Chew On This: Did Jesus Really Say That?
Chew On This: Did Jesus Really Say That?
John 6:41–60 How Jesus offends his own disciples, and what that means for us.
Did Jesus Really Say That?
John 6:41–60 — How Jesus offends his own disciples, and what that means for us.
My littlest just turned four. One of the things we've noticed is that in the mornings, he needs to eat immediately. If I don't get a morsel of food in his mouth right away, it's a recipe for disaster.
Just this week, he was on the verge of a breakdown, and I could see it coming, but I knew that if I could get one bite in his mouth, he'd be okay. So I kept offering him anything. He wouldn't eat. He was so sure he was not hungry and would rather just play with his toys. Big meltdown — until eventually I got him to eat, and all of a sudden he's happy again. “I love you, Daddy.”
I love you too, buddy.
This moment made me think about how much we do that in our own faith. Here's God giving me exactly what I need for this moment — this bread, this word, this nourishment — and I run around obstinate and stubborn, wanting everything except the one thing he is actually offering.
I learn a lot from my three-year-old — now four-year-old — about faith.
Start With Us, Not Them
John 6 opens with the feeding of the five thousand, so the whole chapter is about food, and then Jesus launches into a very long sermon about bread, redefining it around himself. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Today we're in verses 41 to 60. There are three distinct objections raised against Jesus that I want to discuss.
First, a word of caution: when I read about people objecting to Jesus in the Bible, it's easy to picture people outside the church. Those people. “Of course they'd say that about Jesus.” But John does something at the end of this passage: he very clearly marks these people out as disciples. He's telling us: don't start by thinking about those people out there. Start with us in here.
Objection One: “We Know This Guy”
Verse 41: So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
They know this guy. They grew up with him. They knew his father and mother. He was the son of Joseph, a carpenter. Who is he to come around making these audacious claims about himself? He's just the neighborhood kid. It's the problem of overfamiliarity.
Ten years after high school, I had changed a lot. So when I went to my first high school reunion, I would have objected if any of my old friends started treating me like I was back then… And yet as soon as we walked into the room, I fell right into that familiarity trap. These are the cliques. Those were the cool kids. They were kind of bullies to me, so I'm staying away from them. It felt like we all fell right back into our old high school rhythms.
I didn't want them to put me in a box, but I absolutely put everyone else in a box.
I can't help but think how many times I've done that with Jesus. It's the Jesus I learned as a child. Comfortable. Safe. Not going to make any big demands on my life. A nice little box.
And thankfully, so many times, God has burst out of that box. Then I put him in a new, slightly bigger box, and he has to burst out of that one again. It's like God keeps having to remind me: I do mean this teaching. I want you to get rid of that pattern in your life, Tyler. Go and love these people. Pray for this group. Pursue this calling.
God is always going to be bigger than whatever box you put him in.
Take It Up With My Dad
Jesus doesn't defend himself the way you'd expect. He never says, let me prove to you that I'm bigger than the box you've put me in. He says, effectively, “You're going to have to take it up with my Father.”
Verse 44: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
He's acknowledging how big his own claims are. Jesus is the King of the world, the Lord of the cosmos, and we are not going to find that out unless God himself enables, empowers, and calls us to him.
This is not a line in the sand that condemns those not drawn to Christ to stay on the outside. St. Augustine summarized the invitation at the heart of this verse well:
“Are you not yet drawn? Pray to be drawn.”
— Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.2, preaching on John 6:41–59
If you find yourself with a hard heart, unable to believe that Jesus is all he claims to be, then ask. God, would you give me insight? Would you draw me to Christ? Reveal Christ's truth in my heart. We can pray that prayer for ourselves and for our loved ones.
Ask the God who freely gives.
Objection Two: Jesus' Exclusive Claims
Verses 52–53: The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 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.”
Their second offense is about the exclusivity of the Christian faith. Jesus' response here is basically an early version of what he says in chapter 14: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. In the body of Christ is the only way to life.
And in our culture — sometimes even within our churches — we don't really like that. We like the tame, comfortable Jesus who wouldn't put those kinds of demands on us. We like the idea that all ways are fine, whatever works for you. I'll admit, there have been times in my own faith where evangelism felt harsh and overbearing, but we don't have to hit people over the head with our Bibles. We humbly invite others into the grace we didn't earn ourselves.
The gospel works like this: Christ has delivered the cure to the greatest ailment of life. And it's the only one available. Of course, we should share it. In some ways, it's more arrogant to keep it to ourselves — to say no, I won't pass that along, because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable.
Objection Three: We Don't Want to Obey That
Verse 60: When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
There it is. John pulls back the curtain. Even if you thought this was some nameless crowd, he tells you plainly: disciples.
That was the challenging part for me this week. Because my first reaction really was to think of the people I know outside the church, who have expressly rejected Jesus. Until it hit me: the challenge starts with me.
The disciples say they don't want to listen. In the Bible, this word almost always carries a sense of obedience. To hear is to hear and obey. The most famous prayer in Judaism is the Shema — Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And in Hebrew, there's really no separate word for “obey.” It's the word listen, all the way through. Wherever your English Bible says obey this command, underneath it is the word listen. Because if you are truly listening, you are going to obey.
So here's the great irony John hands us in verse 60. A disciple is someone who listens to their rabbi and obeys — and it's the disciples who say, I don't think I can listen to that!
We don't do that, right? We like Jesus, but don't speak into that area. Don't touch my finances. Or these relationships. Don't tell me what to say in this situation. Don't tell me how to treat my neighbor. I'll worship you on Sunday — but Monday, that's my day.
Do you want to walk away yet? Most of these disciples did just that.
Next week, we'll meet the ones who stayed.
