August 19, 2012 · John 6:61–66

Dine on the Divine

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe."

“The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life — it is the words of Jesus he is asking them to eat! Peter confesses "You have the words of eternal life." This bread, this wine, that brings eternal life is ultimately linked to, and identified with, the Word of God which gives eternal life. Jesus is the Word of God, as John 1 declares, and when he gave his life on the cross, he was giving his flesh and blood for our eternal life. But his teaching during his life was also part of his being the Word of God. It is the entirety of the life and ministry and death and resurrection of the Word of God Jesus Christ that brings life, and we need to be in that Word. We need to meditate on what it says to us. How his flesh and blood appearance amongst us gives all of us the chance to live forever in newly minted bodies, and so we need to think about how we can take what Jesus says seriously. Because he was dead serious. We need to eat his flesh. How then do we practically eat his flesh and drink his blood? Actually, we feed on Jesus in so many ways — in basking in the presence of his Holy Spirit — in praying with him — in taking in the Eucharist and literally eating his bread and wine and feeding on his flesh, and yet these are all linked to the Word of God. First because Jesus is the Word of God. He is the living speech of the Divine. He is the expression of the eternally hidden and mysterious unknown God. He is the Unknown God made known, and so when we eat the Eucharist, first of all we repeat his very words — we say the words of Jesus when he told us to do this in remembrance of him.”