Clean Your Plate!

John 6: 52-58

A friend of mine called last week. She asked, “How are you?” It’s a common question, one we ask and are asked every day. You and I both know the standard answers and I gave them. I said, “Fine. I’m doing well. Things are really busy right now. I’m good.” She laughed and said, “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

I suspect I’m not the only one who’s had this type of conversation. Most of us have these kind of conversations several times each day. We offer the usual answers. Sometimes we add something about our family, our health, where we have been, or what we have been doing. More often than not those conversations focus on the circumstances of life. We might be fine and busy, getting our work done, meeting deadlines and commitments, fulfilling obligations, volunteering our time, and loving and caring for our families but there is a difference, a vast difference, between doing life and having life within us.

Doing life or having life; that’s the issue Jesus is concerned about. That’s the focus of today’s gospel. It is important enough that it has been the subject of the last several Sundays of gospel readings. Each week has brought us closer to the unspoken question behind today’s gospel: Is there life within you?

That’s a hard question and one which many will avoid or ignore. They will turn back and walk away rather than face the question. “Fine,” “busy,” “good,” and “doing well” do not answer the question. They cover it up. The question pushes us to discover the hunger within us and the life Jesus wants to feed us. That’s what Jesus has been after these last few weeks.

Three weeks ago 5000 hungry people showed up. They were fed with five loaves and two fish. They didn’t understand. They thought it was about loaves and fish. It was really about life and where life comes from. Two weeks ago Jesus challenged us to consider the bread we eat. Is it perishable bread or does it endure to eternal life? Last week Jesus declared himself to be the bread of life, the living bread they came down from heaven.

Today he says, “Eat me. Drink me.” This is the only way we ever have life within us. Jesus is very clear and blunt about it. His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. Any other diet leaves us empty and hollow, hungry and bereft of life.

There is a Steven Spielberg movie from the 1980s called Cocoon – in it three old men, tired of being old, sneak off from their retirement village one afternoon for a stolen dip in a nearby pool. It is an indoor pool, in one wing of a huge house that is apparently used only at night. Ignoring the strange glow near the bottom, they slowly, painfully enter the pool at the shallow end. They have a wonderful time, floating in the water. Back home that afternoon they feel better than they have in years, so good in fact that they decide to do it again the next day and the next. Very soon it becomes clear that this is no ordinary pool. The same men who were creaking down the steps only days before are now doing cannonballs and back flips off the diving board. Back at the retirement village they are eating spicy Mexican food, dancing the tango, and flirting with their wives.
To anyone who has ever grown tired of being old or feeling old, it is a delightful fantasy- a pool in which old age is washed away. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!? Hundreds of years ago, tribes of Indians in Central America and the West Indies believed a spring like that existed in the Bahamas Islands. Spanish explorers tried to find it. Ponce de Leon searched in Florida for a fountain of youth that would make those who bathed in it forever young. Can you imagine wrinkled skin becoming instantly taut and toned again? Arthritic joints growing suddenly supple and strong? Or the pleasure of leaving your cane in the corner, throwing your pills away, but still keeping your free bus pass? If all that were really possible, wouldn’t it be worth a search for the fountain of youth?
But when you talk to young people, they will quickly tell you that youth isn’t all its’ cracked up to be. Yes, you can get out of a chair without groaning, but you can’t show off pictures of your grandchildren. And then there are all those things to worry about: Will I be able to go to university? Will I get a decent job? Will I ever get married? Will there ever be peace? Will this pimple on my nose be gone before my date on Saturday night? Ask a thirteen- year-old if she would like to stay thirteen forever and she will answer in one word: no. Although a youthful body would certainly have its advantages, it is not really eternal youth we’re looking for. It’s something else

What we want is that something I discovered whilst stargazing in the Sinai desert with my daughter by my side and when the two of us were snorkelling in the Red Sea surrounded by hundreds of different sea creatures – the true “life doesn’t get much better than this” moments; moments that, young or old, are about real living, experiencing life. We get a taste of it when we love so deeply and profoundly that everything about us dies, passes away, and somehow we are more fully alive than ever before. Sometimes everything seems to fit together perfectly and all is right with the world; not because we got our way but because we know our self to be a part of something larger, more beautiful, and more holy than anything we could have done. We are tasting life. There are moments when time stands still and we wish the moment would never end. In that moment we are in the flow, the wonder, and the unity of life, and it tastes good. This is what fills our memories and our scrapbooks. This is what brings a smile to your face a three o’clock on Monday afternoon. This is life. And if we want anything to last forever, it is this. Not youth but Life.

So, I don’t think Jesus could have come to us with any more provocative invitation than the one He brings; the offer of eternal life. And this sixth chapter of John is filled with references to that offer.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever”.
And when Jesus talks about living forever, you can be sure that He is not talking about merely existing forever. This is the same Jesus who says, in chapter ten of this same Gospel, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” – Abundant life is made up of those moments when you want to take a deep breath and hold it; When you want time to stand still for just a little while; those “life doesn’t get any better than this” moments.  All those moments when you think to yourself, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” That’s real living, and we would do almost anything to make it last forever. Almost anything.

Jesus is talking about more than just physical or biological life. He’s talking about that life that is beyond words, indescribable, and yet we know it when we taste it. Most of us spend a fair amount of time, energy, and prayer trying to create and possess the life we want. In spite of our best efforts, sometimes we live less than fully alive. Sometimes the outside and inside of who we are don’t match up. We ask ourselves, “What am I doing with my life?” We wonder if this is all there will ever be. Is this as good as it gets? We lament at what has become of us and our life. Nothing seems to satisfy. We despair at what is and what we think will be. Despite family and friends we find no place in which we really belong.

Those questions and feelings are not so much a judgement on us, but a diagnosis of us. They are symptoms that there is no life in us. We are dying from the inside out. There is, however, treatment for our condition and food for our hunger. Life in Christ, not death in the wilderness, is our destiny. The flesh and blood of Christ are the medicine that saves; what St. Ignatius called “the medicine of immortality.” One dose, however, is not enough. We need a steady diet of this sacred medicine, this holy food.

Jesus is our medicine and our health. He is our life and the means to the life for which we most deeply hunger. We don’t work for the life we want. We eat the life we want. Wherever human hunger and the flesh and blood of Christ meet, there is life.

In the eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood he lives in us and we live in him. We consume his life that he might consume and change ours. We eat and digest his life, his love, his mercy, his forgiveness, his way of being and seeing, his compassion, his presence, and his relationship with the Father. We eat and drink our way to life. So leave nothing behind. Push nothing to the side. Clean your plate!

“Whoever eats me will live because of me,” Jesus said.