Eternal Life Right Now – John 6:51-58

A text – John 6:51-58

6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 6:54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, 6:55 for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 6:56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. 6:57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

A reflection:

The gospel lesson this week continues the theme of “bread.” In this passage of John chapter 6, Jesus gets very physical about giving his flesh for us to eat, and he says that those who don’t eat it have no life in them. Is Jesus just being metaphoric, saying that “eating him” is like sitting at his feet, learning from him, following him? Is he using the words eating and drinking to mean “taking it all in” (sort of like eating or drinking)?

Well, Jesus was trying to provoke the Jewish religious leaders. So the stranger his speech, the more they challenged him and really started talking. But perhaps he truly meant eating and drinking him and his ministry. He even uses the verb “gnaw on” (we still usually just translate it “eat”). He was getting physical and provoking conversation.

A British theologian, Robert Hoch, writes that one of his teachers, Raymond E. Brown, likes to say that in the gospel of John, Jesus teaches us that God doesn’t wait until the “next life” to give us eternal life. God gives us that gift the moment we believe in Jesus. And that gift of eternal life keeps us together with God from that moment of believing, right through our death, and into the next world. It becomes part of our being, our lungs and our blood and our stomach, just as food becomes part of us the minute we eat it. Our whole self participates in believing, from that moment, just as our whole self participates when we eat something. What we eat breaks down to the cellular level and becomes part of our cells. When we believe, in that very moment we are no longer separated from God but eternally united with God, right down to the cellular level.

What a thought. Our bodies as well as our spirits become part of the life of God, and death can never separate us, because we are always with and part of God. It makes the idea of death as our final ending absurd. Death breaks us apart from our earthy friends, but since our very cells are lodged in God, we just enter the new world before our earthly friends do, tied as we are to God and pulled through the transition by God. Carried into the full form of the Kingdom of God by a loving parent, as if God were our mom carrying us to our bedroom when as 4 year olds we might have fallen asleep in front of the TV. Jesus promises that we are his and united with him the moment we believe, as he said to one of the thieves on the cross: “Today you shall be with me in paradise.” How completely God loves us!

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us the gift of eternal life as part of our physical being in this life and the next. Thank you for being our loving parent, shepherding even our transitions. Help us to remember we never need be afraid. You are with us in every way.  Amen.