This is a special musical performance of Every Time I Feel The Spirit by Emily Brown, Tammy Heilman and Deb Borton-McDonough at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

As I think back to the years when my kids were growing up, I remember late afternoons and evenings when they would sit at the kitchen table doing their homework.   I would frequently sit with them as they worked, attempting to encourage them and help as necessary.  I clearly remember times when they would be working on something rather challenging, when they would not quite understand how to do something, when they just seemed not to be getting it.  At those times, they would often get frustrated and exclaim, “This is soooo hard!”   They just wanted to give up.  Well, today, we find something similar in our gospel reading.  The people are gathered together, listening to Jesus as he teaches in the synagogue.  And, when he is done, a bunch of his followers come to him and say, “Jesus, this teaching is soooo hard!” 

This is the last week of five in which we hear about Jesus as the bread of life.  Jesus has been telling the people this meal he offers them doesn’t come from the fields or the sea, but from his very own body.  Jesus says to them that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will abide in him and he will abide in them, and that whoever does this will live forever.  The crowd, now referred to as disciples, say to themselves, “This teaching is so difficult; it is so hard.  Who can accept it?”  

Now, it is important to understand that the English translation giving us the word “difficult,” doesn’t quite get at what the Greek word really means.  In the Greek, the word means “hard”, as in solid and dense, something that would leave a bruise if it hit you in the arm.  So, what the crowd is saying is that this teaching is like banging your head against a brick wall.  It’s so hard.  You can’t quite break through it.  You can’t understand it.   They are saying, “This is craziness! This is insane.  This doesn’t make any sense.”  But does Jesus slow down? Make it softer? Does he explain any of it?  No.  Jesus ramps the sermon up a bit, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, does this offend you?  Well, if this offends you, what if you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?  It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. But among you, there are some who don’t believe.”  I have to ask – does anyone understand what Jesus is talking about?   These followers don’t.  And so, not surprisingly, they leave. 

Well, again, the followers who walk off on the spot are so like us. 

You see, when things start to lose their meaning, or you don’t really feel like you understand, it is pretty tempting to just leave, isn’t it?  And, as I think about the church in today’s culture, I think we church people often speak in a language people don’t understand.  For many people, church just doesn’t seem to make any difference.  In light of all the other things going in our culture and world that do impact people’s lives, many today wonder why they should continue to go to church.  So, they quit.

How do you respond to that?  Does the church still have significance in your life?  Does the church speak a language you feel you can understand, or not so much?  I mean we use phrases to talk about Jesus like, “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being of the Father.” We talk about resurrection from the dead and power through death, the Holy Spirit, forgiveness, loving your enemies, redemption and overwhelming grace.  Some days, it seems like the things we say within these four walls are probably as clear as mud to many people.

When we look again at today’s gospel reading, notice what Jesus does when the people leave.  Nothing.  He doesn’t do anything.   Why?  Why not just try to make it easier to understand?  Why doesn’t Jesus give the people what they want?  Isn’t that what most churches would do if put in a similar situation? If people are leaving a church in droves, many churches try to spice up the worship with a guitar and drum set.  Some try to make the sermons more interactive with a screen and cool videos.  But Jesus… he just lets them leave, without a word.  Now, I don’t know about you, but there is something about this that speaks volumes about love to me.  To be given the freedom to walk away.  To be given a choice.  To be told, “You can stay, or you can leave. It’s up to you.  I won’t force you either way.”  That response just seems to display a whole lot of love.

Well, when these followers leave, we then get one of the saddest lines in all of Scripture…Jesus looks at the twelve remaining disciples, and he says, “Do you wish to go away too?”  Anyone who has ever been abandoned by their friends or their colleagues, anyone who has suddenly found themselves isolated and alone, knows what Jesus might be feeling in the depth of his heart – a sense of grief and maybe even fear in this very moment.  “Do you wish to go away too?” he asks his friends.  Peter then responds with this beautiful line, a line that we sing every Sunday in our liturgy, just before we hear the gospel proclaimed.  Peter declares, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  Yes, Peter asks, “To whom can we go?”  And, the twelve disciples stay with Jesus.

Now, on the surface, this line from Peter sounds like a confident statement of faith.  But, there is part of me that hears in it exhaustion as well.  These disciples have left everything behind, their families and jobs and friends.  And now that the crowd has left…where else are they to go?  Might as well just keep following Jesus.

Now, I don’t know why you are here today. But I do know this whole faith thing isn’t always easy.  In fact, I must honestly say that, in our present culture, there are times when this life of faith seems increasingly hard.  It is a very counter-cultural way of living.  At times, it can seem exhausting.  At times, it can seem soooo hard.

