Bible Reading: 1 Kings 3:3-14, Ephesians 5:16-20
and John 6:51-58
Dear Friends,
There are times as I read the upcoming texts and prepare this bulletin note that I am tempted to think as, I imagine, many people think that the Bible has precious little to do with real life. This week’s reading John 6: 51-59, is one of those weeks. I mean, here we are, stuck in the middle of this argument between Jesus and the crowd who was following him about bread from heaven and Jesus’ nearly unintelligible and rather laughable assertions about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. What does this talk of flesh and blood and heavenly bread and even with the Lord’s Supper really have to do with the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of everyday living? What does it have to do with the things that really matter, our hopes and fears, loves and hates, our living and our dying? What does it have to do with us, here and now, two thousand years later, struggling just to make ends meet?
When we come to the Biblical text we don’t come for academic or theological controversies, but rather to find both counsel and comfort in dealing with this life; and, even more, I think, we come to the text for meaning, not meaning in the sense of answering all our questions but meaning which makes life worth living. So like the crowd in this week’s lesson, we also grow frustrated with Jesus’ abstract words about eating and drinking his body and blood when what we really need is something more concrete, solid, meaningful. “How can this man give us his flesh?” they rightly ask. Or, in other words, “Stop talking nonsense Jesus. We need something a little better than your empty, abstract, metaphorical promises.” To this angry demand, Jesus responds by insisting like a grumpy child on the point he has already made. “I am telling you the truth,” he says, both to the crowd gathered around him in Capernaum and those gathered in our congregation.
“I am telling you the truth: if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in yourselves. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. For my flesh is the real food; my blood is the real drink.” And then, suddenly, upon hearing these words we realize the crowd both then and now we realize that he’s serious. He’s not being metaphorical or speaking abstractly; he really means it. This one, Jesus, would give us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink.
In these verses we begin to recognize just what is at stake for Jesus, just how much we are worth to him. In these verses, he offers to us his very own flesh and blood, the flesh which will be stretched upon the cross for our sake, the blood which will flow freely from his hands, feet, and side, also for our sake. For three weeks we have read, studied, and struggled to understand what Jesus means by speaking of the bread of life and the food from heaven. Here, now, in this fourth week he makes himself far too plain. 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 the whole of God meets us to love, redeem, and sustain the whole of who we are, good, bad, and ugly. The God who comes for our whole selves. In one sense, this sums up all of John’s testimony to Christ. For throughout the Fourth Gospel we have encountered some of the most familiar images describing the relationship of Jesus and those who believe in him: Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep; he is the vine and we are the branches; he abides in God and we abide in him. “In this passage, however for those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. This is the promise which God makes to us: to be one with us and for us forever, to stick with us and even in us no matter what.
Solomzi