M
martino
Guest
One of the biggest divisions between Protestants and Catholics is the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding the Eucharist. It is a topic worthy of much debate because both sides cannot be right and let’s face it, if Catholics are wrong we are guilty of idolatry, the worship and adoration of mere bread and wine; and if the Protestants are wrong they are guilty of denying their Lord and Savior as He comes to us is this most mysterious way!
I was thinking about the Eucharistic discourse laid out in the Gospel of John chapter 6 (vs. 35-59) which is correctly used by Catholics to support the Church’s teaching of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; that what we eat really is His body. Jesus tells the disciples over and over again***…"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…” or…” he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day”* or “…my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed”, so on and so forth. We know from the beginning of the discourse that Jesus is going to teach them something controversial; in vs. 41 John tells us that the disciples began to murmur and dispute saying things like, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” and , **“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” **It should come as no surprise that Jesus’ words are every bit as controversial today as they were then.
I realized that in my discussions with Protestant friends I was showing them what Jesus says about his flesh in John 6, but I had been asking them the wrong questions. I tried to show them how literal Jesus spoke but I would end up trying to explain that we are not cannibals. I would show them how illogical the passage becomes when you give it a symbolic meaning, but they always saw a different meaning than I did. The question that I always thought was sure baffle my friends was; If Jesus was speaking symbolically why did the disciples leave Him and why didn’t He call them back if it was only a misunderstanding? This is a good question and I have never heard a really good answer to it but it never proved to be as powerful an argument as I intended. But now I think I know the question that I should have been asking all along. It is just so obvious!.
We all agree that Jesus was calling them to a deeper faith in John 6, calling Himself the “Bread of Life”. We know that He went on to explain this by telling them (and us) that we are to eat His flesh and drink His blood. We all agree that those that heard this became extremely disturbed, so much so that they decided they were not going to follow Jesus any longer…only the apostles stayed.
What we don’t agree on is why they left, which is why I had always remembered to ask my friends to explain to me why they thought the disciples left. The response is always that they had misunderstood Jesus and thought that He meant that they were to partake in cannibalism. This answer is not good enough because Jesus would not allow them to walk away from their Savior due to a simple misunderstanding…He had always corrected them when they misunderstood His meaning. He simply could not let them leave in ignorance…all He had to do was explain that He was speaking symbolically. Anyways, why would Jesus create such a ruckus only to tell them His flesh is symbolic food and His blood is symbolic drink? What in the world does that symbolize anyway? Those are all good questions but still not the one that suddenly came to me the other day!
After the disciples become distraught over this teaching, Jesus says to them, “…’there are some of you that do not believe’ For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray him.” This verse (64) clearly shows that the disciples did not leave because they did not understand Him, they left because they did not believe Him!
So my new question to all my Protestant friends is this: What truth did Jesus reveal in John 6 that they did not believe?
I was thinking about the Eucharistic discourse laid out in the Gospel of John chapter 6 (vs. 35-59) which is correctly used by Catholics to support the Church’s teaching of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; that what we eat really is His body. Jesus tells the disciples over and over again***…"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…” or…” he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day”* or “…my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed”, so on and so forth. We know from the beginning of the discourse that Jesus is going to teach them something controversial; in vs. 41 John tells us that the disciples began to murmur and dispute saying things like, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” and , **“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” **It should come as no surprise that Jesus’ words are every bit as controversial today as they were then.
I realized that in my discussions with Protestant friends I was showing them what Jesus says about his flesh in John 6, but I had been asking them the wrong questions. I tried to show them how literal Jesus spoke but I would end up trying to explain that we are not cannibals. I would show them how illogical the passage becomes when you give it a symbolic meaning, but they always saw a different meaning than I did. The question that I always thought was sure baffle my friends was; If Jesus was speaking symbolically why did the disciples leave Him and why didn’t He call them back if it was only a misunderstanding? This is a good question and I have never heard a really good answer to it but it never proved to be as powerful an argument as I intended. But now I think I know the question that I should have been asking all along. It is just so obvious!.
We all agree that Jesus was calling them to a deeper faith in John 6, calling Himself the “Bread of Life”. We know that He went on to explain this by telling them (and us) that we are to eat His flesh and drink His blood. We all agree that those that heard this became extremely disturbed, so much so that they decided they were not going to follow Jesus any longer…only the apostles stayed.
What we don’t agree on is why they left, which is why I had always remembered to ask my friends to explain to me why they thought the disciples left. The response is always that they had misunderstood Jesus and thought that He meant that they were to partake in cannibalism. This answer is not good enough because Jesus would not allow them to walk away from their Savior due to a simple misunderstanding…He had always corrected them when they misunderstood His meaning. He simply could not let them leave in ignorance…all He had to do was explain that He was speaking symbolically. Anyways, why would Jesus create such a ruckus only to tell them His flesh is symbolic food and His blood is symbolic drink? What in the world does that symbolize anyway? Those are all good questions but still not the one that suddenly came to me the other day!
After the disciples become distraught over this teaching, Jesus says to them, “…’there are some of you that do not believe’ For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray him.” This verse (64) clearly shows that the disciples did not leave because they did not understand Him, they left because they did not believe Him!
So my new question to all my Protestant friends is this: What truth did Jesus reveal in John 6 that they did not believe?
:nope: **
