As we continue our consideration of transcending, escaping or engaging and transforming our world, again, all of the gospels may have had a common ancestor in these stories, John’s version is a bit different.
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(Read this series from its beginning here.)
For starters, unlike Mark’s, Matthew’s and Luke’s versions, John’s story isn’t about food justice and making sure the material needs of everyone in the Jesus community are being met. John is using this story for a narrative purpose: to set up the bread of life controversy in verses 16-71. This controversy, which has roots in the gnostic desire to transcend death, is only mentioned by John’s gospel and also is very out of place with what we would expect a Jewish rabbi like the synoptic Jesus to say:
“‘Here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’ Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’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. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.’” (John 6:50-56)
The bread of life controversy in John has always been a source of debate within Christianity, and, I believe, a distraction. John’s gospel uses the feeding of the multitude story to set up a theological debate whereas the synoptic gospels use various versions of this story to teach about resource-sharing, mutual aid, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked. Meeting the material needs of those in our communities resonates much more deeply with me than arguing over what Jesus meant by drinking blood and eating flesh.
In true Johannine fashion, when the people try to make Jesus king by force, Jesus departs. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ kingdom is not material but ethereal (John 3:3, 5). Unlike the synoptics’ kingdom theme, the kingdom in John has very little to do with challenging, confronting, or changing anything about how the kingdoms of this world operate (John 18:36). In the synoptics, the kingdom theme describes that which has come from God to impact and transform our present world. But in John, Jesus kingdom is about transcending our present world with all of its challenges and transforming death into a portal to postmortem bliss.
We’ll unpack why being honest about this difference is so important, next.
(Read Part 3)
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