John 6:51-58 Commentary

Here we are in the homestretch of our time in John 6. Between this week and next you have your chance to say whatever has been left on the sermon cutting room floor about the flesh and blood of the Bread of Heaven.

As for me and these sermon commentaries, I feel as though we’ve been circling around a central idea over the last few weeks. Some famous preacher once said that each of us only has one sermon to preach and we just keep giving it with new tones and nuance. For me, that sermon is definitely about the possibility of having Christ alive in us through the power of the Holy Spirit already now.

So when I hear Jesus say, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me,” well, I hear God’s invitation to discipleship.

Jesus uses that significant word again, menō (abide or remain) to describe what we receive when we eat his flesh and drink his blood. It isn’t hard to see why so many of us ( ) see an allusion to the Lord’s Supper in this passage. The core message is the same because God’s purpose is the same.

And yet, the scope of our view is often narrowed by the Eucharist connection. Communion is not just soteriological, reminding us of our participation in Christ’s salvific work. Nor is it just eschatological, pointing us to the future of eternity at the heavenly banquet table. Communion, where we eat and drink the means of grace, is also a present-day calling narrative.

Throughout their conversation in chapter 6, Jesus and the people have been comparing manna to Jesus’s human body. Manna was a daily occurrence (minus the Sabbath day), eaten each day and not reserved only for a church special occasion. Most of us Protestants don’t participate in daily Communion, so what does that mean for what Jesus is saying here?

Eugene Peterson titled his 2006 book on the spiritual reading of Scripture Eat This Book. Drawing on the biblical and historical imagery of “tasting and seeing,” and of prophets like John who had tangible experiences that involved eating or witnessing others eating scrolls of Scripture, Peterson lays out the sort of thing that Jesus means here. Though Peterson is talking about Scripture, many of us recognize that the way we modern Christians will eat and drink Christ—alongside the sacrament of course—is through the Scriptures.

Peterson writes, “Eating a book takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives. Readers become what they read. If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God, it must be internalized. Most of us have opinions about God that we are not hesitant to voice. But just because a conversation (or sermon or lecture) has the word ‘God’ in it, does not qualify it as true. The angel does not instruct St. John to pass on information about God; he commands him to assimilate the word of God so that when he does speak, it will express itself artlessly in his syntax just as the food we eat, when we are healthy, is unconsciously assimilated into our nerves and muscles and put to work in speech and action.” (pp. 20-21)

Eternal, living, true food, blood and Bread from Heaven is a both/and thing. Eternal life is not just something that starts when we die. Jesus will raise us up on the last day, but he says we already have eternal life (the verbs in 54a and 56 are present tense)! Jesus further underscores the point: it’s just like his relationship with the Father. Notice the words he uses to describe it in verse 57; he uses active and present tenses to describe both himself and the Father as living.

So we eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to live and be with (abide) God. Period. Dallas Willard’s definition of discipleship brings Peterson’s point about eating Christ home: discipleship is living the life that Jesus would live if Jesus were living your life. As we become more like Christ we will live our lives more like how he would live them if he were us—by the Spirit the way we live as his people is “unconsciously assimilated into our nerves and muscles and put to work in speech and action.”

There are lots of other things that we can eat and drink and therefore abide with, making it all the more important that we are people in the habit of looking for the true bread from heaven to sustain our narratives, mindsets, habits and lifestyles—but more on that next week.

Textual Point

Last week we noted how the people grumbled or complained (v 41). This week they’re bickering with each other (v 51). Machomai is a strong word to use, often used to describe a physical fight. Are they becoming more frustrated with Jesus or are some of them starting to come around to Jesus’s message?

Illustration Idea

About a year ago a story made it on the news about a guy named Bryan Johnson. Johnson has devoted his body and substantial wealth to trying to reverse aging, spending upwards of $2 million USD per year as a unique human experiment. His Instagram tagline is “Death is our only foe.” The thing is, it requires a lot of discipline—the level of which most of us would say goes well past extreme. Johnson gets up at 5:30 AM and goes to bed at 8:30 PM; he doesn’t eat past noon. He takes 64 supplements in the morning alone, and has a medical room in his house where a team of doctors perform experimental procedures and tests on him. This seems more than fanaticism and the results are in his DNA, his muscles and his nerves and appear to be bearing fruit in his life expectancy.

Of course, this is not the kind of eternal life Jesus speaks of, nor is it a life of abundance and joy and discipleship to Christ. The drive to truly live a full and abundant life can be fuelled by only one thing. That one thing can transform every other task and habit so that they too become morsels of goodness that enrich our spiritual and physical lives, but that isn’t found in a pill or procedure. It’s found in the food and drink that is the living Christ.

Scott Hoezee has a sermon on the Day1 website available for listening this week on the gospel passage (sermon begins at minute 10:15):

https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/66b0c28a6615fbfe740000b1/real-food-rev-scott-hoezee-john-6-51-58