To be a disciple of King Jesus is to say, I'm going to obey you no matter where you send me. Wherever you want to shine light in my life, I'm going to let you come in. And that's going to be hard. Sometimes it's going to be painful. Sometimes you're going to wonder if it was worth it. Which brings me back to eating Jesus' flesh (yes, he really said that).
Why the Gross Language?
So why the visceral, physical, almost crass language? Eat flesh. Drink blood. That's gross, Jesus.
One answer is that John 6 is a deeply sacramental chapter. This isn't the institution of the Lord's Supper — that comes the night before Jesus is crucified — but it is clearly pointing in that direction. John is weaving Last Supper themes in early. And Jesus' words here help us understand the Communion meal.
The bread and the cup, Jesus' flesh and blood, are symbols, but so much more than symbols. If they were merely a symbol, you could throw the symbol away and just think about it — intellectual meditation. In the Reformed tradition I find myself in, we call the sacraments a means of grace. John Calvin's theology was more dependent on the Holy Spirit than many realize. The Spirit of God is the specific mechanism of God's presence for the church; it is the Spirit in the room that makes the sacraments efficacious. Calvin taught:
If the Spirit be lacking, the sacraments can accomplish nothing more in our minds than the splendor of the sun shining upon blind eyes, or a voice sounding in deaf ears. Therefore, I make such a division between Spirit and sacraments that the power to act rests with the former, and the ministry alone is left to the latter — a ministry empty and trifling, apart from the action of the Spirit, but charged with great effect when the Spirit works within and manifests his power.
— John Calvin, Institutes, IV.xiv.9
A mere symbol indeed, without the Spirit making it more.
Jesus gave us this physical, tangible meal, and, here in chapter 6, he uses such earthy language — in large part — because faith is meant to be embodied. My temptation is to overspiritualize or hyper-intellectualize it — if I just think the right things, that's all that matters. And God says consistently: yes, what you think matters, and how you live also matters. When we come to the Communion table, we are physically ingesting something. We are using our bodies in an act of worship. That's meant to dovetail into the rest of the week — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, every day in between.
Jesus' down-to-earth, physical words in John 6 help us retain the link between our spirit and our body in our worship.
Trōgōn — τρώγων
Then there's a word Jesus uses four times, starting in verse 54.
We took the family to the Santa Clara County Fair this weekend and admired the prize-winning barn animals. Hold in your mind a picture of barn animals feeding, because that's about the right register for this word.
Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood. Whoever feeds. Whoever feeds. Whoever feeds. Four times in five verses. The Greek is trōgōn, and it's a fascinating word, because it is genuinely visceral and physical. It means something more like chomp. Or gnaw. Or chew audibly.
You know how some foods make noise when you eat them? That's trōgōn.
Corn on the cob and ribs are some of my family's favorite foods. I don't think you can enjoy either one without making a lot of noise! You've really got to chomp and gnaw on those things, seeking out every last morsel of goodness. It's delicious, it's messy. You know you're going to have to floss later.
I love how the crowd is already offended by Jesus' language, and he just doubles down. Yeah — chomp on this flesh and drink. Gnaw on my word. Chew it up.
I think maybe he picks startling words so that they stick with you. Because if you go home today thinking, did Jesus really say chomp and chew on his flesh and blood? Really, Jesus? Is that the language you wanted to use? — then it worked.
Do I wake up every single day feeling like if I don't get a morsel of Jesus today, my day is wasted?
The Answer Isn't to Try Harder
If you're sitting there starting to feel a little anxious — I've treated Jesus with too much familiarity, I've balked at his exclusive claims, I don't know that I want to obey him in every area of my life — cling to this grace:
The answer is not to buck up and get better. The answer is to start enjoying the presence of Jesus.
Trōgōn. Start chewing and gnawing on the presence of God. God, I just need a morsel in my life. I need a little bit of your word today, and every day. I don't want to go a single day without that.
Because the more we enjoy the presence of God, the more naturally he transforms us into the kind of people who aren't going to be offended at those sorts of things — people who can walk with Jesus boldly into every area of their lives.
Postlude: I Became a Christian Five or Six Times
I first became a Christian in middle school. I stood up at a Christian conference and received Jesus, and it was a wonderful day.
Six months later I came back to that same camp and stood up again to become a Christian. I did that five or six times. I was really boosting the conversion numbers at my youth group those years.
I'd stand up — this great holy moment — and then go home for six months and effectively forget. I was ostensibly a Christian, but day to day I wasn't thinking about God. I wasn't devouring his word. I wasn't chomping at the bit to get more of Jesus into my life. So every six months I'd come back to that camp and think, I messed up. I forgot God for the last six months. I better become a Christian again. And I'd stand up. Again and again and again.
The turning point came later in high school, at that same camp, when I realized I didn't have to stand this time. These last six months, I had actually been walking with God. I could look at my friends who were standing, and go pray for them, and encourage them.
Maybe that's a little bit of what this strange word is after.
Some days you get the luxury of a whole day in God's word, and that's lovely. Most days it's the busyness of life, cleaning the kitchen and changing diapers and going to work. But if I get to the end of my day and I haven't even had a morsel of Jesus, then I'm missing something.
So even if it's one verse. One song. One moment of prayer. God, I just need you to speak into my life. I've got that piece of rib in front of me, and I need to get every single bit off of it, because it's just so good.
This week:
- Name the box. What version of Jesus did you inherit — and where has he been trying to burst out of it lately?
- Who can listen to that? Take the disciples' objection personally — do I have areas of my life I refuse to let Jesus speak into?
- Don't end a day without a morsel. One verse, one song, one moment of prayer — and chomp on it.
