According to John 6:53-69 [NLTse]
53 So Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. 54 But anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. 55 For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 56 Anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. 57 I live because of the living Father Who sent Me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 I am the true bread that came down from Heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever.”
59 He said these things while He was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
60 Many of His disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”
61 Jesus was aware that His disciples were complaining, so He said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what will you think if you see the Son of Man ascend to Heaven again? 63 The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But some of you do not believe me.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning which ones didn’t believe, and He knew who would betray Him.) 65 Then He said, “That is why I said that people can’t come to Me unless the Father gives them to Me.”
66 At this point many of His disciples turned away and deserted Him. 67 Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you also going to leave?”
68 Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. 69 We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”
[Preach from behind the Lord’s Table]
In the middle of the 16th century, during the brief five-year reign of Queen Mary I of England – whom history has sometimes called, “Bloody Mary” – 288 Protestant Reformers were burned at the stake. Of these, one was an archbishop, four were bishops, twenty-one were clergymen, fifty-five were women, and 4 were children. Why were they burned by the Roman Catholic Queen? There was one central issue: The meaning of the Lord’s Supper.
Here are the words of Anglican Bishop John Charles Ryle to explain: “The doctrine in question was the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated elements of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. Did they, or did they not believe that the body and blood of Christ were really, that is corporally, literally, locally, and materially, present under the forms of bread and wine after the words of consecration were pronounced? Did they or did they not believe that the real body of Christ, which was born of the Virgin Mary, was present on the so-called altar so soon as the mystical words had passed the lips of the priest? Did they or did they not? That was the simple question. If they did not believe and admit it, they were burned.
I share this history of the martyrdom of those who denied that the physical body of Christ was really there in the form of bread and wine to show that there was once a time when the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper carried meanings that were very important: Worth dying for! And some thought, worth killing for…
Let’s open our Bibles to the passage Joe just read, or, if you’re already there, look with me at those first verses, 53-58…
Jesus is speaking here about His upcoming sacrifice: The Gospel of John does not include Jesus’ dialogue about the Passover bread being His body and the Passover’s Cup of Salvation being His blood the way the other three Gospels do. No. As far as John was concerned, it was during this sermon while Jesus was preaching in Capernaum, that Jesus best made clear the fullness of the meaning of the Passover meal, that He best made clear what He was going to accomplish on the cross, and that He best made clear what would actually be taking place when His followers and brothers and sisters – for centuries to come, even through to today – would be doing when celebrating “Communion”, “Eucharist”, “the Lord’s Supper”. According to John, the Lord Jesus made all that clear here in this sermon even better than He had when He’d told them about it around that Passover table!
John the Baptist called Jesus, “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world”. Though it’s a foreign idea to us today, those listening to Jesus preach in the congregation at Capernaum that Sabbath knew that when you offered a sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem that part of offering your sacrifice was eating the part of the sacrifice the priest gave back to you, as a part of your participation in the sacrifice.
As we’ve already said, Matthew, Mark, and Luke record Jesus’ words during the Passover celebration saying of the Passover bread and cup, “This is My body; this is My blood”. And though Jesus is not referring to the Passover Feast here but to the sacrifices offered at the Temple in Jerusalem, even so, likewise He is calling His disciples to eat Him and drink Him… Only if we eat of Him, only if we drink of Him, He says, can He be our sacrifice, can we participate in His sacrifice and have the fullness of His saving work applied to us.
Now, I’m going to pause for a second here because Jesus seems to pause here. And I want to invite us to wrestle for a second with what Jesus first laid before those worshipers in Capernaum that day, and, by the Holy Spirit, what He lays before us today: [Pick up the bread and the cup] We are not eating bread or drinking grape juice here. I mean, we are, of course. But ultimately, if we have trusted in Jesus Christ and are living our lives for Him, by the Holy Spirit we are eating of His sacrifice and we are drinking of His sacrifice. That’s how we participate in His sacrifice: We share in it by eating the portions the priest gives back to us. And Jesus, our great High Priest, has given back to us this bread and this grape juice. (Or unfermented wine, some have called it.)
So I ask you: When you are served the bread, are you eating the sacrifice Jesus became for you on the cross? When you are served the unfermented wine – the grape juice – and we lift it up into the air, saying, “L’chaim! To abundant Life!” are you drinking the sacrifice Jesus became for you on the cross?
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Let’s look at the next section of our reading: Verses 59-65…
After dropping this crazy, cannibalistic-sounding bombshell on His followers, only then does Jesus make clear that He’s been talking about spiritual things and not physical things with what He’s been saying. “The Spirit gives life,” He says, “the flesh means nothing.” So it’s not the physical eating of lamb parts, or eating Jesus’ arm or leg, or even eating bread or wine that means anything. What gives life – true, everlasting life – is the spiritual realities these parts and pieces we are eating symbolize!
Why were Protestants martyred by Queen “bloody” Mary? Because they believed the bread and wine to be physical symbols of spiritual grace!
And, just so! The Lord Jesus is making clear here that He’s talking about spiritual things, because only spiritual things can truly give life! But of course, He says, a person must believe these things to be true in order to obtain the abundant, eternal Life they produce. And He makes clear that it’s only the Father Who grants people that kind of faith, the faith to trust in, and live for, Jesus Christ…
And again, let’s stop here, because Jesus seems to, again, have stopped here.
During that first part He said that His flesh was real food and that His blood was real drink. And here in this second part He’s said how that can be so, because it’s not about the bread or unfermented wine, it wasn’t about the bull or the lambs or the goat parts those Temple worshipers offered and ate to participate in, either. Physical things can’t produce the abundant, eternal kind of Life the Father is offering us in Jesus Christ! There’s a spiritual reality going on behind the scenes in this bread and cup we give thanks for and ask the Father’s blessing on. We see bread and wine or juice, but in the heavenly places the angels (and the demons, grinding their yellow teeth about it, I’m sure) they see Jesus’ sacrifice: The Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world!
So I ask you: Once you’ve eaten this bread, after you’ve drunk from this cup, do your sins still worry you? Do you think your sins still separate you from God? If you’ve truly participated in a sacrifice for sins, that cannot be! So I ask you: Once you’ve eaten, after you’ve drunk, do you know your sins have been forgiven? Do you know that you’ve been washed – for today, for all eternity! – white as snow in the eyes of God?
Isn’t that worth dying for? Isn’t that worth living for?
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