19 April 2024 John 6:52-59
“The one who feeds on me….” Jesus must have been worried that people might get the wrong idea about what He was saying. It wouldn’t have been the first time. So he went over it again, using exceptionally graphic language so that everyone would get the point.
He used words that rhymed so people would remember: “My flesh is true food” (Greek – brosis) and my blood is true drink (Greek – posis)” (John 6:55).
The verb which is translated as “eat” in Greek (trogo) is more associated with animals than people. It has more the sense of “to gnaw” or “to munch.” Jesus wanted it to be very clear that he wasn’t referring to eating in some figurative fashion, as when people say of some performance they are enjoying, “We just ate it up!” He was referring to eating in the least delicate, most graphic way possible.
Jesus often used parables and other forms of figurative speech, and usually when He did that, He said so. Here, however, He was not doing that. He wanted it to be very clear that he wants people to consume Him, and that this eating will save them: “This is the bread that came down from heaven…the one who eats this bread will live forever” (6:58).
Although the eating Jesus was talking about was real eating, the food was not ordinary food. Gentiles heard this and thought Christians were cannibals. They thought the flesh that Jesus was talking about was like the dead flesh of chicken, cows, or pigs that people ordinarily eat. Jesus, however, was not talking about anything that was dead, but very much alive. In fact, it was, and is, his substance – not just flesh and blood, but also soul, divinity and will. In fact, the substance of Jesus that He gives us is everything that makes Him who He is. St. Augustine pointed out that with ordinary food, it becomes what we are – eating eggs does not make us more like chickens, but the eggs become what we are. With the extraordinary food of the Eucharist, however, we become what it is, viz., the very life of God (Easter Sermon 227).
This is advanced discipleship. We have to be very clear about where life in Christ is leading us. Basic discipleship means proclaiming the presence of God. Advanced discipleship means being the presence of God: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in Me and I in them.” Christ taking up space in us, Christ continually taking up more space in us is the life to which we are called. The oldest prayer in the Bible, the Shema(Deuteronomy 6:4-9) reflects God taking possession of the lives of the faithful so completely that He is the only thing on their minds, the only thing they ever talk about: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise….” The life to which we are called is one which points to God all the time, a life which is only possible when Jesus abides completely in us, and we completely in Him.
“In Him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” Paul the Apostle said of Jesus (Colossians 1:19). The fullness of God is pleased to dwell in us, too. That is where the food of the Eucharist is taking us – being the presence of God.
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