(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
In some cultures and in some times, hunters and warriors would drink the blood of those they had captured. To drink the blood was to drink up the bravery and strength of the victim. That is the force of drinking the blood of the Lord Jesus: we drink in his strength, bravery and godliness. We become him whose blood we drink.
The same goes with the Body of Christ. We eat it to become more like Christ.
When we eat and drink, we celebrate our unity with Christ and all who are Christ’s. When we eat and drink, we have communion with the whole Christ, which includes all those who belong to Christ by faith. We cannot be in union with Christ unless we are in union with people. If we are not in union with other people, we are not in union with Christ.
This does not answer the question posed at the start of this reading, “How can this be?”, but it does declare that is what happens in fact when we eat and drink. It is more difficult to answer the how. It is as mysterious as how God created the heavens and the earth and all within them. It is mysterious, but so is the mystery of how God exists. It is mysterious, but so is our existence mysterious.
The way Jesus answered the question, “How?” was to emphasize the reality. We eat and drink in several ways. We eat and drink the body and the blood of Jesus when we study his presence in the Scriptures, when we interact with the members of his body, and when we celebrate his presence in the Eucharist.
These last verses of chapter six are where John presented what the other gospel-writers presented at the Last Supper. As with the other accounts of the Last Supper, we cannot understand the meaning of the flesh and blood unless we see it as the climax of a life of listening to the Scriptures, of interacting with others by eating, drinking, teaching, healing and living with them. The mystery of the flesh and the blood demands action: it recapitulates the past and impels into the future and never leaves us only in the present.
To recap, from the feeding of the five thousand on the mountain and the mysterious passage over the water, with all the references to Moses and the Exodus, through the understanding of Jesus’s teaching as our food and drink, we come to acknowledge the mystery of Christ in the flesh and wine of the Eucharist. It is our union with God’s word, our union with the totality of God, our union with the fullness of the body and blood of Christ. It is all and more than simply flesh and blood.
The finale: do we believe or do we leave?