John 6:56-69 (New International Version)
56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 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. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Many Disciples Desert Jesus

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" 61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? 62 What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit[a] and they are life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him." 66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. 67 "You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. 68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

Many ancient people longed to take their god into themselves and take themselves into their god. They would not read phrases like eating Christ's body and drinking his blood in a crude and literal way. We should also remember here that John is giving meaning and drawing out the inner significance of the words of Jesus under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Barclay draws out two ways in which we can take this passage. 1) We could take it in the literal sense. Jesus speaks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. We could think of the flesh of Jesus as his full humanity. We must grab hold of and feed our minds, our hearts and our souls on the fact that Jesus took on our human life with all its struggles, temptations, joys and sorrows. When we eat his flesh it is as though Jesus says to us, "When you are discouraged and in despair, when you are tired of life and beaten to your knees and and disgusted with life and living - remember I took that life of yours and these struggles of yours on me." And it is the great belief of the Greek Orthodox Christology that Jesus deified our flesh by taking it on himself.

Jesus said that we must drink his blood. In Jewish thought the blood stands for the life. It is easy to understand why. AS the blood flows from a wound life ebbs away. And to the Jew, the blood belonged to God. That is why to this day a true Jew will never eat any meat which had not been completely drained of blood. So when Jesus says we must drink his blood he is saying that we must take his life into the very centre of our being. And also that the life which is mine is also the life which belongs to God. Barclay gives and illustration of a book in a bookcase which someone has never read. Let's say it is the tragedies of Shakespeare. The person has bought the book but as long as it remains unread on the bookshelf it is external to him. It remains outside him/her. But then one day s/he takes it down and reads it. It is fascinating and moving! The story sticks and the great lines remain in the memory. Now, whenever the person wants to they can take that wonder out from inside them and feed on it and remember it and think about it. Once the book was external - upon the shelf. Now it is on the inside.

It is that way with any experience in life. Not long ago I knew nothing about sailing. It was something external to me. Now I am beginning to feel it part of my life. It is the same with Jesus. He is the life of God. As long as he remains a figure in a book he is external to us; but when he enters into our hearts he is within us and we can feed upon his life and strength. When Jesus says we must drink his blood he is saying "You must take my life inside you; stop thinking of me as a figure in a book and a subject for theological debate; you must take me into you and you must come into me; and then you will have real life.

But John must have meant more than this. He was writing as an old man. The Lord's supper was already central to the early Church. John must have been thinking of the experiences of Jesus in the old Galilean days and making them real to the Christians he was writing for.

When John was writing this, Barclay suggests, he was quite certainly thinking of the Lord's Supper. He was saying, "If you want life, you must come and sit at the table where you eat that broken bread and drink that poured out wine which, somehow, in the grace of God, brings you into living contact with the love and the life of Jesus Christ." We must also note that John has no account of the Last Supper. John brings his teaching about it, not in the Upper Room but, interestingly, in the story of a picnic meal on a hillside near Bethsaida. There is no doubt what John is saying - he is saying that for all Christians every meal has become a sacrament. And I am aware that there are some who are profoundly irritated when we insist on saying grace before meals because they happen to be unbelievers.

John seems to be refusing to limit the presence of Christ to an ecclesiastical environment or a correctly liturgical service. It is almost as though John is suggesting that in any meal we can find again that bread which speaks of the humanity of Jesus and that wine which speaks of the blood which is life. It is a wonderful thought that the communion table and the dinner table and the picnic on the seashore or on the hillside are all the same in that at all of them we can taste and touch and handle the bread and the wine which brings us to Christ. Christianity would be very much poorer if we locked Christ up in our churches. It is John's belief that we can find Christ anywhere in Christ's world. And of course this is not belittling the sacrament of the Eucharist. It is actually an expansion of the Sacrament, so that we find Christ at the table in church and then we go out to find him everywhere where people meet together to enjoy the gifts of God.