The hard Session #1
01.12.11 The
sayings Session #2 Flesh
of Jesus 01.19.11
“It will simplify the discussion if When many of his
we admit the truth at the outset
that the teaching of Jesus is disciples heard it, they
difficult and unacceptable
because it runs counter to those
said, “This teaching is
elements in human nature which difficult; who can
the twentieth century [21st] has
in common with the first—such accept it?” But Jesus,
things as laziness, greed, the love being aware that his
of pleasure, the instinct to hit
back, and the like. The teaching disciples were
as a whole shows that Jesus was complaining about it,
well aware of this and
recognized that here and said to them, “Does
nowhere else lay the obstacle
that had to be surmounted.”
this offend you?
T.W. Manson,
The Sayings of Jesus John 6:60-61
I. The scandalous teachings of Jesus often begin in the flesh, the
incarnation.
A. John 6:51-52—The living bread come down from heaven is
given as flesh.
1. John 6:53-59 is the fourth Gospel writer’s equivalent of
Mark 14:22-24; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25; Luke 22:14-23;
Matthew 26:26-29.
B. Jesus presents himself as a living sacrifice in the flesh and
institutes a meal as reminder.
1. The disciples not only found the sayings hard, but feared
the repercussions of Jesus, as this meal appeared to usurp
the Bread of Life address in Exodus 16:13-36 and
Numbers 11:4-9.
2. The manna which their forebears ate in the wilderness was
not the Bread of Eternal Life, the Bread, of which if one
partakes, will produce a life lived forever. (John 6:58-59)
3. “This is more than we can stomach.” “Why listen to it?”
“This is Son of Man cannibalism.”
C. The sayings in the latter piece of John’s Gospel follow the
feeding of the five thousand, a miracle located in all four
Gospels.
1. Jesus connects the “You give them something to eat” of
Luke 13:9 to, and parallels with, the miracle of himself
being the Bread of Life.
II. The hard saying of Jesus, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” has been a
source of contention and dispute in the church.
A. Luther repeatedly returned to the flesh—“This is my body,
this is my blood.”
1. Against a Roman Catholic sacramental system (ex opere
operato) on one side.
2. Against the Spiritualists or Enthusiasts on the other side
(Zwingli), who took John 6:63 (“It is the spirit that gives
life; the flesh is useless.”) to be against the flesh.
B. In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church and in various
treatises on the sacrament of the altar, against the
Enthusiasts, Luther maintained that “flesh” means flesh,
“body” means body, “blood” means blood—”Take and eat.”
1. Luther neither desired a mechanical view of the
sacrament nor a magical view, nor did he feel constrained
to vehemently protest the Enthusiasts’ disregard for the
flesh of the coming of the Son of Man.
III.What is at stake in this hard saying is the Incarnation.
A. The risk of mechanical response and spiritualizing tendencies
remains.
1. The unwillingness to declare the Son of Man come
down from heaven (Daniel 7:13-14) was Jesus in the flesh
and would be Jesus in the flesh of His disciples and His
church was Luther’s battle.
B. The undermining of the flesh being the flesh results in an
impoverished view of the Gospel.
1. This impoverished view propagates sentimentality,
inauthentic spirituality, individualistic piety, and a woeful
disconnection of the flesh of Jesus and the coming of the
Son of Man.