BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life” John 6:22–27
Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” John 6:51 The Jews disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” John 6:52.
Many of the Jews found this discourse not only intellectually and religiously problematic but even nauseating. According to the Torah, Blood is the vital principal of life and belongs to God alone, and ought not be brought under the control of human beings.
In the Noah story, we find this divine directive: “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” Gen. 9:3–4
We find the same prohibition among the legal decrees in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy: “It shall be a perpetual statute through your generations, in all your settlements: you must not eat any fat or any blood” Leviticus. 3:17
“Only be sure that you do not eat the blood; for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the meat” Deuteronomy. 12:23
At the conclusion of this Eucharistic discourse, Jesus practically lost his entire Church: “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’” John 6:60.
MANY TURNED AWAY AND LEFT HIM John 6:66
If Jesus were speaking only at the symbolic level, why would this theology be hard to accept? If Jesus wanted to soften his teaching, to place it in a metaphorical or symbolic sense of the words he was using, this would have been the perfect opportunity
But in this case, Jesus didn’t spiritualize his rhetoric; just the contrary. He said, “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” John 6:53
Jesus boldly brings this real presence home in the crucial conclusion, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me” John 6:56–57.
The very earliest theology of the Eucharist is found in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, penned probably in the early fifties of the first century.
Paul speaks of the intense identification that is effected between Jesus and his Church precisely through the Eucharist: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” 1 Cor. 10:16.
.When “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” John 6:66. Jesus then turned to his inner circle, the Twelve, and asked, bluntly enough: “Do you also wish to go away?” John 6:67.
In response to Jesus’ question, Peter, as is often the case in the Gospels, spoke for the group: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” John 6:68–69.
IS PETER’S RESPONSE MY RESPONSE AS WELL?
THIS IS MY BODY TAKE AND EAT
THIS IS MY BLOOD TAKE AND DRINK