Is. 58:6-9
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rearguard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
John 6:35-51
Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe. 37Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’
41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ 42They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ 43Jesus answered them, ‘Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
I found a package with two brat buns in the back of my refrigerator. You know how things kind of work their way back, and, especially if they are on the bottom shelf, the container of lettuce goes in and out in front of them, and when the salad is gone, the big leftover casserole fills that space, and then maybe a bag of apples, and it takes a while for the apples to get eaten and other things are tucked into whatever space is created, and all the while there are those two brat buns way in the back … well, months can pass. And they did. So, when I finally discovered them, I pulled them out with trepidation expecting some kind of toxic black mold. But they were fine. They looked fine, smelled fine, were still fresh, soft — fine. Do you realize how wrong that is?
When our daughter Marnie studied in Ireland for a semester, the informational packet warned students about bread and other baked goods. Only buy what you can reasonably eat in a week, they said, because bread molds. The preservatives we add to everything in this country are not used in Ireland. Food spoils in a natural, timely manner. Not like my brat buns, which seems to be bread that will last forever.
I don’t know why this came to mind as I was considering bread and eternal life – Jesus was not talking about preservatives that the extend shelf life. He does not make the claim that eating the bread of heaven will extend our lives or protect us from spoilage.
The life he gives is eternal life, not on-going life – and there’s a big difference between them. But still, he was talking about actual bread to start with. In gospel time, this discussion happened the day after he fed 5000 people with 5 small loaves of barley bread. So it started out being about actual bread to feed physical hunger. But it didn’t stay there.
‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
We know Jesus is not a baked good. By comparing himself to bread, is Jesus simply making himself as necessary to us as the food we eat? That’s part of it.
In John, we rarely know what Jesus is actually saying even though we know the words he uses. I would refer you to the Celtic knot design on the bulletin cover. It seems natural that the Celtic Christians preferred the gospel of John. They understood interweaving a single strand into something complex and beautiful. Conversations such as this discourse on bread start with a definite topic, but very soon Jesus is talking at right angles: related, but heading in a different direction, doubling back in a parallel track. So it is with ‘bread’, ‘bread of life’, ‘manna and Moses’, ‘bread from heaven’, and the ‘bread’ that is his flesh. There is a thread of logic connecting these “bread” words, and we do end facing the same direction that we began, but the ground has shifted. I find it very confusing.
Beginning with the five barley loaves that he blessed and broke and gave for all to eat, we end this passage with Jesus saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
He claims to be our food, enabling us to live life’s call, to be alive to God’s mystery and wonder, to be our source of spiritual energy when exhausted, our consolation when we are troubled, our strength when we are weak. Jesus, the bread of life, sustains us and restores our moral compass and compassionate heart. I get that. But, believing in Jesus in life and in death, and in life beyond death, doesn’t end hunger or thirst either on a physical level or a spiritual one, because we still live in a physical world where bodies matter. Believing in Jesus doesn’t (shouldn’t) end our hunger and thirst for justice, for example, for a world in which all bodies have adequate food and clean water. Strong faith doesn’t end your hunger for healing or companionship or any of the other myriad ways in which our bodies hunger.
It seems that the whole God-with-us, Word-made-flesh enterprise is sold short if the point of the bread of life is only eternal life. But we move on…
The Word – God’s word – became flesh and dwelt among us. That’s how the gospel begins, and now that flesh, Jesus’ body, is given for the life of the world. Blessed, broken and given for all. These are the words of communion – a meal in which the corpus of Christ, the bread of endless loaves is broken again and again until all are fed the presence of Christ. And filling a hungry tummy becomes a way of talking about eternal life, because we’re actually talking about Jesus, not bread.
If you see the shifts and connections Jesus is making between manna (a physical bread-y substance) that God sent to sustain the Israelites in the wilderness (bread from Heaven), and the 5 little endless loaves, and himself – the word of God that is God, who sustains and feeds our souls, then it might be best to stop there and talk about something else. It’s like trying to explain how bread baking in the oven smells. I mean, why would you try? It’s best just to experience it.
And if this discussion is about Jesus and not bread, then something else stands out – verses actually skipped by the Revised Common Lectionary which I’ve added back in.
Verses 36-39 “But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe.Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”
Throughout chapter 6, there are multiple references to manna from the Israelite’s time in the wilderness. They were rescued, sustained, and lead by God through Moses’ hand through a 40 year time of testing, and at last sent into the promised land. Manna was their bread in the wilderness, and, along with the quail, was a powerful, daily sign of God’s presence and provision.
The point of God choosing Israel was that they were to be a light to the nations, to draw people into a relationship with God, and so to trust God, to know God. The point of choosing Israel was not to exclude the other nations, but, rather, to attract them, to draw the others in, using Israel as the bait and hook, so to speak. So, in the fullness of time, God came in Jesus in the same way, for the same purpose, to draw others into a relationship with God, so that they would see and trust and believe in God through the physical body of Jesus in his life and teaching, and through the Spirit of Christ after Jesus’ death.
The goal has always been the same, for all people to be in a relationship of trust and love with God.
So, when we hear Jesus say the will of God is that nothing should be lost or left or forsaken, that is in continuity with the God of the prophets and Moses and Abraham before him. In chapter 17, in his farewell prayer, Jesus says, “3This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Knowing equals believing equals abiding equals relationship equals eternal life. Eternal life begins in this earthly life, in the relationship we are called into by God’s spirit, and that continues without end, no matter how circumstances change. Our modern concepts of heaven are not very biblical. Eternal life is relational, more than spacial. So that what we begin here is carried on in the mystery and love of God, in the fullness and being of God, in the life of God, which is eternal – eternal life.
Passing loaves of bread around, helping physical bodies, working for justice— all of this is tied together with the eternal invitation to come and see and know God. For us, it is through Jesus, and as illustrated in the swirling, Celtic knot, with no ending, holding all things together in one path.