John 6:51-58 (NRSV)
“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.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 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. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This 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.”
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"In 6:51-58, two different Greek verbs for “eat” occur a total of 8 times. The more common of the two, phagein, is used 158 times in the NT; it’s used 15 times in John (four times in this passage; vs. 51, 52, 53, 58). The more rare form, trogein, is used only 6 times in the NT, four of the occurrences here in this passage (vs. 54, 56, 57, 58), with the other two having a negative impact: Mt. 24:38, describing the eating of the people before Noah; and John 13:18, a reference to Judas’ eating next to Jesus at the Last Supper. The lexicons make John’s choice of words here even more shocking as they allude to the fact that trogein is generally used of animals gnawing audibly on their food. It would seem to be a choice of words for “eat” to convey a more ‘primitive,’ i.e., less prim and proper, form of eating, the kind that might shock the majority of diners when dining “in good company.” Is it too much to translate it here as “gnaw” of “chew”?
"In N.T. Wright’s Kingdom New Testament, he translates the first instance of trogein (v. 54) as “feasts upon,” and then the subsequent three again as “eat.” Perhaps to capture the flavor of animals eating, an alternate translation could be “feed upon.” Here’s Wright’s translation of v. 54 with the further modification: “Anyone who feeds upon my flesh and drinks my blood has the life of God’s coming age, and I will raise them up on the last day.”"
- Paul Nuechterlein, from Exegetical Notes for this text on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 15B (link in comments below)
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"I see Jesus’s use of a more crude word for “eat” - trogein, which I translate as “feed off” - as a cue that he is challenging his listeners on their sacrificial thinking. He means to stir up in them the offensive thoughts of cannibalism because he has come to challenge them to give up all vestiges of sacrifice - most especially, the wrathful, punishing god who demands it. His listeners think themselves above cannibals, but their sacrificial thinking is as deadly as ever. Jesus will eventually let himself be their sacrificial lamb in order to expose the entire business.
"Christians need to hear this message just as much as Jesus’ fellow Jews. We have betrayed his rejection of sacrifice by becoming entrenched in a sacrificial reading of the cross, [which] is a betrayal of Jesus’ mission. It puts back into place the sacrificial thinking which Jesus came to subvert into self-sacrificial thinking - living lives of loving service."
- Paul Nuechterlein, from Opening Comments: Elements of a New Reformation on the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 15B (link in comments below)
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"Jesus’ strange words in his long monolog that follows the feeding in the wilderness connects this feeding with the Eucharist in words that are both comforting in that they promise a deep union with Jesus, but disturbing by thrusting the violence of Jesus’ death in our faces. English translations inevitably lose much of the force of the words as there is no English word that catches the connotations of trogein. “Gnaw” comes closest but even that is not strong enough. The German word fressen, which refers to the eating of non-human animals, comes much closer. When I used the word flippantly in conversation with a German acquaintance, his reaction was very strong, about as strong as our reaction to Jesus’ words ought to be. Which is precisely the way “the Jews” react to Jesus’ words.
"In reply to “the Jews's” anger, Jesus promises that his flesh and blood are “real food” and “real drink” without which we have no life in us. Jesus goes on to make the even more audacious claim that his body and blood do not nourish us as meat and vegetables nourish us. Such nourishment is not lasting and needs to be renewed by further eating and drinking as the manna God fed the Israelites in the desert needed to be re-gathered every day. But Jesus’ own flesh and blood feeds us in such a way that we will live forever.
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"Since Jesus’ promise of everlasting nourishment is tied so closely to his painful death, we might get some understanding by looking at sacrifice. Sacrifice is closely tied to eating. Deities feed on animals or vegetation, or at least the aroma of them, and the sacrificers usually eat the food that was sacrificed. The Passover lamb is sacrificed both to spare the Israelites from the plague that strikes the first-born of Egypt and a sacrifice to physical hunger, and thus a source of nourishment as well. Sacrifices need to be repeated, as the author of Hebrews says. (Heb. 7: 27; 9: 6) In his sacrificial death, Jesus has obtained “eternal redemption.” (Heb. 9: 12) Thus, this author is making the same claim on behalf of Jesus that Jesus is making in John’s Gospel.
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"The death and resurrection of Christ, then, are a pledge of the heavenly banquet where we will be nourished without need of taking any life [...] What we can do is let Christ nourish us deeply in the here and now so that we do not need to sacrifice other people as we are prone to do, but rather will feed others in anticipation of the heavenly banquet."
- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled "Eating Together" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2018/08/17/eating-together/)
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"Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Now we understand the living bread is God’s forgiveness that comes from outside ourselves and draws us toward God. [...] The very thing we most need and cannot provide, God provides in the form of Jesus’ broken body, the body we broke, now given back to us as the food of forgiveness.
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"We are used to seeing flesh hacked and blood spilled. [...] This is what we are doing to each other everywhere and this is what Jesus came to stop. He tries to stop it by offering his own blood and flesh instead of all these whose flesh we otherwise feed on. Eat my flesh; not theirs. Drink my blood, not theirs for mine is the bread of forgiveness, mine will satisfy your cravings and give you peace.
"Since our killing is so vividly real he uses images that do not veil the truth and provide an alternative. It is common to take life but Jesus gives it. This is his alternative. He gives it freely and defines it as the bread of forgiveness. Could it be that all life comes from forgiveness, even eternal life? Maybe forgiveness is a grittier name for love. Could it be that unless we participate in forgiveness we aren’t really living and in fact, are dead already? [...] We must abide in forgiveness; it is the only bread that can sustain us in any sustainable fashion. It is the only way we can live.
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"Our living derives from Jesus. His bread of forgiveness, which is himself, as broken body and shed blood, keeps us alive because it is rooted in his relationship with his non-violent Abba. Because God loves Jesus, loves him for himself and for what he did for us, God will not let us disappear either. It is not metaphysical, it is relational. It is not built on ideas and pure thought. It is built on the non-rivalrous relationship between Jesus and God, where each honors and respects the other. By God’s grace we are included in this eternal relationship as forgiven friends of Jesus. As Jesus put it, “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of my father.”
"Yes, the bread of life is forgiveness; “The one who eats this bread will live forever.” Amen."
- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on August 19th, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Proper15-2012-Forgiveness-the-Bread-ofLife.doc)
[Source of Paul Nuechterlein quotes and links to Andrew Marr blog post and Thomas L. Truby sermon, and for further discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper15b/]
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