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ДВАДЕСЕТА СЕДМИЦА Неделя, година В ПЪРВО ЧЕТИВО Яжте хляба ми и пийте виното, което съм размесила. Четене из книгата Притчи Соломонови 9,1-6 Премъдростта си съгради дом, издяла седемте му стълба, закла жертва, размеси виното си и приготви трапезата си; проводи слугите си да възвестят от градските височини: "Който е неразумен, да свърне тука." И на малодушните тя каза: "Дойдете, яжте хляба ми и пийте виното, което съм размесила: оставете неразумието, и ще живеете; ходете по пътя на разума." Това е Божие слово. ОТПЕВЕН ПСАЛОМ Пс 33,2-3.10-11.12-13.14-15 (О: 9а) Вкусете и вижте, колко благ е Господ. Ще благославям Господа във всяко време хвалата за Него е винаги в устата ми. С Господа ще се хвали душата ми; ще чуят кротките и ще се радват. O Бойте се от Господа, Негови светии, защото няма оскъдност у онези, които Му се боят. Богати обедняха и търпят глад, а онези, които дирят Господа, не са лишени от никое благо.O Дойдете, деца, послушайте ме: на страх Господен ще ви науча. Иска ли човек да живее, и обича ли дълголетие, за да види блага.O Нека сдържа езика си от зло, и устата си от коварни думи. Нека се отклонява от зло и прави добро; да търси мир и да следва подир него. O ВТОРО ЧЕТИВО Разпознавайте, каква е волята на Господа. Четене от Посланието на Свети Павел Апостол до ефесяни 5,15-20 Братя: Гледайте, колко внимателно трябва да постъпвате: не като неразумни, а като мъдри; като скъпите времето, защото дните са лукави. Затова недейте бива неразсъдливи, а разпознавайте, що е волята Божия. И не се опивайте с вино, от което произлиза разпътство; но се изпълвайте с Дух Свети, като се назидавате сами с псалми и славословия и с песни духовни, пеейки и възпявайки в сърцата си Господа, като благодарите винаги за всичко на Бога и Отца, в името на нашия Господ Исус Христос. Това е Божие слово. АЛИЛУЯ Ив 6,57 O Алилуя. Който яде Моята плът и пие Моята кръв, пребъдва в Мене, и Аз в него, казва Господ. O Алилуя. ЕВАНГЕЛИЕ Плътта Ми е истинска храна и Кръвта Ми е истинско питие. Четене от светото Евангелие според Иван 6,51-59 В онова време: Исус каза на народа: "Аз съм живият хляб, слязъл от небето; който яде от тоя хляб, ще живее вовеки; а хлябът, който Аз ще дам, е Моята плът, която ще отдам за живота на света." Тогава юдеите се запрепираха помежду си, думайки: "Как може Той да ни даде плътта Си да ядем?" А Исус им рече: "Истина, истина ви казвам: Ако не ядете плътта на Сина Човечески и не пиете кръвта Му, не ще имате в себе си живот. Който яде Моята плът и пие моята кръв, има живот вечен и Аз ще го възкреся в последния ден. Защото плътта Ми е наистина храна, и кръвта Ми е наистина питие. Който яде Моята плът и пие Моята кръв, пребъдва в Мене, и Аз в него. Както Мене е пратил живият Отец, и Аз живея чрез Отца, тъй и който Мене яде, ще живее чрез Мене. Този е хлябът, слязъл от небето. Не както бащите ви ядоха манна, та и умряха: който яде тоя хляб, ще живее вовеки". Това е слово Господне.
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John 6:51-58 New International Version (NIV) 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 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. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Happy palindrome Sunday! If you do not know what a palindrome is…that makes you cooler than me. A palindrome is a sequence of symbols, letters, or numbers that are the same forward and backward. The word “racecar” is a palindrome, and so is today’s date: 81918. In fact, the last 10 days have been palindromes, beginning with 81018 through today. It seems appropriate that today is palindrome Sunday, because we know the subject of today’s scripture forward and backward (How do you like that transition?). This is about communion, the Lord’s Supper. Here at Staunton Mennonite, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper about four times a year. And every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, I give a bit of background on why we eat a little bread and drink a little grape juice. You get this, you understand what’s going on. When you hear Jesus talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, you know that this is about communion. Like I said, you know this forward and backward. It is almost like a palindrome. Here’s my challenge for you this week: I want you to hear this as if you didn’t already know this stuff forward and back. I want you to hear this as if you are hearing it for the first time, and for those that want an extra challenge, imagine hearing as if you are hearing this for the first time as a 1st-century Jew. Our text begins with Jesus stating that he is the living bread that has come down from heaven. His flesh is bread, and if you eat his flesh, you will have eternal life. Then in verse 53 he says, “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.” Do you ever get the feeling that Jesus intentionally tries to be confusing? In John 2, Jesus talks about destroying the temple and raising it up again in three days. In chapter 3 he tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, and Nicodemus—who is surely a smart guy—is like, “You mean I have to go back into my mother’s womb?” In chapter four he is talking about living water; in chapter five he is calling God his father. Now he is saying that he is made of bread and if people want eternal life, they should eat his flesh and drink his blood. Maybe Jesus isn’t trying to be confusing, but I am pretty sure that he is trying to be a bit of a provocateur. Think of it this way. We have a name for eating another person’s flesh and drinking another person’s blood. We call that gross. We call that cannibalism. With very few exceptions across time and around the world, cannibalism has been frowned upon, to say the least. Cannibalism was not an accepted practice in Jesus’s day, and even more specifically, it was against the teaching of the Torah. As early as Genesis 9:4, in the covenant with Noah, God forbids the drinking of blood. In Leviticus 3, God lays out the process for making an animal sacrifice. The blood and the fat of an animal is to be burned on the altar and offered to God. Verse 17 says, “This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.” This isn’t some temporary rule, but a lasting ordinance. Don’t drink blood. Don’t eat the fat. It doesn’t specifically say not to eat any human flesh, but that seems to at least be assumed. And it didn’t even dawn on me until Friday that the New Testament again affirms this teaching against drinking blood. In Acts 15 we find what we often call “The Jerusalem Council,” where the disciples meet together to decide