Lent Day 17: Feasting on the Messiah
Jesus says some startling things. "You must be born again." (Impossible physically; John 3.) Then in John 6, he offers another impossibility, humanly speaking.
"You must feast on me - Eat my body and drink my blood." What?!
He's not advocating cannibalism. That much is certain. But he insists on his uniqueness as God's chosen messenger, the Messiah who will save the world.
How? By dying so that those who believe on him will have a spiritual feast. They will be nourished by the Living Bread, Jesus himself. Read what Jesus says and how people respond. He gets pretty much the same reaction today:
Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.’
> Jesus makes a big promise. He is bringing spiritual life and nutrition from God himself - to all those who feast on what he offers.
> So do his listeners and disciples cheer? Um ... no.
> Deifnitely not! It sounds strange. It's difficult to understand. Suddenly their whole-hearted support for a king who can miraculously feed them (earlier this chapter) dissolves. They grumble.
At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I came down from heaven”?’
‘Stop grumbling among yourselves,’ Jesus answered. ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: “They will all be taught by God.”[d]Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live for ever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’
Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live for ever.’ He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
> Even his disciples struggle to comprehend what Jesus is saying.
> So Jesus explains further. He is explicit about what it takes to have a relationship with God. His Father in heaven must create both the desire and the means of salvation. He will be broken and poured out for us.
> Now - like then - people balk at what Jesus says. Many - may most of us - prefer to choose how we save ourselves, don't we? Something less bloody. Something nicer. But Jesus will be flogged, beaten, and crucified. He doesn't shy away from the ransom price for us.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you?Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.
'The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life.Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’
For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.'
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. [John 6:35-66]
> Jesus makes bold claims that we cannot fully understand. Yet in the same way that scientists and researchers keep looking for new and deeper answers to questions, so we must do the same with spiritual things.
