The Feast of Flesh and Blood

  

  As  I was translating John 6,  I came to the section where Jesus talked about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, starting around verse 51. This pericope begins with one of John's "I am" pronouncements. "I am the bread which came down from heaven".... After Jesus made this statement an argument started among the Jews. Who can blame them? It is hard for me to understand that this bread was the "food of angels". Do angels eat?  So I could see the Jews murmuring. Then Jesus said He was that bread. What does that mean, in a practical sense? I think scholars are still surmising what that meant in any sense!
      Jesus of course knowing that this caused a stir, proceeded to stir the pot more. Naturally.  Remember He is in the synagogue in Capernaum teaching! If you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not die like your fathers did. That's an eye opener.  I bet no one was asleep during this service.  You eat my flesh and drink my blood you will live forever. If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, I have no part in you! Wow, He said this to clean, pure, sanitary, kosher Jews no less, eating human flesh and drinking blood!  Even symbolically that sounds crazy.


 oJ trw◊gwn mou th;n sa◊rka kai… pi√nwn mou to; ai»ma e“cei zwh;n ai∆w◊nion, ka˙gw˝ a˙nasthvsw* aujto;n th≥: e∆sca◊th≥ hJme√ra/.  The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day.


      This sounds like your reading from Twilight. It is small wonder some of his disciples had a hard time with this. Some have argued that Christ is talking about the Eucharistic Feast (Brown), but that is a little revisionism. I think he was challenging those he was teaching, rather than talking about the sacrament. What would those Capernaum Jews known about the Eucharist? He had not instituted the sacrament, yet. He was talking about a deeper dedication and that is why we see a few of the disciples leaving. Have you ever googled images of "bread and wine?" Beautiful pictures of the communion table and it should be, I suppose. But Christ was not talking about "bread and wine and the communion table". Google "flesh and blood" and see what you get! Yeah, we might have been offended that Saturday morning too sitting in the prime seats of the synagogue, you know by the window with the sea breeze blowing gently through the curtain from the Sea of Galilee. 'Flesh and Blood', some commentators say is the Hebrew way of referring to the whole man. Why were the disciples offended?  No it is what it is. As Robertson said, "Jesus has here presented to this Galilean multitude the central fact of his atoning death for the spiritual life of the world."  And I might add real life of the world. This type of talk (teaching?) is challenging. Often to me, Christ's demands to follow him and "drink" his cup have a humbling aspect to them. Acceptance of this teaching takes obedience graced with humility.
     Christ was obedient to the Father unto his death. This is why He related eating his flesh to the resurrection.* Obedience and life are tied together in both the OT and the NT. In Deuteronomy 30 Moses told the Israelites to choose life or death. You chose life, Moses said, by obeying the voice of God.  In NT, Paul said Christ was obedient to death, therefore God exalted Him (Philippians 3).  That Saturday morning in Capernaum,  Christ invited us to "eat my flesh and drink my blood in obedient practice and I will raise you up and you will live forever." The words "eat" and "drink" are present participles, which carry a continuous action in their Greek aspect (Robertson). You keep eating my flesh and keep drinking my blood and you will remain in me.  Our continual dedication to be obedient to God, will have us remaining "in Christ".  He said as much in verse 56.


 oJ trw◊gwn mou th;n sa◊rka kai… pi√nwn mou to; ai»ma e∆n e∆moi… me√nei ka˙gw˝ e∆n aujtw/Ç.  The one who eats (again the present participle) my flesh and drinks (pp) my blood remains in me and I in him. 


       The insititution of  the Lord's Supper was the night before the Cross. He gave his life that I might live. And he gave us the Eucharist so we could practice this oneness with Him.  I am finding that as I am obedient to Him in his death, it brings life to me.  The areas in my life where I am being obeidient there is life. Otherwise there is striving and death. The fathers ate the bread in their disobedience and died in the desert, verse 49. We eat Christ food of obedience and keep practicing it, we will live. This is what it means to be a disciple of Christ. 
      As an application I am going through my life and the areas I find where I am not obedient to His will,  I am taking communion in faith that it will change. The areas I don't know His will, I have faith He will reveal it. His death in exchange for my life, righteous for the unrighteous. I may be taking a lot of communion in the days ahead. Bon Appetite.

Holy Laughter

     I was watching a clip from "Mary Poppins" that someone put on Facebook from YouTube. It is the part where Mary, Bert and the kids go visit uncle Albert,  played by Ed Wynn. "The more I laugh, the more I'm a merrier me." They all go flying up to the ceiling. Its a great scene and Ed Wynn was an adorable actor. We love to laugh and be full of Joy. The Bible says that "in His presence is fulness of Joy and by his right hand are pleasure evermore" (Ps.16:11). Actually the Hebrew has the "abundance of joy is before you" or "your face". I don't think it means God has a funny face. I think it means what KJV translates "in His presence or before His face" is abundance of Joy.

