John 6:51-59
“Gross Stuff”
August 19, 2012 - Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

         Spiders have unpleasant eating habits. They have no stomachs, no place within to digest food. So a spider is equipped by our mysterious Creator to digest food on the outside. When it captures an insect like a fly in its web, it punctures it and injects the digestive juices it has no stomach for. The spider’s meal digests itself, liquefying within. Then it punctures that fly again and sucks up that nourishing juice.

         As one might expect, spiders are often lonely creatures, especially females. Female spiders can be solitary for the unpleasant reason that they eat the male after mating. Many female spiders also abandon their young. They lay their eggs in a sac, maybe leave some food nearby in the form of a paralyzed insect, then go their merry way.

         Most of us have a natural revulsion to the very form of these creatures. Very few want much to do with them and many people find them gross, horrible and terrifying. But I’m borrowing a few thoughts, but not so many words from Walter Wangerin, who wrote our July book of the month. He found deep spiritual truth in the habits of spiders.[1]

         If talk of how spiders eat makes you queasy, or disgusted, you’ve got a good idea of how the congregation in the synagogue felt as they listened to Jesus speak in the synagogue in Capernaum. According to verse 59 somewhere in John’s narrative the conversation moved from an initial encounter back in verse 25 with those who followed Jesus across the lake to a dialogue that took place in the synagogue in town.

         Visiting rabbis were invited to read the Scripture for the day and then to comment on it. Jesus does that over in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 4. Here Jesus likely read the text from Exodus that’s been in the background of this chapter all along, the account of Moses and the manna. But like presidential candidates keep saying about each other’s attack ads, Capernaum must have felt that Jesus brought the discussion to an all-time low. He said stuff more gross than talking in church about the mating and feeding habits of spiders.

         Once again, we started our reading with where we left off, repeating verse 51 in which Jesus told them that “the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” That didn’t sit well with the synagogue congregation. In verse 52 they began to ask themselves what Jesus could possibly mean: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

         Recurring throughout history, cannibalism is repugnant to normal human beings. The thought of eating human flesh makes us gulp and swallow bile, nauseated at the thought. That was true for those Jews in Capernaum and for their Greek neighbors, who were in the habit of labeling far-off, barbarian people as cannibals in order to highlight their own superiority. A spider who eats its mate does not disgust us near as much as a human who eats another human being.

         Yet Jesus upped the disgust factor. Verse 53 begins with the fourth time Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you.” The original words are “Amen, amen.” It’s a Greek word derived from Hebrew which means something like “so be it.” In the Old Testament it was used to affirm the truth of what’s just been said. We say it now at the end of prayers. But Jesus was the only one to put the word first, to highlight what our English translation gets at. He was about to speak the very truth, the Gospel truth, truth which mattered beyond all else.

         Jesus said that truth-intensifying “Amen, amen I tell you,” then disgusted His Jewish audience by continuing, “unless you eat the flesh of the son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Old Testament law stringently forbade Israel to eat blood of any animal. More than once, particularly in Leviticus 17:10, they are told that any Israelite or visiting foreigner who eats blood is to be banished, “cut off” from the rest of the people. If the suggestion that His own flesh was to be bread for consumption were not enough, Jesus totally grossed out those Jewish people with talk about drinking His blood.

         It’s all about life. Leviticus 17:11 says “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” So blood of animals is not to be consumed, but poured out in an atonement offering. The life of the sacrificial animal is exchanged for human life. Jesus said that without eating His flesh and drinking His blood, “you have no life in you.” In verse 54 He puts it positively, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”

         It’s all about life. Without the flesh and blood of Jesus, we’re dead. As Wangerin suggests, we’re more like spiders than we’d like to admit. Spiders inject their victims with a paralyzing venom, but many of us are good at injecting others with a paralyzing word, or killing look, or abuse or neglect that enters into another soul and eats them up inside. Our mutual venomous activity leaves us like spider victims, whole and almost life-like on the outside, but dead and liquefied on the inside. We do it even to those we love, and they do it to us.