But where else can we go?  Where else can we at least join together in the struggle and contemplate the mystery of this life and the mystery of faith?  And that’s just it. It is something we do together.  Notice that Peter didn’t say, “Lord, to whom can I go?”  No, he said, “Lord, to whom can we go.”  When Peter responds with these words, it is truly a significant point in the Gospel of John.   It is the first time that Jesus’ closest disciples are named “the twelve.”  Their decision not to turn away but to walk forward with Christ draws them together as a community of faith. It is not any particular creed, mission statement, style of worship, or service program that unites them as the body of Christ.  It is their professed willingness to walk together following Jesus Christ that renders them a community of faith.  You see, this life of faith is not something we do on our own.  We do it together and we go together!  It is something we share together as we live together in relationship.  And when it is shared, we – together - make up the body of Christ.

Jesus, the true Word of God stands here in our midst, in the midst of all the challenges of life and the challenges of the living of these days, pointing us to life and life abundant.  Quite honestly, running away from the challenges of life, running only to self, living for self, really leads to empty satisfaction.  On the other hand, I must truthfully say this life of faith is counter-intuitive.  It is counter-intuitive, because the words of eternal life which Jesus gives to us, tell us that we must die, and that is so hard.  But, we must die to self and live to Christ, because it is at the foot of the cross that we gather.  It is at the foot of the cross where God is faithful, where Christ is present with us, and where, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are one in Christ. 

So, in times of uncertainty and challenge, at times when we do not understand, at times when there is a temptation to leave because things seem soooo hard, may we look again to Christ and not ourselves.  Like the twelve disciples, we will find there what has always been – the good news of Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God.  We will find Jesus, the bread of life, the one with the words of eternal life.  To whom else can we go?

This is a special musical performance of I Want to be Like Jesus by Faith Lutheran Church members Diane Hill and Bob Nelson.

A national survey was done a few years ago by the Barna Group, and there was one simple question on the survey.  That question was, "What is the phrase you most long to hear?"  The overwhelming answer was not at all surprising: "I love you." In a solid second place was the phrase "I forgive you."  And, the third most longed to hear phrase was, "Dinner is ready!"  I find it fascinating that these three answers articulate the deepest longings and needs of every human being.

Well, the Jesus we meet this morning in John's Gospel, understood these deepest longings that exist in peoples’ lives, longings for love, forgiveness and, yes, sustenance.  And, in the 6th chapter of John, we repeatedly hear Jesus address these three areas of human need.  In this lectionary year, for five Sundays in a row, we hear Jesus address these deep human desires as he claims, "The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self."  

As we enter today’s reading we see the crowds becoming testy.  After hearing Jesus say over and over again that he is the bread of life, the crowd gets a bit impatient and grows frustrated as they are unable to understand Jesus’ abstract words.  They want something more concrete, something that is easier to understand.  And, I have to say that, after hearing this message multiple weeks in a row, we too are likely getting a bit frustrated.   The crowd asks, “How can this man serve up his own flesh for a meal?”  We might say, “Jesus, please talk sense!  Don’t give us metaphor, give us substance!”

Well, Jesus does not budge an inch.  He responds by again hammering home the point he has been making throughout this chapter.   He says, “I am telling you the truth.  Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you.  The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has eternal life… My flesh is the real food and my blood is the real drink.”

I don’t think we fully understand how mind shattering and grotesque Jesus’ words were to the people at that time.  What Jesus is saying, eating a person’s flesh and drinking a person’s blood, has always been a sinful act.  Such practice or behavior has always been regarded as an abomination by the law and the prophets.  And, quite frankly, Jesus’ words are gross and grotesque when we hear them.  They assault our sensibilities and our understanding of what is ethical and not ethical.  If we truly listen to Jesus’ words, his assertion sounds uncomfortably cannibalistic.  Quite honestly, I know several pastors who try to avoid preaching on this passage, simply because of this. 

          That’s why, I really like the story UCC pastor, Martin Copenhaver, shares as he talks about Jesus’ words today and our practice of communion.  Copenhaver described what happened when one of his parishioners, a child, really listened to the words he used in preparation for communion.  He writes, “The communion table was draped, as always, in starched linen and set with silver chalices and plates and a crystal flagon. The congregation was silent, even somber, as [I] began carefully reading the words of institution in a solemn tone meant to add dignity to the proceedings. And, on this one occasion, when I repeated Jesus’ familiar words, ‘This is my body, broken for you; this is my blood, shed for you,’ a small girl suddenly said in a loud voice, ‘Ew, yuk!’ The congregation looked horrified, as if someone had splattered blood all over the altar — which, in effect, is just what the little girl had done with her exclamation.”

