Reflection -- Living Bread

One wag said that “Jesus talks funny in the Fourth Gospel.”  He was not just being flippant.  The things that Jesus says, as reported in the gospel of John, often have multiple layers of meaning and are sometimes full of mysterious symbols and signs.  Today’s passage includes such signs and symbols -- bread and flesh -- as ways of helping us understand who Jesus is and his significance in our lives.  It is a passage that includes shadows of the cross and of the Eucharist (“Lord’s Supper”) as a central celebration of the earliest Christian communities, shadows that will become clearer images in the rest of chapter 6 following today’s lesson.

Jesus uses bread to draw an analogy between the physical and the spiritual realms of our existence.  Just as common bread sustains physical life, Jesus, as the revelation of who God is and as the path of restoration to relationship with God, sustains spiritual life.  Unlike physical life, that is temporary, the spiritual life that Jesus offers is eternal.  The way of obtaining this priceless gift is simple faith.  “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.”  Even coming to faith is enabled by God’s love for us, for Jesus tells us that it is God who draws us toward him.

The images move from bread to Jesus’ flesh and blood.  The bread about which Jesus has been speaking is living bread.  “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  The “bread” that Jesus gives us that feeds the hunger of our souls and brings us to a lasting relationship with God that sustains us even beyond our earthly existence is nothing less than himself, all of who Jesus was and is. 

Henri J. M. Nouwen says this in his remarkable little book, Life of the Beloved. 

The great spiritual battle begins -- and never ends -- with the reclaiming of our chosenness.  Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God’s loving eyes.  Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us.  Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love.  Our preciousness, uniqueness and individuality are not given to us by those who meet us in clock-time -- our brief chronological existence -- but by the One who has chosen us with an everlasting love, a love that existed from all eternity and will last thorough all eternity.

revclay

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John 6:35 and 41-51

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.”

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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.”

 [NRSV]