According to legend, in a time of starvation, a mother pelican may dig into the side of her chest until it bleeds to feed her chicks. And so starting from the 2nd century, the Church has adopted the pelican as a symbol for Christ. The pelican represents Christ on the cross because, like a pelican, He shed His blood to save us. The pelican also represents Christ because, on the cross, blood and water flowed out from His side.
But what flowed from the side of Jesus was not just the result of what He suffered for us on the cross. That blood and water also point us to the Sacraments, the physical water and blood that God chooses to use to give us life from Jesus’ death.
In the Word and water of baptism, the Holy Spirit brings the forgiveness that Jesus won for us on the cross. He brings us into Christ’s New Covenant, doing what circumcision did in the Old Covenant (Colossians 2:11-14). In the Lord’s Supper, we receive Jesus’ blood, the same blood that poured from His side to give us life and salvation.
The pelican becomes a symbol, pointing us to Christ and His Supper for our salvation. It’s like what we heard in our Gospel reading. Jesus, referring to Himself, said:
This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a person may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
Jesus was pointing forward to His sacrifice for the life of the world. He was also pointing forward to the New Covenant that He would institute, His Supper.
But as you heard from John’s Gospel, our Lord’s graphic, even gruesome words offended the Jews. They “began to quarrel among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And if we were to read through more of John chapter 6, even Jesus’ disciples would say: “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60).
Sometimes the truth is hard to swallow. How ironic it is to hear Jesus’ disciples say: “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” For about 1600 years later, a part of Christ’s Church would find Jesus’ clear and understandable words hard to accept.
And so we learn that no one is immune from finding this word or that word from Jesus as being hard to accept. Now, Lutherans rarely stumble over “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” For us, it’s clear what Jesus meant, and we just believe it.
So, when our Protestant brothers say that we’re wrong about the Lord’s Supper, we just bring out Jesus’ specific words: “This is My body; this is My blood.” Their quarrel is with Jesus and what He said, not us. But because they have inherited a tradition that they don’t even realize they have, they have changed Jesus’ words “This is my body” to mean, “This is NOT my body; it’s just a symbol.”
It’s easy to point out the error of others. But what about us? We also have our inherited traditions that try to change Jesus’ clear, understandable words. Jesus said:
I assure you: UNLESS you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in him.
Jesus couldn’t mean that! What about all the people who haven’t received His body and blood? They can’t be condemned. It has to mean something else!
And so, we let potential “what ifs” worry us, so much that we try to change the meaning of Jesus’ words. We become guilty, like our Protestant brothers, of changing Jesus’ easy-to-understand words. “UNLESS you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Those aren’t hard words to understand. Jesus says what He means and means what He says. Jesus didn’t mean to say, “Even if you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you still have life in you.”
When Jesus was speaking to the crowd that day, He even changed words to make sure they didn’t misunderstand Him. At first, Jesus was talking about eating, in general. He used the Greek world fagomai. “I assure you: I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats [fagomais] of this bread he will live forever.”
And yes, at that point, Jesus was speaking metaphorically, in part. For by faith, we do partake of the bread that came from heaven; we all receive Jesus. That’s true.
But then Jesus changed words, letting us know that receiving Him is more than just something spiritual. Jesus then used the Greek word, trogo, which means to chew something physically.
I assure you: The one who chews [trogos] my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in him.
That sounds gross. No wonder the Jews left. They understood what Jesus meant: To have salvation we are to eat and drink in Jesus physically. What they didn’t get was that Jesus was pointing forward to the New Covenant that He would establish, His Supper, where Christ’s own could physically receive Jesus in His body and blood.
But Jesus speaking in such an exclusionary way wasn’t unusual for Him. He used the same grammar and words when Nicodemus came to visit Him. Jesus told Nicodemus that UNLESS someone was born from above, he could not see the kingdom of God.
Now, that perplexed Nicodemus. Nicodemus thought that Jesus was talking about being born physically a second time. And so he said, “Can someone enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” (John 3:4).
And it’s then that Jesus said, “I assure you: UNLESS someone is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). And what do we Lutherans do with Jesus’ exclusionary words? We recognize that Jesus was pointing forward to the baptism He would institute. So, we say, “Have your child baptized.”
But what if the child dies before he had a chance to be baptized? We then use what St. Mark’s Gospel teaches: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
It’s unbelief that condemns. But unbelief could lead someone to despise what God does through the Word and water of baptism. He then could conclude, “I don’t care if God saves me through baptism,” and choose to remain unbaptized. If he were to die in such a state, of unrepentance and unbelief, he would die trapped in his sins.
It’s the same with the Lord’s Supper. Jesus says, “I assure you: UNLESS you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And yes, someone could, in unbelief, despise what God gives us in the Lord’s Supper. He could conclude, “I don’t care if God saves me through the body and blood of Jesus in His Supper,” and in unbelief refuse to receive it. And if he were to die in such unrepentance and unbelief, he would die trapped in his sins.
But the point is not to try to find loopholes. We don’t let “what ifs” change what Jesus says. Faith takes Jesus as His word. And faith says, “Oh, this is where Jesus gives me Himself for life and salvation? Wild horses couldn’t keep me away!”
What’s the greater scandal and offense in today’s Gospel reading? It’s this: Apart from Christ, we have no life in us. We are all beggars. None of us have what it takes to have eternal life. UNLESS Jesus gives us what we need, we’re all doomed!
Knowing that, it’s then that this beautiful prayer from the early Church strikes home: “O loving Pelican! O Jesus, my Lord! I am unclean, so cleanse me with Your blood. A single drop for sinners spilled is ransom now for all our guilt.”
For those who know they don’t have what is within them for eternal life, our Lord Jesus speaks these powerful and life-giving words: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” “The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.” “The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in him.”
Like baby pelicans in this nest we call the Christian Church, we cannot find life within ourselves. We can look only to Christ, our loving Pelican, as it were, who gave, and gives, His flesh and His blood for our life and strength.
Through your connection to Christ, who is your Food, you receive the food and drink of eternal life. Your Lord has given His flesh to you, taking into His flesh the full guilt and penalty for all your sins. Your Lord has poured out His blood for you, washing away every sin. And now, your Lord gives this life-giving flesh and blood to you, in His Supper, so you will live forever and be raised up on the Last Day.
Don’t let our Lord’s graphic words scandalize you. Don’t be offended that Jesus tells you to chew His body and drink His blood. For the living Bread that comes down from heaven, Jesus Christ, is the one-and-only connection you have with heaven. So then, dear saints of God, open your mouths, for your Lord serves you eternal life! Amen.