         Without eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus, there is no life in us, even if we’re looking pretty good on the outside. We are dead in our sins, in both the sins we have done to others and the ones they have done to us. We need another infusion, not of venom, but of life, if there is to be any hope for us. That’s what Jesus offers here.

         The old expression is that it’s a “dog-eat-dog world.” Our normal way of life is to compete and to consume one another in the process. In business, in education, in sports, even in relationships, it’s eat or get eaten. The strongest will take what they need from others and leave the empty skin and the gnawed bones behind. That’s the philosophy of Ayn Rand and more than we might like, it’s the philosophy of us all.

         Jesus came to offer something different. That’s why He keeps repeating His point here. When He said it again in verse 54, His word for “eat” changed. Instead of the usual expression, it’s something like “munch” or “gnaw” or “chew.” It’s a grosser word, a word that might describe animals eating, and it’s the word that describes how we are to eat the flesh, the life of Jesus.

         He wouldn’t let up on it, either. He knew perfectly well He grossed out the Jews there in that synagogue, but He kept talking, like I’m going to keep talking about spiders. So in verse 55 He said, “for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink,” and then verse 56, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

         Four times Jesus repeated that thought of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Maybe it’s important? Maybe those four verses are absolutely crucial for us? Maybe, like the synagogue crowd, we ought to be sitting up and paying attention and trying to get over our disgust with the thought of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood?

         There’s a different kind of spider. In Britain there’s the lady bird spider. In the southern Mediterranean there is stegodyphus lineatus. In both species the mothers don’t abandon their young. The lady bird spider makes a burrow and carefully tends her egg sac. She moves it to the top of the burrow during the warm day, and brings it to the bottom at night, to regulate its temperature. Stegodyphus carries her egg sac around on her back, fighting off aggressive males who try to destroy the eggs.

         For both these unique spiders, the mother does something greater for her little brood. As lady bird’s children are about to hatch, she lies down in the bottom of the burrow and dies so that her body will be her children’s first meal. Stegodyphus releases venom into her own body, liquefying herself so that baby spiders hatching from the sac on her back can swarm over her and suck her dry. These spider mothers lgive themselves for the lives of their children.

         Jesus’ message is that He is a different kind of man, a different sort of human being. Jesus came into this life of eat or be eaten, and refused to do it. He never spoke a word designed to inject pain. He didn’t nourish His own well-being by consuming the lives of those around Him. Jesus didn’t come to eat, but to be eaten, eaten up in love. Jesus is God giving up Himself for the life of His children.

         That’s why Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” He meant His own flesh to be food for us, His own blood to be drink for us. He meant to give up His life on the Cross, to let all the venom and sin of our lives pierce Him through in the form of nails and a spear. He made Himself into a meal so we can hatch out of sin and death, be born again feeding on Him.

         Today we hear “eat my body and drink my blood,” and think of Holy Communion, which is exactly right. No Christian, whether John’s first readers or we today, can read those words and not think of what Jesus said in Matthew, Mark, Luke and I Corinthians 11 as He handed around bread and wine at the Last Supper. “This is my body.” “This is my blood.”

         Unfortunately, just like the crowd in Capernaum, Christians argue about what Jesus meant. We try to make this passage solve our theological questions about Communion. Roman Catholics take Jesus’ words absolutely literally and so they have a theology whereby the bread and the wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus. Some Protestants have a theology in which they so much want to deny the Catholic view that they insist that absolutely nothing happens with the bread and wine. They are merely signs to help us remember what Jesus did for us. In the middle are a lot of other Christians who believe, like the Covenant Church believes, that though we can’t say how, in Holy Communion Jesus comes to us, that we are nourished by Jesus, that we are doing what He asked us to do when He said, “eat my flesh and drink my blood.”

