Just to try to get to the bottom of things, think of what it would mean if a person said to you that you were going to have to drink of their blood and eat their flesh, or if you said that to someone else. We can agree that the literal meaning would be people actually eating and drinking of each other’s physical bodies, as is and has sometimes been done in religions. That is what was in the mind of the Jews Jesus spoke to, too. But, it was not, when Jesus and the apostles gathered at the Last Supper, what He instituted, even though, Jesus was there in the flesh. He was also there after His resurrection, eating with them to prove He was physically there. But He did not mean His actual physical flesh. So what did He mean? I think parts of it are mysterious, since we can’t exactly understand how Jesus is God’s Word, and the Trinity is something we can’t quite grasp too while in this world, but a part of it we can understand is Jesus dying for us to have life, which means He is our food. Consider, too, in John, after Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, He told His disciples that He had food to eat that they knew not of, and when they wondered about what He said, He explained that His food was to do His Father’s will.
We also know that those who are saved will eat of the Tree of Life, and I believe IIRC that the Bible identifies that tree as Jesus. The things here, like our eating food, are shadows of Heavenly things, which are no doubt to teach us of those Heavenly things. So on food, the food of eternal life, Heavenly food, we have to realize there’s so much we don’t understand about it here. When we fall into reversing things, and make God into the image of man, then we do what the Muslims, for example, do, when they’re offended by Jesus as God’s Son, because “God can’t have a son.” They think of Him in a natural, pagan sort of way. But the spiritual things aren’t shadows of the natural, but the natural of the spiritual, which is mostly beyond us right now.
.
>> “So what did He mean?” <<
.
By “eat my flesh” he meant live and grow off of the sacrifice of his flesh.
And this had nothing whatsoever to do with the bread and wine of the Last Supper; that was the traditional bread and wine of the blessing spoken by the Melek Zedek with Abraham: “Blessed art thou Yehova Elohim that brings forth bread and wine from the Earth.”
.