My Favorite Verses - Vol V (Feb 17 to Jun 17)

Luke 14:15 … Eating Bread in the Kingdom
(04/02/2017)
“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 internal
“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).
58