Luke 14:15 … Eating Bread in the Kingdom (04/02/17)
“Blessed is anyone who eats Bread in the Kingdom of God.”
~ Jesus (Luke 14:15)
For the traditional Christian, this verse has Jesus arrogantly referring to himself as the “bread” that is the source of salvation (even though it would have been highly hypocritical for him to have done so – see Matthew 18:3-4), but only salvation for those who chose to believe that he is the only Son of God (a claim he himself refuted – see John 14:12) and then worship him accordingly (an abject subservience which Jesus did not want, and indeed which he repeatedly rejected; see Mark 10:18, John 5:41, John 7:16, John 8:50-54, John 12:44 et al) … Of course, for hyper-conservative evangelical Christians this verse takes on a bizarre bent, indirectly encouraging them to become cannibals (see also John 6:50-71) by somehow literally transforming the Eucharist into the actual body of Jesus and then consuming the same.
Of course, Jesus himself made it quite clear that he wanted nothing of the sort, with him informing his disciples in John 16:25 that everything he had told them up to that point had been essentially metaphoric, and thus was not in any way to be construed literally – and this included the statements he made in John 6 about being “the bread of life” (along with the summons he made at the Last Supper for his disciples to symbolically partake of his message — see Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-38, and John 13:1-35).
No, to correctly comprehend this particular verse, it is important to realize that “bread” for Jesus was essentially selfless service – the crux of his entire ministry (see John 13:15-17, Matthew 13:18-25, Matthew 7:21 + Matthew 5:48 et al) – a fact emphasized in this very verse, where he noted quite clearly that “blessed is anyone who eats” the bread of which he spoke (i.e. those who actively performed acts of humble selfless service); not those who merely worshipped the same. Even John 6:32 notes that the “bread” of which Jesus spoke was “from Heaven” – the same “Kingdom of God” mentioned in Luke 14:15, and the same “Kingdom of God” that he had already stated resided within us all during every moment of our current lifetimes (see Luke 17:20-21; also Matthew 4:4).
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