Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 6-7.

So, after Jesus taught that only those who ate His flesh and drank His blood would have eternal life, many of His disciples had trouble accepting His teaching.  When Jesus heard their complaints He further clarified His teaching on this subject.  Which led many of His disciples to leave off from following Him.  So, what was it about Jesus’ follow-up which was the point of no return for so many of those who had followed Him up until then?  It was when He said that the flesh counts for nothing.  At this point they realized that following Jesus was not going to get them a “place” in the power structure of this world.  Jesus was neither going to lead a revolt to overthrow the Romans, nor was He angling for a “place at the table” within the existing power structure.  When Jesus asked the Twelve if they wanted to leave as well, Peter answered for them, revealing that he, and the rest of the Twelve (well, perhaps not Judas Iscariot), understood and accepted this.  Peter and the others realized that what Jesus was teaching was much more important than overthrowing the existing power structure, or finding a place within it.

There is truth in what I wrote above, so I am going to leave it in, but it does not capture the thoughts I was going for when I began to write.  As a result, I am going to discuss the other thought I had about this passage.  When Jesus talks about our need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, He is talking about our need to re-imagine the pyramid of needs.  The pyramid of needs has food and water as our most basic needs: the needs that people must satisfy to some minimum level before they will seek to meet any other need.  Jesus was telling us that He fulfills our most basic need, even before physical food and water.  This is a difficult thing for us to accept, and we can only do so if God draws us to Him.  In fact, part of what makes it so difficult is that we can in no way satisfy that need by our own actions.  We must accept that our most basic need is satisfied only because God offers it to us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.