August 27, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

John 6:56-69

The great American humorist, Mark Twain, was also a pretty sharp theologian. He once wrote: "Most people are bothered by those passages in Scriptures which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always notice that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those which I do understand."

What Mark Twain was getting at is close to the problem expressed in our gospel for today; and I believe, the problem with the acceptance of the real gospel everywhere. The problem is this: people want a God different from the one they find in Jesus, flesh and blood, on earth, crucified, risen, and now living in his down-to-earth church.

First to John 6, our gospel. Good Hebrews that they were, Jesus' followers and even those constant critics of his, the Pharisees, knew that his claim, those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will live forever, was not about cannibalism, but rather was a typical Hebrew metaphorical way of speaking. Flesh and blood, even in our language, still stands for the total being of a person, for their reality. "I saw him in the flesh and blood," we might say of a famous person we'd only seen on TV, but now shook hands with at the Convention Center. To be in the "flesh and blood," is to be present, physically and totally, here and now.

Back to Mark Twain's insight, it was not that Jesus' followers and hearers found his words obscure; it was rather that they understood him only too well, and simply couldn't accept what he was saying. He claimed too much for himself. He claimed in his flesh and blood physical presence to bring and even be God on earth. They muttered, Who does he think is?! Isn't he just Jesus, the son of Joseph? Don't we know his mother and father? How can he say that he has come down from heaven? Yes, they knew and understood what Jesus was saying. They just couldn't accept it. God's not supposed to look like just another Jew from the old hometown, Nazareth (a sort of Rio Linda in those times). No, that was too much to accept!

Let's face it. Some unchurched folks get really weird around those who admit to being Christian. And this doesn't happen only because some avowed Christians are so obnoxious that any one with any sense would run the other way. No, this happens with anyone who seems to take God seriously. Those of you out in the work force, hasn't it sometimes happened to you that when your co-workers find out you go to church, their whole attitude changes in an instant and they may look like deer caught in the headlights. Suddenly, they are thinking about you differently and they may even turn their backs on you, leave you out of the joke telling, social events, and so on, because religious people like are supposed to be different, more holy, and heavenly minded. In other words, less human!

Some time ago I went back to my hometown for our 25^th high school class reunion. I thought I was going back as Dave Mullen, but, since the word had gone out long ago that I had become a pastor, I was greeted like "his holiness, the Most Reverend David G. Mullen". And of course I had to be asked to give the invocation and table blessing because suddenly it became clear I was the only there who knew how to pray. And all night long at the party, people shied away from me. My old buddies just shook their heads and said, you're a pastor?!

This weird thing about "religious" people rubs off on PKs, too. You now what PKs are? Preachers kids. PKs don't have it easy, folks. In third grade our daughter Heather started having stomach pains, real bad ones. We couldn't figure out what was going on. We scheduled an appointment with the pediatrician and he told us, that she was right on the edge of having an ulcer! An ulcer in third grade? He said, "Find out what's causing her stress, and get rid of it!" Well, Sue and I had no idea what the problem was. Then one afternoon Heather came home from school in tears and I finally got her to tell me what the problem was. Her classmates in that nice little village were teasing and tormenting her about being the Pastor's daughter. They were saying things like, "Oh, oh, can't tell that joke, because Heather might hear it." And stupid things like, "Your Dad's a priest and he let's you watch HBO!" (I guess if I was a priest and she was my daughter, we really would have had a problem!) So in between sobs, she told me all about this, and having gotten it out of her system, her stomach problems vanished.

But that's how it is. Mention God and right away people are looking for something or someone more holy than ordinary flesh and blood. But God always shows up in real flesh and blood. And we are truly blessed when we come to accept this word of life. You want the living God? Then you have to eat and drink‹that is, fully accept the down-to-earth reality of Jesus. And that's always been the problem. People want God off in heaven, thundering about rules and doling out blessings, acting in "Godly-looking ways." They don't want God with a human face, standing right with them in all the folly of their lives.

Back in that same little village that gave my third grade daughter stomach pains, a new priest showed up in town one day. His assignment, to straighten the place out. To his Catholic parishioners, he was, they said, a holy man. A holy man? Why? Because he was a zealous enforcer traditional Catholic practices and piety; he thundered forth the rules of Catholicism; he made a display of his religion by praying daily back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the rectory. But then this holy man began to forbid Catholics to ever step foot in the local Lutheran or the Presbyterian churches. Catholics were to avoid contact with us sinners. But the fact was, in that little town all families had long since intermarried across denominational lines and every family had members who belonged to each of the three Churches. In less than two years, the Catholic parishioners petitioned the Bishop to get rid of their holy man. Turned out what they wanted, after all, was a real human being priest who would love them for what they were!

In other words, they wanted the real gospel, which always comes to us not in grand and glorious doctrines rammed down our throats or in show-off piety or smug moralisms, but in and through humble flesh and blood.

This singing-praying-listening to the Word-celebrating the Sacraments gathering of flawed and fallen flesh and blood is the presence of God on earth! This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? Yes it's hard to accept the church as it is, just as it was hard for the first followers to see God in Jesus, when he was so clearly human. In fact, when sometimes the church has seemed way too human I have joked, "The Church would be great if it weren't for the people!"

But the church is the people and such flesh and blood reality is what God gave us when he gave us Christ. And so, finally it comes down to this: To receive the gospel, to enjoy the presence of God, we have to eat and drink the church; we have to absolutely love the church not as we would want it to be or demand it to be but as it is. For it is here, present in the folly that we often are, we meet the Savior whose words of eternal life satisfy our hungry hearts. Amen