     Have you ever had Holy Laughter come on you? That is what that scene from "Mary Poppins" reminds me of. You laugh until you think you will never stop. You realize how wonderful it must be in His presence. Joy is such a wonderful gift. And to see us straight faced most of the time as Christians is, well, not right. If we laugh in his presence or at least are full of joy so, well, some might be forced to crack a smile, it might be what God wants. 

     On Sunday we had a visitor to our fellowship from Brazil, Silas Esteves.  He is the senior pastor in our sister church in Niteroi, Brazil. In fact he is over all of our churches in Latin America, including Mexico. It was delightful having him with us. He talked to us about obedience. Something we in our fellowship recognize  about him is that he is a very humble and an obedient man of God. Silas said many  important things about obedience, but this one thing kept cycling through my mind. He said "obedience draws His presence." I went home thinking about that one thought. But soon I sat down to a football game and that thought receded to the back of my mind. 

      We were keeping our grandson all weekend. He is a great kid, although he is having trouble in school with his teacher. After the game I played "school" with him. I mentioned that he was going to school tomorrow and he started to cry and said he didn't want to go to school. Suddenly the two ends came together. Joshie (his name) didn't like school because he was not being obedient to the teacher. Obedience draws His presence, and in his presence is fulness of joy. These two would come together for Josh when he decided to listen and do what his teacher told him. "I only do what I see my father doing" is what Christ said (John 5:19 ff).  He learned obedience. Josh has to learn obedience. He will enjoy school when he does. I wonder if a lot of our dislike for learning is because we are not giving ourselves to be obedient to the process. Josh is getting ripped off of the joy of learning, that makes me mad.We can be in His presence more than we know. It does make me wonder if the places that I am unhappy are the places I need to reconnect with the Lord and become more obedient. Our obedience draws the Lord's presence, and His joy. 

     When I am doing what God asks me to do, I am staying in His presence where the fulness of Joy resides. The Hebrew word shema and the Greek word akouo both mean to hear and obey. Obeying has the element of really listening and hearing what is being said. A good student listens. It is amazing the battle on kids hearing. Think of all the sound that bombards them every day and yet it is hard for them to really hear. I want to have the ears that truly hear. I want my grandson to have the same. I want to live in His presence where there is fulness of Joy, to be caught up in His presence full of laughter. Is it possible that that is what the scene from Mary Poppins meant? No. Forget it, Jake, it's Holywood. 

"I love to laugh long and loud and clear, I love to laugh it gets worse every year".  Now don't watch this next part your gonna laugh.  Holy Laughter (please disregard the notation before and after) I can't watch that second one without laughing. God is Great. 

 Except for the laughter part, you can hear a more direct word on obedience entitled, "Our Obedience- The Way Into His Kingdom" by Gary Hargrave.

The Geometry of God

Isosceles Triangle

     Deep in the fifth Chapter of John we find Jesus talking to the Pharisees about His relationship to the Father. This give and take resulted in the Jewish leadership initiating the persecution of Christ. What did he say that caused such a reaction? John tells us that the  real reason was not that He did miracles on the Sabbath,  but that He made himself out to be equal with God. Robertson points to the Greek word,  "Isos is an old common adjective (in papyri also) and means equal. Here some argue that Christ did not mean equal with God (Bernard)." Robertson pushes back, "He (Jesus) never corrected this understanding and Paul claims the Pre-incarnated Christ to be Isas theoi, equal with God." An understanding of the reading, if one can accept the reaction of the Jews as the litmus tests for translation, then it can be seen in verse 18 that they wanted to kill Christ because he made himself equal with God. Certainly this was a bold and dangerous way of thinking in Jesus' day just as it is in our day.
      The coming together of this theory of equality for Christians began to formalize at the meeting called by Constantine in the fourth century at Nice. The strategy of Constantine was to unite the Christians for political reasons and get beyond the division being caused by Arius. Arius claimed that God and the son were not equal substances. Suffice it to say that Arius lost and we now have a working model of the Trinity. I say working model because new revelation is appearing from theologians of today on how the Trinity functions and what affect it has on the body of Christ.  Fiddes, Buxton, et al., have been working with the "community" of Christ explaining how the Trinity draws us into the "dance" of the Father with Son and the Spirit.
      This is all interesting, but the real challenge for us is that Jesus is equal with the Father.  This is the point we need to ponder here.  If I said that I was one with the Father and part of the Trinity,  would you want to pick up scriptures, theological phrases and arguments to hurl at me? Would we seek to "slay" anyone who made themselves out to be equal with God? It is still a very personal and dangerous sounding statement. Yet Jesus' prayer in John 17 (especially v 21) is for us to have the oneness with the Father that He had. This is the same Jesus and same statement that caused the Pharisees to want to slay the Messiah.  Their Messiah was standing in front of them and they could not see Him. The Father wanted them as His sons.
       He wants us for His sons also.What holds back our accepting the oneness?   Are we waiting for the end of all things before we can be one? Is it pushed off until the eschaton? Maybe  that is where it belongs in the sweet by-and-by.  Is it really something that we can achieve before the Lord's return? But really Christ wanted the oneness as a sign or witness to the nations. We see in John 17 that our oneness is to be a witness to the world (again v 21). John Stevens points to our oneness as an identity change.  "I’m not just identified with Christ (Christian, little Christ); I’m identical with Him. When Paul says in I Corinthians 12:12–14, that the Body is not one member but many, yet it is one Body, and so also is Christ," he is not speaking blasphemy. Christ intends to manifest Himself throughout eternity in a many-membered Body, made one in Christ" (Identical With Christ). This is not blasphemy as the Jews thought. This is our salvation and really theirs. 