what is necessary for a person to become a Christian. The main concern here is circumcision, but they decide that circumcision will not be a marker of Christianity. Here’s their official ruling, found in verses 28-29: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” So why the emphasis on the prohibition of drinking blood? Leviticus 17:14 gives us some insight. “The life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.’” The word translated here as “life” is nephesh. Nephesh means more than just being alive, and is most commonly translated as “soul.” We translate it here as life because we don’t often think of animals as having an eternal soul that needs saved. Nephesh is more of an animating force, the essence of who one is. It is almost like the way we use the words “genetics” or “DNA.” We still have this concept of nephesh and blood in our idioms today. If you love camping, fishing, the great outdoors, and your father loved these things as well, we might say that it is in your blood. It is a part of who you are. It is in your DNA. It is your nephesh. So the Hebrew teaching against drinking blood comes down to the belief that the very essence of who a person or animal is can be found in the blood. That essence should either be returned to the earth or offered up to God. So here you are, a 1st-century Jew, well versed in the teachings of the Torah, and you’ve come to hear Jesus speak. He has been healing people, feeding thousands of people from a couple of loaves and fish. You think this guy might be the Messiah. He may lead the people to freedom! But then he starts with all this bread and flesh and blood talk and most people turn away. No thanks. You can keep your nephesh to yourself. What’s going on here? We know the answer to that, because we know this palindrome forward and back. This is about communion. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus offers the bread and the cup and he says: This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. We focus on the death of Jesus when we read those accounts. This is an account of the Lord’s Supper, Communion, the Eucharist, whatever you want to call it. Let’s take just a brief detour and I’ll come back to what I think is going on here. I want to explore a little bit of what some traditions teach about the Lord’s Supper, its meaning and practice, and why I think we can do better. I’ll start with a story. My friend Martin is an ordained Mennonite mission worker. He is intelligent and articulate and did his seminary training at Duke Divinity. I was having a conversation with Martin one day, and like things often do, the nature of our conversation turned to theology. I have no idea how we came to the topic of the Lord’s Supper, but Martin proudly proclaimed, “I’m a transubstantiationist.” Transubstantiation is the teaching that when the bread and the cup are blessed by the clergy, they literally become the body and blood of Christ. The word “transubstantiation” itself means to change substances. I’ll admit, I can be a little cocky sometimes, and it is good for me to be brought down a few pegs. In my cockiness, I asked Martin, “Really? Where do you get that from?” Martin replied, “From every reference to communion in the Bible.” Martin is correct…kind of. Jesus says, “This is my body, broken for you… This is my blood, shed for you.” He never said that it is symbolic of his body and blood. And in today’s text, it seems as if many people interpreted Jesus literally because immediately following this teaching, many people stopped following Jesus, figuring the guy was a little off. Okay, but Jesus often used metaphors to describe himself. He didn’t say, “I am like a shepherd,” or “I am like a door.” He said, “I am the Good Shepherd.” I thought he was a carpenter? But honestly, if you believe that the bread and wine/grape juice literally become the body and blood of Jesus, that’s fine. I’m just not there myself. Transubstantiation is official teaching of the Catholic Church, and this is why if you attend a mass, you may notice that only the priest can handle the elements. The lay person never touches the cup, in part out of fear of spilling the blood of Christ. The priest often places a wafer directly in the mouth of the person receiving the offering. Martin Luther argued against transubstantiation, and offered something that is often called “consubstantiation,” though many Lutherans today reject that term. Pretty much every denomination that believes in consubstantiation will nuance it slightly different. But essentially, consubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine don’t actually change substances but that Christ is present in the bread and wine of communion. The substance of Christ is present, even though the substance of the bread and wine do not change. In the Mennonite tradition, we emphasize the symbolism of the bread and the cup and the memorial aspect of communion. Again, Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” I believe that the Lord’s Supper is absolutely a way to remember and proclaim the death of Jesus. And I also believe that Jesus is present in the bread and cup, at least symbolically. But when I read today’s text I feel as if the idea of communion simply as a memorial is lacking. I think that there is something more to be gained. If you read all of John’s gospel, you will find that John does not include communion as a part of his account of the Last Supper. In chapter 13 they open with foot washing, they have a shared meal, Jesus offers some teaching, and then Jesus is betrayed. Our passage this morning is really John’s only explanation of communion. And by emphasizing this teaching earlier in Jesus’s ministry, the idea of feeding on Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood becomes more about life than about death. Again, I absolutely believe that one aspect of communion is that it is to help us remember all that Jesus has done. But John offers another perspective. Verse 57 says, “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” In John’s gospel, there is also a very this-worldly aspect to communion. We are not simply called to remember what Jesus did. No, we consume and live on the very nephesh of Jesus, the animating force of his being. We eat the bread and drink the cup as a reminder that Christ died, but also as a reminder that Christ. Christ lives in us. The prohibition against drinking blood in the New Testament remains because we are to get our lives from Christ, he is to be our animating force. Today as we take communion, we echo the words of Paul: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.