God's Last Words

“That’s Gross Jesus!”

John 6: 51-63a

A Law professor during the course of a contract law class asked one of his better students, "If you were to give someone an orange, how would you go about it?" The student replied, "Here's an orange." The professor was undeterred. "No! No! Think like a lawyer!" The student then replied:

"Okay. I'd tell him 'I hereby give and convey to you all and singular, my estate and interests, rights, claim, title, claim and advantages of and in, said orange, together with all its rind, juice, pulp, and seeds, and all rights and advantages with full power to bite, cut, freeze and otherwise eat, the same, or give the same away with and without the pulp, juice, rind and seeds, anything herein before or hereinafter or in any deed, or deeds, instruments of whatever nature or kind whatsoever to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding...'"

A mouthful – think about  that when you give things away.

Details of how and why things are done can be messy, gross, and just not interesting to some people. Some of you stopped listening after the second sentence of the joke.

Not many people want to know their microwave works, gasoline burns in a car, or why a lightbulb needs to be turned on. They just want them to work.

Not many people want to watch hamburger, sausages, or Jell-O being made. Not many people want to know the details behind their government, their church, or even their children’s school. They just want the benefits of each.

This is why everything in government, in medical services, and nursing home care is growing everyday – people want others to take care of the increasingly detailed and meticulous, monotonous tedium of life in the 21^st century. “We’ll pay someone else to do it” is our cry. Anything to avoid the “gross” details. Some even feel that way about faith.

Our passage for this week, from late in John’s 6^th Chapter is best understood when verses 59-63a are read before verses 51-58: 

He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit is the one who gives life.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 

So 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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 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. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Jesus is talking to a group of people who have at least 500 years of history in the sacrifice-forgiveness cycle of Judaism. They knew that blood was sprinkled on the altar and bodies of some sacrificial animals were eaten by High priests. So when Jesus begins to tell them that believers in Him will come to drink His blood and eat His flesh they become contentious and argumentative.

Even the disciples join in the argument and grumble.

There is a kind of consensus that perhaps Jesus has gone a little too far, claimed a little more about Himself then he should have. People are getting “uggied-out.”

Jesus tries to deal with the debate and disbelief by simply saying: “Would you believe if you see me, with your eyes, being taken to up to Heaven to be with the Father? Besides I am speaking spiritually. Would you know I speak truth then?”

This is the same Jesus who reminded them in John 3 “if they can’t handle the world’s truth how are they going to handle heavenly truth?”

We know these are the same people who in a chapter of two from now in the Book of John who will deny Him and call for Him to be crucified. How did they change their minds, hearts, and attitudes? How did they become “bad church people?”

When we are confronted with a situation we’re sure about we develop a disorder called cognitive dissonance, which means we’re experiencing a situation that involves conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. We want to believe or understand but we can’t.

Cognitive dissonance produces a feeling of discomfort that either leads to a change in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors involved which then reduces the discomfort of the stress of the situation. Put simply, when faced with facts that are at odds with what we believed to be true, we often lie to ourselves to create a comfortable illusion.

For example people who believe that abortion is acceptable may also say all life is important, but that human embryos, fetal tissue they call it, are not alive in the sense that you and I are. This helps them sleep at night.

People who accept homosexuality and the whole gender-identity spectrum concept have probably done so out of humane care and concern for another human being more then out of any sense of acknowledging the actual physical acts of same sex behavior. We care for the person and overlook the behavior.

It’s really just developing a logic system that allows white to become black, orange to become yellow and so on, because the alternative is upsetting.

We humans experience dissonance a lot, it’s often the major focus of ad campaigns, sales techniques (the foot-in-the-door method), and even when companies give you a gift in advance for trying or answering a survey (“Wow this must be worth a lot).

Dissonance resolution is only one of the ways we handle discomforting stress. Most of the time we’re unaware that we’re doing it or have experienced it, and will automatically make adjustments to our belief system.

That’s probably how the attitude change happened but let’s talk a little more about this “body and blood” stuff.

Jesus knew people would have trouble understanding the concept of Him being the source of a body and blood giving meal that believers in Him could accept and understand. He also knew that they would have trouble understanding that it wasn’t an actual physical meal He was talking about. It is obviously spiritual and obviously supernatural in nature.

But this ritual, called the Eucharistic meal or Sacrament of Holy Communion is still explained and understood in two separate traditional views pertaining to how Christ is present. The dispensation of the view represents two separate ways people solved this mystery to reconcile the ability to believe what Jesus was telling them.

Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and a few other denominations view Christ’s presence as one of transubstantiation, while the Reformed tradition (UCC, Reformed Church, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and so on) view the presence as consubstantiation.

In Transubstantiation, it is felt that the communion bread and juice are transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ when the ordained or authorized celebrant prays (called the epiclesis) over it.

Consubstantiation believes that Christs’ spirit surrounds the bread and juice instead as the ritual becomes a commemorative supper memorializing Christ’s death and resurrection.

Both traditions believe there is no greater intimacy between Jesus and the believer than during the Sacrament of Holy Communion. And I believe that Jesus was trying to convey that message to these people in the synagogue that day but it didn’t work because their cognitive dissonance got in the way. They weren’t seeing the trees for the forest. They were hung up on details just like we are.

I don't think we can understand just how offensive and gross Jesus' words were to the Jews. Seven times it says we are to eat him, in fact it says to gnaw and chew on Him, and at least four of those occasions it refers to the drinking of his blood. He says our life depends on it! But only if we understand that He meant spiritually, that works. We are to know Jesus fully and spiritually in all ways.

Our next message will come back to the attitude change. Amen.