Eating Jesus? - 24 May 2009 |
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John 6:53-54
So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’
Over the centuries, many Christians have got quite confused about what it means to ‘feed’ on Jesus’ flesh and ‘drink’ his blood.
Some have wrongly imagined that, if we are to ‘feed’ on Jesus, he must be somehow physically located in the bread. This is wrong – Jesus is physically located in heaven, not on earth.
Others, perhaps reacting against the first misunderstanding, have rejected the idea that we really feed on Jesus at all. The Lord’s Supper is just a helpful memory aid, they say, nothing more. But this hardly does justice to Jesus’ words in John 6.
Here’s what actually happens. Jesus is physically located in heaven. He’s not physically ‘in’ the bread. So we’re not in any way ‘eating’ Jesus physically.
But this doesn’t mean that Jesus is absent. Jesus is present with us now, because we are present with him in heaven, by faith. When we ‘lift up our hearts’ at the start of our service, we ascent to heaven by faith, to be seated with Jesus.
By faith, therefore, we feed on Jesus life-giving body in heaven, at the same time that we feed by sight on this bread now on earth. The two acts of eating are ‘parallel’: our physical feeding-by-sight on this bread on earth is the divinely-appointed means by which we feed-by-faith on the body of Christ in heaven.
Our feeding on Christ is not visible, but it is nonetheless real. Feeding on Christ by faith means reckoning this to be true.
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Meditations for the Lord's Supper, Minister's Blog