I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat,” right? We are what we eat … and that might be pretty disturbing for some of us. What do you put into your body by eating and drinking? For that matter, what do you put into your mind through words and images? What do you take into your body through all of your senses? I ask because what we take into us changes us – for good or for ill.

In today’s episode of the extended dance version of the Feeding of the 5,000 as told by John, Jesus now moves into some very provocative language. We tend to spiritualize what he says and those of us who have been Christians for a long time can easily gloss over the shock and awe of what his words mean: “ … 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.” Let’s drop our tendency to over-spiritualize this – this sounds like cannibalism! This is shocking language.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, references to eating someone’s flesh are seen as hostile actions. (Psalm 27:2, Zech 11:9) Ezekiel pronounces the judgment against Gog by stating they will be sacrificed on the mountain of Israel and the birds and wild animals will eat flesh and drink blood. There are also prohibitions on the drinking of blood in the Torah. The only positive references to eating flesh and drinking blood are in the Eucharistic language of the New Testament. Jewish people hearing these words would be scandalized by them!

And yet, the consuming of the meat from sacrificed animals was commonplace in both Jewish and Greco-Roman religious praxis. The meat from sacrificed calves, goats, and lambs was part of the diet of the priestly class in the Jerusalem temple. So when Jesus uses this language, he is both scandalizing his hearers and foreshadowing his own life becoming a sacrifice which will reconcile the world to God.

Up until this point in John’s narrative, Jesus has placed his emphasis on believing in his discourse: “whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” “whoever believes has eternal life” “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” We are often tempted to reduce belief to an intellectual assent to a series of propositions or ideas. This really isn’t what belief is. The Latin word for “I believe” is credo which more accurately translated is “That to which I give my heart.” It is more closely related to trust rather than the ability to understand or comprehend. Belief is not a head trip even though we are tempted to reduce it to this.

Jesus’ words today move from giving our hearts to action: “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” Through this language, Jesus says giving our hearts is the first step, but it is not enough. We must put our convictions into actions: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Jesus is telling us, “You are what you eat!”

My father tells the story of when he and my mother joined the Episcopal Church. They had participated in an ecumenical progressive dinner in 1974. Several churches participated and a different course of the meal was served at each church. During the various courses, the clergy of that particular congregation would tell the diners a bit about their church and traditions. There was one participant who asked every clergyperson this question: “What is the center of your worship experience?” The ministers of the more Protestant churches answered, “The preaching of the Word of God.” When this question was posed to Father Mac Stanley rector of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, he replied, “The Eucharist is the center of our worship. We are centered on the Sacrament.” This got my dad’s attention … and within two weeks, we were worshiping at St. Michael and All Angels.

There is a temptation to take the Eucharist for granted – after all, we have it every Sunday and sometimes even in the mid-week as we did this past week. Yet Jesus was clear this mystical meal is about his abiding in you – his becoming a part of you – as you eat his flesh and drink his blood. It is a physical act with very real physical consequences. You are what you eat.

Jesus commanded us to make disciples through baptism and to receive the Eucharist. These are the only two sacraments explicitly commanded by Christ because they are necessary to our salvation. They are the means by which we die to ourselves and then live for Christ, continuously being nourished by his Body and Blood. This is why we worship in the way we do because what we take into ourselves matters. Through the hearing of the word, through our participation in prayer, through hearing music and singing praise to God, through the smells of incense, and through the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are formed into the mind and likeness of Christ so that in the words of our Rite 1 Eucharistic prayer, we may be a “reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto thee.”

You are what you eat. You are what you choose to take into you and what take into you forms you into who you are. The Eucharist is a mystical feast of communion and community – it builds us into the Body of Christ as a living sacrifice for the sake of repairing the world. You are what you eat. What you take into you matters. Of what will you choose to partake?

In 1996, I was privileged to visit Japan as part of a five woman delegation from the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland to the Anglican Church in Tokyo. The purpose of our visit was to discuss the issue of ordaining women to the priesthood. This was long before I had acknowledged my call to ordained ministry – I was an active lay member of All Saints in Frederick. In the Japanese Anglican Church at that time, women could be ordained as deacons, but no farther. The subject of ordaining women as priests had been brought up at the Japanese Church’s General Convention just a few months before our trip and it was defeated in a deeply divided vote. The Bishop of Tokyo invited us to come and share the experience of how women’s ordination unfolded in the United States. He was one of the few bishops to vote in favor of it at Convention – largely because of his time spent in Maryland.

