In calling himself the Bread of Life, Jesus gives us something odd to chew on. That the story isn’t about the man at the center of it.
Seeing the source of joy in feeding the hungry
Proper 14B | John 6:35, 41-51
“Bread of life”
“the bread that came down from heaven”
“the living bread”
“Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever”
I’m sensing a theme here. Something to do with, and I might be wrong, but hear me out, I think he’s talking about bread. And it seems as if he’s talking about that glutenous spongy bread we all love to break into and something metaphorical.
Like, we’re smart enough to recognize that Jesus isn’t calling himself a literal loaf of bread.
We all take this rhetorical move for granted; chalking it up to common sense. But we need to dwell in the bothness of the image. Because Jesus is still talking about real bread. And not the wafers we’re eating at communion exclusively.
God just fed them real bread. Bread that came from a boy’s lunch. A few loaves of bread that managed to feed thousands. That may have been a couple of weeks ago in the lectionary, but it was just yesterday in the text.
And it was that feeding: that grand miracle of miracles: that led them to cross a body of water to chase after Jesus.
Because they wanted more.
I’m not sure I’ve ever really interrogated the crowd’s motivation for following him. It seems pretty obvious. He fed them. It’s a miracle. They want more of it. The whole things seems pretty self-explanatory.
But Jesus pushes against their motivation. Why?
This is what we heard about in last week’s part of the story. He said:
“you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”
The point of the feeding was not only to put food in their bellies. It was to show them something!
AND at the same time, they followed him, not to learn more from him, but to eat more bread.
Jesus’s primary goal is to teach them. They must not only focus on the consuming of the bread because they are hungry. Or pursuing this path of following Jesus because they think his goal is to feed them. It isn’t only about the bread.
And it isn’t only about Jesus.
Jesus points them to God.
The bread wasn’t the point of the feeding. The miracle wasn’t the point of the feeding. It was about seeing God in their midst. Knowing God among them.
This was what happened to the people wandering in the wilderness in Exodus 16. They were hungry. Feeling lost. Wanting a savior to feed them. They put it all on Moses. He was the leader in front of them.
God feeds them. In their desperation and confusion. When they were acting up and getting rowdy. When they frankly didn’t deserve it.
Moses didn’t have magic powers because he was Moses. God did it. And God gave Moses the chance to participate in a miracle.
This is what Jesus goes to when he sees the crowds. Crowds he had sympathy for because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Lost. Scared. Confused. Indecisive. Wondering where do we go?
They followed him because of the food. Smart enough to know their history and stupid enough to mistake the point.
Jesus is telling them not to follow for the food. Or the miracles. Jesus isn’t the point. His job is to help them see the point.
God. All of this. God is the source.
But they don’t want to see God.
They want magic. And to be fed. So what is better than combining the two: magic bread! That’s what they want. And Jesus’s focus on teaching them…well…that just makes them mad.
The crowd starts grumbling like his neighbors from back home. The ones who couldn’t trust that the carpenter’s son was capable of such things. But Jesus commands them to stop complaining.
This is about God. You might be here because you’re hungry for bread. But you wouldn’t be here unless God brought you here.
All of this connects to the point: God is the source. It isn’t about Jesus or the magic or the hunger. It isn’t about the signs. The signs point to God.
This is what Jesus is doing here.
The Bread of Life connects us.
At the center of the whole thing: the feeding, the healing, and the teaching: is not who Jesus is, but the role he plays.
He isn’t only a healer or feeder or rabbi. But in the 21st Century, we need to also remember he isn’t only Messiah, Savior, or Son of God. He isn’t only the third part of the Trinity or a persona of God. Even the way we raise Jesus up as the Christ and center of our faith can be the way we also miss the point. Because the point isn’t Jesus.
God is the source. And Jesus helps us know God in our midst.
And so Jesus calls himself Bread. A ridiculous idea and metaphorically ambiguous. Seriously. How am I supposed to tell Stella or Kurt or Jack or Molly that Jesus calls himself Bread and have that make any sense? It barely makes a tortured kind of sense to any us.
But the point isn’t what Jesus is. The point is who God is.
And as the Bread of Life, Jesus is how we know eternal life.
What’s Eternal Life again?
The phrase we translate as “eternal life” is active and present tense. So Jesus is guiding us to an active present, not an abstract forever. It isn’t life, but living. And the first word is more like vivid or vibrant.
One who believes has vibrant living. The real life.
This is the way to know God. How it connects with the manna that came from God in Exodus. The fish and bread they ate on the other shore. Jesus himself.
They came, not because they were hungry, but because they desired more bread. Now Jesus is saying, don’t desire to eat–desire what I offer–a way to know God.
And what you will find is vibrant living. Not the two-dimensional world of hunger and scarcity, but the breadth of possibilities when we see who is behind it all.