In whom all our hungers are satisfied

‘I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE’

John 6:35 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.”

Bread. For much of the world, it is the most basic of life-giving food stuffs. This is Jesus’ second name for himself from the Gospel of John. This saying of Jesus in Chapter 6 comes after he has fed 5,000 hungry people with bread and fish, tearing and breaking five small barley loaves and two small fish in an extraordinary miracle (this is the only miracle of Jesus that all four gospels report). He has then walked on water to the disciples as they despaired in a storm. And then the next day the crowd who had been fed by him, follow him across the lake. They grab boats which have come from Tiberius to this somewhat deserted spot (possibly near Bethsaida) and take a trip across the northern part of the lake to Capernaum to locate Jesus. They were hungry for more. But where they hungry for Jesus or something else?

Here’s the full story from the point the hungry crowd realise they want to track him down (John 6.22ff): The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there. They also saw that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So, when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 

The first thing to note is that Jesus seems to question what is motivating the crowd. It appears that Jesus discerns that they are looking for him because he had filled their stomachs. He says they need food that will fill them not just on this earth, which has a sell-by date. He offers a food that has no sell-by date but lasts through eternal life. Jesus responded to their physical hunger out of compassion for them the day before. There was nowhere to go for food out in the wilderness of the hills around the Sea of Galilee. And Jesus had responded by converting five small barley loaves into something ridiculously abundant. But those who then wanted more (More miracles? More signs? More time with Jesus? Or perhaps more food?) had now made huge efforts to find him. So Jesus starts to take this experience of bread which connected them to him and give it new meaning and new importance. He says don’t work just for food, but let me give you something even more satisfying. It is as if he is stretching the dough and pummelling it. Metaphorically and in new ways that perhaps make more sense to us as we think about bread and wine at Holy Communion, Jesus is getting the crowd to join in with him in exploring what it means to be fed by Jesus’ own bread.

Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So, they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 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.”

Who were this crowd who had made such effort to track down Jesus in Capernaum? How come 5,000 people (probably many thousands more, because, as we know, the Gospel writers only seem to count the men) could spend time away from work to follow him into the wilderness? Were they the landless day labourers who depend so much on earning their next wage to get fed? Where they whole villages and families who just got caught up in the extraordinary phenomena of the Jesus movement of healing and teaching in Galilee?

What is evident is that they were Jews who knew their faith and history. They were literate about their shared religious roots. They could enter into a dialogue with Jesus using shared terms of reference. They remembered how Moses had fed the Israelites with bread from heaven (manna) for 40 years of wandering in the desert. Was this the kind of bread Jesus was offering – a miraculous supply for them? No wonder they responded with such hope to an endless supply of bread from the hands of the miracle-working Jesus – a bread that would sustain life for the whole world. Is this what is going on? Were they hoping that Jesus would become a limitless food bank for this poor community?

Today is Sunday. We come together as a worshipping community 2000 years on from this reported encounter to break bread. We look back at this story of Jesus through the telescope of interpretation which comes from 2000 years of  Eucharistic practice. We come to Jesus at the altar, the one in whom, in the words of the service we sometimes use, ‘all our hungers are satisfied’.

Jesus tells the crowd then and us now that this is what he is about. He alone meets us in our deepest needs, our most evident terrors, in our hidden shame, in or most profound worries and says I have another source of life-giving reality to share with you. Come to me and, yes, eat of my bread and drink of my wine; yet know that there is something of me coming into you to sustain your body and soul. Bread for the mortal body yet also bread for your eternal life too.

The final verses of chapter six take us deeper into Jesus’ theology of the Eucharist and also a response from some in the crowd who find his teaching too hard. They start to say how this Jesus, whose parents we know, be telling us that he can feed us food that will solve our hunger. They start to disbelieve him.

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They 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’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.  It 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. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

They also begin to question (it might seem quite reasonable to do so, really) the revolutionary idea that Jesus will actually become the bread of life for centuries and millennia to come. As always, the ‘I am’ blows our mind because he is speaking about the vast stretch of time and not just that moment in Capernaum. He is speaking of his body broken on the cross and his blood shed from the wounds he endures. He is speaking about the actual and metaphorical breaking of bread and breaking of body.

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  So, Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”  

This has been a much longer blog because it has been important to me to look at the way in which Jesus has pulled and stretched the meaning of the ‘bread of life’. And yet there will be much more from you, dear reader, to stretch and pull our shared understanding of Jesus as nourisher and the one who abides in us.