         This text isn’t going to settle those questions for anyone. What it does teach us beyond all doubt is that we cannot live, there cannot be any life in us, unless we are feeding on Jesus. Holy Communion is the sacrament, the act of worship which gets at and makes that truth visible and real more than anything else we do or say. Ultimately our job is not to explain the mystery of Communion, but to feed on and be nourished by our Lord who gave Himself as the Bread of Life.

         So Jesus said, “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” There’s a real chain of life being expressed here. Jesus lives because of the Father, and we live because of Jesus. The eternal, holy life of God is passed on to us through Jesus Christ when we feed on Him. And more is passed on.

         Baby spiders grow up to be like their mothers. That’s the truth of genetics. Those infant lady birds or stegodyphi will carry the traits they inherited. The females will become mothers themselves and in turn give their flesh for their babies, for their children.

         When we believe in Jesus and feed on Christ, we are meant to grow and mature into people who do like He did, who give our own lives to nourish others. Jesus carried a Cross, and asked us each to carry a cross and follow Him. He said that students are to be like the Master. We are to live lives of sacrifice and love. We are to give our lives away, because He gave us His life.

         That’s the reason we are here. We have a good mission statement here at Valley Covenant Church. Read it on the back of our bulletin. But it boils down to just two things. We come to be nourished by Jesus and we come to learn to give ourselves like He gave Himself. Jesus feeds us and we feed others, literally, and in all kinds of other ways.

         In verse 58, Jesus finished His remarks in the synagogue by recapping what He’d said before, “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 came as a different kind of bread to give us a different kind of life. Not the eat or be eaten sort of life that always ends in death, but a new life, a life of love, that lasts for eternity.

         As Walter Wangerin taught me, there are spiders that are different from all the rest, who give their lives for their children. There is a Man who is different from all the rest, who gave His life for the life of the world. When we follow that Man, when we believe in Him, when we feed on Him, we become people who are different from all the rest.

         The Communion Table is at the center of our worship focus to remind us that we come together to be nourished by our Lord Jesus Christ and that we come to be transformed, to grow more like Him, like Him as He gave Himself up, like Him in sacrificing our lives to Him and to others.

         As Jesus came not to eat but to be eaten, we do the same. We come not just to be fed but to feed others. We do that literally when we give to the food pantry year round or serve breakfast or a sandwich to the homeless in the cold months. We do it figuratively in all sorts of other service.

         Yesterday was a good example. A few of us trimmed trees at Kennedy Middle School, serving those teachers and students. Others of us helped people move. We’re giving ourselves to feed others. You do it with offerings that allow our church to have buildings, electricity and water so a homeless family may live temporarily here on our property. You do it by volunteering in a community event, or by taking care of someone else’s child. Several of you feed others literally by taking meals to those who are sick or in crisis.

         You nourish another person just by providing a listening ear, a shoulder on which to cry, an encouraging or comforting word when someone’s world is coming apart. Bit by bit, day by day, we are eating the food that is Jesus and His life is changing our lives, making us more like Him, less selfish, more generous, less inclined to look for our own mouths to be filled and more ready to help fill the lives of others who are hungry.

         It’s not easy. It can feel as gross as spiders to not get what you want and to put the needs of others first. It may be gross, but it’s also beautiful. In the middle ages, the church imagined a lovelier, gentler image than spiders. They told the tale that a mother pelican, when food was scarce, would pierce her breast and feed her babies with own blood. So the pelican became a Christian symbol and Thomas Aquinas called Jesus our “Good Pelican.”

         It’s not true about pelicans. They don’t feed their babies with their blood. But it’s absolutely true about Jesus. And it can be true about us, if we will only let it be. Come and feed on the life of Jesus Christ. Believe in Him and be nourished by His sacrifice for you. And in the strength of that food, may you grow more and more like the Good Spider, the Good Pelican, who gave His life for you so that you could live forever like Him.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj