Day 44 – Consuming Jesus

Read:  John 6:53-71

Jesus is big business. Publishers and distributors have discovered a market for books, movies, music, conferences, and home décor that feature Christian themes. Jesus has always had the ability to draw a crowd, and wherever there's a crowd there's money to be made! Our consumer culture devours merchandise and media and gorges itself on the profits. The problem with consuming Jesus is that the world has always preferred profits it can control to prophets who refuse to cooperate with marketing strategies. If Jesus had had a publicist, he would have quit after the events of John chapter 6.

Jesus had never been easy to manage. Consumers were demanding a very specific kind of savior, and while Jesus' ability to perform miracles made Him appealing to many; He had a reputation for saying things that made people uncomfortable. He refused to shy away from controversy. Nor did He practice the kind of political correctness that produces the vanilla reputation everybody willingly accepts. He had already compared Himself to the manna God provided during the Exodus. This comparison was absurd to the Jews. To the extent He compared Himself to Moses, they thought Him arrogant; to claim to be the Son of God was downright blasphemous. However, none of these claims drove the crowds away. If anything, Jesus' radical claims continued to draw the crowd. "Where is He going with all of this?" they thought.

Jesus' next statement is the logical conclusion of His bread analogy. After all, what do you do with bread? You eat it, of course! It is not enough to receive bread; you must consume it for it to have any nutritional value. (Here is where the publicist begins to get nervous.) One of the earliest and most basic Jewish laws prohibited eating anything with its "life blood" still in it.  When God first permitted Noah and his family to eat meat from clean animals, He clearly stated that they had to ensure that the meat had no "life blood" in it (see Genesis 9:4). Jesus' command to "eat my flesh" was shocking and repulsive to the crowd, but to explicitly say that they must "drink" His blood even went beyond cannibalism.

This exchange is reinforced at the last supper where Jesus said, “This is my body, take and eat” and, “This is my blood, take and drink.” The symbolism of that meal and Jesus’ shocking statement to the crowd would only be fully understood after His death on the cross. But here in Capernaum, long before His death, Jesus’ invitation for the consumers to consume turned stomachs and drove away potential customers.

We like the marketed version of Jesus, the one that stays on the book cover and out of our wallets. We prefer a Jesus we can sing about to the Jesus who convicts. We are thrilled when Hollywood "finally gets it right" and portrays a real Christian hero. We just don't want to be that hero if it means we must give up our plasma screens and surround sound. We want to go to the latest Christian conference where we will be inspired and challenged to "Live for Jesus," and then we curse the traffic on the drive home.

To consume Jesus means we take Him into ourselves. He permeates every part of our being and resides on the inside where He gives life. To follow a consumer Jesus means we only accept Him on our terms and add Him to our collection of possessions. To consume Jesus is to be controlled by Him. To follow a consumer Jesus means we are pursuing a savior we can control. A consumer Jesus, or one who consumes Jesus, there is a difference. Which do you prefer?

Bread of Life,

Thank You for refusing to appeal to the popular demands of our human fickle hearts. You died so that I might live. You are the source of life; there is no life outside of Your body and blood sacrificed on the cross. I humbly come to the table and gratefully partake. As I consume You, fill me with your life that it might be You who consumes me from the inside out.

Amen