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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ask people in society what is “offensive”, and you get quite a different answer than you do in the Bible and in the Church. A GoogleNews search for “offends” yesterday found headlines from this month related to such things as Republicans taking offense at Vice President Biden’s recent comments that candidate Mitt Romney would put people back in chains, New York Jets wide receivers taking offense at a Jets cornerback’s claim that he was the second-best wide‑receiver on the team, and disability groups in France taking offense at a cheese company’s new marketing slogan with a word that can be translated either as “extraordinary” or “mentally ill”. One internet poster said the statement “I find that offensive” is “nothing more than a whine” that “has no meaning”, “no purpose”, and “no reason to be respected as a phrase”. People in society’s sense of “offending” as making someone upset or angry is not the same thing as taking or giving offense in the Bible and the Church, where “offending” means giving an occasion for someone not to believe or to fall from faith. That Biblical and churchly sense of “offending”—giving an occasion for someone not to believe or to fall from faith—is the one we need to keep in mind this morning as we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Taking offense at the flesh and blood of the Son of Man”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is the third in a series we have heard of Jesus’s teaching in the sixth chapter of the divinely‑inspired Gospel according to St. John. You may recall that the teaching came after Jesus fed five‑thousand people with five loaves and two fish, after He had crossed over to Capernaum walking on the sea, and after the crowd He had fed searched for Him and found Him there, where He began to teach them about the bread of life. As we heard last week, when Jesus said He came down from heaven, Jews in the crowd grumbled, because they thought they knew Joseph to be Jesus’s father. Then, as we heard this morning, when Jesus said He would give His flesh for the life of the world, the Jews in the crowd disputed among themselves, because they could not imagine how Jesus could give them His flesh to eat; they did not believe He was God in the flesh. Even Jesus’s disciples grumbled at what Jesus was saying about the need to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and to drink His blood; they called it “a hard saying” and asked, “Who can listen to it?” What Jesus said was clear enough, but they were hard‑hearted and unwilling to listen to it; they placed their expectations over what Jesus said and in effect criticized God. Jesus did not change what He was saying in order to not offend them, but He continued to claim that He was God and spoke of the weakness of their fallen human flesh. When He was done, many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. In some 24 hours, Jesus essentially seems to have gone from five‑thousand followers to twelve.
With our seemingly small numbers here at Pilgrim Lutheran Church, we especially might want to not offend anyone. This past week I led a confidential discussion with our elders about a recent visitor who had gotten upset at something said while the visitor was here. We all agreed that, as in that particular case, people too easily get angry about things that they should not get angry about. Still, we want to be sensitive enough to not say or do anything that might unnecessarily upset or anger them and so give them an occasion not to believe or to fall from faith.
To be sure, there are distinctions to be made between “taking” offense and “giving” offense, although the Bible does not exactly speak in those terms. Essentially, the Bible tells us to unconditionally avoid giving offense, and yet the Bible also tells us that giving offense is unavoidable. Perhaps to some extent the key is in the one being offended—whether in the disciples of the Gospel Reading, or in our recent visitor here at Pilgrim, or in us ourselves. How do we take offense at what God says to us? How do we let what He expects us to believe serve as an occasion for us not to believe? How do we let what He permits us to experience give us an occasion to fall from faith? As Jesus says in the Gospel Reading, our fallen human flesh is no help at all when it comes to spiritual matters. Apart from eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking His blood, we have no life in us. Our natural unbelief and the sins we commit earn us nothing but death and eternal damnation.
And yet, God has mercy on us and calls us to repent and believe, just as in the Gospel Reading Jesus called His grumbling and offended disciples to repent and believe. Jesus asked them, “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” There are really only two answers to His question: either they would be offended all the more, or they would be convinced and so repent and believe. Certainly Jesus wanted them to repent and believe, as He wants us to repent and believe. He calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin—from our sin of needlessly giving offense to others, from our sin of taking offense when we should not—He calls us to turn in sorrow from all our sin, and He calls us to believe that God forgives all our sin. When we so turn in sorrow from our sin and believe that God forgives all our sin, God does just that: He forgives all our sin. He forgives all our sin for Jesus’s sake.
In today’s Gospel Reading we heard Jesus say that He would give His flesh for the life of the world, and we know from elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel account that that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus permitted Himself to be crucified on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and mine. He died and was buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead, and then He ascended to heaven, where, as He said in the Gospel Reading, He was before. The forgiveness of sins His death on the cross earned for the world, for you and for me, is given in the flesh and blood of the Son of Man. As Jesus says, whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life, and Jesus will raise that person up on the last day. For, His flesh is true food, and His blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him and He in that person. As the living Father sent Jesus, and Jesus lives because of the Father, so whoever feeds on Jesus also will live because of Jesus. Such are the blessings available to us through faith, if we, like the Twelve, only get past the occasions not to believe and to fall from faith. Well we believe and confess with them that Jesus not only has the words of eternal life but also is the Holy One of God, God in human flesh and blood.
Apparently the Jews grumbling in the Gospel Reading about “how” the man Jesus could give them His flesh to eat refused to believe that Jesus was also God. What we call His incarnation relates directly to His being really, physically present in the Sacrament of the Altar, where He gives us both His flesh with bread and His blood with wine. The Jews grumbling in the Gospel Reading are little different from so‑called Christians through the centuries and today who take offense at and refuse to believe Jesus’s clear words “This is My body”, “This is My blood”. Already in the Old Testament, Sacrificial meals were occasions not to believe and to fall from faith, and sacramental meals continue to be so today. Verdicts rendered by rejecting God’s Word attached to physical elements are no less verdicts of unbelief rendered against God’s Word.
You may recall that earlier in St. John’s Gospel account Jesus taught Nicodemus about the need for fallen human flesh to be born from above by water and the Spirit in order to enter the Kingdom of God. In that same context, as in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus spoke both of the need for faith and of His ascending to heaven. At the baptismal font you and I are given birth from above, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and we are given entrance into the Kingdom of God as our present possession. For private confession of the sins that trouble us most, we who are baptized seek out pastors, whom Jesus has sent as He was sent, so that they can individually absolve us of those sins in the same Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Baptized and absolved, we then come to the altar to receive the true food of Jesus’s flesh and the true drink of Jesus’s blood. The human flesh and blood of Jesus can give life because He is God in the flesh and blood. As we receive that flesh and blood, both spiritually by faith and sacramentally (and supernaturally) by mouth, we are blessed physically and spiritually. Far better than the manna in the wilderness, we eat this bread from heaven and live forever. Even if our bodies die an earthly death, Jesus will raise them up at the last day, changing them by way of His flesh and blood from lowly bodies to glorious bodies.
Until that last day, we receive the invitation of Wisdom in today’s Old Testament Reading and walk in its way, the way described also by St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading. We recognize that people in society may get upset and angry over vice‑presidential statements, football players’ claims, and cheese‑makers’ slogans, and we recognize that there always will be those who take offense at the flesh and blood of the Son of Man. For our part, we try not to give offense when we need not to, we try not to take offense, either from others or from God, and we live each day in the forgiveness of sins for all our failures, receiving that forgiveness in Word and Sacrament, set in the context of the Divine Service not changed to avoid offense, the Divine Service where we give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +