Good News Translation - Paraphrase
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me, and I live in them. The living God sent me, and because of him I live also. In the same way whoever eats me will live because of me. This, then, is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread that your ancestors ate, but then later died. Those who eat this bread will live forever.
Jesus said this as he taught in the synagogue in Capernaum. Many of his followers heard this and said, “This teaching is too hard. Who can listen to it?”
Without being told, Jesus knew that they were grumbling about this, so he said to them, “Does this make you want to give up? Suppose, then, that you should see the Son of Man go back up to the place where he was before? What gives life is God's Spirit; human power is of no use at all. The words I have spoken to you bring God's life-giving Spirit. Yet some of you do not believe.
(Jesus knew from the very beginning who were the ones that would not believe and which one would betray him.) He added, “This is the very reason I told you that no people can come to me unless God makes it possible for them to do so. Because of this, many of Jesus' followers turned back and would not go with him any more. So he asked the twelve disciples,
“And you - would you also like to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. Now we believe and know that you are the Holy One who has come from God.”
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More than any other of the Gospels, John presents us with the “hard sayings” of Jesus to wrap our heads around. Today’s reading is one of the hardest. On first read it is offensive. It is not only somewhat offensive to us, it would have been really shocking to Jewish listeners. As a result, many preachers have tried to sanitise the text, and make it more genteel, by turning it into yet another text about eucharist or communion, and thereby making it more palatable. Most clergy have tried not to preach it - because it is a really hard text.
In the time of Jesus, it was pagans who ate flesh with the blood still in it; eating flesh or drinking blood would have been anathema to the Jewish hearers; they would have been shocked and probably outraged to hear Jesus even utter these words. A quick read of Corinthians will demonstrate that the church got itself into all kinds of knots over whether or not to eat meat which had been killed in a pagan temple. The suggestion of eating flesh with the blood still in it would have been repugnant to the Jews altogether. How could Jesus even suggest such a thing?
Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr places this text at a period of Jesus’ ministry usually designated as “the crisis”. Jesus had been popular for the first while. The multitude had followed him to listen, to catch the charm of his personality, and to be cured of their ills. “But gradually”, says Niebuhr, “as Jesus unfolded the full meaning of his way of life, the multitude found his ideals as difficult as they were engaging, and began to desert him, muttering, "These are hard sayings, who can hear them?" Only the twelve disciples stayed, in the end, along with some of the women and others, although John specifically names the twelve. Jesus asked the disciples, did they also wish to leave? Peter, always the spokesman for the rest, answered “Where shall we go?” Niebuhr interprets this to mean that Peter is saying, "Yes, what you ask of us is so difficult that we are tempted to give up too. We don’t know if we can follow your way and truth, but we can’t find a better alternative.”
Is Jesus offering immortality in this quote? We have tended to take the phrase “eternal life” to mean immortality. I don’t think that is at all what is inherent here. This is another example of Jesus trying to communicate a difficult concept using the most ordinary things of life, crucial to everyone - bread, wine, meat, water - to teach about a way of living which saves us from being ruled by fear and anxiety for the future. Jesus reminds them that it is the Spirit which gives life, and that his words are both spirit and life. Yet they choose to turn away because living it out is “too hard”.
The crowds had got used to the comfort of being around Jesus, and were prepared to take some small challenge to their discipleship. There was comfort in the affirmations of Jesus’ faith, and they were to some extent willing to accept them; but Niebuhr comments that “inextricably intertwined with that assurance is a moral challenge” which most people find too difficult to consider. He says that the Christian church, at its best, is a community of the few who have seen, however dimly, “that the assurance and the challenge belong together”. The teaching of Jesus presents both a way of looking at reality, and a way of living.
At the beginning of his presidency, as Barack Obama began to lay out the foundations of a health-care plan, arguments for and against were all over the news, and still are. People have threatened violence, extreme responses to the proposal - accusing Obama of being Hitler. There have been accusations of fascism and socialist medicine, as if somehow socialist is a bad thing. An American colleague of mine noted “how easily scaremongering can prod people to act against their own best interests.” I’ve found the comments of people fascinating - people who claim that their country is founded on Christian principles, yet who scream at the notion of paying for someone else’s health care as un-constitutional, too difficult, if people want good health care they are “free to pursue it”, but others should not have to shoulder it for them.
Rev. Amy C. Howe says this: “Our culture tells us we are in control of our lives, our destiny. If we work hard, we will be rewarded with material gain.” She goes on “My theologian sister says that we prefer religion to God. We, like the disciples, are offended by Jesus’ offer of spirit and life. We make religion about the rules because we can control the rules.” I wold say we make the living of our faith about the “rules”, because we think then we can control outcomes.
Well, the words Jesus uses “abide in me” present comfort, but they also present challenge. A handful of followers remains, and when Jesus asks if they also want to run away, Peter responds “Where else can we go? You have words of life. We have come to believe.” In that moment, Peter who is generally a little thick, realises that despite the hard path Jesus calls the followers to walk, he is ready to give up some control in order to accept the offer of the gift of life.
The gift of life for the church is the moment we realise that giving up control gives life. It may not be the life we envision out of our own experience. It may not be the way things have always been done in our church. It may be that the creative spirit moves into that space created by our willingness to let go, and does something completely unexpected. The decision of the followers not to walk away but to follow and give up control marks them as a community of faith. Nothing else matters - budgets, fundraisers, mission statements, worship attendance - none of these mark us as a community of faith. It is how we live in relation to each other, how we come together to follow Jesus, no matter how hard it is - that marks us as a community of faith - and in following Jesus we receive spirit and life. May it be so.
Sources:
1. Reinhold Niebuhr, “To Whom Can I go?” in The Christian Century, March 10, 1927.
2. Rev. Amy C. Howe, essay in “Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary” Year B Volume 3.
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