What does it mean to ‘eat Jesus’ in John 6?
Nosotros are in the fourth of five weeks in the lectionary winding our way slowly through the feeding of the five,000 in John 6 and the following discourse, in which Jesus declares he is the bread of life, and that he volition feed all who come up to him. The reading for Trinity 11 in this Twelvemonth B is John half-dozen.51–58, and Jesus' teaching, mixed with brief interrogations from 'the Jews', continues to circle around, both repeating previous ideas and adding in new ones, whilst intensifying the claims.
I would really love to know what the lectionary compilers thought they were doing by offering us this serial of quite brusque readings, with much repetition, dragging out this episode over five weeks! Did they assume that most people would be on holiday so that you could, in effect, preach the same sermon every week and no-i would notice? I am in the odd position of covering for different churches, and so am preaching in four different places in August. I might well detect myself making employ of some insights in more than one identify!
Only the real problem nosotros have in reading these verses, extracted from their context, is that nosotros cease up removing them from the things that come before and later, which seems to me to be essential in making sense of them. In terms of what we accept already read:
- The wider context is the feeding of the five,000. People have actually just eaten bread and fish, so, every bit is characteristic of this gospel, a 'spiritual', metaphorical significant is attached to a existent and physical event.
- In the calorie-free of this, Jesus so makes the cadre stardom between food which 'perishes', and nutrient which 'abides to eternal life'. We noted that the destiny of the food is linked to the destiny of people in their response to Jesus, and the sectionalization betwixt those who 'perish' and those who, 'abiding' in Jesus, inherit 'eternal life', so that 'you are what you consume'
- There is a repeated and emphatic parallel between 'believing in the one who the Begetter has sent' and 'eating the breadstuff of life'. So 'eating Jesus' appears rather strongly to be a metaphor for 'believing in' and 'abiding in' him. Indeed, the later discussion about 'abiding' includes language ofmutual indwelling; those who abide in Jesus, Jesus will abide in them.
In terms of what follows in adjacent week's reading:
- 'Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum'. In other words, Jesus is offering this teaching nearly himself in the place that would unremarkably be used for the reading and exposition of the Torah. If 'people do not live on bread solitary, but on every discussion that comes from the oral cavity of God' (Deut viii.iii), then Jesus is now claiming to be this word which we should eat.
- When some of his followers accept offence in John 6.61, Jesus responds with a prediction of his rise to the throne of God. In other words, their grumbling appears to exist at the exalted claim that Jesus is making, rather than at the offence of the (if taken literally, rather revolting) nature of the metaphor of 'eating Jesus'.
- Jesus goes on to comment that his words are '[S]pirit and life', and that 'the mankind has no value'; in other words, we should not take his words literally! He is not talking nigh actual eating and drinking, but nigh his death that gives life.
- Peter'south response in dissimilarity to those who are leaving isnot 'I don't heed eating your flesh!' just 'We have come to believe and know…'
With these elements framing our reading, let'due south turn to the text itself.
Having described himself several times as 'the bread of life', Jesus now reframes the expression to draw himself as 'living bread'. At ane level this is not much of a alter, but it makes the claim more relational. 'Bread of life' has the sense of 'bread that gives [eternal] life', but now it is articulate that the life that this 'bread' brings is the life that the 'bread' itself, Jesus himself, has. And then the metaphor of 'eating Jesus' means taking in the life of Jesus for ourselves, which is the same kind of idea that Paul deploys when he talks of being 'baptised into Christ' (Gal iii.27, Rom half dozen.3).
The phrase as well draws our attention to the parallel discussion in John iv.xiii–14 with the Samaritan woman at the well. Whoever eats physical bread will be hungry over again and volition somewhen die, merely whoever eats the 'living bread' volition never hunger and will live. Whoever drinks the water from the well will be thirsty again, just whoever drinks the 'living water' that Jesus gives will take inside them a 'spring welling up to eternal life'.
We saw concluding week how the circling statement built cumulatively: first, Jesus is the staff of life of life; and then Jesus has 'come up down from heaven'; so, in the words of 'the Jews', Jesus is the 'bread that has come down from heaven'; and finally (v 51) Jesus is 'the living breadstuff that came downward from sky'. Now Jesus adds a further layer by explaining that this bread 'is my flesh that I will give for the life of the world'.
The term 'flesh' (σάρξ) is not common in the Synoptics, occurring only incidentally in three or four sayings (Matt sixteen.17, 19.five, 24.22, 26.41 and parallels, plus Luke 24.39). It occurs in 12 verses in the Fourth Gospel, and does much more theological work here, though in quite a unlike sense from Paul'southward use of it as 'sinful humanity' in contrast to the work of the Spirit (see Gal 5.sixteen).
- In John 1.xiii, 3.half dozen, six.63, 8.fifteen and 17.two is means 'humanity' or 'the (but) human'. Where there is a contrast with the Spirit, information technology is not in the Pauline sense, but distinctively Johannine, meaning 'mundane' as opposed to 'spiritual'.
- In John 1.14, it signifies humanity, but now making the theological merits that the divine Give-and-take has become fully human.
- The remaining occurrences are all in this passage.
The language of 'giving' of his 'flesh' is an unmistakable reference to Jesus offer himself in his death on the cantankerous. It runs parallel with the idea of God 'giving his merely Son' (John 3.sixteen) and giving the true bread (6.32), and is developed in the 'shepherd' discourse in John 10.11, 15, 18, where Jesus is clear that his death comes about because he chooses to lay down his own life, rather than it being taken from him against his will. Elsewhere in the New Attestation, there is a connexion made betwixt the breaking of breadstuff in the Lord'southward supper and the body of Jesus—only the term 'flesh' is never used.
