As we continue our exploration of how right now matters in the context of the words of John chapter 6, consider the following cultural prohibitions against ingesting blood:
“This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: ‘You must not eat any fat or any blood.’” (Leviticus 3:17)
Welcome Readers! Please subscribe to Social Jesus Here.
(Read this series from its beginning here.)
“And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal. Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people.” (Leviticus 7:26)
“I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. Therefore I say to the Israelites, ‘None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood.’ . . . You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.” (Leviticus 17:10-14)
Drinking or eating blood, even drinking blood “that makes atonement,” was a foreign idea.
It’s also problematic to devalue the work of meeting people’s material needs like Moses did by feeding a multitude of people with manna during the exodus, Jesus did with loaves and fish, or as many today do through soup kitchens today. This is the tension that exists between the present and future. Some people say our lives don’t matter because we are all going to end up dead. Others, even those who are non-religious, say that ultimately dying doesn’t negate how meaningful present realities are. These things may or may not have meaning in the future, but they all still have meaning right now. In the present, we are alive, and what what we are experiencing means much to each one of us. It betrays a deep lack of compassion to say someone’s experience of hunger right now doesn’t matter because it may or may not matter in the future.
The choices we make today also affect what other people are experiencing right now, and can spill over into generations to come after we are gone. Over the last hundred years alone, so many who are no longer living made discoveries and choices that benefit all of us today. To say that our present realities don’t matter because we will one day die (or that one day billions of years from now the sun is going to burn out) is a very stunted way of looking at our existence. What we are encountering in John is simply a Christianized version of this way of looking at our material existence.
The future will come. But right now, we are alive. We live in the present. Our material existence does matter. Injustice, oppression, violence, and suffering matter. Love for those who are experiencing these realities demands that they matter.
We’ll take one last look at our passage before we wrap up, next.
(Read Part 3)
Are you receiving all of RHM’s free resources each week?
Begin each day being inspired toward love, compassion, justice and action. Free.
Sign up at:
https://renewedheartministries.com/Contact-forms/?form=EmailSignUp
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In