Super Food – John 6:41-71

“Nutritionally speaking, there is no such thing as a superfood.”  That’s how the Healthline article on 16 Superfoods That Are Worthy of the Title starts.  “The food industry bestows the superfood label on nutrient-rich foods with a supposed capacity to positively affect health,” it continues.  Then it lists these 16 foods, dark leafy greens, berries, green tea, eggs, legumes, nuts and seeds, kefir (and yogurt), garlic, olive oil, ginger, turmeric, salmon, avocado, sweet potato, mushrooms, and seaweed.  Find anything in there that you eat?  What if there was a true super food that would cause you to live forever?  That’s what Jesus is offering.

So the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”  And they were saying, “Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How can he now be saying that he is come down from heaven?”  Jesus responded, “Don’t grumble with each other.  No one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.  It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’  Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned will come to me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God, he has seen the Father.  Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died.  This is the bread that has come down from heaven, that anyone who eats of it may not die.  I am the bread of life come down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews began fighting among themselves, saying, “How is this man able to give us his flesh to eat?”  Therefore, Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and  drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves.  The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh truly is food, and my blood truly is drink.  The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, remains in me and I in him.  Even as the Father of life sent me, and I live through the Father, so also the one who eats me, that one will live through me.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, not like the bread our fathers ate and died.  The one who eats this bread will live forever.”  Jesus said these things while he was teaching in Capernaum.

So many of his disciples who heard this said, “This is a hard saying.  Who is able to hear it?”  Jesus, knowing within that these disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “You are offended by this!  What if you were to see the Son of Man going up to where he was before?  The spirit is that which makes alive.  The flesh does not benefit anything.  The words I am speaking to you are spirit and are life.  But there are some among you who do not believe.”  For Jesus perceived from the beginning that there were some who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.  And he said, “For this reason I said to you that no one is able to come to me unless it has been given to him by the Father.”

Because of this many of his disciples deserted him and no longer walked with him.  Jesus said, then, to the twelve, “Do you not also desire to leave?”  Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom will we go?  You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Jesus answered them, “Have I not selected you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil.”  He said this of Judas of Simon Iscariot.  For he was about to betray him, even though he was one of the twelve.  (John 6:41-71)

It is possible that John’s use of the word “Jews” here indicates particularly the religious leaders, but in either case Jesus is exposing more than just manipulation on the part of the people in order to get bread.  He is exposing out and out opposition to his teaching.  It is the Jews who take a figurative statement of Jesus and make it a literal impossibility.  So Jesus goes with that.  You must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have life eternal.  Even Jesus’ own disciples begin to complain about this teaching.  Not everyone who has professed to believe in Jesus really does.  Jesus explains that no one can come to him (believe) unless the Father draws them, but everyone the Father so draws will be raised up on the last day in the resurrection.  Jesus denies to human beings, to flesh, the ability to do anything good spiritually.  Only the Holy Spirit can give life.  He chooses who to draw and save.

When Jesus’ own disciples begin leaving him he turns to the twelve and asks if they will leave also.  Disciples of all generations must face this question.  When Jesus does something that offends us what will we do?  Will we fall away in discouragement?  Or will we like Peter remember that Jesus is the one whose words have brought eternal life.  There is no other place to go.

Discussion Questions

1. What are the “super foods” that keep you healthy?
2. What is one of the reasons John shows that the Jews were offended by Jesus?  Would you have been offended this way?
3. What is hard about the saying of Jesus that no one can come to him unless the Father draws him?  What is the implication that whoever is so drawn he will raise up at the last day?
4. Why do you think Jesus gets so weird saying you must eat his flesh and drink his blood?
5. What do you feel when Peter says, “To whom will we go?  You have the words of eternal life”?
6. What challenges to being a disciple of Jesus have you faced and why have you stayed and not deserted him?