Mtr Kelli Joyce

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Dear friends in Christ,

John’s Gospel, from which we read today, technically doesn’t tell the story of Jesus teaching his disciples to observe the Eucharist as a memorial of his death for our salvation - that story is present in Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospels, but not in John.

However, John still manages to give us some of the most startling Eucharistic language in all of scripture. In this passage and ones that follow it, Jesus speaks of himself as the Bread that came down from heaven, and as the True Vine. These food metaphors aren’t so disturbing - the idea of Christ’s love as nourishment is rather comforting, really.

But then he starts talking about the importance of us eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and everything gets a little... concerning. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” And this isn’t a case of an idea that’s gotten lost in translation, where we don’t understand because we live in a very different time and place. This stuff freaked out the people who heard it back then, too. The crowds of fans Jesus had gotten as a result of his miraculous feeding of the hungry multitude? They all bail after this. It’s too much.

So what are we to make of it?

Here’s what I think: in the Eucharist, when we all share in the one Bread, we are truly being nourished by Christ’s body. Not merely as a metaphor - though of course there is a beautiful poetry to the image of it. We eat his flesh and drink his blood in a re-presentation of the one sacrifice of himself that he made for us on the cross. Just as the priests in the days of the Law ate their fill of the grain and meat offerings brought by the people, we as Christ’s royal priesthood are truly sustained by the Lamb of God. As members of the Body of Christ through baptism into his death and resurrection, our very being is sustained when we are united with him each time we take Communion, accepting the free gift of the Bread which Jesus gives for the life of the world: his very human, very divine self.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli