In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Well, I've heard from a few of our younger members, that they wish I'd tell more jokes in my sermons. So, in my desire to pander to my audience, here are a few good ones.

     Why'd the nun wiggle down the street? Because she had a nervous habit.

     Why couldn't the Jamaican jury reach a verdict? They were dreadlocked.

     Lost on a rainy night, a nun stumbled across a monastery and requested shelter there. Fortunately, she was just in time for dinner and was treated to the best fish and chips she'd ever had. After dinner, she went into the kitchen to thank the cooks. She is met by two brothers, "Hello, I'm Brother Michael, and this is Brother Charles." "I'm very pleased to meet you", she said, "I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful dinner. The fish and chips were the best I've ever tasted. Out of curiosity, who cooked what?" Brother Charles replied, "Well, I'm the fish friar." So she turned to the other brother and said, "Then you must be the 'chip monk!"

     You see, I, too, can tell jokes in sermons-and while they might make you laugh, and laughter is a good thing; they won't save your soul, they won't bring you the Bread of Life, they won't change your life, and prepare you to go out into the world to serve the Lord. Jokes can have meaning and jokes can even teach us things.but my calling is not be a jokester, but to be the pastor-doing theology with you, imparting to you knowledge of God, helping us all to see theological meaning-God's meaning, in life and human existence. So, now you've gotten your jokes, let's do some theology!

     These last few weeks, we've been talking more experientially, about the Bread of Life come down from heaven. We've talked purposefully about how the Bread of Life, transforms life, and feeds and nourishes you for your life's journey, so that you might come to church, hungry for that Living Bread from heaven, and leave, strengthened for the week ahead. The Bread of Life passages from John's gospel deserve to be treated experientially, so that they can speak to us about real life, and real experience, and how this Living Bread is meant to be daily food and sustenance for the followers of Jesus. And yet, John doesn't include the teachings of Jesus about the Bread of Life, for practical, experiential reasons-John includes them in his Gospel, to teach us theology-the theology of the Lord's Supper. Now, for many years in Protestant Christianity, Christians have denied that this passage in John 6, has anything to do with the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist. Believe it or not, Luther himself once said, "John 6 does not refer to the Sacrament, for the Sacrament was not instituted yet." But in saying this, Luther was trying to walk the fine line that he walked, at times not very successfully, between the radical reformers on the one hand who denied the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, and the Romans on the other, who taught that the bread and wine are "transubstantiated"-that the bread and wine change substance and become the Body and Blood of Christ. The Roman position, of course, was argued, in part, on the basis of John 6, where Jesus himself is recorded by John as saying, "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you." So, Luther tried repeatedly to juggle his firm commitment to the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, with his belief that the presence of Christ is not "transubstantiated", but rather, is "in, with, and under" the forms of the bread and wine. We have to say, Luther was not too successful in this juggling act-so that in Lutheranism today, we find great inconsistency-with some Lutherans saying they believe in the Real Presence, but not manifesting that belief, while other Lutherans come right out and deny that Jesus is physically, bodily present in the bread and wine that supposedly become His Body and Blood. And the reason Lutherans are confused, is because our theology has been confused. And part of the reason for that, can be found in the fact that Luther himself denied that John 6 has anything to do with the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper! This should remind us that even Blessed Martin Luther was not right about everything-especially when he was trying to walk a tightrope between the teachings and beliefs of Rome, and the extremism of the radical reformers-Zwingli and Carlstadt, for example. Nevertheless, Luther makes his position clear when he said, "I would rather drink pure blood with the pope, than mere wine with Zwingli." The fact is, Luther's juggling act is what opened the door to Protestantism's radical denial of the Christ's real presence in the Lord's Supper-a real presence that had throughout the history of Christianity, in both the east and the west, been believed, confessed, and attested to on the basis of the 6th chapter of St. John's gospel. Because St. John, in his gospel, sought not to provide a historical account of the institution of the Lord's Supper-that had already been provided in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, as well as in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. John was writing his gospel toward the end of the first century AD, well after the other three gospels and Paul's letters. That's why John's desire was not so much to give biographical, historical information, so much as theological meaning, to Jesus' life, Jesus' teachings, Jesus' death and resurrection, and yes, Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper. By the time St. John was writing his gospel, every Christian knew that Jesus had instituted the Lord's Supper. So, John includes no institution narrative in his gospel. Rather, John included in his gospel, what no other gospel does include-Jesus' blunt, straightforward, unmistakable teachings about the Bread of Life, the Living Bread come down from heaven. And why might the other gospel writers have left these teachings of Jesus out of their Gospels? Because there was a sense in which it was a stumbling block to Jews and Gentiles, alike! If Jesus had only just talked, in figurative terms, about himself as the Bread of Life, the new Manna come down from heaven to give life to the world, that would have been palatable (pun intended). But Jesus goes on to say, "the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." Then the Jews disputed among themselves saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" And Jesus continued on, "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 have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them." Well, it should not be surprising that Matthew, Mark and Luke do not include these words of Jesus in their gospels. If you were writing a gospel of Jesus, would you have included these words in your gospel? Even if the Holy Spirit was guiding you, most of us would have felt we know better than the Holy Spirit on this one, because from those first Jews on, this has been a stumbling block for believers and non-believers alike. That's surely why the reformers Zwingli and Calvin rejected the Real Presence-because they couldn't swallow the notion that we are eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood. Which is precisely what St. John wanted to emphasize, by including these teachings of Jesus in his gospel. Because how can you get around the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, when you have John 6?! You have to do a lot of editing and twisting and denying and explaining it away, to suggest that Jesus' words in John 6 are not about consuming Jesus' real presence in the Lord's Supper. Otherwise, why would Jesus have used these particular words? Why wouldn't Jesus have softened it up a bit, used less graphic, descriptive words, made it more "spiritualized", more abstract, so that it would be less offensive. But Jesus always chose his words carefully. Jesus taught his disciples that they would be eating and drinking His literal, physical Body and Blood, and that through this eating and drinking, they would have life in Him, they would abide in Him, for all eternity. And John includes these teachings of Jesus in his gospel, so that later Christians could not deny, or reject, or reason away His real presence in the Lord's Supper, just because we find it bothersome.

