Posts
My friend Xerxes, for Maundy Thursday, quotes Jesus at the Last Supper: first he took a piece of pita bread, and divided it, saying:
“This bread is (like) my body (which will be) broken for your sakes.”
Then he raised the cup and said:
“This is like blood. You need it to keep your strength up. Drink it, and remember me in tough times.”
It seems to me this is worth citing as an example of denial, and of the perennial human tendency to deny evidence they do not want to accept.
The actual words, from 1 Corinthians, the earliest of the five texts we have confirming what he actually said, are of course quite different:
“This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
(NRSV)
Why the tendency to change the words? Because they are shocking. They suggest not only death, and a solemn pact hinting at requiring death, but cannibalism. This is above and beyond the thought that bread can become flesh and wine can become blood. That too may sound surprising, but then, not really, given the essential premise that the speaker is God himself.
Yet this is exactly why we can be assured they have been recorded correctly just as they stand in the gospels. Because they would be a very hard sell to anyone reading, as they stand. If this were not obvious enough, from Xerxes’s reaction, just such a reaction is presented in detail in John 6.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
… Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. (NRSV)
There is no ambiguity here; the apostolic record ensures there is no ambiguity.
Yet Xerxes is far from the only one who wants to resist and deny the plain meaning of Jesus’s words. Not because he, being God, could not have turned wine into blood, as he turned water into wine. Because it makes too graphic and real the significance of the sacrifice he made today, on Good Friday, over two thousand years ago. And what a solemn, serious commitment it really is to be a Christian.
“This bread is (like) my body (which will be) broken for your sakes.”
Then he raised the cup and said:
“This is like blood. You need it to keep your strength up. Drink it, and remember me in tough times.”
It seems to me this is worth citing as an example of denial, and of the perennial human tendency to deny evidence they do not want to accept.
The actual words, from 1 Corinthians, the earliest of the five texts we have confirming what he actually said, are of course quite different:
“This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
(NRSV)
Why the tendency to change the words? Because they are shocking. They suggest not only death, and a solemn pact hinting at requiring death, but cannibalism. This is above and beyond the thought that bread can become flesh and wine can become blood. That too may sound surprising, but then, not really, given the essential premise that the speaker is God himself.
Yet this is exactly why we can be assured they have been recorded correctly just as they stand in the gospels. Because they would be a very hard sell to anyone reading, as they stand. If this were not obvious enough, from Xerxes’s reaction, just such a reaction is presented in detail in John 6.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
… Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. (NRSV)
There is no ambiguity here; the apostolic record ensures there is no ambiguity.
Yet Xerxes is far from the only one who wants to resist and deny the plain meaning of Jesus’s words. Not because he, being God, could not have turned wine into blood, as he turned water into wine. Because it makes too graphic and real the significance of the sacrifice he made today, on Good Friday, over two thousand years ago. And what a solemn, serious commitment it really is to be a Christian.
No comments:
Post a Comment