Does this offend you? Do Christians believe offensive and unreasonable things?

In a few minutes, hopefully not too many, we will stand and read the Apostle’s Creed, proclaiming our faith in a God who came down to earth, was born of a virgin, died, and rose again from the dead. This same God, two thousand years ago, as a human teacher, proclaimed to his disciples, “Whoever eats me will live because of me.” And we endeavor to fulfill this teaching today by eating Jesus, who will be present, in some mysterious way, in bread and wine.

How the bread and wine becomes a vehicle for Christ’s presence is even more mysterious. We will, with our priest’s help, take, bless, break, and receive. By these actions and the accompanying worship, we somehow eat Jesus, and are assured of eternal life, God-willing. Is that unreasonable? I think it’s a fair question.

By the way, before we can fully understand the experience of the first audience for this gospel, we need to remove our twenty first century Christian lens, because we are too accustomed to this language. We Christians like to see ourselves as the disciples, the heroes in the Christian story. Jesus has his confrontations with the Jewish authorities, but we are on the right team. This identification shields us from the sting of rebuke in most cases, it helps us escape culpability. Jesus is never telling us that we’re the ones in danger; we’re not the ones who have gone astray. But our reading today breaks through the noise. 

It isn’t the Pharisees this time, not the Sadducees, or even a Samaritan confronted by Jesus – the people who “turn back and no longer go about” with him are not the authorities but his own belovéd disciples, and many of them. There is nowhere in the text for us to hide and pretend to be the chosen ones. This Gospel confronts us with the reality that we all, at some point in our lives, abandon Jesus.

Yet, after the many leave, maybe we think we can escape by identifying with the few left behind, the Apostles. That sounds nice, there is still a chance to be the hero. But Jesus turns to the Twelve and says, “Does this offend you? There are some among you who do not believe.” Some among you, the special ones, the chosen ones. You thought you were safe here, but it’s a hard month in the lectionary to be a follower of Jesus. Last week I joked with Tom, our deacon-in-training, that the lectionary puts the Bread of Life discourse in the summertime because it knows that fewer people will be in church to hear it.

And it gets worse. I don’t think Jesus is really saying that there are some among you who do not believe, in fact this is the opposite of hyperbole, it is understatement. He really means, none of you truly believe: some part of you is holding out against me, something inside you is still hoping I am wrong, that the terrible truths of Christian faith will be metaphor, hyperbole. That would be an inoffensive salvation, wouldn’t it? Can’t you see it on the dollar bill? In Metaphor we trust!

So what is it? Do the bread and wine become his body and blood? And how does that work?

Different churches have described the Eucharist in different ways. Many of you probably remember from when you were Roman Catholics that the Roman church teaches transubstantiation: the bread and wine at the Eucharist become the body and blood of Jesus Christ in substance. Many misunderstand this teaching. They think it means that the bread and wine physically become the body and blood of Jesus, but there is no such official teaching. The metaphysical substance changes, the reality of the thing changes, but the physical properties remain the same.

And of course good Protestants don’t believe such things, for such things are unreasonable. We hold to reformers like Martin Luther, who taught that the Eucharist is Christ, mysteriously, because Jesus said so – “this is my body” – but we cannot define it any further than that. While Luther rejected the idea that the Eucharist is a mere symbol or memorial, Ulrich Zwingli reduced it to just that, and many Christians now embrace this theory of a symbolic Eucharist or Memorialism. The Episcopal Church is the church of the middle way, so what is Eucharistic reality for us?

While it may be easier to be Christian when our beliefs are reasonable, it is difficult to read this gospel honestly and also metaphorically. If it were metaphor, if it were hyperbole, if Jesus were defining a mere symbol, surely he would turn to his disciples and say, “what I really mean is, when you break bread together, it’s a symbol of me, remember me, it’s a ritual meal.” He has no problem explaining a parable to his disciples; he frequently gives us the answers to the test. But that is not what happens here. Instead, Jesus says, “Does this offend you? Do you also want to leave me?” He means it: this is my body, this is my blood. Jesus means it, and it is unreasonable.

So convince us then, Joshua, convince us the Eucharist is really the body and blood of Jesus, even if we don’t know how. I could try. There are books that try to convince readers one way or another, bringing proofs from scripture, tradition, and what the authors imagine to be common sense. None of these books are particularly good, because the problem with convincing people is it misses the whole essence of belief. Being convinced, or even convincing yourself is not belief. Belief is holding onto the hope we need to keep on living, or in other words, to have eternal life. And sometimes…necessary hope is totally unreasonable.

I believe some awfully unreasonable things: I believe that a woman of color can be the next president of the United States of America. I believe it is possible to free Palestine and secure Israel at the same time. I believe healthcare and education make for safe communities better than a strong police force ever will, that humanity can survive the war we wage on nature and rebuild civilization in harmony with creation. I believe love transforms humanity one heart at a time, until peace and unity prevail – that the arc of history bends toward justice, however wobbly and long that arc may be. And I believe that the bread and wine we share here today will become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I believe! Not because I am convinced, but because I must. This is the necessary hope I hold so that I can keep on living, and I mean living, not just surviving.

When I tell you I’m not convinced, I’m not being humble, I’m serious; preaching this is an awkward and vulnerable exercise in public confession and intellectual honesty. I am not convinced that when Mark waves his hands over bread and wine today, and every Sunday and Wednesday morning, that the elements magically transfigure into something other than what they are. I’m not convinced.

But I have tasted this bread and this wine, and I have seen that hoping in the True Presence of Christ is necessary for life. When we do this – when we take, bless, break, receive – we take Jesus into us, we internalize, we become. We are the Body of Christ, and Jesus is here. Feasting on him, holding one another and our world in prayer, we see that life is worth living in a way that no other ritual or meeting can accomplish. When we gather in holy communion, together we see that love and life persist, even beyond death. (And that’s not just an opportunity to pitch my upcoming Bible class on the afterlife.)

We don’t need to be convinced. We experience the Eucharist – body and blood, soul and divinity – and then we believe, and then we live, because we have tasted the unreasonable revelation encoded in the word “is, being.” “This is my body,” we are the Body of Christ, our existence is not a symbol.

When Jesus asks the disciples, when Jesus asks us if we are offended by his suggestion that we should eat him to have eternal life, when he reminds us that we will wander away from him, subtly planting the seed that brings us back, when Jesus interrogates our faith, he does not try to convince us. He does not put his foot or lay his arguments down. Jesus is not a media pundit, he’s God, and he doesn’t need to argue. He doesn’t even demand that we understand him. He leaves a space for us to simply answer, in the words of the disciples, “Where else can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” We have come so that we may believe and know.

I wish I had the guts to stand up here and try to convince you all that the Catholic Church was right, the bread and wine really really really turn into the body and blood of Jesus. This talk would be a lot longer as I explain Aristotelian metaphysical models and Thomistic theology, which I hardly understand myself. When I saw the gospel I would be preaching on, part of me wanted to do that, because I wish I bought into the reason-ing that makes the Eucharist reason-able. But then the Spirit brought me to a moment of honesty through this text, and I confessed to myself, and now to you: I’m not convinced. Rather? I stubbornly believe what is necessary: that when we gather in the name of Jesus to break bread, we come to know him, and we find the hope we need for eternal life.

Let us pray: Lord Jesus, you teach your disciples unreasonable truths and impart necessary, life giving hope. Give us the grace to bring our doubts to the altar of sacrifice and find you in this place, in communion with your Church, bearing hope into the world you made for your glory, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.