I Am Not Eating That

An experience I am sure most parents have is trying to get your kids to eat healthy things like vegetables. My boys, although good eaters, are not always healthy eaters. Getting them to each vegetables is often a challenge, especially for my youngest son. I try to explain to him that eating vegetables is important for him to live a healthy life, but that doesn’t get very far. I know that most behaviors are learned behaviors, but their mother and I have always eaten vegetables and in fact we love them. I have loved eating vegetables for as long as I can remember. The green stuff is delicious to me!

So, I have been trying to think of where my love for vegetables came from. I know my parents love to eat vegetables but growing up my little sister refused to. Maybe it was a desire to please my parents and make myself look better than my sister? I don’t know, but recently I was thinking about a cartoon character I used to love imagining myself to be like. Do you know of or remember Popeye the Sailor Man? In those cartoons Popeye was just a regular man trying to do what is right, however there was a bully named Bluto who was much stronger and meaner to him. In the cartoon just when you thought Popeye was going to be beaten, he would eat a can of spinach and gain superhuman strength to defeat Bluto. I am not sure if Popeye eating spinach was sinister scheme by parents to get their kids to eat spinach or, more than likely, the spinach industry trying to sell more spinach, but it worked. I would eat spinach and love it thinking I could be just like Popeye.

That all sounds crazy, right? That someone would believe that just because they ate something that someone else did they could be just like them. Well if that is crazy then I guess call me crazy, because I do believe that. In John 6:25-59, shortly after Jesus has fed 5000 plus people, he tells the people following him that if they were to eat of his body and drink of his blood they would gain the life. This he called the bread of life and encouraged them to partake. Their response however was like children being told to eat their vegetables, they thought it was weird or gross even to suggest such a thing. Jesus of course was not suggesting that they eat of his actual body or drink of his actual blood, but that they were to live the life he lived and they would gain a life worth living.

When we partake of communion we are eating bread and drinking juice, but we call it the body and blood of Christ because we are committing individually and communally to living the life Jesus lived. A life that loved first. A life that put the needs of others first. A life connected to the eternal hope and wellspring of life. A life forever connected to God. The bread of life.

Join us this Sunday for worship at 8:30 and 10:45 am as we continue this conversation.

In God’s grip,

Pastor Chuck Church