“Jesus is Sacrifice”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Reading: John 6:41-59
Well, we heard the scripture, beautifully read. But I'm just going to come out and say it: Jesus says some wild stuff, doesn't he? I mean, let's be honest. The things we just heard in that story are more than a little bit strange, aren't they? You can admit it, it's okay.
Imagine if you were one of Jesus' friends sitting in the local synagogue and he comes out with: you guys are gonna eat my flesh and drink my blood. You might not ever hang out with that guy again. I'm just saying. Jesus comes across in this passage as the kind of friend that you can't really take anywhere. And the worst thing is, this isn't the first time he's done it.
Imagine if I was one of Jesus' friends at this time and he called me on a Friday night saying, “Hey Dayle, do you wanna come out and follow me?”
I might say, “Jesus, I don't know, man. Last time I went out with you, things got a bit dicey.”
He'd say, “Come on, remember that time I turned water into wine? That was great, wasn't it?”
“Yeah, sure it was. But then we went to the temple, and you started turning over tables and kicking out money changers. Mr. Goldstein was very upset.”
“That Samaritan woman, I told her everything that she'd ever done in her whole life. And I healed that blind man at the pool.”
“Yeah, Jesus, but you did it on the Sabbath. Did you have to do it on the Sabbath?” Jesus is that friend you just can't take anywhere. He's always doing something outrageous, always saying something obnoxious. And here he is in the local synagogue in Capernaum telling the people they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. If I’m one of Jesus’ friends, I probably won't come out to the next gathering.
We're having a bit of a joke here, but that's exactly what happened. If you look at the verses that come after the passage we just read, it says that many of the disciples started to complain. In fact, lots of them refused to follow him after this speech. Everyone except the 12. Peter said, “where would we go? You are the one that has the words of spirit and life.”
The amazing thing about Jesus is he might be outrageous, might be obnoxious, he might rub everybody the wrong way, but his words are the only ones that can nourish us and give us strength and a reason to face the next day. Jesus is the one with the words of spirit and life.
Doesn't make the speech any easier to hear, does it?
Jesus had just finished a run of doing great things: water into wine, healing a man at the pool of Bethesda. He just fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes, and then he comes to the city of Capernaum, he goes before the people at the synagogue, and this is how he chooses to begin his sermon, something like this:
Hey guys, I know why you're all here. You want bread, don't you? Yeah, yeah, you heard about what I did. You guys really like bread. Well, let me tell you something about bread. I am living bread. That's right. I am living bread that comes from heaven. And if you believe in me, you never hunger, you never thirst, and you're gonna live forever.
Sounds objectively nuts, doesn't it? Come on, let's be honest. It does. What are you on about, Jesus? And that's what the Jews thought when they heard him. So, they're scratching their heads, they're nudging each other, they're starting to argue and murmur amongst themselves. What does he mean, bread from heaven? From heaven? This guy's from Nazareth. We know his mum, we know his dad. He's the carpenter's kid. Bread from heaven. And Jesus, goes, shh, stop murmuring I was talking, and it keeps going.
I'm the bread from heaven and you can't even come to me unless the Father brings you. In fact, you guys haven't even seen the Father. I've seen the Father and I'm going to raise you up at the last day. That's right.
Sounds even more crazy, doesn't it? And then he says something that absolutely blows their minds. He says, ‘you want to know about real bread. The true bread, the living bread is my flesh. That's right, my flesh. You've got to eat my flesh and I'm going to give up my flesh for the life of the world.’
Now, we can kind of accept that a little bit, can't we? Because we know that over time he’s going to institute the Lord's Supper and Jesus is going to die for our sins and rise from the dead. There's going to be this great institution called the Church, which lasts 2000 years. And we all do this thing on a regular basis… but without any of that context, what Jesus just said sounds like a Kanye West level of crazy monologue, right? For those of you who don't know, Kanye West is a rapper.
It sounds just insane what Jesus did. And if you're Jesus, and if you're just being poetic, if you're just trying to make a point, this is the great time to backtrack and explain what you mean, isn't it? This is a good time to be like, “No guys, I don't really mean eat my flesh. What I mean is you have to get to understand the Torah better, or it means you have to have a deeper relationship with God, or it means you have to follow my example and be more like me. That's what I mean.” But no, Jesus doubles down. He doesn't just say, “you have to eat my flesh.” He goes on to say, “you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood, or you're all dead.” Read the scripture, that's what it says, “…or you have no life in you.”
Then he says, ‘if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have eternal life and you will abide in me and I in you.’ And he says all of this in a synagogue in Capernaum. How's that for a sermon, folks?
It was difficult to swallow then and it's difficult to swallow now. Although now we can kind of pretend we get it, can't we? Because now we come together once in a while, and we break the bread and we pour the wine and we pretend we know what we're doing and we follow all our friends up to the front because that's what everyone else is doing. This is just what Christians do now, isn't it? What's the point of it? Why do we partake of this wafer and call it the body of Christ? Why do we drink this grape juice or this wine and call it the blood of Christ? Does it mean anything? What did Jesus mean when he was saying all of this stuff?
