Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
To Those Who Can Listen To It
Theme: You listen, not on account of your understanding, but one account of
God’s miracle of faith, by which you believe.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen.
Dear Christian friends,
Many pastors, theologians, and even wet-eared seminary students love to
debate various questions of theology. (There is hardly better sport.) Of
everything in God’s Bible that can be wrangled, one of our all-time favorite
questions for debate is the question that arises out of today’s Gospel: Is
Jesus speaking about the Holy Communion when He says here,
· I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of
this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life
of the world is My flesh.
· Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up on the Last Day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is
true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I
in him.
· Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, you have no life in you.
Is Jesus speaking about the Holy Communion here in John 6? Prompted by various
motivations and citing all sorts of evidence, countless generations of Bible
scholars have weighed in on this question. The endless river of their books and
essays probably should be taken as proof that no one really knows whether Jesus
is speaking about the Holy Communion in this Gospel.
· There are plenty of good reasons why it is appealing to think that
Jesus speaking about the Holy Communion here. Chief among these reasons are the
very graphic Words that Jesus uses to describe our fellowship with Him: “For My
flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and
drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” What better Bible verse can we use
against those Christians who reject God’s precious miracle of Holy Communion
and who refuse to believe God’s Words concerning this meal?
· Yet there is also good reason for us to think that Jesus might not be
speaking exclusively about Holy Communion here, but that Jesus’ words about
eating and drinking in this Gospel might be images that refer to God’s
miraculous gift of faith. (For example, the theologian Augustine wrote, “To
believe on Him is to eat the living bread. He that believes eats” [Gospel of
St. John, Tractate XXVI, para 1]). Jesus says here, “Unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” If this Gospel
is about Holy Communion, what are we to think of those Baptized Christians who
do not yet commune? Shall we conclude that these infant Christians have no life
in them because they have not yet communed? Of course not.
I understand that I am not preaching to a gathering of pastors and Bible
scholars. I would like for you to understand that I am not speaking about
things that are irrelevant to your life. Is Jesus speaking about the Holy
Communion in this Gospel? There are a couple of benefits that you receive from
the fact that no one really knows.
1. First, St. John chapter 6 stands defiantly as one of those Bible
passages that no person will ever master. Stated a better way, John 6 forcibly
reminds us that there is no Bible passage that any person will ever master.
(God forbid that any of us ever regard ourselves as masters over the
Scriptures!) John 6 puts pastors in their place and it destroys any illusions
they might have about themselves. John 6 requires that “every mouth be stopped”
(Romans 3:19)—including those mouths that run for a living—and that “all flesh
be silent before the Lord” (Zechariah 2:13). John 6 is the theologians’
humiliation. It requires all pastors and Bible scholars to admit that, at the
end of the day, they each still must be a little child who must continually
pray and read God’s Word, but who cannot “master it as [they] wish” (Luther,
Large Catechism).
What is the benefit you in this? The unanswered questions of John 6 assure you
that there is no one better than you among the baptized of Christ. John 6
assures you that knowledge and understanding are merely the servants of faith;
that a detailed theological training is ONLY an act of love for neighbor and
not the evidence of superior faith. Like the prophets and apostles before them,
pastors write and speak “to those who have received a faith as precious as
ours” (2 Peter 1:2, NIV); “a faith of equal standing with ours” (ESV); “a faith
of the same kind as ours” (NASB). We write and speak, NOT to those who are
below us or above us, but to those who stand with us on a level field.
2. Is Jesus speaking about the Holy Communion here in John 6? There is a
second benefit you receive from this unanswerable question. Oddly, this
unanswerable question helps you to understand John 6 all the more!
Hear again to how many of Jesus’ disciples responded to His eat-My-flesh Words
in today’s Gospel: “This is a hard saying,” they said. “Who can listen to it?”
These people did not say, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” They
said, “This is a hard saying; who can LISTEN to it?”
Here is the point: “Faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:17). A person
might even be so bold as to say that understanding is secondary (2 Peter
1:5-6). By all means, hearing with understanding is very important—but nowhere
near as important as hearing with faith. “This is a hard saying,” they said.
“Who can listen to it?” Who, indeed?
· You can. You can stand to hear Jesus say, “My flesh is true food, and
My blood is true drink” and you do not turn away. You stay and you listen, not
on account of your great ability to plumb the depths of these Words, but you
listen on account of your faith, which God has miraculously given to you. You
stay and you listen because you believe that Jesus has “the Words of eternal
life” and that there is really no place else for you to go. This staying; this
listening; this not turning away with Jesus’ other disciples: these things give
you additional proof that you now possess exactly what Jesus promises to you
here: you “have… life in you” and that life cannot die.
· “This is a hard saying,” they said. “Who can listen to it?” The infants
of the Church can. The preached Word of God is a miraculous Word, giving its
hearers ears to hear its promises and faith to believe them. The baptismal Word
of God is a miraculous Word, giving even those who do not yet comprehend the
ability to believe. The unanswerable question of John 6 keeps you and me right
there in the font, right next to babes in arms, listening with them to the
hard, inexplicable sayings of Jesus and somehow not running away.
3. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh. …
whoever feeds on Me, he also will live because of Me.” Is Jesus speaking about
the Holy Communion in this Gospel? The answer will depend upon whom you ask and
what sort of mood he is in when you ask it.
Maybe it would be better for us just to leave the question alone and let it be
unanswered. Is it possible that Jesus was deliberately vague in this Gospel,
and that He does not want for us to know some things? Rather than have us pick
apart and examine every last detail of what He says—as if Jesus’ Words were a
presidential State-of-the-Union Address—maybe there are some times that Jesus
would prefer simply to have us listen. Stated another way, just let the bright
light of Christ and His forgiveness shine upon you and pierce your darkness.
Focus on listening, even with you have a hard time understanding. The divine
and life-giving Light of Christ beams its way into you through your Baptism,
through your listening to preaching, and through your Holy Communion. Give
thanks to God for the miraculous fact that “this is a hard saying; [but YOU]
can listen to it,” for that very listening is God’s miracle for you.
Comprehending or not, we say
without doubt that Peter is right. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the
Words of eternal life, and we have believe, and have come to know, that You are
the Holy One of God.”
___________________________________________________________________________
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