“This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

  “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

The disciples are still reeling from the Bread of Life discourse that Jesus has just given them in John’s Gospel (JN 6: 60-69).  Feeding on Christ and on each other sounds not only odd, but unnerving in a way.  Yet, this is what Jesus has told his disciples.  And what could this possibly mean – a bread eaten that grants eternal life?  They find it all very difficult to accept.

Jesus’ response to the disciples’ reaction was quite simply, “Does this shock you?”

The tone hints to a bit of exasperation on Jesus’ part, namely that the disciples are not grasping the bigger more expansive picture.  I can only imagine that travelling around with Jesus, witnessing his healings, listening to his words, the provocation of both faith found and denial expressed, must have been quite a rollercoaster for the disciples.  There must have been a living tension experienced by them in all this, and it was a tension that does not ever get resolved.

Now, this feeding on Jesus as the bread of life that grants eternal life seems just a bit too much for them – too challenging and quite frightening in a way.  It was difficult if not impossible, so it seemed, for them to grasp the magnitude of this new way of life offered to them.

For some of them, it marked the end of their sojourn with Jesus…

As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer walked with him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”

What is too much?  At one point do we feel we have been pushed to the limits of our capacity to understand much less embrace and engage something strikingly foreign and new?  Maybe that is the distinction.  Perhaps, wherever we fall on the line not to be crossed in all this, the line itself is determined by its perceived foreign nature rather than its newness.  There is a protective gear that we wear over our bodies, minds, and hearts to limit that which can really get to us so to speak.  It’s a shut-down valve formed over years that for all its practical utility can be quite constricting when it comes to considering something radically new that could be a real game-changer.  The perceived foreign nature of this potential newness seems a threat more than an invitation.  That unresolved tension is buzzing in our ears.

It quite often takes a shock to offset us enough to begin seeing something that seemed foreign and threatening as something with the capacity to expand and transform.  In order to really enter into the reality of an experience, it must be tasted, despite the fact that it may not immediately sit well on the palette.  Beyond tasting, it must be eaten.  To eat something is to take it inside of who we consider ourselves to be with the hope that we will be nourished and sustained.  Eating something shockingly new, and really chewing on it, has the power grow and transform us.  And this is where the risk comes in to play.   The risk taken is that of death – death of the smallness of our lives and worlds as we know and understand it.

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.

Jesus is speaking about the risk of allowing potentially everything about our lives to die, only so to let real New Life spring forth.  In this death, there is a real felt sense of loss; however, nothing essential is lost.  This loss is a breaking of the attachment to our perceptions.  The only thing really lost is our limited perception of what it means to live.  The flesh of our lives is waiting to be enlivened anew by a Spirit of the Divine, which moves beyond a food for sustenance into a food of transformation.  It becomes a new way of eating, wherein, just as the feeding of the 5000 revealed, nothing is wasted, leftovers are gathered, and in this – abundance prevails.  This is the unresolved tension buzzing again.

The Acts of the Apostles describes beautifully the release of this Holy Spirit’s power when the Bread of Life is eaten and shared. (ACTS 9: 31-42)

There he (Peter)  found a man named Aeneas,
who had been confined to bed for eight years, for he was paralyzed.
Peter said to him,
“Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.”
He got up at once…

Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha…fell sick and died…
Peter… knelt down and prayed…turned to her body and said, “Tabitha, rise up.”
She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up.
He gave her his hand and raised her up,
and when he had called the holy ones and the widows,
he presented her alive.

This is the Bread of Life is Christ, consumed and raised up in the nourishment of the Holy Spirit as aliveness.  The Paschal Mystery – the life, death, resurrection, and ascension – is being lived – ALIVE – in those in communion.  In the end, we, like Tabitha can only be presented alive, when we share in eating the Bread of Life that shocks our old lives to their core and bursts forth in an electromagnetic field that expands and heals through its aliveness.  This is that unresolved tension, the buzzing of aliveness within the Divine Field, seeking to feed us and transform us into this same food.

Now, back to Jesus’ question to those so shocked about this teaching on the Bread of Life:

“Do you also want to leave.”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

To whom shall we go?  Do we eat the Christ meal and suffer the Holy Spirit’s divine enlargement?  Can we dare present Christ Alive?