John 6:51-58
6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." 6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
6:53 So 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. 6:54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 6:55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 6:56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."
……………………………………………………………………………
The content of this section as many others in the Gospel of John is an obvious metaphor. As Methodists say, there is no explicit Biblical need for that, and it is occasionally also impossible, moreover even forbidden to take some verses from the Bible literally, but we have take them always very seriously. If the used metaphor is obviously intentional, then we have to examine the intention expressed behind that particular metaphor.
Jesus once warned the audience of the spiritual consequences of their deeds by saying in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18 that “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the eternal fire. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into the Gehenna of fire.”
If the disciples of two millennia would have taken this advice literally, then billions of people would have walked on Earth self-maimed and without one of the eyeballs or both. The odd but figurative speech was given by Jesus to make us understand that the eternal life in Heaven is at stake, when we brake the law by our deeds or our desires. Sometimes we tend to forget that even desiring is sinful, according to the Tenth Commandment which says that You Shall Not Covet.
In order to grasp anything from the Gospel of John, we have to understand that this Gospel is very different from the other three Gospels, as this one looks like as it was written explicitly for Gentile, Greek speaking Christians in the second century.
This Gospel tries to render an account of Jesus to meet the expectations of the educated Greek audience, seeking something explicitly mysterious.
In this Hellenic, ancient world their universe was filled with mysteries, divine secrets, oracles, semi-gods, imported angels and demons. In the late second century even the baptism with the long education and trials of the candidates, called catechumens, was deemed rather an initiation process into a new mystery cult, than the simple Jewish repentance ritual of John the Baptist.
Just as the Apostle Paul states in his letter to the Romans, chapter six, parallel with other Greek mystery notions that “don't you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism to death, that just like Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; … ”
Same thing happened with the Last Supper. It went through the transformation from the simplicity of the shared bread and the cup of blessing, to this mysterious Holy Communion of the broken body and the poured blood for many, the ritual of the Sacrificial Lamb. The idea was definitely based on the event of the Last Supper, but again it was also a figurative speech from Jesus, a metaphor.
While Martin Luther, having one of his feet still in the medieval Roman Church, kept insisting that concerning the Holy Communion believers must take Jesus’ figurative words literally, then the Reformers, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and the others, in the overwhelmingly important issue of the Holy Communion called the dispute over the sacraments, decided to remove the thrilling tinges of the Greek mystery cults from the Holy Communion, and they rendered it a Holy, Sacred, Remembrance Meal of what Jesus did for us. As it is also written that “do this in remembrance of me.”
In the temptation story, when Jesus had been fasting for forty days in the desert and became very hungry, we learned from the Gospel, that Jesus had the power to turn even the stones into bread in order to eat, but he refused to do so by famously saying that “ It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.’”
Thus, when he said in the Gospel of John that I am the living bread that came down from heaven, It is supposed to mean that He is the embodiment of the Word of God. As the earthly bread nurtures the body, so the word of God nurtures the soul, consequently the word of God is the bread of the soul.
It is very talkative that the Greek version of the Lord’s prayer, when we should spray for our daily bread, the Gospel really says that ‘give us the bread of tomorrow’, which is a Hebraism from the term of Olam HaBA which means the World to Come aka Heaven.
So, when we pray in the Lord’s Prayer for our daily bread, it is all right if we think that we pray and give thanks for the earthly bread to the Lord, who is the ultimate provider, but otherwise it should be also conscious in us that we are praying to the Lord that he may nurture us with the Bread of Heaven every day, which is the word of God. It is also talkative, that the Gospel of John begins with the statement that the THE WORD BECAME FLESH.
As his whole earthly life was the embodiment of the Bread of Heaven aka the Word of God, that is why Jesus was able to say that I will give this living bread for the life of the world, which is a true statement in itself, but also it is a metaphor, a parable, a simile, a figurative speech, to indicate the importance of the sacrifice he was ready to make and go through.
So (when) 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.
It is supposed to mean that whosoever is indeed not able to see that I perfectly keep God’s commandments, and that I am the embodiment of the Word of God, and they do not follow me, and they despise the Commandments, those will have a hard time to enter Heaven after this life.
To follow Jesus is not complicated. It does not require post-graduation studies at universities.
The commandments can be summarized into a single sentence that May We Be Good for the sake of the Love of God. May the Lord give us faith and strength to fight against all odds and all evil. May the Holy Spirit empower us to understand the parables, metaphors,the figurative speeches of Jesus that may we grow in compassion and kindness for the always greater glory of God, Amen.
