“This Teaching is Difficult”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, February 8, 2026
Reading: John 6:51-60; 66-69
I’m curious if you could guess which passage I’ve preached from the most often since I arrived nearly four years ago. What’s my favourite go-to part of the Bible? It’s a trick question. Because today is the first time I’m coming back to a passage I’ve preached to you before. My first fall here I preached through John. And made sure to linger on this text. I just love it. And I’m utterly baffled by it.
There’s something deeply human and humanizing here. Jesus offers some of his most off-putting teaching. And his hearers respond appropriately.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?... 66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”
Yeah, eating flesh and drinking blood is pretty offensive. The Greek goes out of its way to make the language more offensive. The verb isn’t just, eat, as in popping something into your mouth. It’s more like gnaw, like a dog with a bone. So, one preacher translates this way: “unless you gnaw my flesh and guzzle my blood, you have no part with me.” Gross enough by itself. But if there’s one food law that’s basic to Judaism it’s that you can’t eat blood. Kosher butchers certify that all the blood has been drained from an animal. If Jews won’t go near raw steak, then these Jewish followers of rabbi Jesus sure won’t go near a person’s blood.
This would have been a really helpful moment for Jesus to drain the tension, ease the pressure. Relax people, this is a metaphor. He won’t do it. So, can you blame the folks who say, “this teaching is difficult,” and remember they have something else to do, somewhere else?
Then Jesus throws a little pity party! He turns to the twelve left and pouts, “Do you also wish to go away?” I guess everyone else is leaving, you probably are too. Maybe the twelve are just the few folks from the 5000 who stuck around. Four thousand, nine hundred and eighty-eight took off. And Peter responds in another deeply human way. “Lord, to whom can we go?” I mean, we don’t have a lot of options here! Maybe those folks leaving aren’t as big a loser as we are! That’s three sad and sweet comments in a row for those of you keeping track at home. This teaching is difficult. Do you also wish to go? To whom would we go?
We’re in a short series at the church on the sacraments. Three weeks after the new year on baptism, this the middle of three weeks on the Lord’s Supper. If you’re keen you might object ‘this passage isn’t about the Lord’s Supper.’ And you’d be right. This passage is about an argument that breaks out after Jesus feeds the 5000 from five loaves and two fish. So, the 4988 who walk away still have bellies full of miraculous bread that Jesus had provided. And you think it’s hard for us to believe today? These folks met Jesus, saw him do a miracle with their own two eyes, fed themselves from his magic bread, and still went home unaffiliated. After the miracle, Jesus debates with his fellow Jews what the sign means. And they ask a perfectly reasonable question: how can this man give us his flesh to eat? We still haven’t adequately answered that question, church. But we can try again. Here goes nothing.
We should first notice the Jewish context of this story. Jesus feeding multitudes by a miracle in the wilderness is putting them, and all of us, in the position of ancient Israel. You’ll remember in the Exodus, God frees a nation of slaves. Our destination is the promised land. But first we wander 40 years in the wilderness. The requisite dad joke: if the Israelites had been led by women in the wilderness, instead of men, they’d have arrived sooner because they would have stopped and asked directions. Does that joke work with us all using GPS? Never mind. Anyway, in the desert God miraculously feeds the people with manna. Magic bread that appears every morning. The morning before the sabbath, twice as much appears so no one has to work on the sabbath. Try and store manna, and it rots. You gotta trust God to provide one day more tomorrow. When Israel is fed, it knows what’s happening: God is leading us to the promised land once more, providing in the meantime.
But Jesus goes out of his way to contrast his bread with the ancestors’ manna.
This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.
What’s the cliché? Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach him to fish and he eats forever? Jesus has his own version. Give people bread and they eat for a day. Give them flesh and they live forever. Manna is good, the ancestors’ story shows. When Jesus gives himself for food, that’s even better.
Secondly, a question: is this a literal description or a metaphor of some sort? Catholic and Orthodox churches, some Anglican and Lutherans incline heavily toward the literal. The sacrament is Jesus’ actual body and blood. If you believe that, treat it accordingly. Sacramental churches will reserve some of the sacrament, place it in a small box called a tabernacle, light a candle by it. If you’re in its presence, you bow, genuflect, cross yourself. That’s Jesus’ actual body and blood, reverence accordingly. We Protestants have tended to be on team metaphor. This is a spiritual experience. Treating it literally just shows you’re confused. When Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again, Nicodemus says hmm, that’s weird, I’m old, mom is even older, how do I go back in there... silly. Jesus speaking of eating and drinking here is like a southern woman telling a newborn “honey I could eat you alive.” We don’t expect her to chomp down. Anyway, for the sacrament to benefit you, you have to have proper faith. Jesus is always coaxing us to believe, and so to become part of him, to abide with him. You could read this whole chapter, even with all the gnawing and the guzzling, as an image for a faith that’s raw, red-blooded, not at all ephemeral or airy, but gut-level.
