READINGS

1. John 6:51-58

HOMILY

Our Gospel, the Gospel in which Jesus talks in St John about how people are to eat him really has me puzzled. One of the people I model myself on as a preacher is someone who’s not a preacher at all. he’s actually my good friend, the very distinguished concert pianist Stephen Hough. And I know that Stephen practices hours per day so that each piece that he plays in public is ever more perfect. And that there’s a time when he’s ready to go to the recording studios. just recently he’s produced a wonderful complete recording of Beethoven’s cello concerti including my favourite of all cello concerto number four which I consider one of the touchstones of Western civilization. and to play that well is wow – that’s real artistry. it may seem bizarre for a preacher to compare him or herself to a concert pianist. 

the reason why I do so is because there are a certain number of elements in the repertoire of concert pianists, there’s actually a very huge repertoire, but a preacher who preaches regularly on Sundays is a little bit like that in that there is a repertoire of passages that we have to preach on. they’re a repertoire of the concerti, the different pieces that we take on. and some of them are relatively easy to preach on, so maybe we can preach two or three times in a church and then eventually allow ourselves to be recorded. And then there are pieces which like Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto are not easy to preach on. they are works that need so much more practice, so much more sinking into. and this, I just want to say, for me is one of those passages. 

I’m ashamed that I’m not going to be able to offer you more than some speculative hints as to what it’s about because this is so rich. And I’ve been caught if you like having to record before I’m ready. So with that, I hope you’ll ask me I hope that you will allow me to stumble through some of these elements of the passages in St John’s Gospel. 

One of the things I want to point out straight away is that I’ve altered the translation which I put before you on the Praying Eucharistically, because in Greek there are two words for eating: eating bread, eating my flesh. And the two words are obviously used. One of them is the normal word for eating and the other – trōgōn – is the word used for animals gnawing. It’s a very very earthy sort of eating, it’s not just ordinary eating and drinking.

So Jesus says, for instance, those who gnaw my flesh, who feed on it in the way the tahanah feeds, or carabao, or that a goat rips up roots and all a plant. this is trōgōn this is gnawing. this I think is what the actual priests in the temple had to do with the innards of the lamb, with the entrails of the lamb – that’s gnawing. this is not a pleasant word for eating. and it’s deliberate. and yet in most of our Gospel translations, it’s treated as if it was simply another word for eat. it’s not. something much stronger and earthier is going on here. he’s really trying to bring people’s attention down from celestial thinking to very earthy thinking. so having said that this is my speculative shot at playing a piano concerto for which I’m not ready. 

I think that Jesus’s whole discussion in John 6 about the bread from heaven which culminates in this passage here is part two of what he did with the first sign. if you remember, the first sign he performed was the marriage of Canna in Galilee,  when he produced wine in abundance. this is the first sign associated with the arrival of the great high priest Melchizedek. remember the great high priest Melchizedek was famous: he turns up in Genesis and offers bread and wine. Jesus fulfilling the prophecy turns up and he offers bread and wine. 

But he’s doing more than that. he wants to say something about the sort of bread and wine which he’s offering. and he’s really bringing it down to something very animalistic. he’s saying: actually, I’m going to be a sacrificial victim, a carcass, and you are going to gnaw on me. and that’s the way that the Melchizedek high priest is going to give you bread and wine. it’s going to be my flesh, my blood. and as you take part in that, you’ll actually be me. you will become me. 

Instead of bread given from heaven which simply feeds you, which is good for you, it feeds you, it lasts for a short time, what I’m going to do is I’m going to undo the whole of the sacrificial system that keeps you all apart from each other, it keeps you divided from each other, it keeps you incapable of being one with each other and therefore actually coming alive and being who you’re really called, and to be enabled to be. so my way of being Melchizedek is not just to turn up and give you bread or wine. it’s going to be much more than that. I’m going to give you bread and wine because I’m going to become the sacrificial victim on whom you’re going to feast. and as you do that, you will in fact be joining in, taking part in my life as the sacrificial victim. 

and guess what? That means you’re going to be able to live forever because you will be undoing the whole of the order of this world. you’ll be able to step out of fear and hatred and rivalry and violence. so you will actually start to live forever when you’re no longer run by all these wild sacrificial mechanisms. but the way you get into it, don’t run away from the fact that what you’re going to be like is hyenas on a cadaver, vultures around the body – that’s an image he uses, I think, in St Matthew’s Gospel. 

In any case, Jesus is using very earthly images: you’re going to eat me in exactly the same way that scavengers do, the beasts do. this is not a pretty thing. that is how you come to form part of my body. don’t run away from it. you’re going to be joining me in becoming the living sacrificial victim forever. that is how i’m going to give my life to you as a priest. and it’s as you join me in that and allow yourself to be taken into me in that that you’ll become one because you’ll no longer need to create unity at the expense of casting out a victim.

You’ll become one because you will be living from the victim, overcoming any victim sense, overcoming any sense of conspiracy theories, and needing to justify yourselves. – No, you will have occupied the place of shame of the cadaver of the beast. you will be eating that. and that is what will give you life. 

So very briefly, that’s what I wanted to share with you. Please excuse me that it’s so speculative. as I say, this piano concerto is not yet ready for, I hope, for recording. I just wanted to bring out some sense of the earthiness of the eating which Jesus is talking about. and how he’s trying to bring down celestial things to very very earthy things so as to understand how very basic our way of joining in with him is going to be. And how he’s going to nourish us. And we’re able to recognize quite what annoying animals we are. and quite how this is going to set us free to become really and fully alive.