Divine Harmony – Gabriel Morgan reflects on an alternative to the cannibalism of tyranny.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary
Readings for Sunday August 14-20, Year B (2024, 2027)
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15–20
John 6:51–58
Even as this broken bread was [once] scattered over the hills [as grain], and was gathered together and became one, so let Your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom; for Yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever.
2nd Century Eucharistic Prayer (Didache 9.4)
For this week’s readings we continue in the Bread of Life discourse from John 6. I know it is challenging to preach on this for four weeks straight, so I’d like to offer an uncommon angle on this text. I want to introduce preachers to the uses of cannibalistic rhetoric to describe the politics of division, the theme of unity in Ephesians 4, and the theme of care for creation. While the eucharistic overtones of the reading are undeniable, I believe this additional lens is necessary to make better sense of the passage. The amount of material needed to unpack this interpretation is considerable. Thus, I have chosen to set those other readings aside for this commentary, although the imagery of a lush feast of nature in conveying divine wisdom returns at the end in a way perhaps not that distant from the message of Proverbs 9.
Here’s a quick summary of my central thesis. In contrast to the tyrant, who eats the flesh of the people like the Lykaion Wolf in Plato’s Republic (Book VIII), Christ instead sacrifices his life for the life of the people (i.e. we “eat his flesh”), thus making peace in the unity of the Spirit (Colosians 1:20; see also Ephesians 5:1-2). Any eucharistic reading of John 6 must, therefore, center unity in the body of Christ after the manner of 1 Corinthians 10:17 & 11:17-22. This invites an analogy from the beautiful eucharistic prayer in the Didache about the disparate grains of wheat becoming one loaf, and so also our becoming one body of Christ, who gave himself for us. From there the preacher may explore the deeper spiritual truths of the loving unity of Father, Son, and Spirit, our unity in the Triune life by faith, and the harmonious beauty of the natural world offering a lush feast of images for the harmony of the church in the Triune Life of God (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 2.24-6).
I want to confess from the outset that while I love the Gospel of John, I’m not the biggest fan of how the lectionary breaks up this chapter, which risks losing the coherence of the chapter as a single unit. The preacher might consider extending the readings each week, even if it means re-using the last verses of the previous week at the beginning of the next. The lectionary also omits vs 36-40, which is highly problematic because a lot of Good News is found there that is essential to the whole chapter.
Eat His Flesh? Division, Tyranny, and the Ancient Rhetoric of Cannibalism
Let’s recap the overall story: Jesus just miraculously fed the five thousand the day before, and some from the crowds have tracked Jesus down because they “ate their fill of the loaves.” Jesus teaches them to instead seek the food that endures for eternal life, which he can give them. The bread of life is the Word of God (Deuteronomy 8:2-3 & Matthew 4:4), which became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5 & 14).[i] He is the bread of life, and by consuming him, we have life in ourselves. These are spiritual truths, not meant to be interpreted in a purely literal-fleshly sense (John 6:63); nevertheless the spiritual is given through material embodiment according to the incarnation, yet grasped by faith and not by physical eating alone.
Certainly, one can lean into a sacramental view of the natural world opened up by the incarnation as a care for creation theme. Margaret Daly-Denton commends this approach in John: An Earth Bible Commentary (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019), among other suggestions. However, in my view, this doesn’t get at the central message of John 6. For that, we really need to confront Jesus’ strangely cannibalistic language as it emerges in the context of the Bread of Life discourse.
In a provocative article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature in 2008, J. Albert Harrill argued that the cannibalistic language in John 6 reflects ancient Roman, Hellenistic, and Jewish political rhetoric, wherein tyrants and conspirators are portrayed as cannibals because they stir division and civil war, and are themselves murderous.[ii] Such rulers are said to eat the flesh of the body politic, to cannibalize the people. It turns out this trope is also present in the Old Testament (e.g., Micah 3:1-3).
