We Who Do Not Walk Away

I wanted to begin today’s sermon with a joke about carpentry but I didn’t think it… would-work. The reason being that Jesus, coming from a family of carpenters, is asking today what it takes to become a joiner. Are you a joiner? A disciple? A follower of this carpenter?

Every three years we get this summer where for five Sundays in a row we go through the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel – largely the feeding of the crowd and Jesus’ teaching on it. By the end you’re running out of good hymns mentioning bread and wondering what more you can say about it, or more properly, whether people want to hear anything more about it. Happily, it’s worked out that we’ve split it this year between the readers and clergy so you haven’t had to just listen to me droning on. It also probably helps that most people are on away for at least one week, and it always feels like All of Putney disappears in August, so that few remain who are clinging to each Sunday, waiting for the next instalment.   But I hope if you are one of the faithful few you’ve enjoyed these different perspectives on what is a remarkable section of the Gospel.

This scene, as my learned colleagues have already suggested, is a replay of the foundational narrative of the Hebrews. Every culture has those stories by which it best understands itself. The French are forever storming the Bastille. The Americans are ganging up with the French to kick out our royalist antecedents on Independence Day; The Hebrews become who they are in the crossing of the Red Sea to forty years in the wilderness, before the entry into the Promised Land. It’s the story that throughout the Hebrew Bible in its prophecies and songs we are returned. And during this time the people receive the Law from Moses, and they’re fed by the Manna, the bread from heaven, in the wilderness, and they become the chosen people of God, the inheritors of God’s promises. The people encounter the God who saves, are fed and taught by God, and come to the promised land.

Jesus has taken the people into the wilderness. He has fed them, literally. He has taught them as Moses taught the Law. And he is now telling them how they are being reformed as the people of God, to receive God’s promise. So Jesus is replaying this foundational narrative and making it the beginning of something new.

When Jesus declares “I am the living bread”, as Anne said last week in declaring “I am the bread of life”, he is deliberately invoking the Divine name – the name which the Third Commandment tells us shall not be taken in vain. It’s the name given at the beginning of our foundational narrative, when Moses asks the burning bush who should he say has sent him, Who has sent him to Pharoah to release the Hebrews – And God answers “I am who I am”, An expression that is so holy that in Hebrew it is still translated throughout almost all Bibles as “The LORD” in capital letters. Think Samuel Lee Jackson quoting Ezekiel: “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!”

So this is blasphemy or it’s revelation – High stakes preaching by Jesus. If I were to say to you now – By the way, I, who am now speaking to you, am God. I can well imagine some would be edging towards the door. But perhaps if from nowhere I’d produced a wonderful Putney brunch before saying it, you might be tempted to stay and find out a little more.

This is what Jesus has done. He is saying God is with you, the God who saves, (which is the literal meaning of Jesus, a derivation of Joshua – Ya – a shortened form of the Divine Name and Shua – ‘he saves’) The God who saves is with you. God is feeding and teaching his people, And Jesus tells them how to become truly God’s people.

In this Jesus takes the people into another taboo – that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. Cannibalism is happily still a taboo in most cultures. Even when consensual in the disturbing case of German computer technician Armin Miewes. Blood, in particular, is taboo. Noah is commanded not to eat ‘flesh with its life, that is, its blood’. In Acts the early Church repeats the command not to eat blood, reiterated again by a seventh century council that Christians should not consume the blood of animals.

Jesus though is using the taboo to shock his hearers. He has to completely change how the Jews relate to God so he is deliberately walking freely on their sense of blasphemy and sanctity – So they must eat the flesh and drink the blood. He is preparing them, and us, for the Eucharist – for our participation in a new sacrifice. But he needs to shock them to realise that where they are is not enough. God is promising them something more. We are told the Hebrews, ‘your ancestors’, ate the bread God provided and died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever. Just as Jesus in his death will take the place of the entire religious function of Jerusalem, the Temple and Sacrifice, so in this new foundational story, he subsumes the role of Moses, the Bread from Heaven, the Law and the Promised Land. Jesus is the immediacy of God with us, meaning that he is our daily bread, our leader, our future.

We are being prepared in this Gospel, as the disciples are, to be in the upper room with Jesus. Prepared us for the moment of food washing and sharing of bread and wine that is the memorial of Jesus’ demonstration of incarnate love; Prepared to follow that example, in holding to truth and compassion in adversity.

We are told that after this many of the disciples turned away. Here, then, is the crucial moment in this Gospel. The people have learned who Jesus is. They have been fed by this miraculous meal. But will they join with him; Or will they walk away?

We don’t face quite this same question because we are not being asked to walk away from what we know. There is a sense in coming to church, though, in which we know we are doing something a little counter-cultural. Most people in this country don’t go to church. Most people feel ambivalently about religion. Perhaps we are even reaching a stage where belief in God will be seen as taboo, Or at least something that only poorly educated people, foreigners or eccentrics follow. A lot of people are also antipathetic to joining things. Institutions, we’re frequently told, are in decline. People no longer feel obligated to go to church each week, and find out what’s happening in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.

When we come to communion we are expressing a commitment: To God, to the Christian faith, to one another. Central to this commitment is the belief that our lives are meaningful, And that meaning is determined by their closeness to the life of Jesus, who is the revelation of God as love. Generations of Christians have thought this love worth giving their lives for, most recently by Maximilian Kolbe, Martin Luther King Jr., Oscar Romero, Esther John, all now adorning the front of Westminster Abbey as modern martyrs, with many, many more besides.

In a liberal, nominally Christian country like ours, belief and commitment to the faith is both easier and harder than at other times and places. But the question is the same? Have we found in Jesus someone we can follow? In our time in this Christian community have we become loyal? In this place of worship, have we discovered something sacred? And, ultimately, have we taken on this foundational story as central to our own. That we might become a person of the God who feeds and teaches his people.

So we now come to Evelyn and Eleanor’s baptism, which expresses this commitment of their family. That they are choosing to be people of God; to follow Jesus, find their place in this community and be taught and fed by him; that this story is their story as it is also our story. We who do not walk away, but follow the carpenter.