John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (The New Testament for Everyone)

by Tom Wright

so that it only meant an inner, non-physical event, of meditation, celebration and grateful contemplation. All of these are important, but John insists here, as does Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, that the ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ in question must include actual physical eating and drinking. Indeed, in verses 54–58 the word for ‘eat’ is a very solidly physical one. It was often used by Greek speakers to mean something like ‘munch’ or ‘chew’, and might be used of the way that animals ate, making a noise as they did so. It may well be that some in the early church, remembering Jesus’ words most likely in the original Aramaic language that he spoke, were tempted (quite understandably) to spiritualize their meaning, and to lose any sense that he really meant to refer to an actual feeding; and John, in writing in Greek, deliberately chooses a word which rules this out. Easily the best explanation for this – though one which has proved controversial in recent centuries – is that John understands Jesus’ language here to refer to the eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament in which Jesus’ body and blood are, in a mysterious way, offered to believers to be eaten and drunk.