Perspective: You Want Us to Eat and Drink What?!

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Comments are always welcomed.
If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

You Want Us to Eat and Drink What?!

Jesus said to them, "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 (NRSV)

Eat this bread
Drink this cup
Come to Him and never be hungry

From "Eat This Bread" by the Taizé Community

Jesus says a number of strange things in the Gospels, but what is probably the strangest thing He ever says is found in the Gospel of John.

One day, Jesus miraculously feeds a massive crowd.  He and the Disciples start with only five loaves of bread and a couple of fish and somehow manage to feed thousands of people.  The people in the crowd are reminded of the bread their ancestors were miraculously fed in the wilderness after they were delivered from slavery in Egypt, so they begin to think that Jesus might be the long-awaited Messiah who will liberate them from their oppression at the hands of the Roman Empire.  They want make Him king immediately, so He quickly has to make Himself scarce.¹

The next day, when the crowd catches up with Jesus, He says to them, "Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that the Son of Man will give you."²  He begins to speak of "the bread of God" that "comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."  When the crowd demands that Jesus give them this bread, He says to them, "I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."³

To compare oneself to bread is strange, but it pales in comparison to what Jesus says next.

Jesus says to the crowd, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the live of the world is my flesh."⁴  He then goes on to say,
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.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.⁵

I hope that it is painfully obvious to you, dear reader, that Jesus is not encouraging people to engage in cannibalism.  Jesus will indeed be killed in the Gospel story, but nobody will eat His remains.  Jesus is speaking metaphorically, but His words are still bizarre and even disturbing.  What exactly does He mean when He invites people to eat His flesh and drink His blood?

Biblical scholar N.T. Wright connects Jesus' strange words to a particular story about Jesus' ancestor David, who was a leader in Israel's military before he became king.  David and his soldiers were hunkered down in a cave, while his hometown of Bethlehem was under enemy occupation.  Longing for simpler days, he cried out, "O that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate!"  Three of his bravest soldiers heard his cry, snuck into Bethlehem, drew some water from the well of which he spoke, and brought it back to him.⁶

David couldn't bring himself to drink the water his soldiers risked their lives to bring him.  In his eyes, drinking this water would be tantamount to drinking his solders' blood, so he poured the water out to God as a libation or drink offering.⁷

Wright suggests that, when Jesus invites His audience to eat His flesh and drink His blood, He is basically calling His audience to do what David refused to do.  Jesus knows that He is going to give His life for the sake of the world, and He knows that His sacrifice will result in new life to all who believe in Him.⁸  His body will be broken like bread, and his blood will be poured out like wine.  Jesus wants His followers to receive His gift and benefit from it.

Jesus loses a lot of His followers because of what He says.⁹  Perhaps they are disturbed by the sheer strangeness of His words, or maybe His words challenge their expectations of the Messiah.¹⁰

In the other three Gospels, we read that, during the evening before Jesus is arrested and put on trial, while He is enjoying one last supper with the Disciples, He takes some bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them saying, "Take, eat; this is my body."  He then takes a cup of wine, gives thanks for it, and passes it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."¹¹  Churches around the world regularly reenact this story in the sacrament known as Holy Communion.

Receiving Holy Communion is one way in which we may ritually receive Jesus' gift and benefit from it.  Countless Christians have found this sacrament to be life-giving and transformative.  It is commonly said that we are what we eat.  We pray that the bread and wine of Holy Communion become the body and blood of Christ and then consume the bread and the wine in the hopes that we become more like Him.  Furthermore, it is the broken body of Christ, which is represented by broken bread, that brings a broken humanity back together at a common table.


Notes:

1. John 6:1-15
2. John 6:25-28 (NRSV)
3. John 6:33-35 (NRSV)
4. John 6:51 (NRSV)
5. John 6:53-56 (NRSV)
6. 2 Samuel 23:13-16 (NRSV)
7. 2 Samuel 23:16-17
8. N.T. Wright.  John for Everyone, Part 1.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 85
9. John 6:66
10. Wright pp. 88-89
11. Matthew 26:26-29 (NRSV) (See also Mark 14:22-25 and Luke 22:17-20.)

