Spiritual Hiccups - Something to Eat

So we need something more than bread.  Even manna won't do, at least according to Jesus in the gospel of John.  One thing I've learned about reading John's gospel is that taking him literally usually leads you astray.  That's what happens with Nicodemus in the famous "born again" passage.  Nick hears "born again," the literal meaning of Jesus' words, which is why he asks about getting back in the womb.  But Jesus is talking about a spiritual rebirth, a birth "from above."  (Bible translators have to decide whether to put "born again" or "born from above" in this passage, but either call makes the conversation somewhat difficult to understand.)

And so when Jesus speaks of "eating his flesh and drinking his blood," it's a good bet that hearing him literally will lead us astray.  That his opponents do understand him literally is also a clear sign that we should not.  Allusions to the Lord's Supper are surely intended here, even though John's gospel does not include Jesus establishing this sacrament.  The fact that Jesus is "the Word made flesh" may also play into this.  God's wisdom, God's creative Word, is available to us in Jesus, who will "abide" in us.  And abiding is the same language Jesus uses to speak of the gift of the Spirit.

His flesh may also refer to the life he gives up on the cross, his saving death.  Here John Calvin makes the interesting observation that flesh, which is normally destined to die and decay, becomes, in Jesus, the source of eternal life. Jesus' fleshy human body, the very body that eventually fails each of us, becomes the way in which God becomes present to and in us.

I don't think I've begun to exhaust the many ways to hear Jesus' words on eating his flesh, words that are rather jarring at first glance.  And perhaps there is a good lesson here on sitting with Jesus' words a while rather than rushing to decide what they mean or what they report.  Literalist readings of Scripture fail us here just as Jesus Seminar type attempts to recover what the historical Jesus actually said.  New life in Jesus will not come from believing the Bible word for word or from distilling an accurate historical picture.  It will come from an encounter with the Word, the vital, living, creative, logos of God.  And this Word will never quite fit in the boxes we create for it.

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