John 6:51-58
“Cross my heart and hope
to die.”
As a child, I could not make a more serious qualifier to
a promise. I don’t’ know if kids these days use that phrase anymore. As an
adult I no longer even think in those
terms. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Perhaps it is because I have become jaded – I’ve seen too
many promises made and broken. I’ve failed to live up to quite a few myself.
What is a promise, after all, but words,
just words, even when spoken with the most sincere and genuine of
hearts and the purest of intent?
Perhaps my reticence to use those words arises from the
hope that a promise made today will
make a difference. That this time, I’ll
be able to honor and keep a promise I make; that the kind of wisdom spoken in the Proverb we read this morning is the wisdom
attained through age and experience; “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk
in the way of insight.”
Maybe, the tenor of a promise, has become, “Cross my
heart and hope to live.”
Promises
are important things.
Promises
can create change in the giver and receiver of the promise – both gain in a
promise kept – despite the cost also connected to it.
In
today’s gospel, Jesus makes a bold, life-giving promise. “Those who eat my
flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the
last day.” And later, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me
and I in them. Just as the living Father
sent me, and I live because of the
Father, so whoever eats me will live
because of me.”
Jesus promises to provide food for the life of
the world, his flesh and blood. Jesus, the perfect promise-keeper promises that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood already
has eternal life, and will be raised up on the last day.
Jesus promises to nourish the world with the
gift of himself. For the “flesh” and “blood” of Jesus, his incarnate life and very
real death on the cross, have become life-giving food for the world.
In, with,
and under the bread and wine of Holy Communion, which is nothing other than
Christ’s body and blood, Jesus lives out this promise to nourish faith, forgive
sin, and empower us to be witnesses
to the Gospel. Jesus gives us life
and feeds the life within us.
Because of Christ’s
promise of mutual abiding, he in us and us in him, life is renewed.
Throughout
this sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, Jesus has tried to help us
embrace God’s wisdom – wisdom which
is not so much knowledge to be grasped and claimed and explained as much as it
is a relationship to be trusted.
It is a relationship desired by God, a relationship that God yearns for so
deeply that God will go to any length to secure it – even to sending this Bread
of Life, Jesus himself, to feed us, to abide with us, to strengthen us, and to
forgive us. This, my friends, is a promise we all need to hear.
It is certainly
a promise I needed to hear this week, a week in which both my 87 year old
father and a little 4 year old girl, Josie, both of whom we have long been
praying for, were among those who through death, joined the choir of saints and
angels surrounding the throne of our Lord.
We have all
had those experiences of loss – those which are sudden and those which were
drawn out. And, though death constantly surrounds us, Jesus’ promise of eternal
presence with us, of life-after death, of resurrection gives us the assurance
that while death has taken loved ones from our view, death does not have the
final word.
The promise
of Jesus that those who believe abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in them always
and eternally, allows us to trust that in the holy spaces where heaven and
earth meet, God’s love surrounds, protects, and guides our loved ones safely
home. In those holy spaces God accompanies those who watch and wait. In love,
in joy, in grief and sorrow, God feeds us and abides with, in and around us. We
are reminded at times like these that God’s holy abundance is contained in the
promises Jesus makes.
Living in
Christ, there is abundance – more life than you could ever hope for or imagine;
you seek heavenly manna? Jesus says, I am
that manna – I am the food you need. I am bread from heaven, for you, come down
so that you may not only live, but that you may have life. I am life for
you. Right here. Right in front of you. Believe
in me and be nourished.
Jesus
stresses that life in him does not come because we understand correctly or believe all the right things – the doctrine and theology with
which we adorn ourselves. Instead, life comes through the promise of the one who is the Bread of Life.
Jesus promises that eternal life comes
through being in close communion with Jesus himself. Eternal life is to remain in Jesus and to have Jesus remain in us. As we eat and drink, we take Christ’s body and
blood into our mouths, into our stomachs, into our bodies, Jesus promises to abide in us, strengthening, renewing, and making
his love both felt and known.
Through
this holy meal, Jesus Christ, Bread of Life, himself delivered unto death upon
the cross and raised to eternal life, moves us closer to himself. Christ moves
us closer to reflecting the very image of the living God in our own lives.
Through
this meal, we are as intimate with Jesus, the Bread of all Living, as the
Father is with the Son. This is
Jesus’ promise to us not only every time we receive this precious meal, but
every day of our lives, in our living and our dying, in our care of others and
in our being cared for.
While the
gracious promise of God includes inviting us into the resurrection and life
after death, we are mistaken if we view “eternal life, or “life everlasting” as
referring only to that kind of life.
Let us
remember that while certainly, Jesus’ promise of eternal life is laden with the
assurance that we will join him in
the resurrection when this life is past. Eternal life reflects the reality that
lives are changed in the moment of our baptism as we receive the promise of new
life – a life which begins in that moment, and then carries us throughout our
earthly existence and beyond.
The eternal
life begun in baptism is the gift of abundant living in relationship with Jesus,
a relationship Jesus nurtures and feeds by every means possible, including the
most visceral feeding through his holy presence at the table. The invitation to
this meal is far more dependent on the relationship
created and driven through the love of God that it is on our own action or understanding.
It is available to us through God’s expansive love shown to us through Jesus
Christ.
Jesus’
promise of eternal life and of his abiding is an essential, life-giving promise
which supplies hope to us in all our journeying on this earthly plane.
The past
couple of weeks, I have been made more aware than ever of the promise of life that
Jesus makes. I witnessed Jesus dwelling in, with and around us through nurses
and doctors, friends and coworkers, through you, through the prayers that were
prayed, through the gathering of family, through the care given and received as
my father and Josie moved closer to that holy place where heaven and earth meet,
through the omnipresent Spirit which surrounded us. The strength we drew came
from knowing the peace and promise of Jesus that nothing in heaven or on earth
could separate us and our loved ones from the love of God through Christ Jesus.
Through the Bread of Life, God’s eternal promises are true.
In
a few moments,
we’ll celebrate Jesus’ presence among
us in Holy Communion.
Our voices will blend with those of the
angels around God’s throne as we sing
“Holy, Holy, Holy.”
The
great prayer of thanksgiving that we lift
Heaven
and earth will touch here,
and Christ will be present in the bread
and the wine
in ways too wonderful to
understand.
And this is what is at the heart of our
meal:
a common loaf of bread,
and a simple cup of wine,
both containing the promises of Jesus; together,
the sign and the reality of how much God loves us.
God has promised unparalleled blessing
in this bread and this cup,
this meal through which God dwells in
us and we dwell in God.
This I firmly believe, and pray that
you do, too. Cross my heart and sure to live.
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