Abide in My Love
Jesus said, “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. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. [i]
As we wrap up week five listening to chapter six of storyteller John’s Good News of Jesus, things begin to fall apart. The crowd of five thousand were truly impressed when Jesus distributed the bread and fish. Everyone got enough. No one got too much. It reminded them of the manna in the wilderness days of their ancestors. Every family could gather enough for one day. Gather more than needed and it would go bad. It would sour. It would become crawling with worms. But now he speaks of eating his flesh. Or, as the Greek text has it, they are to “gnaw” on his flesh, and drink his blood. He keeps saying, “I am the true bread that comes down from my Father’s home of love, mercy, and forgiveness.”
They don’t know what to make of all this talk. What you are
asking us to do is too hard, they say! We just want more bread like the other
day. I’m not a baker, he says. I am no baker’s son, he says. One cannot live on
bread alone, but on the Word of God. The opening verse of John’s story speaks
of The Word. In the beginning the Word was with God. And the Word was God. But
what on earth does all this mean.
Taken out of the context of the whole story, it all sounds weird. Even more weird, later, chapters 13-17 focus on the Last Supper where there is no mention of bread or wine. Instead, Jesus is on his knees washing feet. And he says, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, wash your feet, you must wash one another’s feet.” [ii] In chapter 15, however, he says, “Abide in me, as I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” [iii] What does it mean to abide?
John tells us that the heart of the Last Supper, the very heart of the Eucharist, is love. The Father’s Love. Christ’s Love. We are to abide in Christ’s Love. To abide is to accept, to act in accordance with, to conform to. We are to accept and conform to Christ’s Love, which is his Father’s Love. And just how do we abide with Christ and one another? “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them… the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
Every three years we spend five weeks with chapter 6 because
this is where John gets to the heart of the Last Supper – the very heart of the
Eucharist: God’s Love; Christ’s Love; Our Love. We come from Love. We return to
Love. Love is all around. As we abide with Christ, we accept and conform to his
love and we become the Love that is all around. This is what Jesus calls
“eternal life” – life lived as God’s Love here and now. This is where John
tells us about the bread and wine, Christ’s Body and Blood. As we abide with
the Lord’s Communion, we become His Body, the Church. His Church is to be
focused on accepting God’s Love, abiding in God’s Love, conforming to God’s
love, so that we might Love on another, and Love our neighbors as God loves us
and we Love one another.
We come from the Love of God. We will all return to the Love of God. And in this in-between time, we are to become that Love wherever we are, here and now.
It was a former French Jesuit priest, Pierre Wolff, who introduced me to this summary of Eucharistic Theology. Pierre became an Episcopal priest, in part, so he could marry a nun, named Mary, who also became an Episcopalian. Mary Wolff was the warden of a men’s prison in Connecticut. Every Maundy Thursday, the day we read the story of Jesus washing people’s feet, she and Pierre would go through the prison washing the prisoner’s feet. The warden washed the prisoner’s feet. Those who could abide with that. Those who could accept the Love of God through Christ Jesus’s representatives, Mary and Pierre Wolff, who on that day were the living embodiment of the Love that is all around – of what it means to abide in Christ’s love.
This is the essence, says Jesus, of the spiritual life. This is the essence of Eternal Life. Eternal Life is not some reward you somehow earn when it’s time to return to that place of love from whence we come. Eternal Life is life lived here and now as representatives, icons, of God’s love for all people, all creatures, and every living thing throughout the ever-expanding universe that somehow, in the beginning, banged itself into existence and continues to create and change, unfold and become more diverse despite all our efforts to try and hoard what we have and keep everything just the way it is.
It is this that Jesus talks about in chapter six. He invites us to abide in him by eating his Body and drinking his blood. The very thought of this is too much for the crowd. They start drifting away. They mumble like their ancestors, “This is too hard. We just want more bread and fish. We just want you to open a bakery. We cannot fathom gnawing on your flesh and drinking your blood.
And yet. And yet, his flesh is Love, and his blood is Love indeed. Like the manna of our ancestors, there is always enough love for each day. But if you gather too much and try to hoard it, it sours. Things go badly. Unless we find ways to give it away. To give love away. As the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruch Cockburn sings, “I’ve got this thing in my heart, I must give you today / it only lives if, you give it away.” Love only lives if you give it away.
Give it all away, and we are assured that tomorrow there will be more love to gather and give away. And the next day and the next. Seems like Good News! But the people get angry with Jesus They just want a baker more than a Son of God who promises eternal life to all who choose to abide in His Love, the love of God that surrounds us at all times and in all places. The love that comes down and chooses to dwell among us. And so we sing: we come from Love; we return to Love; and Love is all around. To remember who we are and whose we are.
For five weeks every third year we read chapter six of John because this is the heart of the matter. The heart of all matter. The bread is love for the life of the world. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to abide in God’s love, and become the Love that is all around, says the Son of God. Be the Love and then give it away. Tomorrow morning there will be more. Amen.
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