A quandary.

        The wonder of it all is that God wants us to be one with Him. I can sometimes feel my inner Jewish leader, the Pharisee in me, the religious self which says it can not be clean enough to approach God,  resisting this thought of being one with God.  Can we be part of the Trinity? Has Christ done such a thorough salvation? But to even see this, we have to go back to Nicodemus. To understand Spiritual things of God we have to have a new level of birthing by the Spirit. This step into the Kingdom is going to take a whole new level of faith to receive what God has done. "I and the Father are one". How can this corrupt body of flesh be able to be in community with the Trinity? It can not. Paul stepped on that thought in Romans 7:24-25. Who can deliver us from this body of this death? "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." "We suffer with Him that we be glorified together"(Romans 8:17, NASB) Wow that is amazingly hard believe. Lord I open up to see your salvation on a new level.  I receive it. It is His gift to us. The author Steven Covey says "Self-growth is tender; it is holly ground. Be patient with yourself."  Let us be tender with our selves and patient as we open up to what God is doing. Be gentle with our selves and with others for the new life that is being expressed in the community of God. May be this is where the Kingdom of God will be manifested. May be the Messiah's return is in among his people. My pastor this morning exhorted us to think on the good things of God as he read from Philippians 4:7. May be the pathway to the Kingdom is dwelling on what is being revealed in one another. Thinking about what a good and a wonderful thing God is doing in His community.
        The more I read the story of Nicodemus the more I feel very kindred with his need to see Spiritually the kingdom of God. God's plan is beyond what eye has seen. What a salvation we have. 
Post Script. 
       Theorem: Equal with God, if a=b (God = Jesus) and b=c (Jesus = Holy Spirit)  and b=d (Christ = body of) then a=b=c=d. Maybe its more of a quadnity than Trinity, or really a quandary. 

Nick at Night

       The story of Nicodemus is found only in the Gospel of John. John's dualistic themes of light and darkness shine through the texture of this intrigue. Jesus, of course, is the Light  (John 1.5) and Nicodemus represents "the people that walk in darkness"(Is.9.2). The contrast of shadows and light reminds me of a 50's film noir.  This quick-shot narrative is hard hitting and wastes no time getting to the punch line. Nick is a Pharisee who came to see Jesus by night.  In his introduction to the story the author sets up the scene and the character in one and a half verses.

1.#Hn de… a⁄nqrwpoß e∆k twÇn Farisai√wn, Nikovdhmoß o[noma aujtw/Ç, a⁄rcwn twÇn =Ioudai√wn` 

2. ou|toß h\lqen pro;ß aujto;n nukto;ß....  The literal translation   reads:  "And (now) there was a man of the Pharisees, name to him is Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This one (He) came to him (Jesus)  by night."

