Humanize God: Pentecost 14 B John 6:56-69 and Joshua 24:18

For five long Sundays we have read the dramatic, yet very complex chapter six of John’s Gospel. Here in the climax we are at a turning point. Many disciples turn back from following Jesus, and many others take offense because of his difficult teaching. The Twelve follow Peter and say, “Where can we turn. You have the words of eternal life.”

What is so hard? Jesus calls on people to eat his flesh and drink his blood. His words of eternal life are the words about a God full of flesh and blood.

And Jesus is the one who says, “If you see me you see God.”

You see, the entire Gospel is predicated on the idea that the Word became flesh and lived among us full of God’s glory, grace, and truth.  

And, of course, the Word is God.

We keep God in the flesh in Holy Communion. The Eucharist helps us not let God slip back into words.

A German couple witnessed to me years ago about a service of the Eucharist gone wrong. The Word was preached in doctrinal purity, the worshippers were standing to sing the liturgically correct words. And all of a sudden, an elderly woman passed out, fell back in the pew, and struck her head.

The show went on. Worshippers remained stiff, and facing the altar. The minister droned. When this couple went to aid the woman, they looked about with pleading eyes for someone to stop and help. No one lifted a finger.

If God to us is a set of attributes, argued and set down in air tight dogma, what use is he?

In today’s reading from Joshua the congregation of Israel is urged on to serve the Lord and never go back to the pagan gods they left behind. “Far be it from us to be such reprobates,” they declare. And they seal the deal by saying, “The Lord drove out the peoples from this land so we could take over. Therefore we will serve him.”

But have we not read the story of humankind? Have we not learned from ten thousand cases of “driving out” that those driven don’t just disappear. They die. Man and woman, child and beast. They die of their bruises and wounds, of starvation, of disease, of despair. It happened to the Native Americans so white folk from Europe could fulfill their divine destiny.

But have we not read and learned? And do not our consciences prick us? Did not these Canaanites have souls? Even if we believe they were sinners and believers in false gods, were they not also, ultimately, children of God?

Only if we humanize God. Only if we believe the Word became flesh. Only if we take Jesus seriously and think of God as Father. Too many preachers, teachers, and theologians try to put the fleshly God back into the Word, or in Greek, the Logos. They have forgotten that the Father God engages with us in a living conversation that is the Bible—the Bible that is both authority and our authorization to keep up a living conversation with God.

There was another service of Holy Communion got it right. It was back at Grace Lutheran Church in Fremont, Ohio. I was celebrating the Eucharist as the pastor and everything was going smoothly, according to the well ordered liturgy, until I laid eyes on Sylvia. I didn’t expect her to be there because her daughter had just died in a freak car accident only days earlier. But there she was, in body, perhaps not in spirit. Her own eyes were frozen straight ahead. And when I handed her the wafer of Communion bread, here stiff fingers took it to her mouth awkwardly and it splintered, and much of it fell to the floor. When the assisting minister handed her the tiny cup of wine, her trembling hand could not take hold.

But next to Sylvia was Eleanor. It was not scripted in our liturgy, but Eleanor broke ranks at the Communion table. She stooped first, collected the fragments of fragile bread and helped Sylvia guide it to her quivering lips. She then cupped Sylvia’s hand in her own and together they took hold of the wine glass. Sylvia then managed to take it into herself.

The bread and wine became body and blood. The Word became flesh.

When it is done right Holy Communion helps us keep God human. When it becomes a well oiled, but rote ritual, it dehumanizes God.

When we read into the Bible a God of all the logically sound attributes for divinity, but with none of the flesh and blood of the Father, we dehumanize God and eventually dehumanize ourselves as well.

We may take comfort in saying we don’t interpret the Bible, but just let it speak for its inerrant self. But then our conscience is pierced when we realize Canaanites were people too—children of God too. At such a time God the Father and Jesus the Word made flesh can reach us and encourage us to ask the hard questions, and to be human in our devotion.

We may do worship flawlessly and think we are doing it right. But sometimes we fall apart in church. Perhaps openly, like Sylvia. Perhaps hiding our pains because we shouldn’t cry in church.

But the God of flesh and blood happens when we break routine and touch one another’s pain.