I spent my first Sunday at our companion parish of Holy Trinity in Tokyo with Deacon Mary Yamano. Mary is a very gifted and spiritual woman who was also a professor at the Anglican seminary in Tokyo. She felt a strong call to be a priest, but the current situation did not allow her to live fully into her call. As we stood in the chancel prior to the congregation’s arrival that Sunday morning, Mary explained the flow of the service to me. For a moment, we stood together in that space in silence and Mary turned to me, her eyes brimming with tears, and said, “This is so hard!” With that, she broke down. I put my arms around her and I think she cried a year’s worth of tears into my shoulder. She had spent over 20 years as a deacon and been faithfully serving a church that just could not get past their tradition and biblical interpretation to see her gifts as a priest.

Tradition and scripture are gifts from God; however, both must be interpreted and sometimes our interpretations put limitations on the Spirit rather than allow the Spirit to liberate us. Tradition and scripture are to be means through which we encounter the living God, but too often we mistake the means for the ends and find ourselves in the practice of worshiping the tradition or the scripture instead of the God who inspires both. This is a form of idolatry and it seems to be what is happening in this portion of our reading from John’s gospel today. We’re about half way through this extended version of the Feeding of the 5,000 story. And the focus today has shifted away from the crowds who are engaging Jesus in a back and forth dialog to this group John calls “the Jews” to which Jesus gives an extended teaching. Now there are various understandings of what John means when he says “the Jews.” Sometimes he is referring to the Jewish authorities. At other times, it appears he is speaking of “Judeans” in effort to contrast their temple-centered spirituality with that of the Galileans whose worship is less centered on the temple in Jerusalem. At other times he is speaking of the Jewish people as a whole. I’m inclined to think this is a group of Jewish people as Jesus tells us they are complaining among themselves. Perhaps they are divided about who Jesus is and what his teachings about bread mean.

This group of Jews appears conflicted about the idea of Jesus’ origins and who he really is. The origin and identity of Jesus is a major theme in the Gospel of John – beginning with the prologue where John says “the Word was with God and the Word was God” and the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Yet John also said, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” We are hearing this again today. His own people just couldn’t accept him – after all, they knew where he came from, right? He came from Galilee, and was the son of Joseph … what’s all this “came down from heaven” stuff?
Last week, I spoke of the fourfold shape of a Eucharistic life and how this extended story centered on the acts of taking, blessing, breaking and giving – the acts Jesus uses on the bread and fish, the act we do each Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist, and how it is to be the pattern of our Christian life. Today we hear in this reading of how these grumbling Jews were stuck in a paradigm shaped by their own traditions and scriptural interpretations. They knew they were chosen (taken) and blessed as God’s Chosen People. But that’s where they stopped. No being broken so that a new understanding could enter their hearts. And this is why they could not understand what Jesus meant as they rigidly stuck to what they knew. They knew that the bread which came down from heaven was the Manna in the wilderness – it was part of their history in the Exodus story (and it is no coincidence that this story in John is set near the Passover – John 6:4). The Jews perceived all of what they were experiencing as past actions in their history while Jesus is speaking of the living bread of the here and now and into eternal life – one which shows up among them in a form they don’t expect: a seemingly ordinary man from Galilee.

It’s tempting to sit back and pass judgment on these poor clueless Jews who can’t get past their paradigms to see Christ; however, we are not unlike them at all. It was scriptural interpretation and holy tradition which for many years claimed the sacrament of ordination was only valid for men – a paradigm that barred Mary, and many others, from living into a priestly call. We too have our lenses, shaped by both the Bible, tradition and our culture which often blinds us to seeing God breaking into our world in new ways and in forms we don’t expect. What happens when we encounter Christ in a homeless person, or a recent immigrant from Mexico (who may not be “legal”), or in someone addicted to drugs or alcohol, or maybe in the eyes of a Muslim child? Do we refuse to see Christ in these people because our scriptural and traditional interpretations won’t make room for this possibility? Will we refuse to be fed by their presence with us and will we refuse to be Christ for them? If so, we are no different than the Jews who are not seeing Jesus for who he really is.

I’ve heard it said that if we believe Christ is only able to come to us in the ways we expect, we will walk right past as he’s heading the other way. Christ often comes to us through people who challenge us and through those who are on the margins. Where does the Living Bread show up for you? Where have we failed to recognize Christ precisely because we have remained taken and blessed but refused to be broken? As we continue our journey through John, may we live as taken, blessed, and broken people that we may be fed by the Living Bread that, in turn, we may feed others.

