Grossed Out!

Jesus lost his crowd when he started talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. They were having a hard enough time of dealing with Him being bread coming down out of heaven. This prompted much grumbling, but it got stepped up several notches when he started talking about blood and flesh. There is something naturally repulsive about this. Jesus was stark, vivid, and graphic. This was getting into the thriller movie section. To the literal and concrete mind of his audience, this had gone too far. There were children in the audience. They are going to have nightmares. Cannibalism stories elicit the extreme reactions from us today, even when we know it occurs in survival situations. What would you do if you were desperate? We shudder to even imagine a bite of human flesh. Now here is Jesus talking openly about taboo subjects. Jews, and later Christians, were specifically forbidden from eating meat with the blood in it, i.e. abstaining from blood. Jesus throws custom to the wind and advocates for it. Read John 6:51ff.

Bram Stoker's Dracula still influences modern day fascination with vampires who live off the blood of others, securing for themselves "eternal life." The popularity of such themes today indicate that we can't seem to get away from the connection between blood and eternal life. Perhaps the truth given to us in the Old Testament that the life is in the blood (Lev.17:11) still keeps us tied to such themes. Even in a day where the importance of blood is understood scientifically we still tend to romanticize it. We teeter between repulsion and fascination. Then, Jesus stands up and blatantly declares that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life (zoe) in us. He couldn't have picked a worse theme to drive his audience away. He was like a white man walking into an Indian burial ground. He was touching the taboo. He was inciting there sensitivities, and the grumbling increased.

This is a good example where literal, concrete thinking is an impediment to understanding essential truth. Later the early Christians would be accused of being cannibals for their practice of partaking of the Lord's Supper. But, many understood what Jesus was saying. His truths are not set aside because man's mind can distort them. It is true that our very eternal existence depends on the flesh and blood of Jesus. He came in the flesh, died in the flesh, and was raised in the flesh. The bodily existence of Jesus is essential to our salvation. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14) Anyone who says Jesus did not come in the flesh is the anti-Christ. (1 John 4) Jesus identified with us in his flesh and blood. (Heb.2:14) Jesus "partook" of flesh and blood "that through death He might render powerless him who has the power of death, that is the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives." (Heb.2:14-15)

There is much more going on here in Jesus' statements than they could realize. If they had been disciples or learners, asking some questions instead of becoming grumblers, perhaps the Master Teacher would have explained all this to them.