Well, I have a wild idea for you. Maybe Jesus meant exactly what he said.
I heard a strange story last week. At the state legislature in Kansas, there was a gathering of satanists outside from the actual Church of Satan, interesting group this, and they gathered together and decided they were going to do this religious ritual, or anti-religious ritual I'd say, outside the state legislature in Kansas. You know, us Christians, we get our prayer breakfasts, we have a Christmas tree up in the White House, so they thought, the Christians get to worship their God, we can worship our not God in the same place. And so, they had this big ceremony called a black mass. A black mass is, I consider a very evil thing. What they do is they gather in their special robes, and they desecrate the Eucharist. And in order for a black mass to be valid, somebody has to go to a church beforehand and steal a consecrated host. They have to take the bread that's been blessed by a priest. And then they have to bring it to the church of Satan. And when the church of Satan holds this satanic ritual, the satanic priests, they hold the host up in the air. They say all these evil blasphemous words. Then they throw the host on the ground, and they step on it while they say all these curses. That's the ritual.
Now outside Kansas City, they're doing this ritual. The priest holds up the host. He blasphemes and blasphemes. He throws the host to the ground. He lifts up his foot to step on the host and out of nowhere, a Catholic comes running out of the crowd, dives on the ground, and eats the host before he could step on it. It's brilliant! I love it!
Then the priest gets really upset, so he yells, assault! And he starts kicking the Catholic guy on the ground, and the police come, and they shut down the entire ritual. Victory for the Christians, I say. But the reason why I'm telling you this story isn't because I want you to know something about satanic rituals. It's because it made me wonder, does the Church of Satan have a better understanding of Eucharistic theology than most modern Christians today?
Why would they have to use a consecrated host? Why couldn't they just go to the store and buy a cracker or some wafers or grab a slice of bread out of the cupboard? They use a consecrated host, not just because they want to mock the church, but because they want to desecrate Jesus Christ. They understand something that many modern Christians have absolutely forgotten: That when we lay our hands over the bread and the wine and we pray for God to meet us at this table, they are transformed and become for us the body and blood of our Lord. Not just a symbol, not just a memory, not just something to make us think that years ago Christ died for our sins, but they become for us Christ in the flesh and in blood right in our midst.
This is something we need to remember. Seventy percent of US Catholics today believe that the Eucharist is just a memorial. It's just something we do to remind us of what Christ did. But for 2000 years, the faith of the entire church has been that when we gather around the Lord's table, we are gathering around the Lord. When Christ said, ‘take of my flesh, and take of my blood,’ he absolutely meant it. And if you listen carefully, you can hear Paul saying it in first Corinthians, chapter 11. He says, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me."
In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”
The gathering together around the Lord's table, my friends, was never thought of in all of these years as just a memory aid. This was actually the only reason the church gathered in the first place. It wasn't for the great music. They didn't have any yet. It wasn't for the great preaching. I don't even know if the preaching was that good.
According to the book of Acts, Paul preached for so long once that a kid fell out of the window sleeping. I don't think he would have won preacher of the year. What about you guys? They gathered regularly to break bread, to share the body and the blood of our Lord, because they knew something that many of us have forgotten. They knew that you are what you eat.
You are what you eat. So, it matters whether or not this table we come to is just a memorial, is just a symbol, or is actually the body and blood of our Lord. Because if it's just a memorial, there are probably tastier ways to remember Jesus, right? But if indeed we come to the Lord's table and experience Christ himself then that means that when we eat of the body, when we drink of the blood, we are taking Christ into us so that Christ may transform us into Christ's body, so that he might become part of us and so that we might become part of him.
Paul says it like this in 1 Corinthians 10, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body.” Why?... “For we all partake of that one bread.”
You want to revive unity in the body of Christ. You want to bring people back from the frays of Christianity. You want to see this church full again as people come in and worship together in person. There's one thing we can do together in this building that you can't do at the other side of a screen, and that's commune on the body and blood of our Lord.
We can take Christ into ourselves and become Christ's body. It's for this reason that the best evidence, the best substantiated miracles told of in the church have always been Eucharistic miracles. When people come to the Lord's table to eat of His blood and drink of His blood, amazing things happen. Bodies are healed, souls are saved, hearts are mended, relationships are restored. Because no matter what it is that you're seeking from God today, if you're seeking sins to be forgiven, if you're seeking hearts to be mended, if you're seeking God's presence in your life and you don't know where to find him, I can promise you today, my friends, that he is right here at this table.
When we say together the prayers, the proceeds, the meal. And the bread is broken. Again, we will see before our eyes the body of Christ wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. When we see that blood poured out into the cup, we experience again Jesus' blood poured out for our salvation, for the remission of our sins that we might know who we are in Him and have communion with God the Father and with each other. So, I invite you today, friends, to join me at this table, not just of memorial, but the table of our Lord. Please bow your heads with me and repeat after me as we pray together.
Most Holy God. We come seeking you at your table today. We come seeking forgiveness. We come seeking healing. We come seeking your presence. Now, O God, meet us at your table. Open our hearts. Increase our faith that you might be in us and we in you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Let us sup together, my friends.