Gnawing on Jesus

John 6:51-58

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 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. 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.”

I’m here to tell you… Barbecue. Is. Serious.  It demands serious time, dedication, and effort to make, AND to eat.  Twelve hours for pulled pork on the smoker to make.  A roll of paper towels and both hands to eat.  But even though it demands a serious investment of time and effort… it is SO VERY worth it!  The prep, the rubs, sauces, checking the fire at two in the morning… all that time and all that effort... it’s all worth it for the wonderful, succulent, juicy, sweet and spicy richness that is barbecue.

Jesus said to the people, “Very truly I tell you, unless you gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life!”  The translators REALLY toned this one down.  Jesus didn’t say “eat” here.  Jesus did not say, “wearing the correct dinner jacket, one is to take one’s correct fork and sitting up straight, with one’s linen napkin in one’s lap, one is to take nice, polite, little bites.”  NOPE!  Jesus said GNAW!  He said roll up your sleeves, put your elbows on the table, grab the bone with both hands and GNAW!  Jesus said, “Get into it!  Get obsessed with it!  Get messy!  Get it stuck in your teeth.  Get sauce on your face and don’t expect to keep your shirt clean!”  Because NONE of that matters!  All that matters is the GNAWING… GNAWING all the way down to the bone!  Which sounds awesome when we’re talking about baby back ribs at a picnic table with rolls of paper towels for napkins, but in this Gospel lessen, Jesus ain’t talkin’ about baby back pork ribs.  He’s talking about baby back Jesus ribs here and that, understandably, freaked people out! 

Having my rabbi friend here last week reminded me of how shocking all this talk of eating flesh and drinking blood really was for the first people who heard this.  Many of us have heard it our whole lives, so the shock of it ends up just washing over us after all these years, but Jesus really said, “Those who gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”  Then and now, those words were meant to be over the top, out of bounds, deal breaker… shocking!    

It’s no wonder the crowd couldn’t wrap their minds around what Jesus was saying.  It’s simply not something that is possible to wrap our minds around!  Now, lots of people over the last 2000 years have used a large volume of enormously sized words to try to explain all this, but I haven’t heard anyone who can fully explain it yet, no matter how many words of various sizes they use.  This idea of gnawing on Jesus, even when we set it into the context of the Eucharistic meal we share, is still mind blowing!  How is this Communion meal fully Christ’s Body and Blood?  It’s a mystery!  How, in this meal, are we given eternal life... it’s a mystery!  But “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” is what Jesus was, and is, saying.  The honest truth is that nobody’s got this one all figured out.  

But, I think at least a part of what Jesus was trying to communicate with this incredibly graphic imagery, is that discipleship isn’t something that can be done in between the other parts of our lives.  Following Jesus isn’t a drive-through-window-meal on your way from one thing to another.  This shocking imagery is, at least in part, calling us to something that is all-encompassing… a whole-life-involving project that is much more like making barbecue which demands tending fires, cooking sauces, making rubs, mopping meat and smoking it low and slow for lots and lots of time and then settling in to a meal that will take hours and hours to eat, rather than eating something cooked in a minute and grabbed from a hand reaching out through a window.  That shocking imagery calls us to settle in and completely make Jesus a part of every moment of our lives because Jesus is the source of all goodness and life.  He is our true food and we are being called to invest EVERYTHING... all our time, all our skills and all our being into consuming the Jesus Way, the Jesus Truth, the Jesus Life, so that just like the food we eat, Jesus too becomes a part of every molecule of our bodies and the fuel we use to live our lives.

Like an amazing feast of real honest to goodness barbecue, Jesus is asking each one of us to invest REAL time, not just left-over or in-between time… and do the spiritual-practice equivalent of mixing spices, massaging in the rub and then patiently, slowly, passionately, smoking our faith over genuine hard wood.  Jesus is asking us to slow down and really see those people around us… to see and then care for those who live on the margins… to study, pray and live each day with deep care, patience and passion.  Jesus is calling us to gnaw on the gift of God’s infinite love and unconditional grace, and make that an integral part of every molecule of our being, so that the Jesus Way of living and loving ends up seeping out of our pores into the world like garlic through the skin.  

Discipleship isn't a McRib sandwich grabbed on a Sunday afternoon on our way to something else.  Discipleship is more like REAL barbecue.  Lovingly, miraculously, patiently and beautifully transforming something tough… someone tough… into an amazing thing that is real and fully authentic… gathering family and friends… sojourners and strangers… lovers and losers… rebels and refugees… gathering EVERYONE around God’s Table where there is a seat and a place set for EVERYONE.  Discipleship is all of us, making together, the deep commitment to gnaw and to savor every morsel of life we’ve been given, in the company of all our fellow saints and sinners… all of us together, reveling in each bone of that rich food filled with marrow, laughing and sharing together those well aged wines strained clear and going through roll after roll of the classiest sort of paper towel napkins, enjoying to the very fullest, the immeasurable sweetness and the beautiful spiciness of the abundant life that comes to us free… as a complete gift… as we gnaw on Jesus.  Amen.