Last week we had a young guest who grew up Catholic, never been here before. When Dayle and I served her communion, we told her: “The body of Christ broken for you,” she said: “I know, I know.” I been here before gents, not my first rodeo. Just for the record a good thing to say there is “Amen.” It means, “I agree.”
An illustration. In early medieval France there was a dispute between two monks with the impossibly perfect names of Radbertus and Ratramnus. Their monasteries were across town from one another, and that town wasn’t big enough for the both of them. The question was this: if a mouse sneaks in and steals a consecrated wafer, is that mouse eating the body and blood of Christ. Radbertus argued yes, the bread is objectively Christ’s body, that mouse is taking communion. Ratramnus said nah. Without faith in Jesus, eating does you no good. And mice don’t sin, Jesus doesn’t become a mouse to save mice, that we know of. Communion is for us who trust him and so become part of him, absent faith, it’s just bread. In my informal Bible study polling of you all, some thought Radbertus was right: the mouse is gnawing Jesus like the rest of us. Some voted for team Ratramnus, the mouse is just having a snack, no Jesus for him. I thoroughly expect some newborn in this congregation in the next year or two to be named Radbertus or Ratramnus. Either one will do.
What about us, in 21st century Toronto? Protestant churches here in English North America have generally been on team metaphor. But we are also on team Bible. And the Bible is pretty explicit in this passage.
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.
Here the Bible is leaning on us who are team Bible. Sure, we’re more spiritual on the sacrament. But what if our Bible isn’t? Jesus is relentless here. He mentions eating or drinking 11 times in eight verses. We might call the passage aggressively physical. He’s going out of his way to be hyper realist, obnoxiously sacramental. We Protestants are right to say Christ meets us in personal faith. In Bible study and prayer. We would also be right to say he meets us in the sacrament. Makes us different. One with him. Whether that’s literal, or metaphorical, I don’t really know or care. It’s certainly Jesus and nobody knows how.
Point three is about belonging. I mentioned earlier that Jews don’t eat blood, not even animal blood, let alone human. Why? Here’s the rationale:
Anyone of the Israelites or of the aliens who reside among them who hunts down an animal or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. 14 For the life of every creature—its blood is its life; therefore, I have said to the Israelites, ‘You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off.’
Blood is life. In our language, we might say that blood is the soul of a creature. The part that belongs to God, comes from God, and goes to God, we have no claim over it or right to it. When you and I think of someone else’s blood, we usually think of possible disease transmission. So EMT’s and health workers wear gloves. But we also think of having our ancestors’ blood in our veins. Blood signifies kinship, belonging. There’s a reason racists always speak of the purity of blood. Ours is good, yours is bad, stay away. They’re right that blood is life. Just wrong to fear mixing. Your and my blood is mixed with a 1st century Jewish rabbi, who makes us family. That’s the best news there is. More of this mixing!
Jesus does seem to be pushing against his own Jewish tradition here with all the drinking blood talk. Here’s why, I think. He is offering us his life. His soul. His kinship to God. He’s using the most offensive language available to get our attention. Drink this and become part of God’s own life. Have God’s own blood in your veins. Along with all the others who drink this cup. This is a blood that washes away difference in race or creed or class. We become just Christian, kin to all others. One day Christ will gather everyone in this family at his banquet table. When we commune it’s just an appetizer, a foretaste. Everyone else is coming too.
I wonder if you know the 1986 movie The Mission? Set in early colonial South America, young Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro, epic soundtrack. Liam Neeson’s first feature film. The boys all play Jesuit priests in the Andes mountains ministering to the Guarani people, who all become Christian. Well, the land changes hands from Spanish to Portuguese, and the new regime wants the Guarani out. The Jesuits say to their fellow Europeans, no, these are our fellow Christians, kin by baptism and communion. The army doesn’t care. It moves in to displace the tribe, and the Jesuits all take the natives’ side. DeNiro’s character had been a soldier, so he trains them to fight. But Irons’ character will not. Christ’s only way is love. Not to spoil the ending, but you have had 40 years to see it ... DeNiro and co manage to kill a few soldiers before dying themselves. But Irons leads a group of the Guarani into fire carrying a monstrance: the consecrated host. Both priests die. One while resisting violence with violence. The other while resisting violence with Christ. I’ll let you infer which one was more faithful.
