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Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?" When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."
From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?" But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?" He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.
- John 6:60-71
In this week's reading, we are going through John, chapter 6. First, we began on Monday with the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness. The people followed Jesus to make Him king, but He eluded them. He sent His disciples by night back across the Sea of Galilee, and walked on the water to them in the middle of a tempest. When the people saw the disciples' boat gone, and themselves went to Capernaum and found Jesus there, they asked when He had arrived. There, He spoke to them about what they sought from Him. Jesus taught that they sought Him because they were fed. He said, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him." They asked, ""What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent." Moses gave the people manna, but "My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." He told them, "I am the bread of life." All that the Father has given Him should not be lost, but raised up at the last day. In Thursday's reading, Jesus said, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me." He told them, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." Finally, in yesterday's reading, we read that the leadership therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, 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 eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats 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 he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven -- not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever." These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?" When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you?" My study bible tells us that "even His disciples took Christ's teaching on His Body and Blood as a hard saying, and many of them departed from Him. the Lord Jesus is aware of the thoughts of men." Let us remember that these people hearing these words for the first time have no idea what will take place as the Last Supper, have not been introduced to a remembrance or Eucharist in this manner. They do not yet know of His sacrifice on the Cross. It tells us something about faith that these teachings are revealed and later they will come to be understood in a new and greater light.
"What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father." Here is a mysterious teaching, leading us to Mystery. Jesus' words are spirit and they are life, and it is the Spirit who gives life. If we are to truly understand, we must approach in relationship, in a place of true spiritual relationship -- we don't leave out any capacities of ourselves in this relationship but every part of us is included. That means even that deepest place that the Father touches, utterly mysterious to us, but in which even God the Father is somehow at work. To my mind, these words sum up a great message told in all the stories of John's Gospel, that by simply sticking to the material, the surface appearance and meaning, we will not understand Jesus nor our relationship, nor the meanings in His words. It is the Spirit that plays a role in all of it. His words live and are filled with life. St. Cyril of Alexandria has commented: "It is not the nature of the flesh that renders the Spirit life-giving but the might of the Spirit that makes the body life-giving. The words then that I have spoken with you are spirit, that, is both spiritual and of the Spirit, and they are life" (Commentary on the Gospel of John 4.3).
From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. The words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood cannot be understood without the spiritual life that is in them; they cannot be comprehended at all except by faith. They become a stumbling block to those who cannot accept them in this sense.
Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?" But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." John's Gospel repeats again the words of Jesus, this time spoken by Peter. It is Christ who has the words of eternal life. This is sign of Peter's understanding of the spirit and life in the words of Christ. If nothing else, that Peter (speaking for the rest of the disciples) understands. In Luke's Gospel, after the Crucifixion, we get another sense of what it is to hear these words when two disciples, after entertaining a Stranger on the road to Emmaus, say about Him, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"
"Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Peter confesses faith in Jesus, a recognition that He is the Christ. Elsewhere Jesus says that such confession is only possible through the revelation by the Father. My study bible tells us, "This confession of faith is a pivotal moment in the life of Peter and the disciples on behalf of whom he spoke."
Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?" He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve. Here is Jesus' foreknowledge of what is to happen. Many disciples have left, and He will be betrayed by one of the Twelve, chosen by Him.Again, there's a kind of mystery here; it's a partial revelation. It's something to put them all aware - but Jesus does not reveal who it is He speaks of.
John's Gospel continues to invite us to dig more deeply into our understanding. Perhaps the most illuminating passages of all are those in which Jesus tells us that it is the Spirit that gives life -- and that the words He speaks are spirit and they are life. How are we to understand this? We see the ones who continue with Him. There is the power of faith, drawn by the Father and drawn by the Spirit -- the same thing reflected in the "hearts that burned" on the road to Emmaus as they listened again to the words of spirit and life in the One whom they thought was a stranger. Faith, as John so cleverly tells us through the ways in which His Gospel is written, will draw us forward into things we don't know and don't completely understand, into the mysteries of God. If it is the Father who draws us to faith in Christ, and the Spirit who gives life in the words of Christ, then all of the Trinity is at work in our faith, and therefore in us -- somewhere in our hearts at depths we can't quite understand. That ties us in with something of which we must always be aware: that in a relationship of love in which our faith is deepened there is always the power of God at work. None of us gets there alone. To be participating in such a relationship of faith is therefore a gift of God, into which we are invited as intimately and as completely as is indicated by Jesus' teaching that He is the bread of life, and that to eat His flesh and drink His blood is to abide in Him. We are created by our Creator to be in union with Him. This is the opposite of a disparaging of our flesh and all our worldly lives; in fact, what Jesus is saying is that in the union of Father, Son and Spirit with us in faith then all things may become transfigured into the fullness of life that He promises. Let us remember that gift. May faith (which does not always have all the answers now) enliven and enrich your life, and draw you forward into its gift and promise of greater life in abundance.
