So; week 3 of Jesus as the Bread of Life story from chapter 6 of John’s gospel. To catch us up on the last two weeks, week one’s story was the miracle of the loaves & fishes—Jesus fed 5,000 people who came to him just with 2 rolls of bread and 5 little fish. In essence Jesus is replicating God’s feeding the Israelites with manna—also known as the bread from heaven. It seems, however, that many missed the fuller implication of Jesus’ miracle. In last week’s gospel reading, we heard Jesus tells the crowd who followed him across the Sea of Galilee to believe in him as the one whom God had sent to give them the true bread from heaven. Yes, God had provided their ancestors with food--manna while crossing the desert to the Promised Land; and yes, Jesus too had fed the people who had gathered that day to hear him preach and be healed. It’s like he’s telling the people to look for the deeper meaning of this miracle – God sent Jesus to be more than a provider of bread and fish, he is the true bread from heaven. For those with ears to hear and hearts to believe, Jesus will feed their souls.
The story continues and this week we heard Jesus explaining to the crowd that he is also the living bread that came down from heaven. Again another reference to bread! Bread is an important and recurring thread throughout the bible, in both Old and New Testaments. I did a quick check and discovered that bread is mentioned more than 315 times in both the Old and New Testaments and 58 times just in the 4 gospels[1]. Bread is a staple food and has provided daily sustenance for humanity for thousands of years. Every culture has some kind of bread, made from all different kinds of grains. “Give us this day our daily bread.” we’re taught to pray. Bread sustains us, fills us and nourishes us, it keeps us alive. And references to bread pepper Jesus’ parables, and his teachings.
Jesus told the gathered masses “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry…” (John 6: vs 35). Just as we need nourishment for our bodies—daily bread—we need daily nourishment for our souls to be spiritually healthy, the true and living bread.
This spiritual hunger we all feel is a force that can drive human will and behaviour as much as the need to fill empty bellies can. Yet it’s a need we don’t always recognize within ourselves. It is a hunger, a yearning that when unrecognized for what it is, can manifest itself in various emotional distresses. Or we try to use other very non-spiritual and less healthy ways to fill that spiritual emptiness: like for instance with food, alcohol or drugs, excessive shopping, sex, gambling—and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. Others may fill their lives with constant activity of one kind or another or with mindless activities. These things cannot really sustain us, physically, emotionally or spiritually, they are but temporary and poor substitutes, they are not the true bread of life. For Christians, it is Jesus who can fill our spiritual hunger and nourish our souls. “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Jesus told the ones whom John calls ‘the Jews’.
Now, it’s important to remember that when John wrote his gospel for his community of believers, eight or nine decades after Jesus’ death[2], this was a community who by that time felt themselves apart from mainstream Judaism. It’s important to remember that when John wrote about ‘the Jews’ in his gospel, we can interpret that to mean the Jewish leaders and authorities who were in opposition to Jesus and his teachings and his followers.
Jesus told the people that he is the true bread that came down from heaven, he was telling his Jewish audience that he was sent by God to feed them—to save them -- just as God had sent their ancestors manna to save them from starving while crossing the desert to the promised land. According to the prophets, and his Jewish listeners would certainly have known this, the Messiah was expected to reproduce the miracle of the giving of manna. And that was the miracle of the loaves and fishes, for those who had eyes to see, hearts to believe and minds to understand what had happened in their very midst.
Even trying to explain it this way, many didn’t understand, or didn’t want to believe he could be the Messiah, the person who God sent to save them. They couldn’t wrap their heads around it, or make the connection. Jesus, bread from heaven. Humpf! There was much grumbling and complaining about that statement John tells us. Lots of folk refused to make that leap of faith. Many couldn’t get past how the son of Joseph the carpenter and his wife Mary, from the community they knew, could really be sent from God—never mind be to them like the manna that saved their ancestors from certain death in the desert. And you can appreciate that this would take a bit of a leap. Imagine a kid from you neighbourhood--perhaps someone you or one of your kids might have gone to school with declaring himself to be sent to you by God? It’s a big enough leap when someone you knew before they went to seminary becomes a clergy person. But to declare themselves as the one come from God, who can bring you nourishment to feed your eternal soul? I’m sure it would be the talk of the town, with much head shaking and tongue wagging. And how does Jesus response to that? Verses 43-44:
43 “Stop grumbling among your selves. 44 People cannot come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me; and I will raise them to life on the last day. 45 The prophets wrote, ‘Every- one will be taught by God.’ Anyone who hears the Father and learns from him comes to me. (GNT)
It’s like Jesus is telling them to get over themselves, this is not of their doing, whether they believe who he is or not, God is at work here.
We are all drawn by God to come to God. God never gives up in calling us. God in Christ wants nothing more than to be in relationship with us! The Holy Spirit prods us, works away at us, niggling here and there, trying to break down those head strong, logic-based walls that we put up against surrendering ourselves to Jesus the Christ, to his teachings, to believing that Christ’s way is the way. It takes a leap of faith to do that, to let go and let God, and a leap of faith doesn’t come from the logical side of our brain! It can be hard to let go of our very rational way of thinking—after all that’s how our society has trained us to be. Jesus’ ways were counter-cultural in his day, and still are today! The ways Jesus teaches are not the ways of society, especially in a ‘me-first’ – ‘the dollar is almighty’ culture like ours—a society that tells us that our goodness and value as people is equivalent to our buying power—and we deserve all we can get. Amongst all the messages our culture bombards us with, it can be hard to hear the call of God, to feel Holy Spirit’s niggles, to see how Jesus can be the bread of heaven for us.
The bread of heaven. The manna in the desert was truly miraculous and an amazing wonder that God provided God’s people taking them through their desert crossing –“a true life saver.”[3] The manna was, for all its wonder and delight and miraculous properties, a short term fix. It signaled the presence of God among (God’s) people[4] as they travelled to the land God promised them.
Jesus: the true and living bread from heaven. Jesus did more than signal God’s presence among God’s people. Jesus walked among them, Jesus was God incarnate, God walking among them, God’s living presence among the people, calling God’s people back to God. The spiritual sustenance we receive from going to him for our daily spiritual bread. And unlike the manna, Jesus is always with us. The bread we receive at Holy Communion is the physical aspect of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, a literal hands-on reminder that Jesus can feed us spiritually. Jesus nourishes and feeds us always; filling that hunger we have for that connection with our Creator, strengthening us for the trials of daily life. It’s a bit like going to a bread box that’s always full, a bread box that will never be empty, no matter how many times you go to it for more!
[1] www.biblegateway.com Aug 6.23
[2] The New Oxford Annotated Bible, (Oxford University Press:Oxford/New York 2001) 147 New Testament
[3] Scott Hoezee. His commentary on John 6: 35,41-51 “The Lectionary Gospel”: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-14b/?type=the_lectionary_gospel accessed August 4/15
[4] Ibid