This is a hard saying, probably one of the hardest in the bible. In the very next passages following today’s reading, Jesus loses most of his followers as a result of this saying. But it was not a slip of the toungue, His message was reapeated 3 times, and He never equivocates, he only gets more serious and strident in His vocabulary. The message of the “bread of life discourses” in John 6 can be summarized as three main points:
- Your fathers ate manna in the desert and were filled for a day, The Lord will give you food that will last forever.
- Jesus IS the food that came down from heaven, he who believes this will not hunger and will not thirst.
- You must eat His body and drink His blood if you want eternal life.
At the beginning of the bread of life discourses, Jesus makes these three points. The Jews murmur, saying how can this be, he is just the son of Mary and Joseph, the carptenter. Then Jesus makes the same 3 points again. The Jews then are upset, and say “how can this be, he is just a man.” Jesus makes the same 3 points a 3rd time. The Jews, now indignant leave, and He lets them go, He never backs down. He did not say “hey! you misunderstood me, that was just a metaphor, come back…” Instead, He said that this is a true saying and you must believe it.
The seriousness is made even more stark if we dive into the meaning of the greek words used here. In greek there are two words that can be used for “body.” The word “soma” litterally means “body”, but it can mean any body from a human body to an animal body, or a church or a political body. The other word for “body” is “sarx”, which litterally means “mortal flesh”. The word used in this passage it is “sarx.” Jesus very clearly wants us to know that this is not a metaphor or a symbol, He is clearly stating that if you want eternal life you must eat His mortal flesh, and drink His mortal blood.
But as the Ignatious study bible points out the mortal flesh that He gives is not like our human flesh, but far greater and higher than we could ever imagine:
“Jesus gives us, not his mortal flesh as it was during his earthly ministry, but his glorified humanity as it was after rising from the dead. This is why he calls himself the ‘living bread’” and continuting on… “Drinking the blood of animals is forbidden under the Old Covenant. To do so is to consume ‘life’ that is merely natural and of a lower order than human life. Jesus’ injunction does not fall under these prohibitions. The ‘life’ he imparts is not natural but supernatural; it does not pull us down to the level of animals; it elevates us to become sharers in his divine nature”
Our protestant brothers and sisters completely ignore this chapter of John. They say they are bible alone, but when it comes to this teaching of Jesus, they either completely skip this chapter, or claim that it is just a metaphor. But Jesus wants us to think about this and struggle with it, becuase it is the source and summit of our faith. Proof for this assertion, is found in the greek word that was used here for “eat” which is this instance is “trōgōn.” This word litterally means to gnaw, munch, crunch, on His mortal flesh, like a lion chewing on the carcas of a gazelle, out on the african savana.
This is not prim and proper ”tea with the queen.” This is hard, difficult chewing, a struggle… God does not want zombies following him, he wants disciples that love Him and believe in Him, and would walk through fire for Him. This kind of faith does not come from metaphor, it comes from deep profound introspection, struggling with ideas, and ultimately conquering of your doubt and fear with the Truth. When we succeed at this task we gain eternity.
Eternity is a highly misunderstood concept among humans. Frank Sheed described eternity as not a measurement of time, but of perfection. Have you ever wondered how God is outside of time, it is because He is in eternity, He is perfect, He has nothing that He needs to change or improve, He is perfection itself, time is not something He needs. Time is a gift from Him, to help us learn to abandone our sinful nature and to strive for the perfection of what God has willed for our lives all along.
Interesting fact here, that when Jesus says “live forever” here he is using a hebrew expression that is only used twice in the whole bible, Here in John and once in the Greek version of Genesis. The comparison thus implied here (again from the Ignatious Study Bible) is between “the ‘Tree of Life’, which bore the fruit of immortality, and the ‘Bread of Life’, which tradition calls the medicine of immortality” — If you missed the significance, let me explain. Adam and eve abandoned the “tree of life” in the garden and chose their own sin over God. God then sends Jesus to reconcile that sin, and bring us back into the garden. He does this by His sacrifice on the cross, in the mystical gift of His life for us, Jesus becomes the new tree of life, and He offers us the “bread of life” in his body, the eucharist.
If we partake in this bread, and gnaw on it, and stuggle with it, then we can gain eternal life as well, and enter into the garden with God. We do that by living in the eternal now. Not dwelling on the past and the mistakes that we had made, and cannot change. Not obsessing on the future for which we have no control, but living in the moment, choosing to do good, and resisting evil, making the most of this moment, learning from our mistakes, and resolving to do better. That is how we “gnaw” on His “mortal flesh”, and that is how we achieve our own personal perfection. If we do this long enough and hard enough, then we will hopefully find that we have acheived something greater than we ever thought possible… to enter into eternity with God Himself. What could better than that?
