SKANDALON 4 (i): [iii] the stumbling-block of Jesus' parables

What was it, then, that precipitated this second bout of murmuring? There are three possible reasons for their reaction. Firstly, they may simply not have understood the ‘parable’ of the bread and the drink, the flesh and the blood – a parable ('parabole' in Greek) being not necessarily a story, but any kind of figurative comparison. After Jesus has told the parable of the sower in Mark 4, “those around him and the twelve” ask him to explain it. Before he does so, he explains the purpose of parables in general, making much the same distinction that we have seen here in John 6, between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, true disciples and ‘the crowd’: “to you – the inner circle – the mystery of the kingdom of heaven has been given; but to those outside everything comes in parables, so that (quoting Isaiah) ‘seeing they may see and not see’ (i.e. ‘get the point’) ‘and hearing they may hear and not understand’" (vv.11-12). It seems that parables are used by Jesus as ‘stumbling-blocks’ or hurdles to discriminate between those who are genuine seekers after truth, and ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’, and those who have merely jumped on the bandwagon, swept along by the enthusiasm of the moment – ‘Palm Sunday disciples’, one might call them. If that is what has happened here, it is not surprising that these Jews ‘murmur’ in protest at the idea of eating Jesus’ flesh, and even more so at ‘drinking his blood’: drinking blood was strictly forbidden by the Mosaic law. But supposing that, for once, they did ‘get the point’, the second possible cause of their murmuring may have been simply that they balked at this demand for personal commitment to Jesus. It was one thing to follow him round the lake in the hope of more free bread, but to follow him faithfully through life was a commitment too far – as, alas, it still is today for many who do not want their religion to ‘get too personal’. Thirdly, some of Jesus’ audience may have realised that he was prophesying his own death when he talked of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and to them, as to Peter in the passage we looked at earlier, the idea of a Messiah who came to suffer and die was unthinkably ‘scandalous’. In fact, the links between that passage (Matt 16.13-23), Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, and the last section of John 6 in Capernaum are quite striking. When the false disciples melt away, scandalized, Jesus asks the twelve: “Surely you do not want to turn back?” Inevitably, it is Peter who replies with a confession of faith: “Lord, to whom shall we go ? You have the words of eternal life – you are the holy one of God.” Jesus replies: “Did I not choose the twelve of you, and one of you is a devil?” – not Peter, this time, but Judas, his betrayer, the ‘son of the evil one’ sown by Satan in the middle of God’s harvest-field.

SKENE 9: the Tabernacle, a parable of the New Covenant

My translation of verse 20 in the above passage was, in fact, incomplete, for in another bold piece of typology (though ‘tupos’ is not used) the writer says of the veil “that is, the veil of Christ’s flesh”. We will return to this idea when we come to consider the incarnation, but for now we must backtrack to Hebrews 9 and to the ‘skene’ of the Tabernacle. We have seen that the Tabernacle was set up, appropriately, at the centre of the cross-shaped formation of the twelve tribes of Israel in their desert encampment, and that the Tabernacle could be seen as standing at the crossroads between earth and heaven, time and eternity. The next theme which the writer develops is the superiority of the new covenant to the old: three different words are used for ‘better’ in 8.6, whose central statement is that “Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant”. Most of the rest of the chapter is a quotation from Jeremiah (31.31-4) promising a new covenant, which God would not have needed to do, the writer shrewdly observes, if the old covenant had been perfect. It then becomes clear in chapter 9 that the Tabernacle stands at the crossroads also between the two covenants, and so introduces us to another striking paradox: the Tabernacle is both the epitome of the old covenant, and, at the same time, a parable of the new (9.9 – the Greek word translated ‘illustration’ in NIV is ‘parabole’). The essence of the old covenant was the law, and the Tabernacle could be seen as the law made visible. Its construction was the exact and detailed fulfilment of God’s commandment to Moses on Mount Sinai, a perfect keeping of the law – a point hammered home by the succession of more-or-less word-for-word repetitions of God’s instructions in chapters 25-30 in the account of the construction of the Tabernacle in chapters 35-9. Moreover, the daily rituals of sacrifice and purification performed in the Tabernacle enacted the ceremonials of the law; and, most significant of all, at the most sacred centre of the Tabernacle, behind the veil, inside the Holy of Holies, within the Ark of the (old) Covenant, were the engraved tablets of the law itself (9.4). Yet the very existence of the Tabernacle was an expression of its imperfection. A tent is, as we have seen, by definition temporary, so that the old covenant was a provisional arrangement, not God’s final plan of salvation. And the very repetition of the sacrificial rituals day by day showed the inadequacy of animal sacrifices, since they “did not have the power to make the worshipper perfect in his conscience” (9.9). In particular, the writer says, the annual day of atonement, the one day of the year on which the High Priest could enter the second tent, God’s very presence, was merely “a demonstration by the Holy Spirit that the way into the Holy of Holies had not yet been made open as long as the first tent was still functioning” (v.8). The ultimate purpose of the sacrifices, daily and annual, performed in the ‘first tent’ was to serve as a ‘parable’ of the perfect sacrifice that was to come. This, of course, as we have seen, and as verses 11-12 make clear, was the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, both Lamb of God and High Priest. This ‘parable’, the writer says, was especially relevant “for the particular time that has come upon us”; he was writing at a time when that “one perfect and sufficient sacrifice” had been offered on the cross, but animal sacrifices continued to be made in a Judaism which had rejected its Christ.