This Sounds Weird
The text for this week is John 6:51-58. Like last week there is an overlapping verse (51). This is Jesus claiming to be the “bread of life”. The Jews were then disputing amongst themselves what this might mean. They ask, like many have since, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat” (Verse 52).
Jesus’s response served as a pretext to view Christians as odd at least and cannibals at worst. Jesus says that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.” (Verse 53). It sounded positively scary to those in Jesus’s time, and it still strikes many as odd. It led to charges of cannibalism during the time that Romans were persecuting Christians. It did not help that the early Christians were secretly meeting in catacombs. Tagged as a death cult early on!
Good Time for an Analogy
Clearly Jesus is not speaking literally here. No we are not to go out and engage in human sacrifice or to constantly be thought of as literally eating human flesh. In the context of the passages that went before we can better understand this. Jesus referenced the manna that the ancient Hebrews ate in the desert. The bread that they ate and eventually died. This was human food. It nourishes us for a time but does not provide eternal life. Jesus is the “bread” that comes from heaven and whoever eats of it will live forever.
He further gives away the secret when in Verse 56 He states that “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them”. Abide in the bible means to “remain” or “stay”. That is if we “eat” and “drink” this Jesus will be in us and remain in us. The eating and drinking is just language reflecting our belief. If we trust in God’s good and gracious word that Jesus became human like us, to be one of us, then died a shameful human death and rose again to new life, then we have “eaten” of His flesh and “drank” His blood. This trust is the bread that saves, the bread that erases all that stands between us and an eternal relationship with our Father in Heaven. Our faith sees us filled with Christ Himself, for Jesus is the very righteousness of God. He will abide in us and we in Him, forever.
So, no we are not cannibals, and Christians never were. We use verbiage that may seem strange, both then and now. However, it is true nourishment that Jesus offers. When framed in that way it, especially in light of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, becomes much clearer. The flesh and blood is what Jesus did for all humanity. Our eating of this is simply our belief in the truth of this. Now that we are fully nourished, let’s go out and obey.
Praise Be to God
