FLESH AND BLOOD
7 4 10
JOHN 6:51-58
ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.
If someone were to hear this reading from John chapter 6 for the first time, in today’s modern, or post-modern, world it would, I think, sound very strange. It still may sound strange to us too, although I think for us the strangeness is mitigated by the fact that most of us have heard these words many times, and we have become a bit inured to them because of that familiarity, and because they are ‘Scripture.’
In order to have a better understanding of this passage I’d like to begin by placing John’s gospel in some historical perspective. It is believed by most scholars that John was the last of the 4 gospels in the Bible to be written, somewhere around the year 100 at the very end of John’s life, or perhaps even after John’s life by members of his school who were representing what he may have passed on orally to them of Jesus’ teachings. This Gospel of John is also the one which clearly contains the most interpretation of the doings and teachings of Jesus, by contrast, say, with the Gospel of Mark, which was almost certainly written first and appears to have the most detail and the most historical accuracy.
One of the most commonly used commentaries on the Bible is by a Methodist minister named William Barclay. He points out that during the days of Jesus’ physical life, when pagans sacrificed an animal to their gods, they did not burn the entire animal. A portion was given to the priests, and another part was kept by the worshiper who had offered the sacrifice to make a feast for himself, or herself, and their friends within the temple precincts. At that feast the god in question was itself considered to be a guest. Once the flesh was offered to the god, they believed that the god itself had come and entered into it; and therefore, when the worshipers ate of it, they were literally eating the god. When the guests rose from the table, they went out feeling that they were indeed filled with god or, ‘god-filled’ because they had eaten the very flesh of their god.
In addition to those pagan beliefs, other prominent expressions of religion in the Mediterranean world of Jesus’ time were those that we now refer to as Mystery Religions. The worship of these Mystery Religions revolved heavily around passion plays, stories acted out dramatically, about a god who had lived and suffered terribly, and who had died and rose again. This same pattern of the dying and rising god was a major factor, for example, in the Greek worship of the god Dionysus. We get one of our main depictions of these rituals in the Greek playwright Euripides’ drama called the Bacchae which some of us might remember reading from our college days. New believers in these Greek Mystery Religions were carefully prepared to watch the play, and as they did, the idea was that under the inspiration of the play they would be elevated into a mental state in which they felt they had became one with the god. They shared the sorrows and the griefs, the death and the resurrection. They and the god became one forever, and they believed that they were then safe in life and in death.
Thus, these ancient people knew all about the striving, the longing, the dreaming for mystical unity with their god and for the bliss of taking that god into themselves. Phrases, therefore, like eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood which sound so bizarre to 21st century westerners, would not sound particularly shocking to the people of Jesus’ world and time. Those people would already have a sense of something of that ineffable experience of union, closer than any earthly union, of which these words speak. And so it was that the early Christians–most especially John, as we’ve heard it today, were adopting and adapting the thought-forms of their day and era to clothe the message of the risen Christ that was such a real and redeeming part of their life-experience.
As I mentioned earlier, John’s gospel was the last one written. John had been reflecting on Jesus’ life for almost seventy years. So in his gospel, he is not so much providing us with a literal account of the actual words of Jesus, but rather, an interpretation of their inner significance. So, from John’s perspective, what does Christ mean when he tells us to eat his body and drink his blood? In being invited to symbolically eat his body we are invited to enter into Christ’s complete humanity.
In being invited to symbolically drink his blood, we must remember that in Jewish thought, the blood represents life itself, for without blood, we are dead, and blood belonged to God. That is why to this day a true Jewish believer will not eat any meat which has not been completely drained of any blood, hence the meaning of kosher. When Jesus says that we must drink his blood, he means that we must take the essence of what was unique and special and powerful about his life into the very core of our life. Like any life experience, whether a trip to a part of the world we have never seen before, or perhaps a favorite book, something must be internalized before we can experience its wonder and excitement. As an example, there are many people who have a favorite book, who read that book several times–read it over and over. And when you do that you are drawing whatever it is that speaks to you in that book into yourself. It becomes part of you and you of it.
So it is with Christ. He is merely a name in a book unless we feed on his life and let him into our hearts. This is at least part of what is meant by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Through reading, through worship, through prayer, through meditation, through communion, through spiritual discussion, or emotionally honest conversation and study, through acts of service, through the expression of our commitment in the larger world; through all of these things we feed our hearts and minds and souls on the real presence of the sacred, and we revitalize our lives with his life until, like the pagans, we are filled with the life and the Reality of the Divine Presence.
During the Second World War, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a courageous Lutheran Pastor whose resistance to the Nazis led to his death. In 1945, just before his execution by the Nazis, Bonhoeffer celebrated the Eucharist for one final time. In their confinement, he and his cell-mates had no bread. And they certainly didn’t have any wine. In that final communion, when Bonhoeffer came to the consecration of the elements, he prayed: “This is the bread we do not have. This is the wine we do not have. But this is the Christ we will always have which can never be taken from us.”
That sums up succinctly what John is telling us in these towering words form chapter 6 of his gospel. John is telling us that in drawing near to Christ and in allowing the Christic energy and Presence to enter in us, we are letting in a profoundly real and profoundly powerful spiritual presence, that has the ability and the potential to nourish us and feed us and empower us far beyond any physical food or material possession.
I pray that all of us will truly take these truths, and the nourishment of this table, to heart in the hours and days ahead, and in each and every time we come to worship and approach the living Christ. In whose name we pray it. Amen.
