When you were in high school, did you have atheist friends who liked to point out that “the Bible is full of contradictions” or “man (it was ‘man’ in those days) made God in his, man’s own image” or “holy communion sounds like cannibalism” and other similar remarks? Well, adolescent atheists, and others, would find support for all three assertions in today’s Gospel, or they think they would. That being so, let us do our best to respond to these objections, and discern what else may be really going on in this passage, the 6th chapter of John’s Gospel, verses 56 to 69.
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” That’s as stark and plain a statement as any in Scripture, and its natural meaning, about the consuming of flesh and blood, is unavoidable. Having in mind the prohibition against consuming blood, it is doubly shocking. What can be meant here?
Jesus and his hearers have the Temple in mind, with its animal sacrifices and burnt offerings and so on. Jesus is referring to Passover, the time of the paschal lamb, another sacrifice, and he identifies himself with the Lamb, as we so identify him in our liturgy, the Lamb of God. Jesus expects to be offered and consumed like the Temple sacrifices, and he teaches his disciples to identify themselves with him and his sacrifice. Jesus goes further; he identifies his flesh with bread, the Bread of the Presence which is tabled next to the Holy of Holies, Bread which only the priests consume. There is a mix of images here: the Bread is the only offering in the Temple not burned, unlike the animal offerings, which are burned. So Jesus has moved from flesh to bread, from the old sacrifices to a promise of life in and through him. “Whoever eats me will live because of me...this is the bread that came down from heaven...the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
Jesus is pointing to the future, as much as he is expanding the meaning of the old sacrifices of the past. In the story, he is a living man speaking to other living people, anticipating the sacrifice of the Cross, the Resurrection, Ascension, and the life of glory in Heaven. Christ’s flesh and blood vibrate with divine life, far beyond any cannibalistic association with dead flesh. The flesh and blood of Christ communicate the life of his glorified presence in the divine world; it is not limited to his glorified body, but is extended to us and to the world, past, present, and future, in the bread and wine of the Liturgy. Christ extends his presence in us and in the world, in the bread and wine of the eucharist.
Did any of you catch the seeming contradictions in today’s Gospel? There are a few, or there appear to be. Jesus says in verse 57, “whoever eats me will live because of me.” But in verse 63 he says, “it is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Then apparently his words aren’t enough, for in verse 65 he says, “no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Now which is it: flesh or spirit or words or the Father? This was a problem for many disciples too; in verse 66, it says “Because of this [‘this’ is the required grant by the Father] many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Jesus at this point is left with the Twelve. He has apparently run off his disciples, most of them, with shocking and inconsistent remarks about what it takes to attain eternal life. What can we make of all this?
We can understand these remarks as describing stages or steps in the spiritual life, in a eucharistic form. We move from flesh to bread to spirit to the Father; the one who eats this bread is the one who allows the word and the spirit to open himself and herself to the presence...that is what the grant of the Father is, admission, so to speak, to the transfiguration of our earthly life into participation in the divine life...just as the divine Logos, the divine Word took on human nature in Christ, so we take in Christ, Christ lives in us in eternity. Flesh and blood are beginnings, early steps, as it were, in life in Christ. The disciples who turn back are those who can’t get beyond mere flesh. We disciples must allow ourselves to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before. When we do that, then the Father will grant that we come to Christ, that he will be present in us, and we in him, forever. Amen. (25.VIII.18. Adv.)
