So the homily I gave on Sunday didn’t get recorded but here are my notes from it:
“this bread is my flesh”… So, this is kinda creepy if you weren’t a Christian and knew the rest of the story. This is pretty intense.
Let’s recap the story…
So, Jesus and his disciples get trapped by a huge, hungry, needy crowd… they fed them with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Then his clearly amazed friends get in a boat and head across the lake. Jesus comes walking on the water to meet them. They get to the other side and by morning the crowd wants more of Jesus… so they take off in fast pursuit. The crowd wants fed again. What’s more they want a sign… some miracle to prove who he is so they can really “believe”. They pull the Moses card.
I can imagine the scene is a bit like a new trick that Cloey has learned lately…. “But Dad said I could….”
The crowd was saying but “Moses gave us bread from heaven…”. To which Jesus replies, “Nuh huh. My Dad gave you bread and now the real deal is here. You’re looking at him”
Naturally, they don’t get it.
So Jesus gets a bit more explicity…. kinda… “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst.” (35)
Naturally, they still don’t get it and now they think he’s lost his marbles…. “Umm, isn’t this Joe and Mary’s kid…. he ain’t from heaven, he’s from poo-dunk little Nazarerth”… or as someone in our house church said… “crazy pants”
And then Jesus just gets nasty… here he’s talking to his own people, the Jewish people, and he recounts their own history and tweaks it. He takes their own story and does them one better. Your ancestors ate bread and died. I am bread that will give you eternal life. “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; this bread is my flesh, offered so the world may live.” (51)
So what in the world is Jesus doing? What’s this whole “bread of life” thing about, anyway? It gets worse… Jesus goes on… let me read the next several verses:
” 52Then the people began arguing with each other about what he meant. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked.
53So Jesus said again, “I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. 54But those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them at the last day. 55For my flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink. 56All who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me, and I in them. 57I live by the power of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, those who partake of me will live because of me. 58I am the true bread from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever and not die as your ancestors did, even though they ate the manna.”
59He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
60Even his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”
61Jesus knew within himself that his disciples were complaining, so he said to them, “Does this offend you? 62Then what will you think if you see me, the Son of Man, return to heaven again? 63It is the Spirit who gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But some of you don’t believe me.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who didn’t believe, and he knew who would betray him.) 65Then he said, “That is what I meant when I said that people can’t come to me unless the Father brings them to me.”
66At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.”
Obviously. This guy has lost it. He’s tellling people to eat his flesh and drink his blood! What in the world!?
I wonder what point Jesus is trying to make? I wonder what John is trying to accomplish in writing this story about Jesus? I wonder what the Spirit is saying to us today through all this?
I have 6 ideas:
#1 Jesus is weeding out his disciples – Jesus is basically saying, “Here’s the deal. Are you in or out?”
This is the hard stuff. Radical discipleship. It is a call to action. Which would be consistent if this John is the same John the writer of Revelation, which is, I submit at its core about radical discipleship.
#2 Jesus is taking a known cultural norm and tweaking it. “You’ve heard it said but I say to you…” kinda thing. You think you know bread from heaven? I’ll give you bread from heaven. This bread or manna was held in such high esteem that it was even kept in the ark of the covenant, so it was pretty central to their cultural and religious identity. He takes that piece of their DNA and shows how he is the fulfillment and the True form of what they thought they knew.
#3 John was juxtaposing the temporal with the eternal and placing Jesus clearly on the side of the latter. Manna was part of their identity – temporary. Jesus – eternal
#4 Jesus is true sustenance. He is True Life. Which is consistent with John’s purpose as he puts in John 20:31 – 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
#5 If John wrote this to a Greek audience then he may be trying to make clear that Jesus is for the whole world – not just Jews. Then all this talk about Jesus being more, better, truer than what the Jew’s ancestors experienced would make some sense.
#6 I have a sneaking suspicsion that the Spirit is saying something to us today about where we assume our sustenance comes from. We have come to believe that our meaning in life comes from having stuff. Making a name for ourselves, being popular, being noticed. We lust for importance. We are gluttons of our own achievement. We assume that our fulfillment in life comes from getting. Sure we want to get different stuff from what the crowd in Jesus’ day wanted… but we, like them, both want want want want want. We are unhappy unless we are getting more.
Is it any wonder then that we live distracted, disinterested lives? If we constantly and consistently surround ourselves with the junk that we crave is it any surprise when we can’t seem to focus.
