Incarnational Gospel

1Kings 2: 10-12, 3:3-14
John 6: 51-58

For the last few weeks, we have spent quite a bit of time in the book of John. We have been concentrating on what it means for Jesus to be the “Bread of Life”. The idea that Jesus’ flesh and blood has the power to bring us life is not an easy one to accept. Jesus knows this. It is why he spends so much time trying to show the people around him that eternal life is being offered by a God who cares enough to become one with us.

Some of us have been reading the bible for so long, and have heard these passages so many times that perhaps the meaning of what we are reading has become obscured. God, our Lord, loves us so much that He could not sit back in heaven and watch us flounder here on earth. God wanted to be a part of our struggle, to help us through each bump in the journey and God’s answer was Jesus Christ.

Picture a child, your child or a relative of yours. Think about a time you have watched them struggle with something. Perhaps it was bad grades, or inappropriate friends, or the struggle to make the right decisions as they became adults. A parent’s instinct is to help their child. We want to guide them, protect them, and help them with the wisdom we have earned with our own mistakes. God is no different. God looked at us and saw our pain, and God could no longer sit back and let us go through life without help.

Jesus, throughout the book of John and particularly in the sixth chapter, is hammering home the idea of incarnation. Incarnation is God, made flesh. We Christians make a bold claim. We claim Jesus Christ is not just the Son of God, Jesus Christ IS God. We know that Jesus is both fully a human being, flesh and blood like us; but we also know that Jesus is fully God. Jesus is not just LIKE God, Jesus is completely, 100% God. When he tells us the only way to see the Father is through the Son, it is because Jesus is God and has come to earth to show us more about our Heavenly Father than we ever could have known previously.

This is beyond radical compared to other religions! The Jewish and Muslim faiths agree with us on many things about God. We all agree that God is holy, loving, and righteous. But when it comes to Jesus, this is where we stand alone. This passage drives home the heart of Christian belief. Jesus’ body, broken on a cross is the flesh we eat; his blood, poured out for the world is our drink. Through his flesh and blood, we are given the gift of eternal life. It is given for all who are willing to accept such a radical thing – that the salvation of the world comes from the broken body of God.

The broken body of GOD. No other religion dares to say such a thing about the all-powerful, all-knowing God except Christians. It is incarnation, a God who is eternal, but enters into time, born of a Virgin and the Holy Spirit, becoming an intimate part of history to save us all. A man named George Macleod once said a prayer that says it all: “The morning is yours, rising to fullness; the summer is yours, dipping into autumn; eternity is yours, dipping into time”.

Jesus is a gift unlike any other. The shocking words he pronounces in this chapter remind us that when we eat and drink at the holy Table, eternity has broken into time in a unique, unrepeatable way. And God keeps on dipping into our time. Today, as we eat and drink the bread and wine, we are joined with the living Christ who is forever, and because we are joined to him, we are forever. Through the laying down of his life for us, he took away the sins of every person on earth. This bread and cup are for every person, in every land, in any imaginable state of mental, physical, and spiritual health.

As I mentioned, this idea that God could have come down from heaven to offer up his life for our own, is unique to Christianity. It is where Jews and Muslims part ways with us. Even Jesus’ disciples find this teaching in John 6 to be difficult to accept. Those of us that choose to believe, commit ourselves to a life of irony and unconformity.

Try explaining this passage to someone that knows nothing about Christianity. It sounds barbaric, like we are cannibals to be eating flesh and blood. It sounds insane, this idea that flesh and blood could make a person never die. It sounds like we are following a man who makes incredible and impossible claims. The secret to our faith is we are not following a man. We are following God. John 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. .. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

This is the secret we are meant to share with the world. Somehow, we need to make known to those who would look at this passage and scoff at such claims of eating flesh and drinking blood will bring eternal life, we must let them know what we know. The grace of God is given to us as we take the bread and wine. We are lifted up into heaven, for a brief moment as we eat and drink and pray together, we are in intimate, loving communion with God. Such moments change the course of our life forever. We have been touched by God. Jesus has shown us more about God’s loving, inexhaustible, and patient nature than we could have known without Jesus’ presence on earth.

This talk of Jesus of flesh and blood, eating and drinking it, it is too radical for many people. Our faith would be easier if it was only a matter of logic and belief. But this chapter reminds us that Jesus intends to have all of us, body and soul. His truth wants to burrow deep within us, to consume us as we consume him, to flow through our veins, to be digested, to nourish every nook and cranny of our being. As we take Communion, we sit with God. We have been given a gift too precious for words, and it is our job to show others how this offer of life has changed who we would have been if we never experienced such an intimate encounter with Jesus, our God and Savior.

Jesus has come down from heaven with the intention of taking it all back. He wants all of us, and he wants us to have all of him. This God, OUR God is so scandalously, intimately available to us. And Jesus tells us here that whoever knows this, knows how to live forever.

Amen.