Devotional thot 7

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, 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…”

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
(John 6:53, 60)

“This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Of course, these were Jews, who had been told since their youth that God forbids you to eat any meat with the blood still in it, for the life of a creature is in the blood. (Genesis 9:4) Surely if you are not to eat the blood of an animal, the prohibition extends to the blood of a man, especially the blood of a man who was a friend; Jesus was all of this, and – they hoped – he was the Messiah. Eat his flesh? Drink his blood? To say, “this is a difficult teaching” understates the matter rather dramatically…

I watched a movie about a Gladiator. It was called “Gladiator.” The hero of the story is a gladiator… (Is there not the possibility that we could make another verse for the song “I just wanna be a sheep” based on the gladiator? You know the rubric: “I don’t wanna be a Pharisee/’Cause they’re not fair-u-see… I just wanna be a sheep.” I charge the noble readers of the casuist with the task of writing a reason why we don’t want to be gladiators. (Also, is anyone else bothered by the fact that we don’t wanna be Saducees because they are sad? I always sing “I don’t wanna be a Saducee, ‘cause they deny the resurrection of the dead,” but it throws the rhythm off so badly...))

Anyway, after the gladiator violently decapitates some poor sod, he calls out to the crowd, “Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is that not why you are here?” And the crowd goes nuts, chanting his name, because that is why they are there. They have come to be entertained; they have come to see a good show, and he has provided it for them.

Every Sunday morning, my alarm goes off, and I wonder why I would bother getting out of bed. I have to tell you, I am used to being entertained, and this ceremony is not entertaining. Am I here to learn? Is this a time to be meet with friends who I would not otherwise see? Am I here to prove my devotion to the relevant church leaders, or to God himself? It doesn’t seem worth it.

We are here this morning to be restored. To imbibe the blood and so take the life of Christ into ourselves; we drink the blood precisely because the life is in the blood. I am here this morning to fill a need that I feel desperately. I am here because I need Jesus’ life; nothing else can liberate me, nothing else can free me from this body of death.

If this feels like an incomplete thot, I suppose it is. There is nothing to tie this together, no snappy line to neatly articulate the theology of the table. It is a reminder of why I came: not to be entertained, not to be taught some new truth, or to see my friends, but to be reminded of the story of sinners ransomed from the fall, and to find my life again, in the only place that it can be found.