The giving of 'life for the world' repeats the phrase from John 6.33, parallels the language of John 3.16, and draws on the complex of life, lite and earth from the prologue. Again, salvation is from the Jews, just it isfor the world.
The reaction here is notable. Instead of, equally previously, 'grumbling' every bit a grouping, with the echo of the grumbling to Moses in the desert, now the 'Jews' sharply dispute amongst themselves. We need to annotation this because it points to the much more complex portrayal of 'the Jews' in this gospel, where some clearly follow Jesus whilst others reject him. Information technology also shows that the metaphor 'giving u.s.a. his flesh to eat' was not simply dismissed every bit unavoidably offensive.
What then follows is a series of nine, x or 11 successive sayings of Jesus (depending on how you count the combination in 5 57), which again circle effectually, repeat and develop, more often than not using language already deployed, but incorporating one or two new ideas that volition be picked up later in the gospel. The group is introduced over again by the Johannine version of Jesus' 'weighty saying' introduction, 'Amen, amen, I say to you…'
Unless you swallow the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, y'all will accept no life
If you practice eat and drink, y'all will accept life—
and I will enhance you up on the terminal day
My flesh and blood are true food and drink
Whoever feeds on my mankind and blood abides in me, and I abide in them
The living Father sent me,
I live considering of him,
and whoever feeds on me volition live
This bread came downward from sky
non similar the manna which the fathers ate and died
Whoever feeds on this will live forever
We brainstorm and end with the connection between eating/drinking and living, and this life is 'eternal' in the sense that information technology belongs to the (imperishable) age to come, so is both realised now and (as in the previous verses) has a distinctive hope for the future, of beingness 'raised upward' on the last day.
There is a repeated and distinctive emphasis onboth flesh and blood. Elsewhere (Matt 16.17, ane Cor fifteen.50, Eph 6.12) the pairing has a proverbial sense, as it has today, meaning 'humanity'. Just given the before reference to flesh alone, as representing Jesus' torso as bread, there is surely a more distinct sense here. Jesus has talked about 'giving his flesh' to refer to his dying on the cross; the problem of 'drinking blood' is that it is conspicuously prohibited in the OT (Gen nine.iv, Lev 17.10–14, Deut 12.23) because 'the life is in the blood'. In other words, you are not to take the life of an animal to contribute to your own life, though you may live from its death past eating it. With Jesus, we both live because of his death, merely also alive considering he gives us his life poured out by the Spirit equally a consequence of his (expiry and) resurrection. We might even be tempted, with Paul, to talk of being baptised into his death and into his new resurrection life (Romans half dozen.3–4).
If the 'eating and drinking' were detached deportment which then had consequences, nosotros might call back that John 6.56 suggests that eating and drinkinglead to the result of 'abiding' in Jesus. But the grammar suggests that they are equivalents; eating and drinking is another manner of talking almost constant. We remain in his honey as long as we receive the benefits of his death for us and alive out his resurrection life by the power of the Spirit.
The cascading relationship of life from Father, to Son, to those who believe in him draws two sets of connections from before in the gospel. Those who believe in the true light bringing life into the world are built-in of God (John 1.13); and the Father who has life in himself has granted that the Son has life in himself (John 5.26) so that whoever believes in him will themselves accept eternal life.
Additional Annotation: someone commenting in online word, Merrill Nanigian, noted:
"My nutrient," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to end his work." (John 4:34) Eating his flesh and drinking his blood = *doing* the will of God in our lives.
The term Jesus uses in his first statement is βρῶσις, and in his response to the disciples' muttering he uses the synonym βρῶμα—a typical variation of words in this gospel. The only other place where the term βρῶσις occurs is near the beginning and end of the 'staff of life of life' discourse, forming a frame to it:
Do non work for the food (βρῶσις) that perishes, just for the food (βρῶσις) that endures to eternal life… (John half dozen.27)
For my mankind is true food (βρῶσις), and my blood is true drink. (John 6.55)
I don't think nosotros tin can dissever these two ideas—then 'eating Jesus' or feeding on him is inseparable from doing his will and being obedient to him. Again, nosotros observe this integration in the 'farewell soapbox', where constant in him means knowing his loveand doing his volition in obedience to his commandments.
The final cluster of sayings connects back the kickoff of this section, but likewise draws to a close the contrast with the manna in the desert from John 6.32. Jesus, the living bread, does not just dissimilarity with the physical bread [and fish] from the feeding of the 5,000—a sign which pointed to him when received aright—merely besides with the feeding with the 'bread' (manna) in the desert. Where the breadstuff and fish point to the pregnant of Jesus, and the manna and quails pointed to the faithfulness of God, both bespeak to Jesus the living bread, who gives the life of the Father to all who receive him by organized religion.
The saying ['whoever eats my flesh…drinks my claret…] must be understood equally a graphic metaphor meaning to believe in him. When it is unpacked it ways that Jesus is the source of eternal life, and belief in him is the just mode humans can satisfy the hunger and thirst for God. These sayings may remind modernistic readers of Jesus' words of institution of the Lord's supper, but in their Johannine context they are to exist understood as a striking, even a against, way of speaking most faith in him (Colin Kruse, TNTC p 204).
The paradox that Jesus will bring life through his death becomes the polemical edge of the discourse (Jo-Ann Brant,Paideia p 129).
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