An archetypal expression of this trope can be found in Plato’s Republic (Book VIII), where Socrates discusses various unhealthy forms of government with Glaucon, Polemarchus, and Adeimantus. Oligarchy and democracy are typically at odds and even oscillate between one another, until a tyrant gains popular support. (It is important to keep in mind that Plato understood democracy as direct democracy, i.e., the people gathering regularly to make major decisions, as opposed to representative democracy as in modern governments.) Through the character of Socrates, it is argued that democracy drives toward a rejection of all external authority and toward the total freedom to pursue one’s own pleasure and ends. Inevitably, one whose own personality is overcome by this pure drive for pleasure will gain the popular support and enthusiasm of the people. First describing the polis or city-state like a colony of bees with each bee serving different roles, ideally in harmony together, Socrates now moves to the analogy of dogs and wolves. Whereas a dog is trained and can demonstrate a certain degree of honor and personal restraint, the tyrant is like a wolf who viciously consumes the flesh of the people.
“What, then, is the starting-point of the transformation of a protector into a tyrant? Is it not obviously when the protector’s acts begin to reproduce the legend that is told of the shrine of Lykaion Zeus in Arcadia?” “What is that?” he said. “The story goes that he who tastes of the one bit of human entrails minced up with those of other victims [565e] is inevitably transformed into a wolf. Have you not heard the tale?” “I have.” “And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, [566a] banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands—is it not the inevitable consequence and a decree of fate that such a one be either slain by his enemies or become a tyrant and be transformed from a man into a wolf?” “It is quite inevitable,” he said. “He it is,” I said, “who becomes the leader of faction against the possessors of property” (Republic VIII, via www.perseus.tufts.edu).
Here the tyrant begins by fomenting factional tribalism through lies and false witness, and from there escalates to physical violence, with promises to liberate from an elite, wealthy class (see also Proverbs 25:18). It is not difficult to draw comparisons with the current political climate in the U.S.
As Harrill shows, this rhetoric is quite widespread in the ancient world. In Homer’s Illiad, fighting and eating become rhetorically indistinguishable. Agamemnon’s brutal fighting is described as that of “wolves, who tear flesh raw.”[iii] Achilles is likewise described as wanting to carve up Hector’s flesh to eat it.[iv] Similar rhetoric can be found in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (3.82.4). Roman rhetoricians also deployed this rhetoric; Cicero said of Mark Antony, “he gorged himself with the blood of the citizens” (Phil. 2.59, in Harrill, 140), with similar rhetoric against Mark Antony also deployed by Seneca and Plutarch; the reader must recall that this was in the context of the Roman civil war which ended the Roman Republic. Other examples also describe conspirators as cannibals who feed on the body politic. This trope could also be found in Jewish writings, such as Josephus’ Jewish War.
What does this mean for interpreting John 6? Factionalism is a major theme in the Gospel of John, reflecting what many scholars identify as the expulsion of Christians from the Jewish synagogues in the latter part of the first century. They were themselves likely described as a divisive faction, cannibalizing the Jewish people and Roman society. The tables are turned through the Word of Christ who in fact calls for no hostility toward anyone but himself as the one who gives his life for the world on the cross, and who by his cross has made peace and torn down the dividing wall (Ephesians 2:14).[v] Those who abide in Jesus do not foment division but absorb the hostility and persecutions of the world in love, just as Christ gave himself for us (Ephesians 5:1-2). Christ teaches, shockingly, that it is precisely by our “consuming” him in this manner that he will give his life for the world.
As the Grains of Wheat
A eucharistic reading of John 6 must therefore keep an eye on the unity of the body of Christ. It is not necessary for the preacher to go into detail on the historical material offered above, except to note that cannibalistic rhetoric was used for these purposes, and to move back to biblical language and themes. Division within the body of Christ is also described with the language of cannibalism in the New Testament. For example, Paul writes in Galatians,
“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:13-15).
As he also writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
This verse inspired the beautiful imagery of the most ancient eucharistic prayer, recorded in the Didache Apostolica (9.4) and quoted at the beginning of this commentary: just as grains of wheat were once scattered across the hills and united into one loaf of bread, so we who receive the body of Christ in the bread are made to be one body of Christ together. Inspired by this ancient eucharistic prayer, ELW includes a hymn called “As the Grains of Wheat” (465), which is a great hymn for the Bread of Life series.
Therefore, I strongly encourage repeating Ephesians 4:1-6 at the beginning of the assigned readings for this week, to keep the focus of this chapter clear: unity in the Spirit as the body of Christ.
