Sermon for August 26, 2018 
Read Psalm 84 and John 6:56-69This week’s passages finishes the section in John that we began last month talking about the Bread of Life. Jesus began by drawing the crowds together with his teachings and then feeding the multitudes, but then then began to abandon him. It was just the crowds at first - those who had come to listen and see what this teacher was about. But now it’s actual disciples leaving him.
But why? Sure the flesh and blood stuff sounds strange, but is it really all that much stranger than calling himself the "Bread of Life"?
The answer to their offense, and the point Jesus was making, lies deep in the Book of Leviticus. Leviticus chapter seventeen contains a forceful and simple law about how the People of God were to handle blood.
"If anyone of the house of Israel or of the aliens who reside among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and will cut that person off from the people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel: No person among you shall eat blood, nor shall any alien who resides among you eat blood. And anyone of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside among them, who hunts down an animal or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. For the life of every creature—its blood is its life; therefore I have said to the people of Israel: You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off." (Leviticus 17:10-14)
Do you notice that when God lays down this law there is no wiggle room whatsoever? You don’t eat blood. End of discussion. There was no circumstance where that law can be broken or swept aside. To ignore this law means that you are cut off from God forever.
This divine commandment was deeply ingrained in the daily life of the Israelite. In fact, this commandment governed what was possible to eat, and what wasn’t, for every day of their lives. It was such a basic law, and so much a part of the ancient Jewish people, that it’s still a cornerstone of modern Jewish eating. A slaughterhouse in America that produces meat that bears the identification as "kosher" still follows the basic laws of Leviticus 17.
So, when Jesus said that in order to inherit eternal life you must drink his blood, he was using incendiary language that seemed to go against a millenium of biblical teaching. In other words, this teaching was like nails on a chalkboard for an ancient Jew.
Now, thanks to the Lord’s supper, this passage doesn’t have nearly the same effect on Christians. We hear it and think about the classic. "This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you." We eat and drink, but we definitely eat bread and juice - not flesh and blood. So we don’t think about what the symbol means.
Because Jesus chose the term blood very deliberately. Blood wasn’t forbidden territory for being dirty, but for being holy. The life force of the creature is its blood. Because God is the giver of all life, life is holy. Life is sacred. And it’s not to be misused or mistreated—and certainly not consumed. It belongs to God, and God alone.
So, when Jesus says that his followers are to drink his blood, what he’s saying in the ancient biblical language of Leviticus is: take my life, and pour it into your bodies, your lives, your souls. Which seems like an amazing gift! But also an incredible responsibility. Because the flip side of that is that we now have to live into that gift, actually live out life the way he taught.
These are, indeed, hard words, hard to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe.
No wonder, then, that many of those following Jesus now desert him. The people in today's reading who now desert Jesus are precisely those who had, in fact, believed in Jesus, those who had followed him and had given up much to do so. They were called disciples. But now, finally, after all their waiting and watching and wondering and worrying, they have grown tired, and they can no longer see clearly what it was about Jesus that attracted them to him in the first place, and so they leave. Can we really blame them?
I mean, which of us has not at one time or another wondered whether we have believed in vain? During the dark of the night, perhaps, watching and praying by the bedside of a loved one in the hospital, wondering why in the world he is so sick and whether he'll ever recover. Or in the early part of the morning, waking up alone and wondering why your spouse has left you and whether she'll return. Or at noon time, standing in line at the unemployment office and wondering how you ended up here and worrying whether you'll ever find another job. Or in the latter part of the day, while cooking supper and thinking about your family, so full of anger toward each other, and wondering why things have not turned out the way you hoped.
At these times, and we all have them, aren't we tempted to conclude that the promises we trusted were empty and the faith we once held was misplaced? Oh, perhaps we don't renounce or desert the Lord openly, we just don't make the extra effort to get to church regularly, or we reduce what we've been giving, are more reluctant to help others, or simply stop praying until, in the end, we end up just like the disciples in today's reading.
Each one of us here has issues that perplex us and confront us as we struggle to make sense of things. Some of us are unwell, some are beset by loneliness, some feel and are a long way from home, many of us wonder what the future will bring; we all have our personal hopes and fears and dreams and nightmares. The complexity of our lives can weigh heavily upon us.
And yet, as Peter says, "You have the words of eternal life. Where else can we go?"
Not all the answers, not just a promise of pie in the sky when we die, but the words of spirit and life are the words of eternal life, life lived knowing the Father and the one whom he sent. We know, we know that this way of life that Jesus offers us is a better way to live. It isn’t easy, in fact it’s so hard his closest followers struggle to live it, but it is so much better.
So yes, we will have trouble accepting these teachings some days. We will have trouble following them and falter. But as Frederick Buechner once said, "Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all." Faltering doesn’t mean you can’t come back. Stumbling isn’t the same as turning away forever.
Even Peter, who loudly declared "Where else can we go?" falters. He denies Jesus out of fear, turning away himself, but he never stops getting back up again.
Who can accept this? We do. Except some days we don’t. Jesus knew that it would be a struggle and in some ways it would only get worse when his followers would see him killed and still be asked to follow.
Following Jesus is hard. Some days it seems like the hardest thing we ever do, but to live a life of meaning, a life that is full of life, is worth all of the struggles it takes to get there.
So question and falter and stumble and turn away, but come back to the one who offers you his very life that you may have life, and have it abundantly. Amen.
