The gospel for next Sunday[1]
has difficulties for some of us. It is
the passage in John chapter 6, where Jesus talks about eating my flesh and
drinking my blood. He says those who
do this… abide in me and I in them… Whoever
eats me will live because of me… I
know what Holy Communion means to many Christian believers – I also know that
numerous others such as Quakers live and bear witness without the
sacraments. It didn’t help when I found
that in this verse the normal Greek word for “eat” is not used – John chooses a
distinctly stronger verb which means greedily devouring food, bolting it down, as
Henry VIII reportedly did – or the Cookie Monster in Sesame Street.[2]
But for all that… what really caught
my attention is what follows. Many of
his disciples… this is the wider band of men and women grouping around
Jesus at that time… many of his
disciples heard it… they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to
them, “Does this offend you?... And then we learn… many of his disciples
turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do
you also wish to go away?” It was a
crisis… over this talk of eating flesh and drinking blood. For some it was a tipping point, and the
question was whether to continue with Jesus.
But why? what was the
problem? Jews, Romans, Greeks… the whole
ancient world was quite familiar with ritual animal sacrifice. The temples were the chief source of meat for
those who could afford it. Great minds
such as Socrates and Plato seemed to assume that the sacrifice of animals
somehow pleased the gods -- and here now is Jesus offering himself (or his
followers understanding him later) as the Lamb of God, slain for the sin of the
world… Some among his followers at that time found this distasteful. It’s not only eating flesh and drinking blood,
it’s also the assumption, unquestioned by many, that a sacrificial offering is
necessary to expunge sin and guilt – what theology calls substitutionary
atonement. What these people had seen in
Jesus was not that at all. If you have
love and grace and mercy, which is what they saw, then you are encountering God
at another level than mechanisms, liturgies, rituals, requirements. They are abiding in Christ because Christ is
abiding in them, as he promised. It is
not the ingesting of bread and wine, but the surrender of heart and will. In St Paul’s words, Where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound.[3]
Turning back, moreover… going no
longer with him, is what many have done in our time. But when Jesus asks the Twelve, Do you also
wish to go away? Peter responds: To
whom shall we go? He has already
found Jesus’s company to be roomier than the church… When Jesus said, In my Father’s house are
many mansions[4],
he was talking about his kingdom, his realm, here and now, his company, his
people... in heaven and on earth. Roomy,
as we say these days… with indoor-outdoor flow.
Peter gets it right for once. There is room in the house for anyone, in
Benedict’s phrase, preferring Christ.
It is spacious in this house, you could have a feast… which Jesus seemed
to think was always a possibility.
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