Jesus Says the Strangest Things: Week 6
We have been looking at strange things that Jesus said while He was traveling around teaching and performing miracles. One of the strangest of all must have been the one we read about in John chapter six. Jesus had once again drawn a large crowd. While speaking to them one day He tells them that if they want to follow Him they must eat His flesh and drink His blood. That counts as strange does it not?. In fact, it is just gross. So the people begin to get frustrated and ask, “what in the world are you talking about Jesus?” His reply is not going to clear the matter up much.
John 6:53-56 - 53 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. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
Understandably many in the crowd left and stopped following Him that day. In fact, some of His closest disciples were confused and on the verge of leaving themselves. I can understand how they felt. All of us, as believers living on this side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, understand that He was fore-shadowing Holy Communion –the Lord’s Supper. However, for those in the crowd that day, they were being asked to accept something that seemed gross, senseless, and even morbid.
There was no way Jesus could have adequately explained to them the mystery of how we would become partakers of His very life and presence through the elements of bread and wine (or grape juice). There is no way they could have understood or placed belief in His death and resurrection before it happened. There was no way that they could have seen that Jesus was going to leave us with a way to Commune with Him that was a divine mystery and yet a gracious reality after He ascended to heaven. It would have been like explaining trigonometry to a three year old. Even now, two thousand years after his death and resurrection, and with a legacy of meaning and practice passed down to us, there is still some mystery at the heart of what takes place during Holy Communion.
Herein lies an important lesson for us. Sometimes things that Jesus said in His teaching long ago, as well as what we hear Him speaking into our lives today, seem inconceivable and strange. Sometimes He may lead us to greater clarity as we ask and study. Sometimes He will not. There may be all kinds of reasons for this. Perhaps the timing isn’t right, perhaps He is teaching us patience, or maybe what He has told us is beyond our ability to comprehend at present. The point is –those who continued to follow Jesus eventually came to understanding. When the time was right, when the necessary events had fallen into place, when the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon them to teach them all things; then those who had endured faithfully received the understanding they needed to move on.
Over thirty-three years of following Jesus, I have found that he often works that way. So I have learned to hold on to his hand and keep faithfully walking with Him when I am perplexed by something He has said, something He has done, something that strikes me as strange. In His time, He reveals to us all we really need to know if we stay close and continue to listen.
