For a friend who finds it difficult to believe right now.

“How can this man give us his flesh and blood? This is absurd!” A sharp argument broke out among the Jews, centering on this graphic teaching of the Man from Nazareth.

“I tell you the truth, my friends, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” Jesus responded.

“Absurd,” called out one of the more orthodox Jews.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

“Ghastly! This flesh and blood business is simply ghastly, ” quipped another pious, clean Israelite.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in Him.”

“Uhh, Rabbi,” cautioned one of his disciples, “maybe you should stop with this flesh and blood business. Not really good for business if you know what I mean!”

Jesus continued, “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate mana and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”

The synagogue where Jesus was teaching was stunned into silence. They remembered the story of their forefathers and God’s provisions of life in the wilderness through the life-givin manna. That they got. But this business of feeding on the flesh and blood of the One the Father sent was a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Upon Jesus finishing, a heated discussion began among his many followers: “What the hell? Feeding on his flesh and blood?” “This is really confusing, hard teaching!” “How can anyone embrace this sort of idea, much less stomach it?”

Aware of the grumbling among his own circle, Jesus approached them saying, “Does this really offend you? What if the Son of Man ascends right now to heaven to where he was before, before your very eyes? The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe…”

From that point on many of his followers turned back and no longer followed him. One by one they left Jesus to pursue other ventures, other more sane ideas, leaving Jesus and his crazy “flesh and blood” teachings behind.

“You still remain,” Jesus said to the remaining Twelve. “Don’t you want to pursue other, more digestible, more logical notions on Life? You do not want to leave, too, do you?”

Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ more skeptical disciples, replied, “Well after that rousing homilee I guess it would make sense to leave,” eliciting a few chuckles from the other eleven. “But Lord,” Peter continued, “to whom or what shall we turn?”

“Shall we go to Oprah or Dr. Phil? In the face of your difficult teachings, does the Church of Oprah offer the life giving sustenance we need for healthy, integrated living?”

“Or maybe we should turn to Nietzsche, Camus, or Foucault, those great modern thinkers who have bleached the world of the Spiritual and Divine, stripping it of it’s need for You, our Messiah, or Yahweh for that matter. They seem to do a good job of pointing out the absurdity of belief in Yahweh and to be honest sound like a rational alternative. After we leave you, are they and their philosophies all that’s left?”

“Would those other religions be better? Though it is hopeless to try and create shalom through our own efforts, no matter how spiritual they are, if we leave you isn’t that what’s left? A grace-less life of hopeless striving for Divine approval, a grasping at the wind? Would they be better than you, Jesus?”

“How about we give up religion all together and pursue hard reason and verifiable science, the opiate for the modern Enlightenment world? Would rationalism sooth the center of man and repair our broken world? Can we humans put to rights the world and give each other the life for which we all long? Can Man triumph over Man and consummate a Brave New World devoid of social evil?”

“Or maybe MTV has the answers? Maybe we could get ourselves a celebrity-made Crib, pale around with Jay-Z and Snoop, bling out our sandals and pimp our rides? Isn’t it written in one of the wisdom books to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die? Maybe we should leave you for the Real World and pursue every materialistic pleasure and sexual fetish known to man to find true Nirvana?”

“Jesus, after you what else is there? If we leave you, what else is left to believe? Who else is there to follow?”

Peter continued, “You and you alone have the words of Eternal Life. Oprah, Dr. P, Camus, the modern Enlightenment project, and MTV have not Life; they do not satisfy, they are Life-less. If we left you we would be wandering nomads in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.”

“Jesus, you ask if we, too, will leave?”

“Well, I ask you: After you to whom or what shall we go?”

A modern reading of John 6:52-68.