There are two very intriguing passages in the New Testament in which Jesus was ostensibly talking about food, though little more than that can be said with unanimous agreement. Enter, the ‘bread from heaven’ scene in John 6 and the institution of the Lord’s Supper in Matthew 26, Mark 14 and Luke 22.
Before we consider the passages in question, one challenging aspect of them is that discourse often devolves to a conversation about ‘what the meaning of ‘is’ is’, or ‘what is food, and what does it mean to eat?’
To the astute reader, who has in times past made expeditions to the fridge and pantry in search of tasty morsels, the mystery of what food is may seem to be a simple one. However, stay your hand from reaching too quickly into the cookie jar, because one uncontested proposition is that some of Jesus’ teachings were controversial, and you may in short order find something altogether different than cookies at the bottom.
Let us turn now our attention to the 6th chapter of John. It is one of those many instances in which Jesus uses material realities to talk about material and spiritual realities all at once, just like his warnings about the ‘yeast of the pharisees’ in Mark 8:15 (once again, Jesus had an expansive pantry of edible metaphors at hand, true ‘food for thought’, one might say).
From verses 25-34 Jesus compares ‘food that perishes’ from ‘food that endures to eternal life’. We all understand that ‘food that perishes’ refers to those cookies from earlier; simply, food. However, it would seem fair from the context to suggest that ‘food that endures to eternal life’ does not come from the fridge, pantry or stove, does not spend a few hours in the stomach, and is not expelled. Rather, it would appear that the thing that is most essential about food, that it sustains the person who eats it, is what he means. That is to say, ‘food that endures to eternal life’, or ‘the sustenance for a person that preserves their eternal life, not just their body’, is the food that Jesus was most primarily concerned with.
This idea is established earlier in John 4, where Jesus tells his disciples about ‘food they do not know about… [which is] to do the will of [God] and to accomplish his work’ after talking to the woman at the well about his ‘living water’.
Returning to John 6, it becomes clear that the bread talk is a sermon illustration for Solus Christus.
‘I am the bread of life. Your father ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.’
John 6:48-50
Seeing this is crucial: Jesus is making a ‘how much greater’ argument like the author of Hebrews does so many times. Jesus taught that true life, life with God, as the Bible calls it, eternal life, is to be found in feasting on the flesh of Jesus.
However, we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this eternal life, this justification, this grace, this is to be received only by faith, not by chewing. As we read in Ephesians, ‘for by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast’ (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Here is the thrust: Jesus, who calls himself the bread of life, the bread of God, must be feasted on by faith for each and every believer. It is not the physical act of eating that saves a man’s soul and brings him peace before the throne of God.
Verse 52 shows once again man’s inability to think in multiple dimensions, especially when the stomach is involved. The Jews disputed, saying ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Jesus replies ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ (v53b).
Their objection was to the impossibility of cannibalism, but Jesus didn’t stop to say, ‘oh why sorry, see of course I don’t mean eat in that sense, why yes of course you mustn’t try to remove my left arm and make it into a roast dinner’. He doubled down and said that his flesh is ‘true food’ and that his blood is ‘true drink’. The sacramentalist Christian traditions typically (but not always) take this and say, ‘see, he really did mean that when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper that the 100-value-pack of flatbread we bought at Aldi is actually his very flesh and blood, and that we must eat it for the imparting of grace, that we may be saved’.
This author once had a most enlightening dialog with some Lutheran believers who suggested (perhaps with a dash of anachronism) that the disciples incredulous reaction: ‘they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it”’, was because Jesus had been teaching the partial-transubstantiation that developed during and after the Reformation, which many with more Zwinglian or Calvinist tendencies would indeed find most troubling.
Au contraire, to say that Jesus’ body is true food is not to say that one must pick up the knife and fork to partake of it, but the opposite, that by tucking into a hearty Zinger Stacker Burger we are engaging with a symbol that reflects the way Jesus fills and satisfies his people. By means of Biblical analogy, Calvary is to Passover what Jesus is to bread: the fullness, fulfilment and antitype of something temporary, symbolic and typical.
As is the supreme desire of this author, let us direct our attention to the cross once more. At the Last Supper, Jesus took the cup and said ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ (Matthew 26:27b-28). It was not a cup of wine that bought the salvation of God’s elect, but the blood of Jesus. He passed them a cup of wine and invited them to drink from it, but far more importantly he endured the wrath of his Father on the behalf of all people past, present and future who would believe in him.
It is not bread that will truly sustain you, but Jesus. It is not wine that will bring you peace with God, but his blood spilled as he bore the punishment of the sin of his sheep. You are exhorted not to ignore so great a salvation, but to gladly receive it in faith, trusting that Jesus is a perfect saviour who will lose none of those the Father sends him (John 6:39). Eat, and be satisfied. Drink, and remember him until he comes.
Distilled Orthopraxy 