Unity of Love, Harmonies of Nature, and the Triune Life of God
It turns out that the imagery of grains of wheat in the field are not the only natural metaphors available for imagining the unity of love in the Spirit. Just as factionalism and division are major themes in the Gospel of John, so is the unity of love in Christ. One of the major petitions Jesus makes to the Father in the great prayer of John 17 is that we may be one as They are One (John 17:21-24). That means the unity of the church as the body of Christ is a communion in, with, and under the divine unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The ancient church understood this divine harmony and readily deployed it in preaching and teaching. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus in particular deployed numerous analogies from the natural world as reflections of the divine harmony of the Holy Trinity, each of which could also be employed to help the church community imagine its own call to unity in Christ, by which we bear witness that this Jesus was indeed sent from the Father. To impress upon his listeners the ineffable beauty, majesty, and harmony of the Holy Trinity on the eve of the Council of Constantinople in 381—burdened with relitigating the Arian controversy thought to have already been resolved at Nicea in 325—Gregory deploys numerous amazing images of nature. If we can barely understand these beautiful mysteries of the natural world, how much further is God’s ineffable, Triune nature beyond our grasp?
“And consider the tribes of birds, and their varieties of form and colour, both of those which are voiceless and of songbirds. What is the reason of their melody, and from whom did it come? Who gave to the grasshopper the lute in his breast, and the songs and chirruping on the branches, when they are moved by the sun to make their midday music, and sing among the groves, and escort the wayfarer with their voices? . . . I would also have you marvel at the natural intelligence even of irrational creatures and explain, if you can, its cause. How is it that birds have for nests rocks and trees and roofs, and adapt them both for safety and beauty and for the comfort of their little ones? From where do bees and spiders get their love of work and art? Bees plan their honeycombs and join them together by hexagonal cells set one beside the other, and secure the fabric by means of the dividing wall and the alternation of angles with straight lines – and this is done in such dark hives, that the structure itself is invisible . . . What Euclid ever imitated these creatures, while pursuing philosophical enquiries with lines that have no real existence, and wearying himself with proofs? . . . Look, too, at the variety and lavish abundance of fruits, and most of all at the amazing beauty of such as are most necessary. And consider the power of the roots, the juices, the flowers, and the scents – not only so very sweet, but also good as medicines – and the grace and qualities of colours; and again the costly value and the brilliance of precious stones. For nature has set all things in front of you, as in a banquet offered to all, both what is necessary for living and what gives us pleasure, in order that, if nothing else, you may know God by His benefits, and by your own sense of want be made wiser than you were” (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 2.24-6, Stephen Reynolds trans.).
Just as we are made to be one body in Christ, in the unity of the Spirit, so we may indulge in the lush feast of nature to imagine a harmonious life of the church community: bees in a hive, birds at song, vines or trees and their branches bearing fruits! Perhaps this is not so far from the message of Proverbs 9 after all, where Lady Wisdom lays out her feast, mystery hidden underneath the created world, offering great blessings to those who listen.
Originally written by Gabriel Morgan in 2024.
________________________________________________________________________
[i] See also Marianne Meye-Thompson: “The bread is God’s word, instruction, or wisdom, both brought and embodied in Jesus,” in John: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 153.
[ii] J. Albert Harrill, “Cannibalistic Language in the Fourth Gospel and Greco-Roman Polemics of Factionalism (John 6:52–66),” JBL 127, no. 1 (2008): 133–158.
[iii] Homer, Il. 16.156-59, in Harrill, 137.
[iv] Homer, Il. 22.346–48, in Harrill, 138.
[v] “Such talk plays on the ancient ideology that cannibalism feeds on the body politic—the community. Believers must consume only Jesus’ flesh and blood. Just as Jesus is the ‘true light’ (1:9), the ‘true vine’ (15:1), and the one sent by the ‘true God’ (17:3), Jesus’ flesh and blood are the only ‘true’ food and drink (6:32, 55). In this way and smarting from their synagogue expulsion, the Johannine sectarians appropriated ‘cannibalism’ from its negative polemics of factionalism into a positive affirmation of community self-definition, thus turning the tables on the invective for those who endured” (Harrill, 153).
