"Does this offend you? . Do you also wish to go away?"

We can almost hear the tears in Jesus' voice as he asks his disciples those questions at the end of our gospel reading. They come at the end of a long chapter in John's gospel which we have been reading Sunday by Sunday during the past month, a chapter in which bread has been the chief image.

The chapter started some four weeks ago, you will recall, with the feeding of the five thousand on the shore of the Sea of Galilee where "a large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick." (John 6.2) After Jesus had multiplied the loaves to feed the crowd with actual bread to satisfy their physical hunger, the crowd pursued Jesus around the Sea of Galilee without really understanding to what they had been a party.

He then explained to them that he himself was "the bread .which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.. 'Sir, give us this bread always'" they respond - still not understanding the signs that they had seen of healing and of miraculous feeding. (John 6.33-34) So Jesus tries to be more explicit: "I am the bread of life .that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die." (John 6.41, 50) This, you will recall, just caused a certain amount of scoffing.

But then the cat is put among the pigeons. "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me." "Because of this," John tells us, "many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him." From an adoring crowd of five thousand, but twelve remain.

Certainly, some of the imagery used by Jesus was, and perhaps still is, distasteful. The notion of eating the flesh of another human being is abhorrent to us today as it was abhorrent to the listeners of Jesus' day. And, if that isn't bad enough, Jesus talks of drinking blood - an action expressly forbidden for Jews. Jesus' words seem to place him outside civilised society.

Today, of course, we say that the words are symbolic. Some see in the imagery a reference to the eucharist. It may be that the weekly repetition of the words of the liturgy - 'This is my body . this is my blood' - has deadened our senses to the offence that they must have first caused. But we may be wrong to read the words as a reference to the eucharist. Indeed, it may be significant that John's is the only gospel that gives no account of Our Lord's institution of the eucharist - the sacrament that he describes Our Lord as instituting is that of the washing of feet.

Whether the words are intended to refer to the eucharist or not, the symbolism is still pretty shocking. It is in the nature of a symbol that the symbol is itself not the real thing. In baptism, we have the symbolism of passing through water, of sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ without actually sharing his physical death. Sometimes, religious symbols can keep at a safe distance things that we prefer to keep at a safe distance because otherwise they might be too intimate, too uncomfortable.

Perhaps Jesus' words seem shocking because they are. Perhaps they are not intended to be altogether symbolic. Perhaps we are offended because we find that reality is not being kept at a safe distance but getting a little too close for comfort. What does Jesus mean when he says "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me"? Perhaps he is saying that there is now no distance between God and us. No longer do we have God over there symbolised by, say, a pillar of cloud or as a pillar of fire and us over here. No longer is God to be found only in his temple, in the holy of holies, or atop Mount Sinai. No, says Jesus, the reality of God is so close to us that we can take it in our hand, eat it, digest it, absorb it into ourselves. It 'abides' in us. It's that close. It can't get any closer. It may be too close for comfort.

In these words Jesus is offering to us a personal, intimate relationship with him that will lead us into the very life of God, a relationship that will nourish this life, a relationship that will bring us to dwell in Jesus and to have Jesus dwell in us just as Jesus dwells in the Father and the Father in Jesus. We are invited to join in that eternal dance of love that we call the Holy Trinity. Is that too close for comfort - or has the only thing that can really give comfort, that can really satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst come close?

"Does this offend you? . Do you also wish to go away?"

Many of us prefer to keep God at a distance. We find it easier to have faith in an all-powerful God who protects us, whom we admire and look up to from afar, whom we try to obey (when his teachings suit us) and whom we may perhaps also fear - a God we can keep at a distance, a God who, we can pretend, makes no demands on us because, after all, he is so powerful and we are so feeble that he might as well do it all himself - and that suits us just fine. We find it hard to have faith in a God who humbles himself, who takes our flesh, who allows himself to become weak, a God who longs to become our friend, Emmanuel, 'God with us.'

As Jean Vanier puts it:

"We so often want a Jesus who makes things right for the world; but Jesus wants us to make things right for the world. It is up to us, with the strength of the Spirit of Jesus, to give food to the hungry, to struggle for justice and peace, to be with those who are lonely, oppressed and in pain, to reveal to them the good news of our friendship and, through this friendship, the good news that they are loved by God." (Drawn into the mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John p 130)

The crowd in this morning's gospel wanted to follow a powerful Jesus who would make things right for the world, not a Jesus who loves us and longs to become our friend, our closest friend.

"Does this offend you? . Do you also wish to go away?"