main concern (and His point for living) was the redemption and salvation of all humankind. So when the crowds wanted to talk about bread, Jesus humored them and talked about bread; but He talked about His kind of bread. Jesus talked about that thing which would bring true, perfect and eternal life to them, not just a temporary full stomach. Jesus talked about His body, His flesh.

  And He didn’t do this in some vague, academic way. The crowds were distracted by the bread they had eaten that day when Jesus blessed those few loaves. So Jesus used their hunger and turned it against them, so to speak. He started talking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood.

  I don’t know about you, but that sounds a little repulsive. Of course, we clean up Jesus words and apply them to communion, where we eat and drink the body and blood under the forms of bread and wine. But that isn’t the first meaning that Jesus has here. And no, he isn’t talking about cannibalism, either.

  Jesus is talking about a complete and total acceptance of Him and what He came to do. Eating Jesus’ body and drinking His blood is Jesus’ way of telling this crowd that the only way to be right with God spiritually is through the complete and total acceptance of His life and work on our behalf. We all like to have things our own way. The crowds wanted Jesus to fill their needs. We want Jesus to ratify our way of thinking, speaking, doing. I saw a cartoon this week about it…

  But Jesus doesn’t ratify our way of salvation. He sets His own way. And that way is the sacrifice of His body and His blood on the cross. Only through the bloody sacrifice of the cross will justice for sin be satisfied. Only through the blood sprinkled from His hands and feet and side will forgiveness be accomplished. Only through His work and His words will we be made right before God. It’s not our way of thinking or doing; it’s all about Jesus’ way of saving us.

  This was offensive to many of the people in the crowds following Jesus, especially when He talked about eating flesh and drinking blood. So they began to leave. It’s still offensive to many people. We don’t like to be told that our perverted ideas of right and wrong, our twisted sense of justice, our wacky thoughts about salvation are all wrong. People don’t like to be told that we are simply, flatly incorrect in our understanding of God. So people reject Jesus and His cross.

  Jesus recognized this, and turning to that inner circle of 12 asked them, “You don’t want to go away with them, do you?” To which Peter gives the perfect response, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The words that Jesus has to speak to us aren’t always easy to understand. They aren’t always comfortable. They aren’t always palatable to our way of thinking. But they are life.

  Peter and the other apostle’s recognized this. It’s not that they understood things better than the rest of the crowd, or had some secret understanding that the rest of them lacked. Obviously, they were just as dense as the rest of us. They simply knew, no matter how strange His words might sound, that Jesus was the source of life. He was the Holy One of God. No matter what, they would listen to Him.

  We have many words we need to learn. That’s why we go to school; that’s why we continue learning even after we graduate. But above all, we have one particular set of words that we must study diligently. As important as other words may be , only Jesus has the words of eternal life.

In His name. Amen.