NOTES for Joh 6:46-54

It is no surprise that Jesus' words about His blood and His flesh, which He would give those who believe in Him to eat, left His listeners bewildered and then grumbling. They saw Jesus as an ordinary man, since traditional Jewish ideas not only about prophets but also about the Messiah assume that the matter concerns ordinary people whom God calls at some point in their lives to a special ministry; after that calling, the person becomes what God wants him to be, whether a prophet or the Messiah. And human flesh and human blood were associated for them not even with murder, but with something far worse: human sacrifice, which from the point of view of the Torah is not only murder and defilement, but also the worst kind of idolatry.

Meanwhile, when Jesus addresses His listeners, He speaks of something that should have been clear to them, at least on the level of symbol or allegory. Flesh and blood were, in both Hebrew and Aramaic, symbols of life, of the life force every person carried within himself while he was alive. Of course, if this had concerned an ordinary person, such a statement, even understood allegorically, would have left many questions. How can one person give his life to many people, perhaps even to an entire nation? How is that possible? And what will remain for the one who gives it away?

But if we remember the fullness of God that Jesus bears in Himself, the fullness of the life of the Kingdom by which He lives, everything falls into place and becomes clear. He can truly give each person His life, and nothing is diminished in Him by doing so: the life of the Kingdom is as infinite as the fullness of God, of which it is a projection into the created world. And everyone who enters the Kingdom truly shares with Jesus His life, which He willingly and joyfully shares with each person. He shares it so that the Kingdom will not remain His possession alone, but will truly enter the life of those who seek it. And so that at the end of time it will enter the world completely and be revealed in it in all its fullness, cleansing the world from sin and transforming it.

How can He give us His Flesh to eat? This question, put to Christ by the Jews, can serve as a measure of how incredible and incomprehensible the miracle of the Eucharist is. Of course, it is impossible within the bounds of human logic. Impossible because these words cannot be understood literally. Impossible because this contradicts the letter of the law. Most importantly, it is impossible because, if we are to eat Christ's Flesh, He will have to die. All these “impossibilities” are what astonish both the Jews and all the rest of humanity.

But by His will God brings into being whatever He desires. “Let there be light,” God says—and light comes into being. “Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven”—and the lights come into being. It is important to accept that Christ's words, “This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day,” and “Take, eat...” are words of the same kind: they express the will of the Creator, which nothing has the power to resist.

Reading the Gospel according to John, a normal person should almost constantly be in existential shock. Who is this Man? A violent madman? A maniac? Who is He to proclaim such a thing as the norm of life?

Or let us admit for a minute that all His words are true and that He is God and Savior. What kind of God is this, calling people to cannibalism, offering Himself to be eaten, saying that the condition of salvation is His blood, which must be drunk? If He is a man, He is sick. If He is God, how are we to understand His words? What does He want from us?

Always one thing, and the comparison with cannibalism can help us. A person begins to eat his own kind when hunger has already driven him mad, when the thirst for life in him is such that nothing can stop him. Jesus tells us that this is exactly how we must thirst for union with God, filling ourselves completely with Him alone and forgetting everything else. From the outside this will, of course, look like madness, like something strange and improper. But God, who came to die for us, says that life is possible only if this insatiable hunger is satisfied.

Most of the time, a normal person is going to be in an existentialist shock after reading the Gospel according to John. Who is this Person? Raving mad? A maniac? Who is he to proclaim such a thing as standard of life? Or shall we admit a minute that all his words are truths. He is the God and the Rescuer. Who is this God who calls up to cannibalism, proposing himself as food, saying that the condition for salvation is his blood, which is necessary to drink? If he is a person, he must be sick or gone mad. And If He is God, then how to understand His words? What does He want from us? Always one thing, the comparison with cannibalism can help us here. The person begins to eat people similar to him, when he becomes already crazy of hunger, when the thirst of life in him is such as nothing can stop him. Jesus tells us we have to be thirsty of the relation with God effectively the same way, fill ourselves completely only with Him and forget about everything. It will of course be perceived from outside as madness, as something strange and indecent. But the God, Who came to die for our sake, says that life is possible, only if we satisfy this insatiable hunger.

If we were not so used to these words of the Lord Jesus, we would probably repeat after the bewildered disciples: "What strange, frightening words!" He had just been speaking about the heavenly bread that comes down from heaven and satisfies everyone who partakes of it, and now it turns out that this bread is Jesus Himself, and that believers are to "chew His flesh" - these frightening, harsh words are softened by the Russian translation. And immediately the Lord tells the troubled disciples that His words are spirit and life, that it is the Spirit who gives life, and that "the flesh is no help at all" (63).

We already know that the central message of John's Gospel is that "the Word became flesh," and that faith in the bodily coming of God's Son gives people eternal life. On the other hand, the very description of the breaking of the loaves - "having given thanks, He broke and distributed," and the gathering of the leftovers from the meal - connects the reader with the breaking of bread at the Last Supper. In this way the evangelist binds together faith in the flesh of the Son of God, the eternal life given by the Spirit, and the eucharistic meal that nourishes the faithful.

Today's Gospel reading continues the discussion of how an encounter with Jesus is a mystery hidden in every person's heart. In today's reading Jesus tells us how this happens. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Thus it is not only, nor even primarily, the human being who seeks God: it is God who seeks the human being. C. S. Lewis put it this way: “You would not have called to Me unless I had been calling to you.” We come to Jesus after hearing God's voice in our heart. Moreover, Jesus says that the one who comes to Him has “learned from the Father.” Even before a person has come to faith, communion with God may already have begun in that person's heart. The Lord teaches us even when we do not realize it.

Christ called Himself bread, and that alone was hard for His listeners to understand. But for those who remembered the unusual images characteristic of prophetic speeches, it would not have been hard to take the words about bread as one of those parables. Jesus says that His teaching, and He Himself, are as necessary as daily food - why not agree with this?

Such an understanding cannot be called wrong, and yet it is clearly insufficient. For twenty centuries already, for many people who accept Christ only as a sage and moral teacher, His words about Flesh and Blood have remained closed and incomprehensible - just as they were for many of His listeners then. It is enough to imagine a Jew who had firmly learned that the law of Moses not only forbids the eating of blood, but also regards everything connected with bleeding as defiling and requiring rites of purification. And suddenly he hears about the necessity of drinking blood, and human blood at that, and moreover the Blood of this strange preacher. Even for prophetic allegory such a call sounds excessively scandalous!

For us, reading the Gospel many centuries later, it is easier to see that Christ is speaking here about the Eucharist; but we should not stop there. The meaning of the Eucharist is deep and incomprehensible in its fullness. At times it is useful to remember how shaken the ancient Jews were when they first heard Jesus' call to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Perhaps this will help us feel anew what the Last Supper was for the first generation of Christ's disciples. Unlike the other evangelists, John does not mention the disciples' partaking of the Body and Blood at the Last Supper. But the words of the Savior that he has preserved for us are just as important for understanding the essence of what was taking place then.