“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

In light of what’s been happening in the news this week, we might paraphrase this: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.” You might have seen a few stories in the news about Chick-Fil-A. CEO Dan Cathy, who is a Southern Baptist, made clear his opposition to same-sex marriage based upon his understanding of scripture. Certainly, he is entitled to have his opinions and I respect his right to adhere to a literal/factual interpretation of scripture. If it was only about one man’s personal beliefs, this whole story would have blown over by now, but it hasn’t. The deeper and more troubling issue is about how Mr. Cathy’s corporation gives large multi-million dollar donations to organizations like the Family Research Council who disparages gay and lesbian persons and which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a hate group. There really are two levels to this controversy – one involving the physical consumption of food in support of a person’s beliefs and the other is a deeper spiritual issue of how we live together as the Body of Christ.

This week’s gospel reading speaks to the two levels of feeding – the physical and the spiritual – and is a continuation of last week’s reading. All four gospels tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000 … but John’s version is what I’d call the “extended dance remix version” of this story. We will hear this story spread out over five Sundays! Last week, we heard the story of the actual feeding where Jesus took the five barley loaves and two fish, blessed the bread and fish, broke the bread and fish, and gave it out to the multitude gathered. He took, blessed, broke and gave. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we hear those same words every week in the Eucharistic prayer: “On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” Taking, blessing, breaking and giving … It’s about the Eucharist!

If, however, we connect this story to only the Last Supper, we reduce it to one event in the life of Jesus. I think it’s important to remember that the narrative of the Last Supper is conspicuously absent from John’s gospel: he has Jesus washing the disciple’s feet instead. So by putting this fourfold action of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving into the story of the feeding of the 5,000, John is telling us that Eucharist isn’t just about the Last Supper. Eucharist is really about the entirety of Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus was taken – claimed by God. He was blessed by God. He was broken on the cross for our redemption and he was given for the life of the world.

Not only is this true for Jesus, but it is also true for us. Christians are also to be taken, blessed, broken and given for the sake of the world. But, the problem is, many Christians want to be taken and blessed … and stop right there, thank you very much! That’s the “feel good” part of Christianity. Being claimed by God and blessed by God feels good. But if we stop there, Christianity can become dangerous – even toxic - because if we only accept being taken and blessed, we will continue to encounter Christ on our terms and not on his terms. We will still retain control. This is a sort of spiritual narcissism where I get to be claimed and blessed, but I still hold onto the right to interpret the Bible my way, use the Bible to uphold my own prejudices, and choose who I want to be in relationship with and who I want to exclude. This is the kind of spirituality the crowd exhibits. They want Jesus on their terms. They want to take him by force and make him a king. They want to know what they need to do to perform the works of God. They want this bread always. They like being taken and blessed … but they stop short of broken and given.

And let’s be honest – none of us really wants to be broken do we? We don’t want to face our faults, our defects, our deficiencies, our weaknesses, our hurts, our suffering, our pain, the abuse we’ve suffered and the abuse we have in turn hurled at others. That doesn’t feel good, does it? It’s not fun. We’d rather be smug, self-sufficient, and self-righteous if given our druthers. We’d rather justify, minimize and flee from our brokenness. But that’s not the way of the cross – it is not the way of the Christian.

We cannot be given for the sake of a broken and hurting world unless we allow our own brokenness to be what it is – and to face it honestly. Our brokenness is the place where the crucified One meets us and reminds us that even as we are broken, we are still taken and blessed. We don’t stop being taken and blessed … even when we are broken. It is in our broken state where we can be emptied of our spiritual narcissism and our false ego. It is there where we can find not just serenity but also the ability to connect with the sufferings of others so that we can be given for the sake of God’s people. We cannot be a gift to others until we accept we are broken.

The shape of the Eucharistic life involves all four actions: being taken, blessed, broken and given. It was the pattern of Jesus’ life and ministry and for us to live authentically as Christians it needs to be ours too. We cannot claim to be Christian by having Christ on our terms and avoid being broken and given for others. If we do, our faith remains centered in ourselves and we will succumb to the temptation to harm others and cloak our actions with religiosity and self-righteousness.

When we are taken, blessed, broken and given, we find ourselves able to connect with the Other and see the face of Christ in them and in doing so we will promote the Body’s growth in building itself up in Love.