Real food. . .

Having come off the series of John 6 Gospel readings for Series B, I am more and more convinced that it is nearly impossible to meet these texts without understanding them Eucharistically.  Yes, I know.  Luther did not mince words in rejecting the idea that John 6 addressed the Lord’s Supper: “In the first place the sixth chapter of John must be entirely excluded from this discussion [of the Supper], since it does not refer to the sacrament in a single syllable. Not only because the sacrament was not yet instituted, but even more because this passage itself and the sentences following plainly show, as I have already stated, that Christ is speaking of faith in the incarnate Word" -- as 1FC SD VII, 41 quote.  Chemnitz summarized the catholicity of Luther’s interpretation, which Luther claimed was simply Augustine’s -- and, for that matter ecumenical since also Cajetan and Calvin agreed.  Lutherans were rather content on the issue until Wilhelm Loehe advocated a more sacramental interpretation.  Both Warner Elert and Herman Sasse followed suit.  It should be noted that Luther was not above using John 6 in his sacramental piety, especially, for example, in the hymn text Christ Lag in Todesbanden.  

While it is not quite dangerous to conclude that John 6 is Eucharistic, it could dangerous to insist that it could not be.  John 6:63, flesh is of no avail cannot be used against our Lord's own institution of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  Luther is careful in his debate with Zwingli to avoid this trap but many on the Radical Reformation side are not.  Jesus is not so careful, however, on the other side.  Jesus pushes every button and ends up with an emphatic to intensify His point: “Amen, Amen I say to you,” as if to say:  “Let me be perfectly clear.”  Then He does the unthinkable.  He also switches words from a rather  polite word for “eat,” φαγεῖν (phagein), to τρώγων (trogon), a more graphic word which suggests gnawing on or chewing His flesh.  This is then no symbolic or imaginary eating and drinking but the literal one which, when done in faith, receives what it promises.  Our Lord precisely places the real eating of His flesh and blood in faith in the context of the real eating of the manna in the wilderness -- one of which could sustain life for day but the other feeds the food upon which one eats and never dies.

In the end, it would seem to be a particularly Lutheran thing to do to read John 6 sacramentally,  as David Scaer has noted:  "John 6 is the chessboard on which the traditional hermeneutical rules are either ignored or shown to be inadequate. In making John 6 a discourse on faith, the unus sensus literalis est―which interprets “eating” as really “eating” and not “faith,” and “flesh” as really “flesh”―is replaced by a purely allegorical interpretation in which these words are given a different meaning."  In the end, it might require suspending the mind of all prior knowledge to read John 6 without automatically thinking of the Sacrament but it would also suspend all credibility to read it without also requiring the faith that receives this flesh and blood.