By the Rev’d Andrew Coyle

Season: 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kgs 2:10-12; 3:3-14 | Eph 5:15-20 | John 6:51-58

This week’s gospel passage is a continuation of Jesus’ controversial “bread of life” sayings. Last week, we heard Jesus say to those gathered around him, “I am the bread of life… I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” And these words throw his audience into a bit of a kerfuffle. And the reason for their consternation is that these people know who Jesus is, or, at least, they think they do.

They know his parents. They know his family. They’ll have known Jesus since he was a child.

Given all of this, it makes no sense to them that Jesus would claim to have “come down from heaven”. And, actually, it’s kind of offensive to them that Jesus should make this claim about himself.

Here in New Zealand with our well-known Tall Poppy Syndrome, if Jesus’ family were our next-door neighbours and we’d all grown up together, we’d probably think Jesus was a bit up himself to say that he had come down from heaven. “Come off it, mate! Who do you think you are?”.

And, actually, in our reading today there is even more for Jesus’ audience to take offense at because Jesus goes on to say to them, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will live for the life of the world is my flesh… unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And at this the people are probably putting their hands over their ears and going, “Aaargh! OMG, Jesus! Will you just stop saying all this gross stuff!”

It’s bad enough that Jesus would claim to have “come down from heaven” but to suggest that people would eat his flesh and drink his blood is just flat out repulsive and offensive. It’s true that one of the dietary laws for Jewish people is that they don’t
ingest the blood of an animal along with its flesh, but the apparent cannibalism that Jesus seems to be suggesting would have been something else again!

So, what are we to make of all of this?

Well, for a start, as Jim indicated last week, we know that Jesus is speaking in metaphors. Jesus is not literally a loaf of bread. Neither is he suggesting that people should feast on his actual body and blood. But eating and drinking are incredibly evocative metaphors for how we receive what Jesus offers us. Those double images of flesh and blood on the one hand and how they are to be received as food and drink on the other, offer us an invitation to take into ourselves the life and mind and way of Jesus.

And, in taking into ourselves the life of Jesus, we are taking into ourselves what is ultimately life-giving and sustaining. And Jesus speaks of this when he says to his listeners, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).

Again, what we are hearing is a metaphor. Of course, we are still alive if we don’t follow Jesus. There is still life within us. But Jesus’ life and way offer us the possibility and the promise of something different.

When we follow Jesus, when our lives give expression to the life of Jesus, then we are able to participate in life in ways that generate more life for others. Love and compassion and forgiveness free people from hate and fear and injury and violence and revenge, all things that lock people into, what is both metaphorically and literally, a place of death. Love and compassion and forgiveness beget more of the same, as do hate and fear and violence and injury. But where one brings life and potential and possibility, the other seems to bring only suffering and death.

So, when we take into ourselves and then express the generous love and compassion and forgiveness of Jesus, we are expressing the freedom and redemption that comes to us in and through Jesus that offers us relief and release from the things that bind and confine us. To quote the apostle Paul, writing in his letter to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). This whole dynamic is expressed in another way when Jesus goes on to say, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them” (John 6:56).

Our participation in the life of Christ is about more than just doing what Jesus would do. The verb that we translate as “abide” means “to remain” and it is a word that describes the mutual indwelling that exists between Jesus and the one he calls Father”. When we “abide” in Christ and Christ “abides” in us, we become part of that same enduring and eternal relationship. Jesus “remains” with us, eternally present within and to us.

And this is why Jesus says to his listeners, “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:58).

Eternal life is the promise of God’s constant, enduring and abiding presence with us.