The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. (John 6. 52-57)
A professor of preaching at Chandler School of Theology and a first-class preacher himself, Fred Craddock always had a story to tell. One of his stories, a true story as were all of his, was about a minister who found himself stranded in a bus station in Winnipeg, Canada during an unexpected October snowstorm. Cold and wet, the minister found an empty seat at the cafe counter inside the depot.
A cranky man in a greasy apron took his order, although the man also made it clear that the kitchen had nothing but one kind of soup. So the minister ordered the soup. When the cranky man put the bowl in front of the minister, it had a gray color and a gooey texture. Taking a sip of the soup, the man decided it was the worst thing he had ever eaten. So, he wrapped his hands around the bowl, deciding that the soup could keep them warm, good for nothing else.
After a few minutes, the cafe door opened and an icy wind blew into the room. Someone yelled, “Close the door!” A woman, clad in an old, worn coat that had seen better days, stepped inside and took a seat a short ways from the minister. When the cranky man asked her what she wanted, she softly said, “Just a glass of water.” He brought her the water and asked, “Now, what do you want?” She answered, “Just a glass of water and a chance to get warm.”
Clearly bothered by the woman, the cranky man said, “Look, I have customers that pay. What do you think this is, a church or something? If you’re not going to order, you’ve got to leave.” Unconcerned about the woman’s feelings, he said it loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. So the woman got up to leave.
Then, one-by-one, each person in the cafe got up and headed to the same door. Every last one of them had decided that if that poor woman was going to have to leave the cafe, so were they. Caught off guard by the crowd’s reaction, the cranky man conceded, ”All right, all right. She can stay.” Everyone sat down and the man brought her a bowl of soup.
When the minister asked the person sitting next to him who the woman was, the other person simply said, “I never saw her in here before.” Not a sound could be heard in the room except for the sipping of the awful tasting soup. Looking around, the minister decided to taste it again, putting his spoon into the lukewarm bowl.
“You know,” the minister said later when telling the story, “it really wasn’t all that bad. Everybody was eating the soup, and it was pretty good soup. I have no idea what kind of soup it was. I don’t know what was in it, but I do recall when I was eating it, it tasted a little bit like bread and wine. Just a little like bread and wine.”
Craddock’s story is a good place for us to begin our study of these few verses of John’s gospel found near the end of Chapter 6, the larger part of which we have studied for the last several weeks. As we may recall, Chapter 6 begins with the feeding of the multitude with two fish and five loaves of barley bread, the leftovers filling twelve baskets until they overflowed.
After the crowd has eaten, Rabbi Jesus takes the opportunity to preach to them about the need to seek the bread that does not perish, unlike the bread that they have just eaten. As we heard in those earlier verses, Jesus uses the example of the manna that the Hebrew slaves ate, food that also came from the heavens, but which did not endure.
With that experience of the Passover as the backdrop–John tells us the feast of Passover is near–Jesus urges the people to find the bread that endures, telling them that it can be found in his person. He identifies himself personally with that living bread, informing them that “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”
As we see today, that assertion leads the people to protest that it is impossible for him to give them his flesh to eat, to which Jesus counters with the statement, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Of course, the crowd remains confused and conflicted about his confession, certain that it is physically impossible for him to offer his flesh and blood for them to eat and drink.
Scholars are quick to pinpoint two central themes playing out in these verses. First, the comparison and contrast with the Passover Feast, the highest celebration of the year for the Jewish people. Second, there are strong eucharistic overtones in the text that the Christian listeners would have heard, their weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper a reenactment of the Passover feast that the Lord Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his own death.
Both elements are certainly there, on the surface in the first instance, just under the surface in the second instance. And since John does not have the institution of the Eucharist in his gospel–substituting the washing of the feet instead–a strong argument can be made that Chapter 6 compensates for the lack of the eucharist in John’s version of the Last Supper.
Over the course of time, much has been said and studied about the passage, particularly the physicality of Jesus’ words when he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Interestingly, the word for eat actually means to crunch or chew and the word for flesh means more than a body, but actual meat.
Taken at face value, then, it anticipates the violent death that Rabbi Jesus will suffer at the hands of his enemies, a death that will overlay the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, his flesh and blood put on the altar of sacrifice as he lay on the cross. The physical descriptors point to the very real death of Jesus, his dying becoming life-giving food for the people in much the same way as part of the paschal lamb was the food at the family table.
But, is there something more to be found here than the obvious references to manna in the desert and the Christian observance of the eucharist? I think so, particularly since Jesus said much the same thing when he compared himself to living water as he stood at Jacob’s well, a townswoman his listener in that story. He told her that anyone who drank this water would not thirst again. Water clearly does not carry the same connotations as bread, and yet it is almost identical to this passage. So maybe there is more to this passage.
Based on the close parallel between the two, I believe the answer is found in the verse, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” The key word in that verse is not flesh or blood, but remains, a word that John very much likes to use. We will find it a number of times in John’s text, for example, later when he says, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.”
The word remain, a word we have looked at before, can also be translated as abide or stay. In whichever way it is used, it connotes being under the same roof, being at home with someone. This is important. When Rabbi Jesus says the person who eats his flesh and drinks his blood remains in him, we should see the closeness and the unity that must exist between Jesus and his followers. They are “at home” with each other, sharing the same life, sitting at the same table.
Understood from the perspective of abiding or remaining or staying with Jesus, the physical description of eating his flesh and drinking his blood of Jesus makes sense in the same way that drinking life-giving water does, food and drink necessary for the human body to survive. So, also the life that Jesus provides to the soul or spirit of a person.
It is impossible to overstate the closeness and proximity that the word “abide” connotes, even the phrase “two peas in a pod” falling short of the depth of the meaning. To say that the person who eats his flesh and drinks his blood remains with Jesus is to say that his life becomes part and parcel of our person, uniting us with him as food becomes one with the body.
So it is with the person who “consumes” or takes Jesus into their heart, the life of Jesus providing us with life, the bonding between us so intimate that we live with him, we think like him, and we align our will with his. We become one with Jesus as Jesus has become one with his Heavenly Father, a confluence of hearts so connected that they are permanently conjoined.
Perhaps it is best described by Jesus himself later in John’s gospel when he prays the so-called ‘priestly prayer” to his Heavenly Father, saying, “I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them just as you have loved me” (17.23). Perfectly united. Another helpful way to understand what Jesus is telling the crowd when he says, “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”
When we remain in Jesus, we are perfectly united with him, as he is perfectly united with his Father. And that unity is expressed beautifully in the image of his body as living bread that we eat, his life becoming one with our life. Understood in this way, it makes perfect sense for Jesus to say to the crowd, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”
It is a closeness to and a unity with the Most High God that the ancient prophets also understood. For example, Jeremiah tells us that he ate the scroll that contained the words of God, saying afterwards, “Your words were found and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy.” In the same way, Ezekiel explains that the Most High said to him, “Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your belly with this scroll I am giving you.” So he ate it, and, as he said, “It was as sweet as honey in my mouth.” Here, Rabbi Jesus is offering his followers that same closeness, asking us to crunch on his words and ways, taking them into our bellies, making them one with ourselves.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 