Proverbs 9. 1 – 6
Ephesians 5. 15 – 20
John 6. 51 – 58
Fr Alex
There’s a wonderful Canadian film called The Gospel of John that goes through this Gospel, word for word, from start to finish, in about three hours. You can find it on YouTube if you’d like to watch it.
I find it a powerful experience to read or in this case watch a Gospel account all in one go. But I read one comment in which the reviewer got half-way through and could only think, “Will Jesus ever shut up?”
As I said last week, we’re making our way through a long discourse from Jesus on the bread of life this month. But it gets harder and harder for the crowd to understand, and more and more difficult to receive. Today he tells them they need to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
Next week we’ll hear that even his closest followers would rather he did ‘shut up,’ and stop giving these hard teachings. Some of them will actually leave him.
It would indeed have been shocking to his first hearers to be told to eat flesh and drink blood. Most of them would be all too familiar with the bloody sight of animals killed for food, and even for sacrifice. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they demand.
Last week they asked for a sign to help them believe, like when Moses gave their ancestors manna in the wilderness. Couldn’t he just do the same?
But they forget, of course, that the manna still left their ancestors with a craving: “If only we had meat to eat!” they cried to Moses. And so they miss the sign that Jesus is giving them: that he is the meat to satisfy all their cravings.
Perhaps it’s less shocking for us because we are rather more used to this kind of imagery, in the context of the Eucharist. “This is my body; this is my blood.”
John doesn’t include the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, like the other Gospels. Is today’s passage his Eucharist scene? Not all scholars agree. But in this chapter, Jesus takes bread, gives thanks, and distributes it; he tells those gathered that he is living bread from heaven, and they must eat of it; that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. It seems quite compelling to me.
But even if we accept a Eucharistic interpretation of this passage, there is still a point of division among Christians. The Eucharist doesn’t actually mean Christ’s flesh and his blood, does it? Isn’t it really about a relationship with him; or a way to remember him?
The key, I think, to unlocking this difficult teaching, is to see this long discourse as opening up to us the mystery of the incarnation.
John said in his first chapter that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” This wonderful mystery, that God would become a part of his creation, is at the heart of the Gospel account, and indeed our faith.
But through the Gospel, and indeed in this chapter, Jesus gradually shows us the true meaning, and the true extent of this incarnation.
Jesus didn’t become one of us just so that we could gaze on him and talk to him for a while. He wasn’t simply a gifted teacher, a compassionate healer, a worker of miraculous signs and wonders.
The incarnation is God coming so close to us in the person of his Son, that he gives us his very self for our sustenance, and our salvation. Not just to share a close relationship with him, but to become one with him, by feeding on him.
And we are meant to take this idea of feeding on God seriously. Through this chapter, the Greek words that John uses change from being polite ones about ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ to more visceral verbs of ‘chewing’ and ‘gulping.’ No wonder our word ‘incarnation’ derives from a word meaning ‘a cut piece of flesh,’ which many modern languages still use for their word for meat to eat: ‘carne.’
The wonderfully-named William Willimon has this to say about this part of John’s Gospel:
Those of us who have been conditioned to think through cool, detached, distant, and dispassionate consideration will find it strange to be told that if we are to think about the Word made flesh, we must think through ingestion, consumption, and intimate, deep engagement. The metaphor reminds us of St Paul’s claim in Galatians: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
There is no knowing who Christ is without visceral, total engagement. We will not be able to comprehend him by sitting back, comfortable in the pew [no danger of that on our chairs, of course!] and coolly considering him as if he were an abstract, disembodied idea. Incarnation means that we must get up, come forward, hold out empty hands, sip wine, and chew bread.
Whether this is a Eucharist scene or not, when Jesus talks of giving his fresh and blood today, he isn’t talking only about a meal, but a sacrifice. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” And so the one who comes down in the incarnation must also be lifted up on the cross, “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
And in the same way, this Mass that we share today is not simply a memorial meal; it is a sacrifice. Our offering of this sacrifice of thanksgiving at our altar unites us with Christ’s offering of himself on the cross; so that we may receive within us the fruits of that sacrifice – eternal life.
Though we make no claims about exactly how this sacrifice of thanksgiving works—“thou art here, we ask not how”—by faith, our offerings of bread and wine, truly become for us the body and blood of Christ. And we receive the greatest gift we could possibly be given: Christ himself, living within us.
May we treasure this great gift, and receive it with joy, always. Amen.