Clean Your Plate! – John 6:51-58
“So Jesus said to them, “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; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
If we weren’t so familiar with Holy Communion, those words would be pretty shocking They were even more shocking in the original Greek because the word for ‘eat’ that Jesus used was ‘trogon’ which means to “to gnaw” or “to chew” or “to munch.” It means to eat like an animal at a trough! Obviously, He’s trying to get a rise out of His listeners.
But maybe what Jesus is saying isn’t so shocking after all, because when I was a kid, I often came to the dinner table famished. And as I fell on my food my mother would say to me, “Slow down and stop eating like an animal!” And that was probably a pretty apt description. Anyone who’s ever watched a teenager devour a pizza knows exactly what I’m talking about. But whether I ate fast or slow, I always cleaned the plate
So, I think that maybe Jesus is using such shocking and descriptive language to describe His body as the Bread of Life so that we can understand that’s it’s intended for those who are really, really hungry. It’s for those of us who recognize our need to be fed. Who feel our need to eat this bread and drink this blood. It’s for those of us who are so hungry that we eat like animals – or famished teenagers – who can’t get enough.
I think it’s a call for us to put aside politeness and eat and drink God’s grace like our very lives depended upon it. Because they do. That’s what happens when we celebrate the Lord’s supper, but it’s also what happens every single day that we recognize Christ’s presence in our lives.
Jesus says, “[He] who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in [him].” The Lord’s Supper is symbolic of taking Jesus Christ into our selves, digesting Him, and eating and drinking salvation. And if we take Jesus in, He promises to abide with us, to stay with us, to never abandon us or leave us alone.
The Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is, and always will be, shocking. And the shocking Good News is that Christ came into the world to save sinners and feed our hungry ravenous hearts on the bread from heaven and the saving blood of grace. So, clean your plate!