John 6:51-58
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. It appears many of us are doing just
that.
Journalist and blogger Megan McArdle admits that she and her
husband "now have enough high-end cultery to stock a small restaurant --
and have a sense of shame at how rarely they use any of it."
They are not alone, she wrote in The Atlantic (May
2011): "Almost everyone I know seems to have the Kitchen Aid mixers and Cuisinarts
they got for their wedding still sitting in their boxes in storage, only to emerge
at Thanksgiving, if ever." America
has left the kitchen.
Oddly enough, gourmet kitchens are on the rise at the very
same time that people are fleeing the heat. Men and women are spending a ton of
money on kitchen equipment that they rarely use.
For example, it’s not unusual to spend $10,000 for a Viking
stove. A Breville toaster oven runs $250. A Margaritaville Frozen Concoction
Maker retails for $349. And a Shun chef's knife, with its own wooden display
stand? $199. This is expensive kitchen equipment, being purchased at a time
when more than a quarter of all meals and snacks are being consumed outside the
home.
McArdle believes that each expensive kitchen gadget
"comes with a vision of yourself doing something warm and inviting: baking
bread, rolling your own pasta, slow-cooking a pot roast." Gourmet kitchen
equipment promises a warm and wonderful feeling, even if you rarely touch it. Cooking is not as demanding and tedious as it
once was with the availability of a wide range of kitchen gadgets to make the
work easier. Cooking has become a
leisure activity for many Americans, instead of a daily job. We take for granted how easy it is to get and
prepare the food we need whenever we want it.
Contrast that with this: in the agrarian culture of
first-century Israel, having bread was essential for survival. There was no
endless supply of bread (in dozens of varieties) available at the local supermarket.
You made your own bread by growing and harvesting wheat and mixing it with
other needed ingredients by hand and baking over an open fire. Some years were better than others. Some years produced a poor crop while others
produced a good crop. Some years there
was a enough food for everyone and other years there was not. Simply put: no bread, no life. Having enough
food was a matter of life or death.
Almost everything we eat comes from something else that has
died. Dead animals provide us with meat. Dead wheat gives us bread. Vegetables
come from dead plants. When we truly come to see how other forms of life die so
we may live, Jesus' words in our text today take on a new meaning.[1]
Upon hearing Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and
drinking his blood, "The opponents of Jesus" begin to dispute among
themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (v.
52). They think, that’s crazy! Obviously this group takes what Jesus says
literally.
When Jesus spoke to them about "living bread,"
they had a sense of what he was talking about because they remembered the bread
from God -- the manna -- that their ancestors had eaten in the wilderness. But
his flesh? That didn't make any sense.
"Very truly, I tell you," says Jesus, "unless
you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in
you" (v. 53).
There was this Italian restaurant back in New Jersey that
made the most amazing Pasta Fagioli in the world.
I asked the cook one time, "How on Earth do you make it?
Where can I find the recipe."
The cook's face glowed with pride. He said, "Well, I'll
tell yas: the pasta is nothing; the broth is nothing; the beans is nothing; but
when I throw MYSELF into it, into the soup, my Pasta Fagioli -- that's what
makes it what it is."[2]
God has thrown himself into the cauldron, into the earthly mix
as the person of Jesus portrayed in the Bible.
In fact, John has already told us that Jesus is the Word of God in human
form, having said that "the Word became flesh and lived among us"
(1:14). And we know that this Word made flesh was not destined to live a long
and happy earthly life, because "just as Moses lifted up the serpent in
the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in
him may have eternal life" (3:14-15).
God has a purpose for Jesus.
And that purpose involves Jesus being lifted up on the cross,
sacrificing his own flesh to bring us forgiveness and everlasting life, to
which he alluded in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."
Living bread; Word made flesh; Lifted on the bloody cross; given
for the life of the world. In Jesus'
kitchen we find God's recipe for everlasting life. But this kitchen gets hot.
Cooking with Jesus is not easy. It’s not a leisure pursuit. It’s not microwaveable or one that can be
done just a few minutes a day. Taking
Jesus into ourselves, making room for Jesus in our lives, is a full-time
challenge, one that transforms us from the inside out. After all, "you are
what you eat." Jesus promises, "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" (vv.
54-57).
If we take Jesus into ourselves, we are given eternal life.
Don't expect to understand it fully right now. Only believe it, trust it and be
grateful.
The challenge for us is to stay close to Jesus, receive his
nourishment and do his work in the world. This is not a leisure pursuit, one
that can be done off and on again. Jesus wants us to remain in the kitchen with
him, even when it gets unbearably hot. Here
is our challenge from Jesus:
We can begin by feasting on the words of Jesus. The disciples knew the power of the words of
Jesus. They longed to hear them, to
understand them, digest them and live them.
But many in the crowds who followed Jesus were turned off by Jesus’
difficult words and walked away. The
words of Jesus remain a source of solid spiritual food for us. It is spiritual food that builds us up,
nourishing us with the truth of who He is.
It’s the spiritual food that sustains us on our journey of faith and
gives us eternal life.
We can be nourished by our participation in communion. Jesus instructs us to eat and drink of the
bread and the wine to remember him, to honor him. Receiving communion is an
important way of living in Christ, and allowing Christ to live in us.
We can go out to be the body of Christ in the world. Christians who feast on the words of Jesus
and nourish themselves with communion become nothing less than the
flesh-and-blood presence of Jesus in the world today. The Apostle Paul writes
in the second chapter of Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ,
therefore it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live I live by faith in
the Song of God who loves me and gave himself for me” (Gal.2:20). When we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior, we become the hands and feet of Jesus, whether we are young or old,
male or female, white or black, liberal or conservative.
None of this requires a gourmet kitchen, filled with
expensive equipment or fancy gadgets. All that we need to do is feast on His
Word, be nourished through communion and be the bodily presence of Jesus in the
world. We need to keep cooking with
Jesus, even when things get hot.
[1]
--Trevin Wax,
"How is Jesus the 'Living Bread'?"Kingdom People, January 22, 2007.
http://thegospelcoalition.org.
[2] Anthony de Mello, cited in Spiritual
Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, ed. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat (Simon & Schuster, 1998), 220.
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