Eating His Flesh – A Metaphor for Ultimate Commitment

Jesus in Conversation

One of the little pleasures in life for me is the NFL. Perhaps because the season is only sixteen games, but more likely because of the drama. The story lines every year are so fun and interesting that the off-field stuff is just as interesting, or sometimes more interesting, than the games themselves. A couple of years ago my favorite team, the Detroit Lions, was featured on a show called Hard Knocks.

Hard Knocks provides a behind-the-scenes look at a team during the preseason. It was so interesting to see all the hard work that goes into preparing for a season. The stories of the players who make the team or get cut are gripping.

There was one moment during the season that caught my attention above many others. The players were doing their warm-up calisthenics, and at one point the head coach, Dan Campbell, joined them, doing one of the most vile exercises known to man: the up/down. You are running in place with knees high, and at the sound of a whistle you drop down and do a push-up back to running in place. Campbell got on the line and did the up/downs with the team just like he was one of them. Every player on the team talks about how cool it is that he joined them. This is something that he does every year, and it resonates no less now than it did then.

There is something powerful about sharing together in suffering, even when it’s something as silly and meaningless as calisthenics.

As we wrap up this conversation between Jesus and the people he miraculously fed, we come across one of the weirdest things that Jesus said…

Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

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. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. John 6:52-59, NIV

The people were wrestling with the meaning of Jesus' telling them that they need to eat his flesh. They understood that he didn’t actually mean that they needed to take a bite out of him or stick a straw in his vein. This was obviously a metaphor. But what was it a metaphor of? What were they to make of it?

Jesus gives them the explanation that in doing so they would gain eternal life, that they would be raised at the last day, and that they would remain in him forever.

So what is going on here?

Some read into this exchange a picture of the communion table. I can understand the desire to do this because the imagery reflects the table so obviously. Yet, this doesn’t seem to fit the context.

I think that it is better to understand the imagery as an extension or a deepening of table fellowship. Jesus is calling people not simply to have fellowship with him but to identify or unite their lives to his life. This is not a call to share a table but to share a life.

When you are called to share a life, it is a commitment that goes beyond the surface. This sharing of life includes the good and the bad. It includes the glory and the suffering.

This is a radical extension of the table fellowship that the people of the day experienced. When you invited someone to your table, you were accepting them as family. Jesus isn’t inviting them to simply be family but, in a sense, to be one with him.

This is a level of commitment beyond the normal. It is no wonder that this would make people uncomfortable. Jesus was asking them to share their lives completely. Not many people, then or now, are willing to make that step.

Is there anything in your life that you’re willing to give yourself to wholly?

I think if we are honest, there is not much.

I suppose the question before me is this: “Am I willing to pursue union with Christ?”

The Apostle Paul writes it this way:

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:1-11, NIV

To be united with Christ is to change the way we live at a fundamental level.

Am I willing to live this way?