The photograph of the Communion elements was taken by John Snyder (no relation) and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Perspective: Soul-Nourishing Work

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.
Comments are always welcomed.
If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Soul-Nourishing Work

In the meantime the disciples spoke to Jesus, saying, "Rabbi, eat."

Jesus said to them, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."

John 4:31-32 (CEB)

I wanna feed the hungry children
And reach across the farthest land
And tell the broken there is healing
And mercy in the Father's hands

From "Set the World on Fire" by Britt Nicole

In the Gospel of John, we read that one day, while Jesus and the Disciples were traveling through the region of Samaria, they stopped in the city of Sychar.  Tired from the journey, Jesus sat down by a well to rest, while the Disciples went to the market to buy food.¹  Later, when they met Him at the well, they found Him having a conversation with a woman who had come to draw water.  After the woman left, they urged Him to eat some of the food they bought at the market.  Jesus replied, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."²

Naturally the Disciples started to wonder if someone brought Jesus food while they were at the market, but Jesus wasn't speaking literally.  He said to them, "I am fed by doing the will of the one who sent me and by completing his work."³

In a conversation with a religious leader, Jesus said, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won't perish but will have eternal life."⁴  On another occasion, He said, "I came so that [people] could have life - indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest."⁵  The One who sent Jesus was God, and the work God sent Him to do was to give people abundant life.⁶

While the Disciples were at the market, Jesus said to the woman who had come to the well to draw water, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again.  The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life."⁷  The woman was so affected by her conversation with Jesus, that, even though she had been an outcast in her community, she forgot all about her shame and told everyone who listen to her about Him.⁸

People commonly speak about working in order to "put food on the table," meaning that they work jobs they may or may not actually enjoy so that they may make the money they need to buy food and other basic necessities.  Jesus, by contrast, spoke as if He was fed directly by doing the work He did.

Jesus found His work deeply fulfilling, but is there fulfilling work for each of us?  Is it possible that each of us could find work that is not soul-sucking but rather soul-nourishing?  Does each of us have a purpose - work that one was specifically designed to do?

The word vocation originated within the Christian faith.  Nowadays, the term is used to describe a "an occupation to which a person is especially drawn or for which they are suited, trained, or qualified."  The term is derived from the Latin word vocatio,⁹ which was used to describe a "calling," a "summons," or an "invitation."¹⁰  One's vocation was originally understood to be a calling from God.¹¹

Writer Frederick Buechner seems to believe that each of us does indeed have a purpose in this life.  On the subject of vocation, he writes, "The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work that you need most to do and that the world most needs to have done."  A person who enjoys his life but makes no positive impact the world around him has not found his calling, but neither has a person who does a lot of good in the world but hates her life.  Buechner writes, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."¹²  Apparently there is work one can do to feed others, literally or figuratively, while also feeding one's own soul.

If you have been following this blog for a while, then you know that I have struggled to figure out what I am called to do in this life.  Reading that Jesus was fed by the work He did makes me envious of Him, but it also gives me hope that such work just might exist for me.  May we all find fulfilling ways of making this world a better place.


Notes:

1. John 4:4-8
2. John 4:27-32 (CEB)
3. John 4:33-34 (CEB)
4. John 3:16 (CEB)
5. John 10:10 (CEB)
6. Joel B. Green, William H. Willimon, et al.  The Wesley Study Bible (NRSV).  2009, Abingdon Press.  p. 1292
7. John 4:13-14 (CEB)
8. John 4:28-30
9. Wikipedia: "Vocation"
10. Wiktionary: "vocatio"
11. Frederick Buechner.  Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC.  1993, HarperOne.  p. 118
12. Buechner, pp. 118-119

The painting of Jesus and the Woman at the Well was painted by Carl Heinrich Bloch in the late 1800s.