Sunday August 14-20 in Year B (Morgan24)
Divine Harmony – Gabriel Morgan reflects on an alternative to the cannibalism of tyranny.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary
Readings for Sunday August 14-20, Year B (2024, 2027)
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15–20
John 6:51–58
Even as this broken bread was [once] scattered over the hills [as grain], and was gathered together and became one, so let Your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom; for Yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever.
2nd Century Eucharistic Prayer (Didache 9.4)
For this week’s readings we continue in the Bread of Life discourse from John 6. I know it is challenging to preach on this for four weeks straight, so I’d like to offer an uncommon angle on this text. I want to introduce preachers to the uses of cannibalistic rhetoric to describe the politics of division, the theme of unity in Ephesians 4, and the theme of care for creation. While the eucharistic overtones of the reading are undeniable, I believe this additional lens is necessary to make better sense of the passage. The amount of material needed to unpack this interpretation is considerable. Thus, I have chosen to set those other readings aside for this commentary, although the imagery of a lush feast of nature in conveying divine wisdom returns at the end in a way perhaps not that distant from the message of Proverbs 9.
Here’s a quick summary of my central thesis. In contrast to the tyrant, who eats the flesh of the people like the Lykaion Wolf in Plato’s Republic (Book VIII), Christ instead sacrifices his life for the life of the people (i.e. we “eat his flesh”), thus making peace in the unity of the Spirit (Colosians 1:20; see also Ephesians 5:1-2). Any eucharistic reading of John 6 must, therefore, center unity in the body of Christ after the manner of 1 Corinthians 10:17 & 11:17-22. This invites an analogy from the beautiful eucharistic prayer in the Didache about the disparate grains of wheat becoming one loaf, and so also our becoming one body of Christ, who gave himself for us. From there the preacher may explore the deeper spiritual truths of the loving unity of Father, Son, and Spirit, our unity in the Triune life by faith, and the harmonious beauty of the natural world offering a lush feast of images for the harmony of the church in the Triune Life of God (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 2.24-6).
I want to confess from the outset that while I love the Gospel of John, I’m not the biggest fan of how the lectionary breaks up this chapter, which risks losing the coherence of the chapter as a single unit. The preacher might consider extending the readings each week, even if it means re-using the last verses of the previous week at the beginning of the next. The lectionary also omits vs 36-40, which is highly problematic because a lot of Good News is found there that is essential to the whole chapter.
Eat His Flesh? Division, Tyranny, and the Ancient Rhetoric of Cannibalism
Let’s recap the overall story: Jesus just miraculously fed the five thousand the day before, and some from the crowds have tracked Jesus down because they “ate their fill of the loaves.” Jesus teaches them to instead seek the food that endures for eternal life, which he can give them. The bread of life is the Word of God (Deuteronomy 8:2-3 & Matthew 4:4), which became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5 & 14).[i] He is the bread of life, and by consuming him, we have life in ourselves. These are spiritual truths, not meant to be interpreted in a purely literal-fleshly sense (John 6:63); nevertheless the spiritual is given through material embodiment according to the incarnation, yet grasped by faith and not by physical eating alone.
Certainly, one can lean into a sacramental view of the natural world opened up by the incarnation as a care for creation theme. Margaret Daly-Denton commends this approach in John: An Earth Bible Commentary (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019), among other suggestions. However, in my view, this doesn’t get at the central message of John 6. For that, we really need to confront Jesus’ strangely cannibalistic language as it emerges in the context of the Bread of Life discourse.
In a provocative article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature in 2008, J. Albert Harrill argued that the cannibalistic language in John 6 reflects ancient Roman, Hellenistic, and Jewish political rhetoric, wherein tyrants and conspirators are portrayed as cannibals because they stir division and civil war, and are themselves murderous.[ii] Such rulers are said to eat the flesh of the body politic, to cannibalize the people. It turns out this trope is also present in the Old Testament (e.g., Micah 3:1-3).
