ONE FLESH
John 6:56-69
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 21), Year B
Analysis by Fred Niedner
56“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” 59He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
60When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 61But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? 62Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. 65And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away” 68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
“The Word made flesh, by giving his flesh away, drank the cup we all must drink and became one flesh with his betrothed, his bride, his beloved – the whole family of flesh that has always been his Father’s beloved, for whom and to whom the Father handed over this only-begotten Word made flesh so that the world of flesh and blood creatures might not perish, but have eternal life.”
DIAGNOSIS: So Much That’s Hard to Swallow
Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Nonsense
Jesus talks in riddles and circles. “Eat my flesh, drink my blood, and you’ll live forever,” he said while teaching in a Capernaum synagogue. But he also said the flesh is useless, and only spirit gives life. (Which is it, Jesus? Worthless? Or capable of giving life eternal?) Those who heard it murmured. Others surely scratched their heads. Who wouldn’t? It’s crazy talk. Say this in a synagogue or church today and see how quickly you’re in the bishop’s office, and very likely on meds.
We don’t hear this in some ancient synagogue, however. As the late New Testament scholar Robert H. Smith reminds us (Wounded Lord: Reading John Through the Eyes of Thomas; Cascade Books, 2009), we hear these things not in Capernaum, months or even years before the crucifixion, but from the crucified and risen Christ, the one who stood among the bewildered disciples in their locked hideaway with his forever ruined hands and said, “Peace be with you.” Soon after, he offered Thomas his hands and said, “Put your finger here.”
He was flesh and blood, but not just any flesh and blood. He was “the word – God’s word – made flesh.” Moreover, it was genuine human flesh in which he walked about – easy as paper to fold, spindle, and mutilate, with perfectly spillable blood. He had a body, was a body. And if you have trouble believing that, consider what we saw when the Son of Man ascended to where he was before. And where was that? He ascended (was exalted and glorified) precisely cross-high, on Golgotha. (All “Son of Man” talk in John’s gospel is coded crucifixion talk that tells of the one “handed over,” “lifted up,” or “glorified.”)
Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): The Trouble with Flesh
And that’s why we have such difficulty believing that flesh and blood, whether in meal form or simply word salad, can or will give us any more than one more day’s survival. The trouble with flesh is that it perishes. Indeed, even to eat it, we must first kill it. To have life one must take life. We can’t trust flesh and blood to endure or preserve us in a creation or universe where flesh and blood promises to consume us, too, if only to prolong its own life by a few more minutes. “Give me flesh or give me death.” (Brutal reality makes that our motto. Even vegans must consume living, if non-sentient, organisms.) Unfortunately, we get both. We eat and we die. We cannot trust flesh to save us from death. Not even The Word made flesh.
Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem): Done. Undone. Dead as a Doornail.
Just look at him hanging there, perfectly killable flesh and blood nailed to a post, hung up between heaven and earth. Well, at least now his feet no longer touch the ground. That’s a start. He’s exalted finally, cross-high, enthroned and weirdly glorified. But his flesh is going nowhere. He may give up, hand over, or even send out his breath and spirit, but his flesh is stuck for good. Soon it won’t even quiver. The same goes for ours. That alone, finally, puts an end to our grumbling and murmuring. The Word made flesh is dead. And so are we.
PROGNOSIS: Becoming One Flesh
Step 4: Initial Prognosis: (Eternal Solution): The Promise of Flesh That’s Handed Over
We died murmuring, “Told you so!” With his last breath, he cried out, “It worked!” In what did he think he had succeeded by dying like this? For what it’s worth, he’d made promises, as had John the Baptist, about what his being “lifted up” cross-high would accomplish. John said he would become the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), and the way John’s passion narrative works, Jesus does die as the perfect Passover lamb (and thus something made of flesh that gets eaten). Jesus said he would “draw all people to himself when lifted up (12:32), and when he asked for and received a drink at noontime on that “good Friday,” he finally got what he’d asked for but didn’t receive at the well, also at noon, back in John 4, as part of a story of a betrothal that was never finished. Until now that is, when the Word made flesh, by giving his flesh away, drank the cup we all must drink and became one flesh with his betrothed, his bride, his beloved – the whole family of flesh that has always been his Father’s beloved, for whom and to whom the Father handed over this only-begotten Word made flesh so that the world of flesh and blood creatures might not perish, but have eternal life. And then he raised him. One more time, the Son of Man was lifted up.
Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Trusting and Entrusting
Flesh is indeed useless, it profits nothing, until it’s given away. That is what Jesus, the Word made flesh, did with his. All he had that was finite and fragile and cried out for protection and preservation he gave away, handed over. And in so doing he gave his life so that those who received his flesh and blood could live, and not merely for another day, but could live and share his life, the life eternal. He entrusts his life to us. We have become one flesh with him, The Word made flesh. Again, the words of Robert H. Smith: “We miss the meaning of faith and life unless we take this wounded, but forever-living Christ, deeply into our lives, like food and drink, so that he becomes bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” (Wounded Lord, p. 71).
Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): Dying His Death, Living His Life
When we are baptized and born anew, or when we baptize others into the body of Christ, we hear the promise that no matter where we might find ourselves or end up, even should that be hell, even there that wounded Lord will be there for us with those ruined hands and his word of peace. God keeps that promise by handing us over, giving away our flesh – that is, our time, our strength, our patience (sometimes including the last shreds of it), our compassion – to those who need it. In the end, flesh avails nothing until it is given away. For love. Then it becomes the Word made flesh. Yes, even ours.
