53Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly I tell you, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves; 54the one chewing My flesh and drinking My blood has everlasting life and the last day I will resurrect him. 55For My flesh is truly food and My blood is truly drink. 56 The one chewing My flesh and drinking My blood remains in Me and I in him. 57Just as the living Father has sent me out and I live because of the Father, the one chewing Me, even that one will live too because of Me. 58This is the bread, which descended from Heaven (not just like the fathers were eating and dying off). The one chewing this bread will live for an eternity.” (John 6:53-58, The Original Gospels)
Happy Saturday y’all! Y’all hungry? Who’s hungry for the Bread of Life? How about for Jesus’ body and His blood? Many of you probably answered that first question with a responding “yes”! “Give me that Bread of Life!” The Bread of Life is the teachings of Jesus which he teaches the crowd the day after feeding over 5,000 men, women, and children by multiplying five loaves and two fish. And also after walking on water to find His disciples scared at sea. All of this is found in John chapter 6. But later in the chapter, Jesus drops the strange teachings in the verses above where He instructs His disciples to “eat My flesh and drink My blood”. In “The Original Gospels” translation, Jesus instructed His disciples to “chew on His flesh”.
While in our “Walking Dead” obsessed culture, these writings easily strike up visuals of zombies chewing on Jesus’ body, or vampires drinking His blood. I had to do some research to try to find a good explanation on what the experts thought of these verses, and most of the experts can not agree. You can read this explanation from Christianity Today, or this one from the Catholic faith. Neither seemed to give an explanation that felt right. So I thought about it for a moment, and came up with my own reasoning.
As you see immediately after Jesus speaks these words, many of His disciples say, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?(John 6:60)” Then six verses later, John writes “From this many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” All but the Original Twelve. Maybe this strange teaching by Jesus was a way to find who was truly, truly committed to following Him and His teachings.
Well, Jesus still wants the most devoted to be His followers. He still asks that you “eat His flesh” and “drink of His blood”. And no, this is not referring to communion, but to a deeper level of dedication and following. His teachings were much simpler than what the Jewish religious leaders were pushing on the Jewish faith during Jesus’ day. Jesus taught His followers to simply Love God and Love People, but when many began to follow Him as He displayed His miraculous powers to heal the disabled man by the pool of Bethesda, and then feeding the crowd of 5,000, Jesus dropped the preaching above and “His followers” quickly returned to just the Original Twelve.
The verses above are not about eating Jesus’ flesh or drinking His blood. These verses are about you, and what kind of follower of Jesus you are going to be. Are you going to be one that only follows when the miracles are happening all around you? Or are you going to be one to follow even when the teachings of Jesus make you feel uncomfortable and push you out of the norms of society? To me, following Jesus is easy. That yoke is light. Just treat everyone with respect, be kind, give constantly, welcome the foreigner, help the widow, care for the orphan, lift up the poor. As we saw yesterday, Moses instructed the Israelites back in Deuteronomy to do most of those things hundreds of years before Jesus came to walk among us.
So what level of following Jesus are you committed to? Are you willing to “chew on His flesh”? I pray you are all at that level. Here is a beautiful new song from a new artist, bringing the words of Jesus to life in a soulful melody. Click below to hear for yourself.
Common Sense Reborn 