Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God the Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
We are picking up where we left off last week. John’s Gospel. Jesus’ famous “Bread of Life Discourse.” Here our Lord is making ancient connections for His disciples. Being good Hebrews, they all knew the Sunday School lessons about the Manna in the wilderness. They could easily quote the Scriptures by heart that had to do with God blessing and upholding His people in the desolate place of the desert many years before. By keeping these stories in their hearts and minds, it served as an encouragement for them in the present time. God was faithful to His people back then, He will be faithful to us right now. That’s the idea. God fed His people in the wilderness with the mysterious “what is it?” Manna bread, He will continue to feed us with bread from heaven too.
Jesus is making this connection for His disciples that He, Himself, is the bread from heaven, the bread of life. But this is a hard teaching. Most people don’t really get what Jesus is really even talking about. He is trying to draw the populace up to spiritual and heavenly things but they are stuck on the earthly things. This has given birth to the proverb “It’s hard to soar with eagles when you are surrounded by turkeys!”
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And 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. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (JN 6:38-40).
Jesus is here taking His hearers back again to the wilderness, way back to the book of Numbers. The people were sinning against God and being bitten by poisonous snakes! Moses made the bronze fiery serpent and put it on a pole, and whoever looked on it in faith would be saved from the venom. Do you remember that story? (Numbers 21:8-9) This is the point that Jesus is making here, “everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.” And not only that, but those who do also have the promise of resurrection on the last day. Eternal life. Living forever. Resurrection from death, just like the Lord of Life Himself would do on the cross, where He, like the bronze serpent, would be lifted up and require hearts that believe the promise.
Now, them thar is fightin’ words to the Jews. “They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (6:42). They knew Him and His family. They came from Nazareth for cryin’ out loud! It’s like bragging you come from Hollywood when you really come from Parkbeg! Everyone listening to Jesus starts to think He’s gone off the deep end. But it’s worse than that. What Jesus is saying is that He is not merely human like everyone else. He’s actually Divine, the God-Man standing in their midst. This gets into blasphemy-territory really quick. And the Jews are starting to get really riled up as is evidenced by their grumbling about this.
What is happening is that the people are being introduced to “Divine Mystery” - the unexplainable, heavenly-otherworldliness of the faith. It’s the part where 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 and not 3 when we talk about the Holy Trinity. Or in this example, where Jesus is revealing to the crowds that He is both fully God and fully Man at the same time. People have always struggled with this kind of thing. The mysterious is hard to wrap our heads around and we don’t like it. It’s hard to market these kinds of things. They either come across as weird or whacko! And this is why many churches instead decide to market themselves with rock bands and free iPad giveaways and coffee bars instead! It’s stuff that is more ‘down to earth’ and easily relatable. But that’s not what Jesus is about. Instead, He is drawing His people up into that spiritual and mysterious message.
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (6:44). In fact, this drawing is more of a dragging motion, like hauling in a heavy net filled with fish. It’s tough to do. There is resistance. The sinful nature always resists the Kingdom of God and the Messiah. This is what St. Paul is getting at in our Corinthians reading today: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1Cor 2:14). So God has to pull us, calling us by the Gospel, into His Kingdom. This He does through the work of the Holy Spirit. And how does the Holy Spirit work? Through the Word and Sacraments. Through the Scriptures, “the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2Tim 3:15), through our Baptism and through Holy Communion. These things are the “secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1Cor 2:7).
Jesus continues to try and draw the people to the truth. He repeats Himself: “I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (JN 6:48-51). He is encouraging His people to repent of their sinful resistance and instead welcome in the Spirit. For it is only by the Spirit that the Son can be received by faith. Faith is the key to grasping that Jesus Himself is the bread of life and further more how His flesh and blood come to us in Holy Communion. But we will delve more into that aspect next Sunday.
Bread. Daily bread. Living bread. Bread of life. We’ve talked a lot about bread today. And truly it was a staple food for Jesus’ first listeners and very central and necessary for every day life. This is the point that Jesus is making. He is essential for life. However, we cannot forget what else Jesus says about it. He says “I am” this most important bread. This seems kind of odd at first until we remember Who the Great I AM was in the Old Testament. It takes us back again to Moses and the burning bush. “God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Ex 3:14). Jesus is telling them straight up that He and HaShem - the name, the great I AM - are the same. God in the flesh coming to His people as the bread of life. Seven times in John’s Gospel, Jesus uses these I am statements. I am the bread of life (6:35,41,48,51); I am the light of the world (8:12,9:5); I am the door (10:7); I am the good shepherd (10:11,14); I am the resurrection and the life (14:6); I am the true vine (15:1,5) and each time He is driving home the same over-arching point. He and the Father are One. He is the God-Man who takes away the sin of the world and gives life to all who believe. Jesus, born in Bethlehem which literally means “house of bread” - He is the very same I AM. He is the bread of life now and forever more. Amen!
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