     And let's take our theological reflection a step further-the reason the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament is so important to us, and to the world, is because it manifests the miracle of the Incarnation-and the miracle of the Incarnation is that which is to shape, not only our theology as Christians, but our lives, and indeed, the life of the world! It's no co-incidence, that the same Gospel which includes Jesus talking about the literal eating of His incarnate flesh, and drinking His incarnate blood in the sacrament of the altar, is also the gospel which begins with a long theological explanation of the Incarnation-the Word made flesh. The first chapters of John are not about Jesus' birth at Bethlehem, but about the theological meaning of this birth, as John lays out for us, theologically, what it means that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh to dwell among us, full of grace and Truth. You see, one of the great negative consequences of the Protestant Reformation has been the loss of the great value and meaning of the Incarnation-the miracle of God become flesh, to dwell among us in Jesus Christ. And this loss is most manifest, in the Protestant rejection of belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper.because Jesus' incarnation to be Emmanuel, God-with-Us at Bethlehem, continues in Jesus' incarnation to be God-with-Us, in the Lord's Supper-interestingly, "Bethlehem" means literally, "House of Bread", and the Church is now Bethlehem, where Jesus is again, incarnated, not just to be the Baby of Bethlehem, but to be the Living Bread, the Bread of Life. You see, the Incarnation is at the heart of God's will, and God's love, and God's desire for us and for the world. God refuses to be a god who is far off and distant. God became human, to be near to us, and God continues to enflesh Himself in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, to continue to be, near to us, and to abide with us, and in us. So that to deny Christ's Real Presence is to reject the incarnation. To deny Christ's Real Presence is to want to keep Christ at a distance, and we might even say, to want to keep God, not real, not present, but abstract, far off, out of our lives and our world. To eat Jesus' Flesh and drink His Blood, is to abide in Him, and He in us. To eat Jesus' Flesh and drink His Blood, is to have life, now, and eternal life forever. The birth of Jesus, is the festival of the Incarnation, while the Lord's Supper, is the Sacrament of the Incarnation. And let us be clear-it is the Incarnation-it is God become flesh to dwell among us-it is God's willingness to take on human flesh and blood, in Jesus, that will ultimately, save and redeem, not just us, but the whole world. Because life for the world, comes from the Living Jesus, crucified and risen, to bring life to the world. And all of the world's problems, result from our unwillingness to acknowledge that God became human in Jesus-with all that this means. Luther wrote in his commentary on Galatians, "He who steadfastly holds to this doctrine that Jesus Christ is both, true God and true man.will acquiesce in and heartily assent to all the other articles of the Christian faith.on the other hand, all errors, heresies, idolatries, offenses, abuses and ungodliness have arisen primarily because this article has either been disregarded or abandoned." Now, this sounds like an unbelievably huge statement-all ungodliness, all idolatries and abuses, arise because people don't believe in the Incarnation-that God became, and becomes, human? It's not so unbelievable, when you consider that by becoming human, God dignifies, and the Orthodox say, "divinizes" human flesh. God affirms and confirms humanity, by himself, become flesh and blood in Jesus-so that human life, itself, is lifted up, given ultimate value, by its unity with Christ, the Son of God. Now that God has become incarnate in Jesus, we see in our neighbor, not a thing, not an article for my use or abuse, not a being for my own gratification-but God in the flesh! So that how we treat another human being, is to be determined by how we respect and honor, God. War, terrorism, violence, abortion, capital punishment, pornography, marriage, human relationships, chastity, purity, adultery, sexuality, dignity-all of these and so much more, are effected by, are shaped by, the miracle of the Incarnation-God become human in Jesus. And God continues to work to effect and shape these, in our world, by becoming incarnate in Jesus, in the Lord's Supper-to continue to be, Emmanuel-God-with-Us-God in the flesh, to feed us with His very presence, to transform us, and to transform the world, through us. If God were distant, far-off, detached, we would have little hope, and no promise for the future. But God who is with us-in flesh and blood, to transform flesh and blood, gives us cause for unlimited hope, boundless promise for the future-because, God is with us. God cares for humanity. God continues to feed us with His very presence, to give life for the world. Which is why we can and should say, changing the world, begins with devotion, dedication, commitment to Christ's real presence in the Sacrament of the Altar. Transformation of the world, begins right here, with eating and drinking the True Food and True Drink, of Christ's presence among us. No joking.

     In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.