           We see right away the character of Nick. Wanting to know more but afraid of his peers, lacking understanding, being in the dark, and not comprehending,  he nevertheless came seeking Jesus, like a moth drawn to the flame.  He cannot help himself. We know this guy. Yeah, he was us once and maybe still is hiding in the shadows of our mind and heart. The uncommitted, uncomprehending, fearful half-believing church goer, maybe even a leader.  But enough of this personal, investigative stuff. Lets get back to the real story.
         John has established in Chapter one of his Gospel that "He (Jesus) was the light and the light shined in the darkness and it comprehended it not". The Pharisees, Nick being an example, were in the dark and did not comprehend what was going on. Even so, Jesus was shocked by his ignorance. "You are a teacher of Israel and do not know these things? You must be born anew to see the Kingdom of God."  What caused this darkness? The Jews were God's people. How could they be living like the blind? Because they chose to live in hope that the Messiah would come and conquror their oppressors, the Romans.  The darkness that Israel lived in was their desire to see God and His Messiah the way they wanted. They just wanted what they wanted. Sound familiar?  Their Messiah was going to establish an earthly kingdom that would overthrow the Romans. Instead, in Chapter 2 of John we see Jesus "cleansing the temple". This had to piss the Pharisees off . This went against their eschatological scheme. Jesus was running the Jews out of their temple, instead of the Romans out of Jerusalem.
      If you read all the Messianic prophecies in the OT it is easy to see how Nick and friends could believe in a physical take-over by God, which most Jews, even John the Baptist waited for. Here is a short list of Messianic prophecies:
Genesis 3.15; 12.3; 18.18; 22.18; 49.10
Leviticus 16.
Numbers 21.6-9; 24.17,19;
Isaiah 2.2-4; 4.2-6; 7.13,14; 9.1,2,6,7; 11.1-10; 25.6-9; 26.1, 19
Daniel, Joel, Amos, Micah, et alii.
             So thinking on a natural plane was easy for the Jews who wanted God to set up a kingdom "like unto David", only everlasting. What did Jesus do in face of this unspoken demand?
           Jesus hammered away at Nick about the Spirit realm. He did not answer any of the Pharisee's  questions the way he wanted them answered. He ended by recapping exactly what Nicodemus had done. "But he that does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds might be made manifest, that they are made in God."  We can hope that this was Nick's experience that night. That he had come out of the darkness and he was exposed to the Light of men, and from then on he did the truth. (To the author, John,  knowing was not enough, the truth was something you did, 1 John 1.6, the Greek word here is poiou:men meaning "to do or make). What was this truth that Nick sought and Jesus held out before him? 
      I was listening to  a group of Christians talking the other day. They were talking about the end time. They were saying. "now we know for a fact that there is going to be a battle, a war, an armed conflict called Armageddon, the end time apocalypse."  I think we as Christian are as sure about Armageddon as Nick was about the first coming of the Messiah. Is His second coming of His kingdom still going to require us to see it? Could His Kingdom already be manifesting and we are looking the wrong direction? This reminds me of one of my kids. Our family would be riding in the car and see something exciting and literally point at it and say "look at that" and he would instinctively look the other way. It was amazing. It became a family idiom. "David Look!" when you wanted someone to do or see what they are not doing or seeing. Are we looking the right way. Are we sure it is going to be physical and just as overpowering as the Jews thought it was going to be the first time? Could we be in any way like Nicodemus, needing to be 'born again' to see anew. 
      Christianity has coined the phrase "born again" to mean those who really, really, I mean really have Jesus in their hearts. But was Jesus using this term in the same way? Lets look at it one more time. He said, "you must be born again in order to see the Kingdom of God." Not to have Jesus born in your heart. Not to become a Christian. Not even to have your sins forgiven. Nick did sacrifices and fulfilled the law. He had his sins forgiven according to the Mosaic Law. What did he not have? The ability to see the kingdom of God. Are we seeing it? Or are we like Nick waiting for its coming?  Do we live in the realm of Spirit or are we still living in the realm of flesh? If we are seeing the Kingdom of God clearly would be different from those who don't?  Can we tell the difference between Christians and non Christians? 

Mary's Sixth Sorrow

      I teach at a Christian school. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell the difference between those professing salvation and those who are not saved. How much more difficult is it to tell the difference between those who seek the things of the kingdom and those who seek the things of the world. The 
conversations are all the same. The dreams and ambitions all seem similar. I think we need an experience in God that will blast us out of this age. Shake the desires, hungers, ambitions, loves, likes, wants, greeds, off of us and get us seeing straight. I want an experience that opens my eyes to the beauties of God. I want to be sure I am seeing the kingdom. For the Ephesians Paul prayed that,

"The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know
what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints "(Eph.1:18). Paul was talking to Christians.

We see Nick again two more times in John's Gospel. The last time in a very tender and touching moment he brings myrrh and aloes for Jesus' body, in what tradition refers to as "Mary's Sixth Sorrow". I do not know what happened to him after that. He disappears back into the shadows of history. But I do know I am grateful for his questions and his desire to see Jesus. Without this conversation we would not have John 3.16 or 3. 21 or even the phrase "you must be born again."

For a serious look at this story listen to the CD by Gary Hargrave entitled "Born of The Spirit".