Progressive reflections on the lectionary #30

Monday 12th August 2024

John 6:51-58 - eating and drinking

The gospel reading this week is part of the ‘bread of life discourse’ which is a continuation of the last couple of weeks readings from the gospel of John. The discourse follows directly after the ‘sign’ of the feeding of the 5000, and this part of the passage has at its heart one of the famous 'misunderstandings’ that are so characteristic of the writing found in ‘John.’

In this passage we see the crowd, recently revealed to be Jesus’ antagonists ‘the Jews’, simply unable to grasp what Jesus means when he says people have to ‘eat his flesh’. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they ask, with bemusement. The writer of John enjoys using these colourful flourishes to create misunderstandings - see for instance, in the same gospel, very earthy ideas of being ‘born again’ and ‘living water’. The latter almost certainly a thinly veiled double entendre. John’s Jesus uses very earthy metaphors to communicate his message.

Some people think this whole passage is an extended piece of teaching about the communion meal, or ‘the eucharist’ if that’s the language you prefer. That way of thinking is based on the idea that early Christians were sharing bread and wine, describing it as Jesus’ body and blood, and that this passage was, at some point, constructed to explain how this came to be.

That may have some, or a lot of, truth in it, it’s impossible to say, but I think that even if it is, there’s another, more interesting - and rather more straightforward, way of reading these words.

“…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” says Jesus, adding: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them…”
What, exactly, does this mean?

I think a useful way of looking at the idea of eating Jesus flesh is the idea that it simply means ‘following his teaching’. The people who eat Jesus’ flesh are the people who follow his commands, the people who drink his blood are those who love their neighbours and their enemies, forgive people, and so on. The sufferings implied in the broken flesh and the shed blood will also be shared by those who stand against the prevailing current.

By doing this, by following my teachings (eating my flesh and drinking my blood) Jesus, says, you abide in me, and I abide in you. The clear implication is that you will also suffer, you will go through pain, you may even be killed, if you do this.

This reading has not a quasi mystical overtone relating to the spirit of God imbuing bread and wine with special qualities, then, but a direct earthed principle. In this way its much the same as ‘being born again’ - in both cases the writer ‘John’ has Jesus give a clear and direct steer on how we are to live, and what this will mean, by employing an embodied metaphor.

This blog is taken from Simon's Substack email series, to subscribe please go to https://simonjcross.substack.c...

Image: