August 17, 2003
Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
It was not unusual for practices of certain religions competitive with the young Christian Church, to practice various forms of eating flesh and/or drinking blood that had been offered to idols. The author of the Gospel of John "bounces" off of this practice with which many of his readers were familiar to make an important point in relation to the teachings of Jesus. They were admonished to "eat up" everything Jesus said, and follow the example of how Jesus expressed his life, and in so doing to experience the satisfying results that some in other religions hoped to experience from "eating the flesh" and "drinking the blood". It is clear that the practice of Holy Communion has its roots in "what other were doing", it is just as clear that the implication of this Teaching about what Jesus said by the author of John is to be taken as an analogy and not to be understood literally. The goal of healthy spiritual expression comes about through a good spiritual diet, not through one injests into the body.
The scripture from Ephesians deals with the emotional satisfaction of being committed to nurturing the spirit to the point of healthy and exemplary expressions of life. The readers are admonished to be wise in recognizing the wisdom of emphasizing a good spiritual diet. Life is short, and even a short life is lived in an environment of evil. Good things and feelings result when one seeks to grow in understanding what the will of the Lord is (what a good spiritual diet is) and engages in spiritual expressions of poetry, music and expressions of appreciation. This kind of emotional value is much to be desired over drunkeness as a means of escaping the evils of the world. All of this was to be done through a sense of worshipping God through Jesus who revealed the truth of what God wished for them in their lives.