The Glory of Flesh-Feasting!

Well, I am feeling the tug to post again, but this week is so jam-packed with preparation for an upcoming retreat that I am unable to steal away to devote the time that a decent post takes. So I thought I’d share our latest from the Sun Valley Church blog, Sacred Metamorphosis. Enjoy!

“Gruesome Goodness”

Most of us don’t consider cannibalism as a valid form of nutrient-supply, do we? And rightly so! Not only is the thought of feasting on someone else’s flesh a gruesome, stomach-churning thought, but it’s immoral. And to restate the obvious: It’s just nasty.

Pastor John has been preaching through the Gospel of John for about a year now, and it has been an awesome study into the life and teachings of Jesus—not as He has been painted by the postmodern, post-Christian West, or by anyone else for that matter, but as He truly is—as the Scriptures portray Him. This week, landing in the latter half of John 6, we broached what could at first glance be misconstrued as the cannibalistic teaching of Jesus. Take a look:

“‘I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers 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. I am the living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘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. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.’ Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as He taught at Capernaum.” (Jn 6.48-59)

A number of things are happening here, as John (the pastor, not the Apostle) pointed out on Sunday:

1. Jesus is teaching people about the only way to eternal life—the Bread of Life. We are all headed for eternal condemnation and just punishment for our rebellion against God, and the only way this punishment does not happen is that we eat the Bread of Life.
2. Jesus is teaching that He is the Bread of Life. If we put this over against the previous observation and take it literally, we see that in order to have eternal life, we must eat Jesus! Whichever way you take it, this just sounds weird, so we look on….
3. The Bread of Life is necessary, lest we suffer condemnation—there’s no way around Christ should we long for life.
4. Jesus’s body is true food and His blood is true drink, which by proxy means that the food we eat every day—from Subway, the supermarket, or El Porton Mexican Restaurant—is not true food. (Consider that this food was given to us by God as a physical pointer to our need for the true food of Christ’s body and the true drink of His blood.)
5. Because we know that no one physically ate Jesus’s body or physically drank His blood, we must understand that Jesus was speaking metaphorically about the crucifixion of His body and the shedding of His blood in suffering the punishment of His children. (This is gruesome indeed, but in a different way than we immediately think of the first time we look at Jesus’s words in John 6.)
6. To eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood is to believe in Him, that His death on the cross for the sins of His people and His resurrection in overcoming death is fully sufficient for all who would come to Him in true belief. As Saint Augustine said, “Believe and you have eaten.”
7. When a person believes on Christ and takes Him as her Treasure for life, there is an ongoing, mutual indwelling that happens—a mystical union in which Christ lives in the believer (note that He lives in and through His people by the Holy Spirit, but the believer does not become Jesus; does not become God) and the believer lives in Christ (the basis for God’s seeing in His children the righteousness of Christ).

It is truly a glorious thing to eat the flesh of (believe in) the Son of God! It is the only way to true life and true satisfaction. Every other yearning—every craving, every appetite, even the fact that we have such a thing as appetite!—is meant to point us to this ultimate reality.

Have you feasted on Christ today? It’s a lifelong pursuit of joy, so by all means… come and eat.

(NOTE: If you have never feasted on Christ and would like to know more, please contact the Sun Valley Church office at 509.965.6800 and ask to speak to a pastor. Also, please join us at East Valley High School in Yakima, Washington on Sunday mornings at 10:30 am to learn more and be part of a community of people that are deeply interested in having and sharing this true life.)