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S. Pentecost 13.24 John 6:51-69

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘this is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’

And it remains a hard saying on so many levels!—our first verse, that is, where Jesus says: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The most basic level of difficulty with this saying is the apparent cannibalism involved in a literal partaking of the words.

This is probably not the time or place to go into how I was tricked by my son into watching “Bones And All” a cannibal romance that’s pretty tough to digest (see what I did there?). But upon reflection, maybe this is a good illustration of how easily we separate “says” from “means”? And besides; now you’re curious—if you don’t recall my telling this story a few months ago…

Chris (who lives in Chicago) and I were talking on the phone, watching NFL Red Zone as we often do. He’s a film buff. I heard him say “Bones And All” was a must-watch. There was a controversial official review at that moment on Red Zone, so I was only half listening, but I definitely heard “must-watch” meaning he’d seen it, and found it entertaining, enlightening, and evocative. But, Chris claims he’d only said it was on his “watch list” and that he hadn’t seen it and wasn’t sure he was going to…

Anyway, the first cannibal (of many!) we meet in “Bones And All” is a teen-age girl who chomps off a finger of a friend at a slumber party 10 minutes in—a scene I found so gruesome I would have turned it off at once, except I thought Chris said it’s a “must watch” and his film judgment is practically unerring, so I gutted it out (see what I did there, again ;-)? I called him the next day and said “Whoa! “Bones And All” was a tough watch! Surprised you got through it! And he went “Oh, I haven’t watched it. I said it was on my watch list, and wasn’t really sure I would watch it.”

Was I… gaslighted, maybe? Because that’s the sort of thing Chris would do, just to mess with me…

Jesus, also, likes to mess with us! I mean, just a couple weeks ago, with the storm on the sea and the stilling thereof, who do you think caused the wind and waves in the first place? OK!

But, you know, cannibalism remained a charge leveled against the early Christians well into the 4th century. So, the difficulty cannot be blamed solely on the sort of mishearing that Chris claims was my problem in interpreting his saying about ‘Bones And All’ correctly.

No, the difficulty is an old one with exactly how we interpret Jesus’ words. Should we always take them literally, and never metaphorically? So that: when Jesus says “I am the vine” it means sometimes he morphs into a grape vine? Or, when he says: “I am the door” that he is a non-metaphorical door? This was Zwingli and Calvin’s argument against Luther’s insistence that when Jesus says in the words of institution “this bread is my body” that ‘is’ means is: either it’s always metaphorical or always literal, never YES!!!

BUT—all the church fathers for 1600 years had not thought Jesus is a literal door or vine, yet they’d always maintained that the bread and wine in the Holy Supper are, quite literally his very Body and Blood. There are signals to the alert hearer in any discourse when someone is using metaphors and when they are speaking plainly. To say “I am the door of the sheep” is obviously a metaphor. But Jesus is also literally the door to heaven.“Is he being literal or metaphorical?” often gets a Lutheran YES!

But, in the Lord’s Supper, to say “this bread which you eat is my body,” simply makes no sense as a metaphor. If you were speaking metaphorically, you’d turn it around, like this: “My body is bread for the soul”. And St. Paul is quite clear in I Cor. 10 and 11 that the bread in the Holy Supper is a communion of the body of Jesus—that both are present at once in a real, though supernatural, manner.

Luther recommended we give the Gospels to a Jew or a Turk or any atheist and let them tell skeptics what Jesus means when he says “I am the vine and you are the branches” in one verse and “This is my body” in the words of institution. Any competent and alert reader can see the first is a metaphor and the second plain speech that presents a deep and confounding mystery. Besides; the witness of the church catholic is unanimous (till Zwingli and Calvin!) on these things.

But Luther goes on in his argument with Zwingli in 1529 to point out that the eating of the bread in the first verse of today’s Gospel is more metaphorical and not a direct reference to the Sacrament of the Altar (which would not be instituted for many months and which no one could have anticipated). Jesus speaks in a way such that a careful listener always grasps what he’s saying at the moment—and no hearer in John 6 could have been expected to think Jesus was talking about the real, though supernatural, eating of his body and blood in the Sacrament that didn’t, at that time, yet exist.

Luther’s insistence that Jesus is not speaking directly of the Lord’s Supper in John 6 has irked many modern Lutherans. They would prefer that any reference to eating Jesus’ flesh always be sacramental, never metaphorical, fearing that a Lutheran YES!, opens doors to a metaphorical eating of Jesus’ flesh which might open (a too literal 😉 door to Calvinism.

BUT… Jesus doesn’t say “the bread that I will give for the life of the word is my body” but rather says here “is my flesh”. Those are two different Greek words!: σωμα is the Greek word for body Jesus uses in the words of institution. σαρξ: the different Greek word that Jesus uses in John 6, means flesh.

When Jesus says “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” he’s speaking both metaphorically and literally. He will literally give his flesh into death on the cross to take away our sins and give eternal life to the world on Good Friday. But, “to eat this bread” is a metaphor for faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Later though, in vs. 63 when Jesus says “it’s the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all,” he’s (contra-Zwingli) quite obviously not speaking of his flesh given on the cross for the life of the world but of our flesh when it is not possessed by the Holy Spirit, but goes the way of unbelief. Let the reader understand!

The trick (if there is one 😉 is: to just let art flow over you! Don’t overthink it, but simply receive the bread of heaven as beggars after all who, in Jesus alone, find the Peace surpassing all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.