A Recap

August 18, 2024

When I started this second year of reflections/blogs from Easter of this year, I had mentioned that I would be faced with topics/themes that might be repeats of what I had already reflected on during  the first year of these reflections. And that I would continue writing and sharing unless I felt that the reflection would be repetitive.  

This Sunday I am faced with such a  situation. Today’s Gospel has the third part of the Bread of Life Discourse, where we find this statement that goes like this: ”Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you” and carries on for four verses. This passage has been at the centre of important theological disagreements among various Christian Churches on what Jesus really  meant. However, this is a theme that I have taken up earlier, and if you wish to read more in detail about this please see my blog: “What does the Eucharist mean to me?” (June 11, 2023)

 

But the very existence of these quite different interpretations of the same Gospel passages raises the provocative question as to whether our  personal/Church perspectives/biases so powerfully influence our interpretation of Scripture passages that we end up with what is known as EISEGESIS and not EXEGESIS.  This too is a theme I have taken up in a previous blog, Can we rely on Scripture alone? (January 28, 2024 )

 

This personal bias/influence that controls our interpretation is the  eternal danger of all Scriptural texts in any religion.  Therefore we need guidance on how to interpret the Bible, and I have offered some reflections on this earlier in two separate blogs i.e. Tips on How to Read the BIble (May 26, 2024), and  Who will tell me what the Bible really means? (March 10, 2024)

First Reading: Proverbs 9: 1-6

 
Wisdom has built her house;
    she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals; she has mixed her wine;
    she has also set her table.
She has sent out her female servants; she calls
    from the highest places in the town,
“You who are simple, turn in here!”
    To those without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
    and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity and live,
    and walk in the way of insight.”

 

Second Reading: Ephesians 5: 15-20

 

Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.  So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts,  giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

 

Gospel: John 6: 51-58

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”