The Task of the Church

At the tail end of Jesus' Bread of Life Discourse in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his Jewish listeners that if they are to follow him, they must symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood.  The word that Jesus uses to describe "eating" is the Greek trogein, which is rarely used in the New Testament.  This was a word that is the rough equivalent of "gnawing."  Instead, the New Testament more commonly uses the more polite word phagein, which was the general word used to describe polite and socially appropriate dining.

Jesus was clearly throwing down the gauntlet, figuratively speaking, with his listeners.  Notice that at the conclusion of his discourse, many of his listeners stopped following Jesus.  What offended them was his reference to eating flesh and ingesting blood.  Even when used as a symbol, this was a notion that would have been shocking and offensive to his Jewish listeners--in Jewish culture, ingesting flesh and drinking blood is an anathema.  By using blunt, even extreme terminology, Jesus made it clear to the crowds that in order to be his followers, they had to be willing to abandon their own cherished cultural practices when those practices conflicted with being a follower of Jesus.


As Christianity spread into the Roman Empire, Gentile Christians had to make the same choice.  Paul and Christian leaders in later generations made it clear that the Church stood separate and apart from culture--when following Jesus conflicted with Roman culture, the Church had to follow Jesus.  Sometimes Roman practices were consistent with following Jesus; sometimes they were not.  The Church was willing to face persecution and even death when necessary.

This is the task of the Church.  Its complicated.  Its somewhere between the extreme of being the mirror and the voice of culture, and setting itself against culture.  Its learning to be, in New Testament terms, in the world but not of it.  Too often the Church today tries to appease the casual disciples who follow Jesus into the desert to get bread and to be entertained.  Jesus was willing to let these casual disciples go in order to get down to the real business of the Church--forming a community that would follow in the way of Christ without compromise or limitation.

In ancient Israel and in our own generation, life was about seeking security and fostering our own survival.  This was so basic to the cultural makeup of ancient Israel, and to us, that it is an assumption about life that goes unquestioned and even unrecognized.

In ancient Israel, security and survival was all about creating bread.  Bread was the staple of the ancient Middle Eastern and European diet.  It remained so until modern times.  For Jesus' listeners, life centered around the cultivation of wheat, the harvest, and the baking of bread.

Today we continue to be preoccupied with our own security and survival, but bread no longer is closely connected to security and survival.  We are no longer an agricultural society where most of us harvest wheat.  Bread is no longer the centerpiece of our diet.  We don't spend our days harvesting and baking bread.  Today, our central preoccupation for security and survival is tied to the creation and cultivation of money and property.

In John's gospel, Jesus creates bread to feed the multitudes.  Those who are fed follow Jesus to get more.  Jesus responds to the crowd's desire for more bread by challenging their fundamental assumption that life was about making sure that there was enough bread.  Jesus says that the purpose of life is not about creating and cultivating bread (i.e. our own security and survival), but in seeking to imitate God.  In Jesus, God was not preoccupied with his own security and survival, but lived as a servant who sacrificed his life for the sins of the world.

If we follow Jesus only to facilitate our own safety and security, we are just like the multitudes who followed Jesus to get bread because we share their basic assumption about what the purpose of life is.  We will never be able to satisfy our cravings, and we will remain hungry.  In order for us to be God's people, we have to reorient our understanding about what life is about.  If we let go of our preoccupation with our own safety and security and live our lives for others, we will never be hungry.