A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. A certain Pharisee named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, came to Jesus at night. Rabbi, he said, we know you are a teacher come from god, For no man can perform signs and wonders such as you perform unless god is with him. In answer, Jesus said, I solemnly assure you, no one can see the rule of God unless he is begotten from above. Nicodemus retorted, how can a man be born again once he is old?
Can he return to his mother's womb and be born all over again? Jesus replied, I solemnly assure you, no one can enter into god's kingdom without being begotten of water and spirit. Flesh begets flesh. Spirit begets spirit. Do not be surprised that I tell you, you must all be begotten from above.
The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from. You do not know where it goes. So it is with everyone begotten of the spirit, And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. I want to call your attention emphatically to another text of a similar situation where Christ said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you won't have life in you. And these good Jews were scandalized that here was a man whom they had a certain admiration for was talking about cannibalism, eating flesh and drinking blood. And so they remonstrated with him. You recall it.
And Jesus repeated it. And what happened? They left. His followers, the multitude left. They couldn't swallow what he was saying.
Unless you eat my flesh, unless you drink my blood, that's horrible. It's repulsive. And to a Jew, it was beyond imagining. So the crowd left him. And what then happened?
Something very significant happened. Jesus then turned to his very faithful handful of, disciples and said, are you going to leave me too? And good old Peter speaks up and said, Lord, if we leave you, where do we go? You know, that was a cry of desperation. That wasn't a cry of understanding.
Peter says, I don't know what this is all about, but I don't know what else to do except follow you. He didn't understand it either, but he didn't believe. The point I'm making is Christ said, this is my body, this is my blood. Unless you eat it and drink it, you won't have life in you. His words, were they misunderstood?
Well, if they weren't miss if they were misunderstood, why didn't he correct them? And that's the point I want to make. Christ did not move in the slightest to modify, to weaken, to explain. All he did was to repeat what he said. And he to the extent that he was perfectly prepared for even his closest disciples to leave him.
Now obviously, obviously, if Christ didn't mean what he said, this is my body and this is my blood, then who is to blame for the error? He was certainly given every opportunity to explain it, but he didn't move in the slightest to explain, and therefore, all you can say is he meant what he said. And my dear friend Martin Luther saw this very clearly that you can't wiggle out of it. Christ said, This is my body. This is my blood, at the last supper.
Now here's a similar situation. Christ says unless you're born again. Well he's talking to Nicodemus who was born forty or fifty years ago. And Nicodemus says, Lord don't be don't be silly. Are you asking me to go back in my mother's womb and be born again?
Now notice, Christ then explains it, that you that his talking about being begotten of the spirit, he's not talking about being reborn again or being reconceived and going back into your mother's womb, I think would make her slightly uncomfortable, to put it mildly. These two incidents notice how here there was a misunderstanding that the Nicodemus didn't get the point. Our Lord explains it. When he was talking to the crowd about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he let that statement stand and was totally prepared to let them all leave him, even his closest and dearest and handpicked disciples. Does that tell you something?
You see, so many all this argument about transubstantiation and all the rest of it, consubstantiation and all of this, you when they deal with text, they go back to the last supper. The last supper isn't the first and the last word about our blessed lord meaning of the Eucharist. Far from it. Far from it. And so I repeat that when you because the Eucharist is the center of our our religion.
It's it's the heart of it. It's the heart of it. If Christ be not in the Eucharist as the church has down the century said it, then vain is our faith. We have been the most deluded people on God's earth because there is nothing you can imagine more ridiculous, more absurd, any words you want. Then in a few minutes, after I say a few words over a piece of bread, you bow down in worship of that what appears to be bread as the as God.
Think of that. That's what we're doing. And you're not you're you certainly are no more speechless than I am. I don't know anything more about it than you do. How it works.
I don't know how it works, but I I cannot get out of this fact of what Christ meant. Because if he didn't mean what he said at that time, then he is the deceiver, and you can't get out of that. As I've said so many times, can't say Christ was only a good man. Christ either was the son of God as he claimed to be, or he was the worst man who ever trod this earth. The name of the father and of the son and holy spirit.
Amen.