For the past few weeks we have been hearing Jesus say he is the bread of life.  However, with the words Jesus speaks in today’s reading, he ups the ante and takes it to a new level.  Jesus uses language that is startling.  As Copenhaver continues his story, he writes, “In this passage, language is pressed to the limits to express the indissoluble union and inextricable participation of one life in another. For those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from the believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can by plucked from one’s body.”

Yes, today Jesus “presses language to the limits” as we reach the heart of John’s gospel.  Today’s reading from John is all about communion.  In the gospel of John there is no last supper.  So, scholars believe the words we hear today provide John’s version of the institution of what we now call the Eucharist.  And, with Jesus’ graphic, gritty, grotesque words, we begin to see just what is at stake for Jesus and how much we are valued in his eyes.  Jesus confronts us with the claim of a carnal God, the God who becomes incarnate and takes on human flesh and bones and blood.  In Jesus we see the God whose flesh will be stretched upon the cross for our sake, the God whose blood will flow freely from his broken, wounded hands and feet and side, all for the sake of God’s love for us.  In Jesus we see God’s love absorbing us into God’s life as we are made part of God’s ever-widening family.  And, when we eat this bread and drink of this cup, we live into God’s ever-widening family as God’s love embraces all people.

In her new book, Love Without Limits, Jacqueline Bussie talks about this aspect of communion.  She writes:

To be honest, the [ritual of communion with its] repetition of Jesus’ words, “My blood shed for you and for all people,” has always troubled me, for what does that really mean, to drink Jesus’ blood?  We often assume it’s about sacrifice and pouring out blood to appease a vengeful God.  But I have come to believe that it’s about something else.

As humans we’re obsessed with blood and bloodlines.  Many of the ugliest things we’ve ever done to one another were motivated by the desire to keep our blood “pure” and “uncontaminated” by others.  Consider the Nazi hatred for people of “Jewish blood,” or the widespread discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS.  Consider also the racist US miscegenation laws that made it illegal until 1967 for African Americans and whites to intermarry; miscegenation is a Latin word that literally means mixing of the families.  Blood has long been our idol.

To counter all of this horrible hatefulness, Jesus uses the symbolic meal of Communion.  Every sip of the wine contains a lesson:  the same blood runs through everyone’s veins.  As we drink down this truth, we share in Jesus’ bloodline and become one family: the human family.  Communion shares the same doormat [as Jesus’ words to us today.]  WELCOME TO MY FAMILY; YOU ARE NOW ALL RELATED.

Of course, we are a broken people who like to jigsaw apart this wholeness. This is why God insists that we share the bread and wine not once but over and over again.  We need constant reminding that our sense of who is our “blood” and “flesh of our flesh” is too narrow, too vertical, too ancestry.com.

Our sense of family needs to be a circle and not a line, and that circle needs to be ever-widening. 

Friends, Jesus’ words to us are all about inclusive agape love, God’s self-giving love, a love that fills our deepest need.  Every Sunday as we come to this table, we again meet the Word made flesh, the Word given physical and visible form for our whole selves.  When we come to this table, we participate with and are provoked to become like Christ, the “living bread” from heaven.  When that happens, what is very ordinary – each one of us – becomes extraordinary – Christ among us.  When we engage in this meal, not only do we remember we are all part of the same family, we become the living bread of God.  And, when that happens, that circle representing our sense of family becomes an ever-widening circle as we share God’s love with all others.

Jesus truly knows and understands our deepest longings and needs, the deepest longings and needs of every human being.  Every time we come to this table and receive his very life, we hear him say to us, “I love you.  You are forgiven, and dinner is ready!  Feast on me!”  So, come, and participate in this feast of love for the whole world, a love for all people.

This is a special flute musical performance by of Two Menuets by Jean-Jacques Naudot performed by Gwynne Kadrofske

As many of you know, we were blessed to have time with our grandson, William, over the past month.  I love playing singing games with him, and one of the games he loves is Eensy Weensy Spider.  He would be enthralled as I would sing this song with him while doing the motions.  And, as soon as I would finish, even though he only says a few words, through his body language and actions he would always indicate he wanted me to do it again and again.  It was as though he was saying, “Do it again, Grandma, do it again!”  This is a very human trait for us as people.  After experiencing something that is pleasing and entertainingly astonishing, we frequently want to experience it again and again.  To paraphrase what Kim O’Brien said in our Tuesday Bible study, when we see a shiny object, we want to see it again and again.

In last week’s gospel reading from John, the 5,000+ people who had come to see Jesus had, in a manner of speaking, experienced seeing that shiny object when Jesus performed an astonishing miracle!  Jesus had blessed a scarce commodity of five barley loaves and two fish and then, miraculously, there was an abundance of food.  In fact, after the people had consumed as much as their bellies could hold, they were amazed to find twelve baskets of food leftover.  And, that experience made them even more curious and inquisitive about this Jesus person. 

