Sermon for Sunday, August 18, 2024 || Proper 15B || John 6:51-58
What does it mean to be alive? The biological definition is fairly simple: to be alive means that the processes which keep our bodies functional are working. Our hearts pump blood, our lungs exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen, our digestive organs turn food into nutrients and waste, and our brains keep all these systems running. In this way, we are alive like amoebas are alive, just at a more complex scale.
But the kind of life Jesus’ talks about in today’s reading from the Gospel is more than simple biological function. “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”
This sort of life is so much more than amoeba-like existence. There are multiple words in ancient Greek that mean “life.” One is bios, which is where we get the word “biology.” This “life” is the kind of life I described a minute ago, the life of biological processes that result in the existence of organic beings. The other word for life is zoe, which is where we get the word “zoology.” This zoe “life” is less about the fact that a creature exists and more about why that creature exists, about what makes that creature a being who reflects the beauty and diversity of God’s creation.
So it’s no surprise that Jesus uses this second word in our reading today: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life – no zoe – in you.”
We exist on a spectrum between the bios kind of life and the zoe kind of life. When we’re just drifting through our days without much care or attention, we trend toward the bios kind of life. We’re simply bundles of stimulus and response without reflection or drive. Think of those scenes in sitcoms when a character has lost a job or gone through a breakup and now they’re sitting in a recliner surrounded by empty bags of chips and soda cans, wearing sweats and a stained t-shirt. That’s the extreme end of bios life, and I’d be remiss not to say that mental health issues can lead us to this end of the spectrum, especially when we’re dealing with feelings of depression or overwhelm. We make our lives smaller than God designed them to be in order to survive. Biological survival becomes our only goal because we can’t even imagine a world in which we might thrive.
The other end of the spectrum is where we find such thriving. Embracing zoe life means we find purpose in what we’re doing, we find nourishment in our relationships, we find new ways to live as God yearns for us to live. We create artistically, we create socially, we create in order to right wrongs. We create because we feel deeply connected to the Creator. We feel alive because we are becoming the people God created us to be, just as the cheetah feels alive when it runs or the dolphin when it leaps and dives.
Last week we talked about the danger of binary thinking, so let’s remember that we’re now talking about a spectrum between bios and zoe. We all live somewhere along this spectrum, trending one way or the other. Bios isn’t bad or evil: sometimes survival is the best we can do and beating ourselves up about simply surviving isn’t helping anyone. God is present just as much at that end of the spectrum as the other. At the same time, God beckons us towards zoe, towards life in all its abundance.
Of all humans who have ever lived, Jesus lived the life of zoe more than anyone. Jesus’ life was miraculous, yes, but perhaps not for the reason we might suspect at first. We believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, 100 percent of both without either being diminished or destroyed. This is a great, inexplicable mystery, so I’m not going to try to explain how this full humanity, full divinity thing works. I will say that down through the centuries the “full divinity” side has gotten the majority of the press. But have you ever stopped to think just what we claim when we say that Jesus was “fully human?”
Jesus was fully awake, fully alive in a way we’ve never known this side of paradise. Human potential has always been so vast, so untapped. We have always had the capacity to see clearer, to love deeper, to shine brighter, and Jesus saw the clearest, loved the deepest, and shined the brightest. He dedicated his life, his death, and his new life to showing us the way to that full humanity, to the abundance of life – of zoe – that Jesus embodied.
Last week, Jesus talked about being the “bread of life,” the most foundational source of nourishment and sustenance for us. Of course, when Jesus talks about being bread, he doesn’t mean physical bread made of flour and other ingredients. Likewise, when Jesus speaks of our eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he moves past the literal and invites us to bring his life – his zoe – into ourselves. When we eat his flesh, his presence travels down to our bellies, the literal middle of our bodies. That’s where Jesus desires to reside in us: in our guts, in the very core of our beings, in the center of what makes us, us.
When we gather to receive the presence of Christ in Holy Communion, we invite him again to take up residence within us. Jesus has been there all along, but he knows that we need to participate in the action of taking him in again and again so that we remember his life is growing in us. Jesus was fully human, fully alive. As we come closer and closer to him, we too discover our lives expanding, becoming fuller, more abundant. As followers of Jesus, we believe that participating in his way, in his example, in his life will make us more fully alive.
This week, I invite you to ponder these questions: what brings you fully alive? How do you embrace the zoe kind of life? Prayerfully think about these questions not just in terms of what you like to do, though that is important. Think about it also in your relationships: whom are you around when you feel fully alive? Think about it geographically: what places on earth make you come alive? What moments of quiet or meditation let you sense the zoe of Christ beating in your own heart? What work has God called you to that will expand your understanding of thriving beyond yourself to encompass the whole world?
We discover the answers to these questions as we live our lives. God surprises us with clarity and awe and peace and fulfillment. We live with care and attention. When we share Holy Communion with one another in a few minutes, we will participate in the act of taking Jesus into ourselves where he resides already. And in that participation, we will become more fully alive than we were before. And the more fully alive we are, the more life we can bring to those around us.
Photo by sutirta budiman on Unsplash.
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