June Trinity
John 6: 53-69
Jesus answered, ‘Yes I tell you, if you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time. For my flesh is the true sustenance, and my blood is the true draught. Whoever truly eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. As the life-bearing Father sent me, and as I bear the life of the world by the will of the Father, so also he who makes me his sustenance will have life within him through me. This is the bread which descends from heaven. It will no longer be as it was with the fathers who ate of it and died. Whoever eats this bread will live through the whole cycle of time.’ He said this in his teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Many of his disciples who heard this said, ‘These are hard and difficult words; who can bear to hear them?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples could not come to terms with this and he said to them, ‘Do you take offense at this? What will you say when you see the Son of Man ascending again to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the physical by itself is of no avail. The words that I spoke to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who have no faith.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. And he went on: ‘This is why I said to you: No one can find the way to me unless it is given him by the Father’.
5th June Trinity
June 19, 2016
John 6: 53-69
Throughout the history of human thought, there has always been a battle of meanings: the literal vs the poetic; fact vs fiction; real vs imaginary. Especially today we tend to see these contrasts as mutually exclusive. Either something is real, or it isn’t.
The event we read about today comes after Christ’s feeding of the five thousand, when He imbued bread and fish with the life force from the stars. In today’s reading He insists that He will go further. He will offer his body and blood to be eaten. It must indeed have seemed a strangely dangerous saying to his listeners, and perhaps at first blush even to us. To literally eat someone’s body and blood is taboo, repulsive. Yet what Christ is saying at this moment is prophetic. Only after the Last Supper will they become literally and safely true. For then Christ infuses the forming power of his body into bread. He pours the living essence of his blood into wine. And thus ordinary literal food becomes his flesh and blood – not only poetically, but also factually. Opposites are reconciled. Spirit and matter are combined into communion, so that humankind can continue to exist and develop into the future. For whenever the Last Supper is re-enacted, He is present.
‘Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time,’ He says.* A beautiful fact, and a real promise.
*John 6: 54
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