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John
6: 35, 41 – 51 This passage follows shortly after the feeding of the 5,000. The theme of bread is already on the table so to speak, when Jesus makes the first of the 7 I am statements. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” 7 is the number of completeness and perfection. These words echo Exodus 3: 14 when God tells Moses “I am who I am”. When I was a girl, at the weekends, I would lie in bed and try to do what all teenagers love to do, to sleep late. However, come 7am on a Saturday morning I would start to get a whiff of the most heavenly smells coming from the kitchen; the smell of baking bread. My step father used to bake bread. He would knead it on a Friday night and then bake it early on a Saturday morning in time for breakfast. I would lie in bed desperately trying to ignore the smell. Eventually it became too painful and hunger pangs in my tummy and salivary glands in my mouth would drive me out of bead and into the kitchen and I would tear off a piece and savour the wonderful taste of the newly baked bread! I bet many of you can relate to my story. There is nothing quite like the taste and smell of freshly baked bread. Now let’s pause for a moment to imagine this, Jesus says: I am the bread of life. What kinds of images come to mind when we visualise Jesus as the freshly baked nourishing bread of life? These poetic words of Jesus ‘I am the bread of life’ can be understood in two ways: They can be understood to mean the bread that is living, alive, as in Verse 51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” and /or ‘the bread that gives life’ as in Verse 47-48 “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” And verse 51 “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.” Jesus is speaking metaphorically when he compares himself to bread, in the sense that just as bread is the staple food of our society, the basic food that sustains our physical bodies, so Jesus claims to be the staple food that sustains our spiritual lives for all eternity. Jesus called himself the bread of life and we remember him that way most Sundays when we receive Holy Communion. As we do so, we also remember that he is as necessary to our souls as food is necessary to our bodies. He is if you like our soul food - his teaching, his death his resurrection his presence in our lives is our soul’s food and without it we will certainly die spiritually, in every sense of the word. This is a bold claim which Jesus makes and it gets bolder. He insists that those who eat of the bread he offers will live forever. This is not a claim that his audience easily grasps and their scepticism is revealed in the passage. The response of the crowd to these bold and mysterious words is what you might expect. Not getting the handout they wanted “What sign will you give us that we may see and believe?”, they begin to complain: Jesus isn’t really so special. They know his father, Joseph and his mother Mary. He is a local lad, used to go to Bethlehem primary and Nazareth Grammar School. Surely he is getting too big for his boots to make such a bold claim as to call himself the ‘bread of life’? We may smile wryly at their lack of imagination but even today the claims of Jesus are not easily grasped, especially by those who are literal-minded. By the end of this story in Verse 6:66 we read that many were so outraged by his claims that they turned away from him and no longer followed him. This is the choice for us also, it becomes at the end of the day a matter of believing. For unbelievers they hear the word, their minds and imaginations cannot grasp Jesus claim and so they dismiss him and turn away. But for others they take a step of faith. They allow the Holy Spirit to work through Jesus’ words and open their hearts and minds to the vast possibilities that are impregnated in the metaphor and through that prayerful process, eventually an understanding and a faith is birthed and they embrace the man who claims to be the bread of heaven. They do no dismiss him nor do they turn away, instead they determine to follow him and receive from him the bread of life that he offers. And their reward is the nourishment of the spiritual food that will sustain their souls in this life and they receive the eternal life that is to be found in Jesus, the Christ. You see the grumbling crowd in the story were missing the point entirely. Faith in Jesus is not something to be measured or calculated. It isn’t an algebraic equation with so many miracles equalling so much of a saviour. ‘Show us a sign that we may believe.’ No! It isn’t a matter of knowing Jesus’ parents or discovering his historic identity. No! Faith is trusting in the profound poetry that says: Jesus is more than you can wrap your mind around. He is the Word that can never be fully spoken, the word that can never be fully understood. He is the bread that will not much feed your body but will eternally nourish your soul. The fact is that Faith takes imagination, and the crowd lacks imagination. It takes intellectual humility and the crowd lacks that also. Their intellectual arrogance that reality is made up only of that which they can understand precludes them from accepting that which the limitations of their minds can understand. Faith takes a heart that is open to see what the mind cannot understand: “I am the bread of life.” Faith takes this statement to be true and acts on what it might mean. And what does it mean? It means accepting that your soul will never be satisfied with the things that fill your belly, that offer you your creature comforts; that fill your bank balance and pay your bills. No food, no job, no wealth, no earthly success will satisfy the hunger of your soul. When we celebrate Jesus the bread of life at Holy Communion we take a thin wafer of bread and a small mouthful of wine. These are poetic metaphors for soul food. The literal minded ones watch incredulously. How can they think that crust of bread and that sip of wine will nourish them?! But the ones who have faith filled imaginations understand and know that eating this bread and drinking from this cup is symbolic of receiving the one who claims to be the bread of spiritual and eternal life and that by receiving this truth they are providing nourishment for their souls and are already enjoying the fruits of that nourishment which is eternal life in Jesus the one who said: Verse 47-48 “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” Verse 51 “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. “ Today we have here in church a bread-maker with freshly made bread which we will use for communion. As we break this bread and share it let us be ever mindful that we are remembering that Jesus gives himself to us daily as the bread of eternal life, the spiritual food that will resource us daily in our lives. Amen. |