An archetypal expression of this trope can be found in Plato’s Republic (Book VIII), where Socrates discusses various unhealthy forms of government with Glaucon, Polemarchus, and Adeimantus. Oligarchy and democracy are typically at odds and even oscillate between one another, until a tyrant gains popular support. (It is important to keep in mind that Plato understood democracy as direct democracy, i.e., the people gathering regularly to make major decisions, as opposed to representative democracy as in modern governments.) Through the character of Socrates, it is argued that democracy drives toward a rejection of all external authority and toward the total freedom to pursue one’s own pleasure and ends. Inevitably, one whose own personality is overcome by this pure drive for pleasure will gain the popular support and enthusiasm of the people. First describing the polis or city-state like a colony of bees with each bee serving different roles, ideally in harmony together, Socrates now moves to the analogy of dogs and wolves. Whereas a dog is trained and can demonstrate a certain degree of honor and personal restraint, the tyrant is like a wolf who viciously consumes the flesh of the people.
“What, then, is the starting-point of the transformation of a protector into a tyrant? Is it not obviously when the protector’s acts begin to reproduce the legend that is told of the shrine of Lykaion Zeus in Arcadia?” “What is that?” he said. “The story goes that he who tastes of the one bit of human entrails minced up with those of other victims [565e] is inevitably transformed into a wolf. Have you not heard the tale?” “I have.” “And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, [566a] banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands—is it not the inevitable consequence and a decree of fate that such a one be either slain by his enemies or become a tyrant and be transformed from a man into a wolf?” “It is quite inevitable,” he said. “He it is,” I said, “who becomes the leader of faction against the possessors of property” (Republic VIII, via www.perseus.tufts.edu).
Here the tyrant begins by fomenting factional tribalism through lies and false witness, and from there escalates to physical violence, with promises to liberate from an elite, wealthy class (see also Proverbs 25:18). It is not difficult to draw comparisons with the current political climate in the U.S.
As Harrill shows, this rhetoric is quite widespread in the ancient world. In Homer’s Illiad, fighting and eating become rhetorically indistinguishable. Agamemnon’s brutal fighting is described as that of “wolves, who tear flesh raw.”[iii] Achilles is likewise described as wanting to carve up Hector’s flesh to eat it.[iv] Similar rhetoric can be found in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (3.82.4). Roman rhetoricians also deployed this rhetoric; Cicero said of Mark Antony, “he gorged himself with the blood of the citizens” (Phil. 2.59, in Harrill, 140), with similar rhetoric against Mark Antony also deployed by Seneca and Plutarch; the reader must recall that this was in the context of the Roman civil war which ended the Roman Republic. Other examples also describe conspirators as cannibals who feed on the body politic. This trope could also be found in Jewish writings, such as Josephus’ Jewish War.
What does this mean for interpreting John 6? Factionalism is a major theme in the Gospel of John, reflecting what many scholars identify as the expulsion of Christians from the Jewish synagogues in the latter part of the first century. They were themselves likely described as a divisive faction, cannibalizing the Jewish people and Roman society. The tables are turned through the Word of Christ who in fact calls for no hostility toward anyone but himself as the one who gives his life for the world on the cross, and who by his cross has made peace and torn down the dividing wall (Ephesians 2:14).[v] Those who abide in Jesus do not foment division but absorb the hostility and persecutions of the world in love, just as Christ gave himself for us (Ephesians 5:1-2). Christ teaches, shockingly, that it is precisely by our “consuming” him in this manner that he will give his life for the world.
As the Grains of Wheat
A eucharistic reading of John 6 must therefore keep an eye on the unity of the body of Christ. It is not necessary for the preacher to go into detail on the historical material offered above, except to note that cannibalistic rhetoric was used for these purposes, and to move back to biblical language and themes. Division within the body of Christ is also described with the language of cannibalism in the New Testament. For example, Paul writes in Galatians,
“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:13-15).
As he also writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
This verse inspired the beautiful imagery of the most ancient eucharistic prayer, recorded in the Didache Apostolica (9.4) and quoted at the beginning of this commentary: just as grains of wheat were once scattered across the hills and united into one loaf of bread, so we who receive the body of Christ in the bread are made to be one body of Christ together. Inspired by this ancient eucharistic prayer, ELW includes a hymn called “As the Grains of Wheat” (465), which is a great hymn for the Bread of Life series.
Therefore, I strongly encourage repeating Ephesians 4:1-6 at the beginning of the assigned readings for this week, to keep the focus of this chapter clear: unity in the Spirit as the body of Christ.
