“Bread of Life” John 6: 35-59

 When I was in sixth grade, we had a weekly writing assignment that would revolve around a prompt. We were told to expand it and make it into a short story. My dad and I were recently reminiscing about these assignments and how frustrating they were for both of us - me as the writer, he as the proof-reader, because I could not for the life of me get my tense right. I would switch from past to future to present in the matter of a few sentences. It was a mess. 

Switching of tenses isn’t just a mess when it comes to writing. They also can make our understanding of Jesus and all of his power and glory quite messy as well. Jesus has just fed a large crowd to their absolute fill - performing this miracle. Now Jesus is offering a teaching to the crowd that starts with the declaration, “I am the bread of life.” Come to me and you will never go hungry or be thirsty again. 

And the people do not get it. They start grumbling amongst themselves about when was Jesus really to be the one saying these things? Isn’t he the son of the carpenter? Isn’t he a nobody from nobody parents? Who is he to make these sweeping claims?

To which Jesus simply says - stop. Stop your grumbling. Stop and simply listen to what I am trying to say.

You can’t understand the one who is the bread of life and know what that truly means unless you know God. 

And let's be honest, you don’t always recognize God or what he is doing very well either. Think back to our ancestors - freed from Pharaoh’s rule, but wandering in the wilderness. They were provided for by God in abundance, but they didn’t even recognize him amongst the manna and quail. They received actual bread from heaven, but they still perished. 

But my life - given as bread beyond your wildest imaginations - will give you life forever. Because I offer it to give life to the world.

And then the people argued even more about what Jesus could possibly mean. 

These folks that Jesus was talking to about being the bread of life - they had just experienced a miracle. They didn’t watch the miracle happen to someone else. They weren’t just observers. Their own stomaches were filled with the very sign. Yet, even as they moved from observers to those who experienced Christ, they still had these persistent questions. 

Now, questions themselves are not bad. Think about some of the people of profound faith who asked questions of God throughout the Scriptures. Mary, the mother of Jesus, who at her tender age, when told by the Angel Gabrielle that she had been selected to be the mother of the Savior of the world asks “how can this be?” Or Moses, when he was called by God to bring the message to Pharaoh to let God’s people go asked wouldn’t God like to send someone else instead? 

The questioning of the crowd is not the problem here. It was that there questions were really just an excuse to grumble. And grumbling comes when our human expectations are not met the way that we would like them to be. In other words, they weren’t asking questions in order to get to a place of understanding, but rather to just quarrel and sow discontent. 

But time after time, Jesus tried to invite them into a place of belief. 

But Jesus also wanted to unpack for them what such belief actually means.

Jesus knew that for some folks in the crowd that day, belief was simply tied to what had happened in the past. Their ancestors had belief, so therefore that belief must be transferred on to them. To which Jesus says, that’s not the way that it works. 

He gives this example of the Israelites during the Exodus when they were fed manna from heaven. And they still didn’t believe that God would provide for them and bring them into the promised land. Some of that manna was preserved in the ark of the covenant, as a sign, and they people forgot its meaning there as well. 

The problem with transferred belief or faith is that people do not make it part of their own story. It is something that happened in the past. And do we not all look towards the past at desperate times - to try to infer from what already has happened what God will do in the future. 

But the bread of life is not contained to the past. 

The opposite of the past is the future. We want past evidence to guarantee future results. And when we start to get nervous about the future, it leads to us asking questions like “What will God do for me?” But just as God didn’t only act in the past, so can the bread of life, but just be put off until the future as well.

Jesus said, I am the bread of life. Present tense. Right here and right now. And belief is the bread of life isn’t something we can depend upon the past for or put off until the future. Jesus is inviting us, just as he was inviting the crowds, to experience in the present moment the meaning of the bread of life. 

But we are not very present-minded people. Or rather, we have abused what it means to be in the present moment. Instead, of looking around us right here and right now, at who Jesus is inviting us to be his hands and feet to, we try to consume Christ. We try to hoard him for ourselves, as if he was bread that could not be shared. 

Or we try to make him into the bread of life… that we only need some of the times. Think about when you go out to eat, what often comes to the table before the rest of the meal? The bread. As an appetizer and not the main course. But when Jesus said that he was the bread of life, he did not mean that he was simply an appetizer that could be picked at or disregarded at will. No, bread was the main course. It was also the utensil used to bring nourishment to the body, since forks, knives and spoons were not readily available. When Jesus said he was the bread of life, he was saying he was the very source and sustainer of life. 

Friends, we can be just as confused today about how to live in the here and now. We can also be just as confused about what it means that Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the food that endures. This was an enrmonous promise for those who had just experienced being filled by the miracle of abundance. 

But let us not let our confusion block us from offering the bread of life to others. Not in the past. Not in the future. But here and now today. Let us testify to the one who was broken so that we could be made whole. To the one who fed both body and soul. We do not need to have all of the answers in order to share who Jesus is to us. Let us share the very bread of life. Amen.