Really. If Jesus were trying to drive people off, rather than bring them in, he could not be doing a better job. He said, “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.” This is incontestably one of Jesus’ hardest sayings. Perhaps, it’s not quite so hard for us, today, because many of us grew up with the idea of Jesus’ body being, somehow, bread, and his blood being wine — indeed, that image is so embedded in our culture as to be familiar even to those who don’t share our faith. It’s not outlandish anymore; more like quaint and dead, harking back to a simpler, more naive time. 

            But we can imagine what it must have been like back then, for those early would-be disciples, to hear those shocking words. Those people were considering following Jesus, because something about him drew them to him. But chapter 6 of John’s Gospel in its entirety depicts the slow and steady desertion of would-be followers. It could almost be said, as was hinted at earlier, that Jesus is literally trying to drive them off. They want to make him king — he withdraws from them¹; they want him to provide physical bread, as he did on a previous day, and he talks about “spiritual bread”²; they say, “okay, so give us this bread” — and that brings us to where we are in today’s passage. One by one, they turn disappointedly away. 

            By chapter’s end, Jesus is left only with that core 12, of whom he asks, “Do you also wish to go away?”; and Peter answers for all of them: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”³ 

        &nb

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