August 16, 2021

 In 2004 my husband and I decided to become vegetarian.  It was a decision about animal cruelty, about health, about worker’s rights, and about the planet.  We don’t look down on people who eat animals, it is a choice we’ve made for ourselves.  We don’t expect other people to cater to our needs.  I usually bring along something we can eat if we don’t think there will be an option for us.  But even though I am vegetarian, I do eat flesh every week at Holy Communion.

                Today’s Gospel is a difficult one—to eat human flesh and drink the blood of Jesus, this all very startling and repulsive.  The Jewish people would have bristled at the thought of drinking blood.  They had so many rules about blood because they knew it was the life of a creature.  There were ways of disposing of the blood of an animal and rules about how to butcher humanely.  There were all sorts of rules about human blood and what to do if you came in contact with it that were meant to keep people healthy. 

                Jesus talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood for several reasons. 

For me, it is hard to understand a concept, until I see an example of it.  So to have God walking this earth as Jesus, it is so helpful, because we can see what God meant by love your neighbor.  It didn’t just mean pray for your neighbor, but to lift them out of a gutter when they’ve been beaten and pay for their hospital bills.  Jesus shows us what God means by neighbor.  God meant every stranger and everyone different from us, no matter how uncomfortable or awkward.  Jesus meant people on the other side of the lake, distant cousins who are perplexing, people of other races and nationalities, refugees, people we disagree with, people who have jobs we disagree with, children, even Evangelicals.  To have Jesus in the flesh means we can learn from his example what God means and what God’s priorities are.  We have a well rounded faith when we are both centered on learning God’s words, and walking physically through this world, interacting with other fleshy people and all their complexity, and living our faith in our actions toward others. Our faith is one of both spirit and body.

I invite you to stop and consider your relationship to food.  Sometimes we eat for the calories, or lack thereof if we are trying to lose weight.  Sometimes we eat for pleasure—trying new recipes and combinations.  Sometimes we are trying to please other people. Maybe you have a picky eater in your family that you are trying to convince to try something or to have an experience that will open their mind and show them something new.  When we eat, we get calories that give us life, fiber that keeps things moving along, pleasure that makes us want to take another bite, and many times, relationships. 

Food brings us into relationship with others.  Sometimes we have someone to cook for or eat with.  Sometimes it is the sharing of recipes that brings us together in community.  Sometimes we make a food that was passed down through our family or maybe we have a special memory of sharing a certain meal with loved ones.  My grandmother’s cinnamon roll recipe that was lost for close to 15 years was recently found.  Immediately, my dad, who never bakes, bought the ingredients, stirred them up, baked them, and had them cooling on his countertop.  I only saw the pictures on Facebook, but I could smell them through the internet.  I felt connected to my grandma and my family because my dad baked cinnamon rolls!  Food connects us.  And There is something empowering about eating, a physical empowerment to do the work in the world that Jesus teaches us to do, and the Spiritual connection with community and family that gives us the spiritual wherewithal to keep going. 

                 

                I pray that we would be nourished at Christ’s table, be connected to the body of Christ in all times and places in community, that we would receive the new life, the new teaching that Jesus is offering, that we would worship and serve God with our bodies and spirits, and that we would be empowered to give ourselves away and pour ourselves out so that others might know eternal life.