The Sign of the Loaves (IV): Eating the Flesh of Jesus

Proper 15, 13th after Pentecost; John 6:51-58

The discourse about bread after the miraculous feeding now takes a remarkable turn. Jesus has been urging the crowd to understand that he himself is the bread of life, who reveals and embodies God’s gift of eternal life and liberation, to which (or to whom) both the manna story and the recent miracle of the loaves had pointed. Now he takes the image in a more confronting and controversial direction.

This week’s Gospel begins with repetition of v. 51, a hinge between the section focusing on the true bread and Jesus’ foregrounding now of his own work and fate: “…and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” True bread is Jesus’ flesh, and it is necessary to eat that flesh, and to drink his blood, to have life—life which is eternal. This is participation in the enduring bread already spoken of, contrasted with the perishable bread of the two wilderness feedings.

Scholarly attention to this passage often centers on its relationship with the similar but not identical imagery in the stories of Jesus’ Last Supper as told in the other three Gospels and Paul, and on the Eucharist. John also has the story of a final meal, but has no narrative there of Jesus giving bread and wine as his “body” and “blood” to the disciples, and instead recounts their foot-washing by him. That absence combined with the remarkable language of this section have led some to think this is a kind of displaced account of the institution of the Eucharist. Others however have seen the contrasting treatments as a sign John is actually not so interested in sacramental or liturgical issues, or critical of some versions of a meal based on the Last Supper.

Yet this language about eating Jesus’ flesh and blood is not well understood by comparing it only with the Last Supper story. As a number of scholars have pointed out, parallels in ancient literature suggest the image of eating the teacher’s person or body is a symbol for the absorption of their message.¹ Some versions of this idea start from the less confronting idea of eating food that the teacher gives; this is a biblical image found in Isaiah and Jeremiah, and in the Proverbs reading that some will hear this week. Eating as a metaphor of learning, receiving, and following is prominent in those OT books that like Proverbs share in the tradition of reflecting on divine wisdom. And while Proverbs imagines wisdom as hostess offering a feast, in Sirach (aka “Ecclesiasticus”) the metaphor becomes one of eating and drinking wisdom herself: “Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more” (Sir 24:21).

So Jesus now offers himself as holy wisdom, not only as host but as food. To eat and drink him is to take divine truth into oneself, and to be one with her. This identification of himself with the wisdom of God also resonates with the Prologue (ch. 1) of John, where Jesus has already been presenteed as the eternal Word (Logos —also translatable as reason, and hence wisdom) through whom all things were made. This idea of an ancient creative wisdom also comes from the same OT literature, where wisdom is the means by which God orders and creates all things (see Prov. 8). To eat Jesus is thus to learn from him and obey him, hence to be transformed, but not just to learn and grow—it is to participate in the presence of God in the world.

What then of this flesh and blood imagery and the Last Supper, and the Eucharist? John probably knows the story of Jesus offering himself to the disciples as body and blood at the final supper, even though he does not tell it. There are various possible reasons for this omission. John’s chronology is less well suited to the traditional supper story, since he also does not depict the meal as a Passover—instead Jesus dines and then dies before the feast itself, and on the Cross becomes the paschal lamb (see 19:31).

“Wisdom has built her house,” detail; Russian icon, Novgorod 1548

Nevertheless John’s “body” language probably does relate to the Last Supper tradition too. Even though the passion story is still some distance away in time, it is never far off in John. So when Jesus now says that “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (v. 51) we should already be thinking not just of wisdom’s invitation to dine, but of his coming act of self-offering as the meaning of that banquet. Jesus’ death—his exaltation, for John—reveals the nature of the bread he offers, and which allows those who eat to participate in him, or to “abide,” as we read in v. 56.

While Jesus offers himself as wisdom to eat, this is not the wisdom the world knows, and certainly not simply knowledge in the usual sense. Already in the OT cases mentioned, wisdom offers not just edification but transformation. Now this means receiving God’s gift of self in Christ, and understanding just how that wisdom is imparted, demonstrated in the language of flesh and blood that hints at mortality. In a famous statement from later in the Gospel, during John’s version of the final meal, Jesus links his relationship with the disciples, their adherence to his teaching, and his imminent death in terms that also apply here: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (15:13-14).

And the Eucharist? This connection is rather less clear. While we can assume John’s community ate and drank a meal together in which they experienced Jesus’ presence, we are not sure whether the language of flesh and blood featured there in a particular way. The earliest eucharistic prayers that have come down to us focus on thanks to God for Jesus or for the meal itself, not on flesh/body and blood. For some years the Last Supper story was not featured in the way familiar from later forms of eucharistic prayer, even though it was known and understood to refer to these meals. To this extent some of the “eucharistic” readings of John 6 are less compelling.

It is a mistake to read the confronting invitation or demand to eat and drink Jesus’ flesh and blood primarily as a reference to receiving the Eucharist. Jesus invites the the crowd into a relationship with him, taking himself into themselves, to an intimacy often referred to in John as that “abiding.” Of course eucharistic celebration is part of that, but it would be better to take John’s text as a means of interpreting discipleship (including sacraments and liturgy) than reversing that process so that liturgy interprets this text. This is not about the Eucharist, but every Eucharist is about this. An authentically eucharistic reading of John 6 is that discipleship as a whole, including sacramental celebration, is participation in the wisdom of Jesus who offers himself for the life of the world.

If this is not quite a reference to communion, neither however is it just about faith in the sense often understood. The imagery of flesh and blood as food suggests both internalization and transformation. Jesus invites the reader to that “abiding,” a participation of one’s whole self, which subverts how we might tend to make following him into either purely interior belief or purely external ritual.

Flesh and blood point to Jesus’ life and death as the center of understanding, believing, abiding. This is not Jesus offering himself as a metaphor, but as a living person who gives his life for others. To eat and drink at wisdom’s table is to receive the difficult and precious gift of understanding who he really is, and hence who we really are too.

1. Meredith J. C. Warren, My Flesh Is Meat Indeed: A Nonsacramental Reading of John 6:51-58. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2015; Jan Heilmann, “A Meal in the Background of John 6:51–58?” Journal of Biblical Literature 137, no. 2 (2018): 481–500.