“Those
who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:56)
Saint
John the Evangelist is doing it to us again. I think he must’ve had a great
sense of humor. Either that, or he knew Jesus had one. So often in John’s
gospel we get people talking at cross purposes like that old Abbott and
Costello “Who’s on First” routine[i].
In
the gospel lesson for Pentecost 14 (John 6: 56-69—mercifully the last of our
“Bread of Life” readings) people are really getting their shorts in a bunch
over Jesus’ statement about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. You have
to admit it sounds pretty icky, like something out of Silence of the Lambs.[ii] I think, however, that
John is having a little fun with this. You’ll note that in John’s version of
the passion story there is no mention of Jesus breaking bread and saying “This
is my body” during the Last Supper. Most smart Bible scholars think this is
because everyone in John’s community already knew about the Sacrament of
Holy Communion. His readers knew Jesus was talking about sharing the
sacramental meal which would commemorate his sacrifice on the cross; whereas
the uninitiated would think this was a reference to cannibalism. Yuck!
But
why is Jesus so insistent that we eat his body and drink his blood? There’s
Bruce Chilton’s explanation in his wonderful book, Rabbi Jesus[iii].
Chilton believes that the shared meal itself is a form of sacrifice purer than
the flesh and blood of animal sacrifice done on the burning altar of the temple
of Jerusalem. According to him, Jesus, because of his rather obscure parentage,
might not have been permitted to make sacrifice in the temple. So, what did he
do? He instituted a ritual in which everyone and anyone could take part—a
communal family meal.
But
what’s so “offensive[iv]”
or difficult about this? Obviously, the first thing is eating flesh and
drinking blood in the literal sense would be pretty distasteful to any pious
Jew who didn’t get that Jesus was talking about taking communion. But the meal
itself could also be a rather nasty thing in this culture.
When
we take communion, we know we’ve sinned and really need God. When we
take communion in church, we know everyone around us also needs God. But
we know and believe that Christ’s love from the cross promises forgiveness for
all of us. This meal, therefore, brings us together and makes us family. In
Jesus’ day, people wanted to be picky about who they ate with. They didn’t want
just anybody to be their family member. It must’ve felt kind of good to be able
to exclude people you didn’t like.
When
the flesh and blood of an animal was sacrificed in the temple, there was a
particular pecking order. Anybody could come into the forecourt of the building
and gawk and admire King Herod’s architectural marvel. If they had cell phones
back then they’d be taking selfies in front of the building and putting them on
their Facebook pages. But to get into what would be like the narthex,
however, you had to be Jewish. To cross inside into the place where the
sacrifice was made, you had to be a Jewish man (no women permitted). To
actually make the sacrifice and put the animal on the altar, you had to be a
priest, and to enter the innermost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, you
had to be the High Priest. It seems the whole society was about where you
ranked on the ladder of importance. It was about who was in and who was out.
For Jesus to invite people to the table—prostitutes, tax collectors, women,
etcetera—was to upset the order and create a scandal.
We
might also consider that lots of folks were just honky-snooky with things the
way they were. You go into the temple, you sacrifice a sheep, and God forgives
you all your sins. Simple. You’re not required to be in any kind of
relationship with anybody else. You don’t have to deal with anyone you don’t
like. Besides, what’s a temple for if not for appeasing God? If you can meet
God someplace else, what’s the good of having a temple? You can see why Jesus’
words were hard for some people to swallow. He was blasting a hole in their
cultural system—just like he does to ours today.
If
you add up all the hard and offensive stuff you see that Jesus is dismissing
the site of cultic worship, which would be pretty hard to take. We like our institutions,
and we don’t like change. To eat the flesh and blood Jesus offers means to
share it with other flesh and blood human beings, which means we’ll have to
form relationships, be willing to exercise empathy and forgiveness, and abandon
our ideas about where we rank in importance compared to others. You can see
that this wouldn’t be easy to do. It’s much simpler just to walk away.
But
then we hear good ol’ Peter asking that most important question: “Lord, to whom
shall we go?” Let’s just come to the table with all our fears and worries. Let’s
bring all our anger and all our doubts and all our disappointments. All our
guilt and all our need. Let’s know that everyone else is doing the same as we. In
meeting the flesh and blood sacrifice Jesus while encountering the flesh and
blood reality of our brothers and sisters we’ll find it’s not so hard after all.
Thanks
again for dropping by this week. Please come again.
[i] If
you’re too young to remember “Who’s on First,” just think of any episode of the
TV series Schitt’s Creek.
[ii] In
case you don’t know, Silence of the Lambs was a 1988 novel turned into a
successful film in 1991 about an FBI agent who has to deal with a deranged
killer who is also a cannibal.
[iii] See
Chilton, Bruce: Rabbi Jesus: The Jewish Life and Teachings that Inspired
Christianity. (New York: Image Books, 2000)
[iv]
The word in verse 61 translated as “offend” is, in Greek, scandalizei,
from which we get our word “scandalize.”
