Lectionary Reflection — 19 August 2018
51 I’m the Bread — the living Bread! — who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live — and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self.”
52 At this, the Jews started fighting among themselves: “How can this man serve up his flesh for a meal?”
53-58 But Jesus didn’t give an inch. “Only insofar as you eat and drink the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has the Life of the Age and will be fit and ready for the Final Day. My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you. In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me. This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats this Bread will live always.”
Other readings: Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20
I remember watching a televangelist “news” program about “end-time prophecy.” In the show, the minister’s wife would read a newspaper clipping about some world event and ask her husband about it. The minister would expound on the “meaning” of the article by quoting and interpreting biblical texts that supposedly supported his understanding of the news article.
At one point the minister said something along the lines of, “There was an ancient pope (I don’t remember the exact era the minister indicated) who prophesied that there would be a generation of Christians who finally took the Bible seriously and would interpret it literally. That would be the generation which would see the return of Christ.”
The camera cut over to his wife who guffawed over his statements. The camera cut back to the minister — “We’re that generation,” he exclaimed.
And — I kid you not — the very next news article causes the minister to quote from Revelation 17 where it describes a woman sitting on seven mountains. He then, with a straight face, says, “This is symbolic of the revised Roman Empire.”
This is the problem of interpreting the Bible in a wooden literal sense — one must pick and choose which passages are supposed to be symbolic and which ones are literal. And they’re generally the wrong passages.
Now, to the televangelist’s credit, Revelation 17 is symbolic. But at the same time he (and many others) think that the literal parts are symbolic, too. For example, when John states at the very beginning that the things contained in the book “must shortly take place” because “the time is near” (1.1-3), this “expert” and other like him don’t believe this is literal. Well, to be fair, they don’t believe it was literal when the letter was first written and distributed. They understand it to be literal when the events begin to take place in our time.
In another place, this same type of “literal interpretation” doesn’t understand Jesus’ use of the word “generation” (γενεά) in Matthew 24. Instead of it meaning Jesus’ generation or the generation that witnessed Jesus’ ministry, this type of “literal interpretation” understands “generation” to mean the people who witness the events Jesus talks about in Matthew 24. The problem is that Matthew always means the people who witnessed Jesus’ earthly ministry — his generation.
So, again, that’s the problem with looking at the scriptures in a literal way. Now, certainly, there are things and events and stories that are to be taken literally. What other people mean by a “literal” interpretation of the Bible is that the passages should be read in the way they were intended … literally. Poems should literally be understood as poems. Places should literally be understood as places. People should literally be understood as people. And poetic imagery — metaphors and symbols — should literally be understood as language pointing to other things.2
Granted, sometimes figuring out which parts are which can be a little tricky. However, when one reads that “the moon will be changed into blood” (Acts 2.20; cf. Matthew 24.29; Revelation 6.11-13), one should see that this isn’t a literal event but symbolic imagery pointing to something else.3
But that’s not always the case. And it’s certainly nothing new. As we see from our Lesson today, even some religious teachers of Jesus’ generation fell into the “literal translation” group. When Jesus said that his body (σάρξ; sarx) must be consumed for people to live (verse 51), the Jewish opposition asked how he could serve up his body for a meal (verse 52). They were looking at it literally. And this conversation is an important one as it deals with the age old question regarding the Eucharist —
Does the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus?
Like a lot of things today — especially when it comes to spiritual things — we like to assign things into categories. Fact or fiction. True or false. Right or wrong. And this categorization carries over into things like the bread and wine in communion. Some teach and believe that the bread is just bread and the wine is only wine but they represent Christ’s body and blood. And others teach that the bread and wine aren’t symbolic but they become the actual body and blood of Jesus.
Either / or.
However, I think this question misses the point. The meaning is more of a “both / and” type of thing. That is, what’s “real” — physical and tangible to the senses — is not opposed to what’s symbolic or spiritual or mystical. Quite the opposite, in fact. Life is much more organic than that. In other words, it takes both the physical and the mystical to make the whole; to bring it to its true or full essence.
I think that the Orthodox Church gets it right in this regard. In Volume II - Worship of the four volume series, The Orthodox Faith,4 by Fr. Thomas Hopko, in the section about the Holy Eucharist, Fr. Thomas writes —
In the Orthodox view, all of reality — the world and [humanity itself] — is real to the extent that it’s symbolical and mystical, to the extent that reality itself must reveal and manifest God to us. Thus, the eucharist in the Orthodox Church is understood to be the genuine Body and Blood of Christ precisely because bread and wine are the mysteries and symbols of God’s true and genuine presence and manifestation to us in Christ. Thus, by eating and drinking the bread and wine which are mystically consecrated by the Holy Spirit, we have genuine communion with God through Christ who is himself “the bread of life” (Jn 6.34, 41; adapted).
He goes on to state —
Thus, the bread of the eucharist is Christ’s flesh, and Christ’s flesh is the eucharistic bread. The two are brought together into one. The word “symbolical” in Orthodox terminology means exactly this: “to bring together into one.”
Lastly, Fr. Hopko sums up my feelings of the eucharist perfectly —
The mystery of the holy eucharist defies analysis and explanation in purely rational and logical terms. For the eucharist — and Christ Himself — is indeed a mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Jesus has told us, is “not of this world.” The eucharist — because it belongs to God’s Kingdom — is truly free from … earth-born “logic” … (adapted).
That’s one of the things I really like about ancient faith traditions — the idea of mystery. There are things within our world that defy “analysis and explanation in purely rational and logical terms.” And a lot of us don’t really like that. We like things in their little boxes, wrapped in little bows. But reality — the “bringing together into one” — just won’t let that happen. And that, in turn, scares some people. But here’s something that’s been really helpful for me: always look deeper, past the surface. It’s there in the depth that one truly begins to see and understand.
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In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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1. Scripture quotations marked (MSG) taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
2. To me, this is what gets other people in trouble, too. That is, they let the “literal interpretation” pendulum swing too far the other direction. For example, when they read about the resurrection of Jesus they just can’t believe what the writers were saying — people don’t come back from the dead. Therefore, they interpret that event poetically or metaphorically, even though the writers clearly used a word that only had one meaning — a new type of physical life after physical death.
3. Please see my series on New Testament Eschatology for a deeper look into poetic imagery and how it’s used.
4. This series can be read online at the Orthodox Church in America website. Or it can be purchased through various sources like here, here, or here.
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