Text: John 6:51-60 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; 54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.” 59 This he said in the synagogue, as he taught at Caper′na-um. 60 Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
The New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce writes this about the last verse of today’s Gospel lesson:
This was the original hard saying: as John reports, ‘Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”’ The implication is that they not only found it difficult to understand, but suspected that, if they did understand it, they would find it unacceptable…That implies that they thought Jesus was talking nonsense, and that it was a waste of time listening to it; but that is probably not what Jesus means.[1]
That’s good news, because his words taken at face value were nothing less than shocking, even blasphemous, to his hearers. Hearing Jesus say that he was the bread from heaven was scandalous enough; but when he follows that up by saying that they had to eat his body and drink his blood to have eternal life – well, that was for many the last straw: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
Professor David Lose writes, “Upon hearing [Jesus’ words] the crowd in Capernaum shrinks back because what Jesus is speaking about has always been regarded as an abomination by the law and the prophets. And upon hearing it we shrink back because it doesn’t square with our reason, it doesn’t fit our sensibilities.”[2]
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Biblical scholars have been wrestling with these statements almost from the time they were first made. The interpretations vary widely as to just what Jesus meant when he said these words as well as his statements at the Last Supper when he said “this is my body, which is given for you,” and “this is my blood, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” The arguments, and even hostility, toward others who hold a different view of what these words meant and mean continue to this very day. Nonetheless, the bottom line for most Christians, I believe, is that we affirm that Jesus Christ is fully present to us in the elements of bread and wine at Communion. How this happens can’t be analyzed by our limited human understanding; no matter how many formulations and pronouncements we make on the subject, it is and will always remain a mystery. And because it is a mystery – because it is the Mystery – we must take it on faith.
So what is Jesus getting at, then? When he calls upon his hearers to take into themselves his body and blood, he is calling upon them to give themselves to his gospel with their entire beings. Professor Lose goes on to say: “In this passage, Jesus gets all too gritty, even base, in his imagery in order to confront us with the claim and promise of the carnal God, the God who becomes incarnate, who takes on flesh, becomes just like us, so that we may one day be like God.
“For in Jesus, the Word made flesh, and in the sacraments, the Word given physical, visible form once again, we meet the God who will be satisfied with nothing less than our whole selves. This is why Jesus speaks of giving us his flesh and blood, you see, for ‘flesh and blood’ is a Hebrew idiom which refers to the whole person, hearts, minds, spirit, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, concerns, everything. In Jesus, you see, the whole of God meets us to love, redeem, and sustain the whole of who we are, good, bad, and ugly.”[3]
That is the God who comes for our whole selves, and who will accept nothing less.
Jesus says, in effect, “I am that one thing you cannot live without.”
Remember that he is speaking to a large crowd that had just a few hours before gone into the wilderness to find him, instead of going into the city of Jerusalem to observe Passover. They had been fed by him with those famous loaves and fishes; and they’d been all set to make him king.
In other words, this was a crowd of people who had a deep yearning gnawing at their insides, a yearning they did not know how to satisfy; and in Jesus they had caught a glimpse of the possibilities Jesus offered to get a deep and true satisfaction. But, as so often happens, they misplaced their yearning – they concentrated on “king.” Jesus wants them to concentrate on “bread.” “Kings come and go,” he says, “but I, the living bread, am forever.”
When we look at our longing that way, we see something much, much different. John wants us to see into Jesus, and through Jesus, to recognize that our real longing is not for kings – not for the things of this world – but for something that endures and is imperishable. The manna of the world feeds us for a day, but one day we all die, anyway, no matter how much of it we’ve ingested.
By saying these stark and blunt words, Jesus tells us to stop looking for earthly fixes and to set our gaze on him. Jesus wants us to see the relationship he has with the One who sent him and wants us to have that kind of relationship with him.
If there’s one key word that describes John’s Gospel, that word might be “abide.” In Chapter 15, Verse 9, for example, we read “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” John is all about the abiding relationship Jesus has with the Father, and the relationship he has established with us.
So, to really get his point across, he uses words like “bread,” and “flesh,” and “blood.” He wants us to comprehend that this relationship is what God intends for us, desires for us, even longs for. It is the relationship that is as comforting and fulfilling as walking into a house full of that bread smell, and shutting the door, and knowing that you are home, truly home.
Abiding in him – this is what Jesus means when he says “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life … my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”
As William Barclay writes, “Jesus is saying … ‘you must take my life into the very centre of your being – and that life of mine is the life which belongs to God.’”[4]
Getting back to F. F. Bruce, we read: “To believe in Christ is to not only give credence to what he says: it is to be united to him by faith, to participate in his life…In the language which Jesus spoke ‘my flesh’ could be another way of saying ‘myself’: he himself is the bread given for the life of the world…Plainly this language was not to be taken literally: he was no advocating cannibalism…Jesus answered their protest by pointing out that his words were to be understood spiritually. ‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail’ (John 6:63).
Augustine of Hippo, writing at the end of the fourth century, puts it like this: “It is therefore a figure, bidding us communicate in the sufferings of our Lord, and secretly and profitably treasure in our hearts the fact that his flesh was crucified and pierced for us…Elsewhere [Augustine] sums the matter up in an epigram: Crede et manducasti, ‘Believe, and thou hast eaten.’”[5]
As long as he’s kept at arm’s length, he just remains someone who’s outside of us, like any stranger on the street, and no more important to us than such a stranger. But when he enters into our hearts, when we take that all-important step and believe, we are nourished and fed by the life and strength and vitality that only he can give us.
Today, as every day, Jesus stands before us, just as he stood before those people so long ago, and says, “I am the bread of life – drink of me and never thirst, eat of me and never be hungry again. I am the son of God; through me you can have abundant life, real life. Come to me, abide in me, and by knowing me, know God, my own parent, better. Then your longing will cease, you will find perfect peace, and you will have eternal life.”
What an invitation! What magnificent grace!
Let us again say “yes” to that invitation and go forth in hope and joy, abiding in him!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Bruce, F. F., Hard Sayings of Jesus, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois 60515, © 1983 by F. F. Bruce, p. 21
[2]Lose, David, “Pentecost 12 B: Meeting the Carnal God,” http://www.davidlose.net/2015/08/pentecost-12-b-meeting-the-carnal-god/
[3] Ibid – emphasis added
[4] Quoted in Barclay, William, The Gospel of John, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2001
[5] Bruce, pp. 21-22