John 6

Jesus Flesh and Blood

When I was growing up the Polk Burnett Counties REA (Rural Electrical Administration ) would hold a mass meeting in Centuria, a small village in the center of Polk County. My parents usually took us along, I think, because the REA served a free box lunch. Otherwise it was a pretty boring day, save for the demonstration of the dangers of messing around with power lines. A hot dog was placed against a live power line and burst into flame.. Otherwise, it was all about the free lunch.

During the past three weeks the gospel lesson have come from John 6. Each week Jesus upped the ante until it got to be too much for many of his disciples and they bailed out and went home.

After Jesus fed the 5,000, a crowd followed him to the other side of the sea of Galilee. They wanted more of the free lunch he had provided. Jesus led the ensuring discussion to the point where he told them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” People seemed to deal with that. The OT prophet Jeremiah spoke of the sweetness of the word of god which he ate. Jesus may have been pressing the envelope a bit when he declared “I am the Bread of Life,” but they could live with that.

The next Sunday some in the crowd grumbled about this son of “son of Joseph” could say, he was the bread sent by the Father from heaven. Again, they knew him when he as kid in Nazareth. They knew his father and mother. Furthermore, there was that suspicion that Joe really wasn’t his old man. But Jesus doesn’t back down. That Gospel lesson ends with Jesus declaring, (remember they didn’t have a preacher to preach on the text nor a whole week to absorb it) “and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Now this past Sunday Jesus pressed the issue even farther. In answer to the question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus answers “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of Man and drink his blood (he has added something new here) you have no life in you.” Indeed, whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life and “I will raise him up on the last day.”

If we stop and consider Jesus’ words, they are abhorrent. In the post flood days God gave permission to eat the flesh of animals, “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” Furthermore, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Now Jesus, who claimed to come from the Father in heaven, was proposing that God was about to break His own laws.

When I read these passages in John I try to put myself in the crowd. Would I have been one of those disciples who went away shaking me head? Would I have hung around long enough to hear Jesus ask, “Do you want to go away as well?” Would I have been able to ask Jesus, as Simon Peter did, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

I’m thankful I can read this story and write about from the perspective of 2,000 years. Next Sunday I can be in church handing out and receiving Jesus free lunch of his body and blood, which cost him dearly.