A couple of years ago my sister in law married a Tanzanian, and there is a custom there, as in many parts of Africa, that when a couple marry, at the celebrations afterwards, the bride and groom are each hand fed a morsel of food by the head of the other family. It’s a powerful symbol of trust, of the union of the two people and of their kin, and it’s a profoundly moving ritual to witness. There is something very definite about eating, in that it confirms what we believe about the food we are being offered, and what it means to us. In a more negative light, those who were adamant about the safety of British Beef at the height of the BSE crisis put their money where their mouth was by publicly eating beef, and feeding it to their families.
Eating is a powerful thing, and both Jesus and St John are aware of that when they make it the centre of today’s gospel, as it has been over these last few weeks when we’ve been looking at the feeding of the five thousand. So today’s gospel reading isn’t an easy passage to read, mark, learn and as it were inwardly digest.
It’s not easy partly because although most English translations are a bit bland, the original word ‘eat’ here refers to "munching" or even "gnawing." It describes what an hungry animal does with its food, and what a famished person does with a chicken drumstick. We diminish it if we try to see it just as a spiritual thing, rather than something that involves the whole of us, spirit, mind and body. And this is what Jesus says his disciples must do with his own flesh and blood.
Not an easy bit of scripture, then, for a people that took food laws seriously, and for whom the idea of ingesting even the blood of an animal was abhorrent. Certainly, Jesus’ hearers don’t find it an easy thing to hear. Some of them walk away, perhaps in disappointment, perhaps in incomprehension, perhaps in denial or disgust. And the ones who stay have no choice but to see Jesus’ words as an ultimatum, a challenge to what their faith is about. Whoever said choosing God, choosing life, was easy, even if for Simon Peter at least, in this passage, it is the only real choice.
For what is this ultimatum about, when you get to the heart of it? It is about the nature of our relationship with God: his commitment to us, and ours to him. Another great theme – perhaps the great theme – in John’s gospel is that we can abide in God just as Jesus described himself as abiding in God, a relationship like branches to a vine, such that the life-blood of God can flow in our veins. That closeness of relationship is hard to put into words, which I guess is why Jesus uses so many interesting images and metaphors to try to describe it.
The Tanzanian custom I talked about shows us that embarking on or deepening a relationship – whether that’s marriage, or a serious friendship, or faith in God - is one of the riskiest-feeling but most generous and life-giving things we as human beings can ever do, because when we actually commit to that relationship we are giving another person our whole selves, and, as it were, taking and eating what they offer us.
In the incarnation, the Word became flesh, as St John put it. And in that sense, it is as if God has become one flesh with humanity, that he has married humanity. On the cross God gave us all that he is, by making the ultimate sacrifice – and God does not ask us to do anything that he has not already done, so it is for us to embrace that gift, and to return it, giving back to God all that we are. And in the Eucharist whether we are coming to receive bread and wine, or to receive a blessing, we are coming to receive the life of God, really and truly. It’s not something that we should, or perhaps even can, do half-heartedly.
Jesus is saying, ‘if you really believe that I can give you life, then you actually have to accept what I am giving you wholeheartedly: take it, chew it, swallow and digest it. Make it part of you. Let it give you strength, let it help you grow, let it fill you completely, and satisfy you.
Almost nobody really likes being on the receiving end of an ultimatum, being called to commit completely to something, to come off the fence, and I know I’m chief among the fence-sitters on a whole range of issues. So this kind of teaching is not any easier for us than it was for Jesus’ first hearers and disciples. We might turn away because it is genuinely difficult and demanding to commit wholeheartedly to anything.
But if we look at the characters who are talking in today’s readings, we see that it is possible to say ‘yes’ to that relationship. The Israelites who are portrayed throughout the exodus story as wayward, ungrateful, impatient, and lacking in faith, finally realise that the God who has brought them this far is the only one in whom they can really place their faith, and trust for their salvation. And in the gospel, it is Simon Peter, who will go on to betray Jesus arguably more tragically than Judas ever would, who says, simply and from the heart, ‘to whom can we go? for you have the words of eternal life’.
In a sense, we have a great deal of choice. There are any number of other gods to choose from, and I’m not talking here about the other major religions, but about the other things in which many put their faith and trust, which they bank on to give them life in all its fullness. Many of them are not bad things, but they are not the flesh and blood, the very life, of the creator of the universe, and the truth is that they can never give us what God can give us.
That is what it means to eat the flesh of Jesus Christ, nothing less than participating in a genuine and committed relationship with God. Literally eating and drinking at the Eucharist should bring that reality closer for us, but what matters most is that it is real, and therefore life-transforming. If you receive a blessing at the altar rail, have the faith that that encounter with God will be real for you today, and that you will be changed by it. And if you receive the bread and wine, ask God to let it be for you his body and blood, his very life. And whatever you receive today, receive the transforming grace of God into every part of your life, for there is no-one else to whom we can turn to receive what God longs to give us.