CANNIBALS?

John 6:53 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.

Bruce D Prewer writes:

In all developed civilisations, the eating of human flesh has been regarded as repugnant. You may recall that true account of a plane crash in the high snows of the Andes, where the survivors only kept alive by finally agreeing to eat their dead companions. They achieved it by overcoming violent feelings of revulsion. Some of their first attempts ended with much vomiting. The very thought is repugnant to us.

There was an unfortunate rumour circulating around the Roman Empire in the 1stC of this era. It was a rumour which led people to despise Christians, and made it much easier for authorities to launch vicious persecutions against them. This rumour had it that Christians were cannibals. It was reported that when they met early in the morning of the first day of the week for their religious observances, they ate human bodies and drank human blood.

It is not difficult to see how this rumour started and took off. Anyone who listened in on a Christian service, even standing outside the door, might well draw that conclusion. They might hear a person reading the words from a letter of Paul about the Lord’s Supper: “This is my body......eat this remembrance of me. This is my blood....do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Or later on they may have listened to them reading from John’s Gospel: “I tell you plainly: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ” You can understand how such words may have shocked outsiders.

Also there is no surprise that Jesus shocked his listeners when he first used similar words. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” It sounded like cannibalism to those critics who were present that day.