And Liam Neeson? He dies in passing early in the battle unceremoniously. Nowadays he’d have just killed everyone with a snarl. He has certain special skills. That’s our day’s imagination, all Hollywood. A biblical imagination is to give our blood for others, like the martyrs, like Jesus. DeNiro’s warrior looks tough. Irons’ peace march looks weak. Looks are deceiving.
The Mission shows one reason I love a highly realistic view of the sacrament. If that just is Jesus—and the Bible sounds like it is—it should affect our behaviour. Fellow Christians shouldn’t have mown down a priest and people with a monstrance. They should have joined in prayer. I know that’s a weak “should.” Violence often just wins in this world. But in the world Christ is bringing, all there is is love. We belong to that world now. And the eucharist trains us for it.
Another example from South America, in the 1970s and 80s in Chile. The military junta governed with terror, kidnapping and disappearing dissidents and opponents of the regime. Eventually the Catholic Church found its voice and spoke out. And those government thugs started roughing up Catholic bishops. Only then did the Catholic hierarchy insist ‘you can’t do this to the church.’ By “the church,” they meant bishops. This is the besetting sin of Catholicism—thinking the priests and bishops are the real church. I could go on all day about our besetting sins as Protestants and usually do. But it took us Protestants to point out that the church is actually all the baptized, everyone who sups on Christ. So, we Protestants say, and so our Catholic brethren would nominally agree. The Chilean bishops could have condemned the first killings and disappearances—that was done to the church too. A friend of mine wrote a book called Torture and Eucharist. Arresting title. He argues the eucharist is there to gather people into one new humanity: Christ’s. Torture is there to divide people with pain and fear, to isolate and harm bodies. So, the church’s response to torture is eucharist. Chileans started gathering for five-minute masses in highly visible public places, then dispersing into the crowds before the police could arrive. As if to say, ‘as much as you try to divide with fear, we are united by Christ in love.’
Catholics like to talk about eucharistic miracles. Folks who fold consecrated wafers into prayer books, open them later, and discover only blood, that sort of thing. If you’ve come through Catholic schools, you’ll know some of those stories. I like them. But the eucharistic miracles that move me more are the ones that unite people, former enemies, into friendship. I pastored a church once where two local politicians ran against one another for the county commission seat where the church was located. And one, despite intending not to, found himself extending his hand to the other during the passing of the peace before communion. He said, “I didn’t want to, but there he was, and how could I not if we were going to the Lord’s table together?” That’s a eucharistic miracle. Another. A professor I had in seminary was an Anglican who was a bit fussy. They can be that way you know. He got furious at a student leading communion wrong, stormed out and yelled. Good form! The next time he presided, the student came forward with her hands out, and he said to her, “the body of Christ, broken for you. I love you.” It’s the meal that makes sinners into saints.
One of my favourite novels is Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. It’s a restaurant where they’ll make you whatever you’re homesick for. If you’re Filipino, how about some balut? Indonesian, here’s some Durian fruit? Prairie kid? Perogies sound right? Indigenous: have some Bannock. Where I’m from, barbequed pork in vinegary sauce. Mmm. See, food isn’t mere fuel. It’s life. It’s a full table, family, those you love alive or dead, where you learn who you are. At the Lord’s Table we learn who we are, church. And we learn how to treat other people.
Okay, my favourite not-explanation of the sacrament? Fathoming of the mystery beyond our reckoning? From St. Augustine. Normally he says we eat food, digest it, and it becomes part of our body. With the Lord’s Supper this normal process is reversed. We eat, and it digests us, and makes us into the body of Christ. Consume us, Lord Jesus. That’s not an explanation. It’s a way of saying hmm, weird, we don’t understand this, but it seems to work like this. Now let’s eat together and be changed.
Anybody do this as kids? You cut yourself; I cut myself, we mix our blood, and there now, we’re blood sisters, blood brothers. I remember my disappointment at being told by some grownup that didn’t really mean we were siblings. Well, I got news for the grownups, from the Bible—there is a way to become more siblings than by birth. Going further: this is the way to become human for the first time. We think we know what it means to have a body, to be a body. We all have one. Then we extend this innate knowledge to the metaphorical meanings of the body of Christ in the church or the eucharist. But maybe what it really means to have a body is to be a part of God? And what we think we know about having a body, being a body, gets revolutionized by Jesus, in this space, at this meal? One early Christian poet says this. Listen to all the intimate, sensual bodily language here.
My heart bursts forth the praise of the Lord.
My lips bring forth praise to him.
My tongue becomes sweet with his anthems.
My limbs are anointed by his psalms.
My face rejoices in his exaltation.
My spirit rejoices in his love.
And my being shines in him.
My body, revolutionized by Christ. Our bodies become intimate, one. All creation transfigured by and in him. That’s a lot to ask of a bite of bread, a sip of wine. But God has always done more with less promising material. Amen.