Today’s Gospel – John 6:60-69 – concludes a long discourse in which Jesus compares himself to the bread of old: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. …. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (6:49-51). The response of “many of the disciples” is quite understandable: “‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?The Greek adjective is sklēros. The NRSV translates it as “difficult” while the JB translates it as “intolerable”. One scholar writes concerning the meaning of this Greek word: “Literally ‘hard, harsh’; there is a twofold connotation of being fantastic and offensive” (Raymond E Brown, The Gospel according to John (I–XII): Introduction, translation, and notes (Vol. 29), New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, 296). Francis Moloney writes: “The Greek adjective sklēros does not mean ‘difficult’ in an intellectual sense. The expressions ‘unacceptable, hard, offensive’ best capture its meaning” (Francis J Moloney, The Gospel of John, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1998, 230).
We frequently find expressions and whole stories that are ‘unacceptable, hard, offensive’ – in both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures. The German Lutheran theologian, Gerhard Ebeling, endured much that was ‘unacceptable, hard, offensive’ in his own life. He came of age in Germany under the Nazis. He was an active member of the Confessing Church and a colleague of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ebeling writes of our encounter with the Word of God: “What Christian faith calls the word of God is not, and never was, ‘self-evident’ to man …. He was never able to take it smoothly, without trouble and painlessly – and without joy, as this would no doubt have meant. Agreement with what was proclaimed and addressed to one, never took place without difficulties …. The believer has always owed his faith to a miracle, to a radical change of mind which overwhelms him. According to Luther, the word of God always comes as adversarius noster, our adversary. It does not simply confirm and strengthen us in what we think we are and as what we wish to be taken for granted. It negates our nature, that has fallen prey to illusion; but this is the way the word of God affirms our being and makes it true. This is the way, the only way, in which the word draws us into concord and peace with God” (Gerhard Ebeling, Introduction to a Theological Theory of Language, translated by R A Wilson, London: Collins, 1973, 17).
If we have grown up within a Eucharistic faith, we may glide over “this teaching” that so affronted the disciples. Here is a little exercise. Imagine you are there with the disciples. Take a little time to construct the scene in your imagination. Catch Jesus’ eye. He holds your gaze and tells you: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you will not have life in you”. Hold his gaze. After a moment he says to you: “Do you also wish to go away?”
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