Unity of Love, Harmonies of Nature, and the Triune Life of God
It turns out that the imagery of grains of wheat in the field are not the only natural metaphors available for imagining the unity of love in the Spirit. Just as factionalism and division are major themes in the Gospel of John, so is the unity of love in Christ. One of the major petitions Jesus makes to the Father in the great prayer of John 17 is that we may be one as They are One (John 17:21-24). That means the unity of the church as the body of Christ is a communion in, with, and under the divine unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The ancient church understood this divine harmony and readily deployed it in preaching and teaching. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus in particular deployed numerous analogies from the natural world as reflections of the divine harmony of the Holy Trinity, each of which could also be employed to help the church community imagine its own call to unity in Christ, by which we bear witness that this Jesus was indeed sent from the Father. To impress upon his listeners the ineffable beauty, majesty, and harmony of the Holy Trinity on the eve of the Council of Constantinople in 381—burdened with relitigating the Arian controversy thought to have already been resolved at Nicea in 325—Gregory deploys numerous amazing images of nature. If we can barely understand these beautiful mysteries of the natural world, how much further is God’s ineffable, Triune nature beyond our grasp?
“And consider the tribes of birds, and their varieties of form and colour, both of those which are voiceless and of songbirds. What is the reason of their melody, and from whom did it come? Who gave to the grasshopper the lute in his breast, and the songs and chirruping on the branches, when they are moved by the sun to make their midday music, and sing among the groves, and escort the wayfarer with their voices? . . . I would also have you marvel at the natural intelligence even of irrational creatures and explain, if you can, its cause. How is it that birds have for nests rocks and trees and roofs, and adapt them both for safety and beauty and for the comfort of their little ones? From where do bees and spiders get their love of work and art? Bees plan their honeycombs and join them together by hexagonal cells set one beside the other, and secure the fabric by means of the dividing wall and the alternation of angles with straight lines – and this is done in such dark hives, that the structure itself is invisible . . . What Euclid ever imitated these creatures, while pursuing philosophical enquiries with lines that have no real existence, and wearying himself with proofs? . . . Look, too, at the variety and lavish abundance of fruits, and most of all at the amazing beauty of such as are most necessary. And consider the power of the roots, the juices, the flowers, and the scents – not only so very sweet, but also good as medicines – and the grace and qualities of colours; and again the costly value and the brilliance of precious stones. For nature has set all things in front of you, as in a banquet offered to all, both what is necessary for living and what gives us pleasure, in order that, if nothing else, you may know God by His benefits, and by your own sense of want be made wiser than you were” (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 2.24-6, Stephen Reynolds trans.).
Just as we are made to be one body in Christ, in the unity of the Spirit, so we may indulge in the lush feast of nature to imagine a harmonious life of the church community: bees in a hive, birds at song, vines or trees and their branches bearing fruits! Perhaps this is not so far from the message of Proverbs 9 after all, where Lady Wisdom lays out her feast, mystery hidden underneath the created world, offering great blessings to those who listen.
Originally written by Gabriel Morgan in 2024.
________________________________________________________________________
[i] See also Marianne Meye-Thompson: “The bread is God’s word, instruction, or wisdom, both brought and embodied in Jesus,” in John: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 153.
[ii] J. Albert Harrill, “Cannibalistic Language in the Fourth Gospel and Greco-Roman Polemics of Factionalism (John 6:52–66),” JBL 127, no. 1 (2008): 133–158.
[iii] Homer, Il. 16.156-59, in Harrill, 137.
[iv] Homer, Il. 22.346–48, in Harrill, 138.
[v] “Such talk plays on the ancient ideology that cannibalism feeds on the body politic—the community. Believers must consume only Jesus’ flesh and blood. Just as Jesus is the ‘true light’ (1:9), the ‘true vine’ (15:1), and the one sent by the ‘true God’ (17:3), Jesus’ flesh and blood are the only ‘true’ food and drink (6:32, 55). In this way and smarting from their synagogue expulsion, the Johannine sectarians appropriated ‘cannibalism’ from its negative polemics of factionalism into a positive affirmation of community self-definition, thus turning the tables on the invective for those who endured” (Harrill, 153).
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