So, with today’s reading we hear John’s continuation of the story.  It is now the next day and the crowd has traveled to Capernaum looking for Jesus.  They want to understand what had happened.  And, like people who want to see a shiny object again and again, we can almost hear the crowd saying in amazement, “Do it again, Jesus, do it again!  Provide food for us again. Show us another sign like when Moses provided manna for the Israelites.”  But, Jesus responds by saying, “You’ve come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs – for free.  Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food like that.  Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides.”  Jesus’ response is so fascinating because he does not answer their questions.  Instead, he makes a statement that questions their motives for seeking him.  He is looking at their deeper needs, not just the need to fill their bellies.  

The crowd comes asking about sustenance - about bread - and Jesus answers them with words not about bread that fills their bellies, but words that indicate he is talking about something much more than physical sustenance.  In him, there is richness and food that endures and does not get used up!  The bread isn’t the point – the manna, the bread from heaven back in the day of Moses, wasn’t the point then and it’s not the point now. The point is where it comes from. The point is who provides it and why.  Jesus is trying to teach them that God provided the manna in the wilderness, and God is now showing them where the true life-giving bread, bread that really matters, comes from.  He is saying, “This bread of life will always be there for you – you’ll never be hungry again. And it’s for everyone to enjoy - all because of God’s love for this world, because of the One who loves you.”

There is a tension in this passage, a tension between the two different meanings of the word "bread.”  Jesus is communicating words about a spiritual meaning which takes us to a deeper place in faith.  In John’s telling of this story, those who go to Capernaum looking for Jesus are still hung up on the physical manifestation of the astonishing miracle, something that satisfied their own experience, that so-called shiny object.  They do not seem ready to really live into this new understanding of “bread,” this life-giving sustenance of which Jesus speaks. And, I have to say, sometimes I wonder if we are really no different than these early seekers.  Quite honestly, most of what we celebrate and espouse in first-world Christianity is merely instrumental in nature, and we also want to see that shiny object, over and over again. 

Theologian, Benjamin Sparks, makes an intriguing comment on this gospel passage when he compares the crowds to "those who see faith and church membership instrumentally, as something they can choose for themselves to use for their own needs or to pursue their own interests." Certainly, it's possible (and perhaps too common) for us to shop like consumers for the church that meets our own needs best. However, Sparks goes on to suggest the following as "all the wrong reasons" to invite people to church, reasons like: "for the 'right' kind of worship; for political engagement on behalf of the poor and downtrodden; for the sake of a Christian America; for a strong youth and family ministry," or for mission work nearby or abroad.  Now, several of those seem to me to be very good reasons to invite someone to become part of the life of a faith community. However, Sparks claims that we offer something much greater than all of these.  We offer "'soul food.'"  And, this soul food is more lasting and more unchanging, the kind of food that will nourish us even after our physical hunger is satisfied.  This soul food does not change with the changing circumstances of the church or the world.  And, whether we realize it or not, it is soul food that we truly desire.  Sparks continues on saying, “We North American Christians have preached a broken, truncated gospel.  We have been good marketers rather than true witnesses.  We have bought into a culture that rewards consumers and addresses their needs, instead of proclaiming a gospel that offers us faith in the only begotten Son, who gave his life for the sins of the world.  He is the bread of life and those who come to him will never be hungry, and those who put their trust in him will never thirst.” 

These words are really hard words for those of us who live in a consumer driven first-world culture.  They are hard words for those of us who have everything and who really need nothing – that is need nothing except to be changed and transformed by faith in Jesus.  So, listen to these words…..  Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  Jesus invites us into a life of faith, life that really matters.  Jesus invites us to live into an alternative way of being.  As we gather around this communion table each Sunday to eat and drink, we are nourished with the very life of God’s Son.  Though the portions are small, we are nourished with an abundance of grace and love.  We are nourished, not by something we consume, but by one who welcomes us with open arms, by one with whom we commune.  When we who are first-world consumers become consumed by the love and grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, we then become changed.   And, nourished by the body and blood of Christ, we are enabled to live that communion of grace everyday of our lives, wherever it is that we work, serve and play. 

In the person of Jesus Christ, God has invaded not only our lives but the life of world.  So, come, be served.  Jesus is the host and has spread a table before us.  Eat and live into the abundant grace and love of God.  And, as we weekly receive this transformational feast through these gifts of bread and wine, we gratefully say to Jesus, “Thank you, Jesus, for doing it again and again, for continually feeding us with your very life!”