John 6:25-34 (Year B July 31-August 6) we move to the preface of the discourse on the Bread of Life. Verses 25-34 (Mk 8:11-13). The idea of the food of eternal life is developed with reference to the manna spoken of in the Old Testament as bread from heaven (Pss 78:24), inviting a contrast between physical and spiritual food. As he reflects on true bread, he passes into Hellenistic ways of thought. The language is close to Philo, who could refer to Logos distributing equally to all who will use it the heavenly nourishment of the soul. It amplifies the idea that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. At this point, the discourse repudiates the crude and materialistic type of eschatology that was common in Judaism and in much of Jewish-Christian eschatology.[1]
When the crowd finds Jesus, they ask when he came. Given they noticed that Jesus had not gotten into the boat with the disciples (v. 22), a more logical question might have been how he got there. The response of Jesus is to speak with divine authority that they are looking for him, not because they saw the messianic work of Jesus, but because they had the results of a miracle. Manna is the greatest of Mosaic miracles. The crowd undoubtedly recalls the Midrashic teaching: “As the first Redeemer brought down the manna . . . so will also the last Redeemer cause the manna to come down.” (Midr.Qoh. 1:9). The people may have expected a prophet like Moses. In verse 27 is a metaphor that contains an allegory:[2] Do not strive after the food that perishes, but for food that endures for eternal life, describing the essence of the relationship between believers and God. In this true food, one experiences authentic faith and a fulfilled life. It refers to the personal bearer of the divine life, to the saving gift of life that he conveys, and to the eucharist. We see the unique distinction between work and faith in John. The crowds are looking for deliverance from physical difficulties (hunger, disease), but Jesus wants them to see beyond physical need to their spiritual needs. This enduring food is that which the Son of Man will give, suggesting the bread of the Lord’s Supper. The seal of the Father was set on the Son of Man (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου), in the Incarnation, baptism, or even the cross. While the crowd asks how they can perform the works of God, Jesus say is the work of God is to believe, providing an answer to the faith and works question. While people who desire eternal life must actively seek it, in the end the Son of Man freely gives it. Faith seeking is the work the text calls us to perform. Faith is the only work that matters in seeking eternal life. That they do not yet understand is revealed in their question regarding the sign (σημεῖον) Jesus will do so that they will see and believe, and what work Jesus is performing. John makes it clear that Jesus will determine how he will meet the demand for a sign.[3] They refer to the manna provided by Moses in the wilderness. The manna came for 40 years, but what Jesus did was just for an afternoon. The sign they want is a supply of bread. Jesus reminds them that it is his Father who gives them the true bread from heaven. Even the sign of the bread in the wilderness had the purpose of directing them to the deeper truth that they do not live by read alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of the Lord (Deut 8:3). The crowd asks for Jesus to give them this bread always, a phrase closely resembling “give us this day our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer.
In verse 35, in yet another attempt to reveal himself to the crowd, Jesus affirms that he is the bread of life, and like Isaiah 49:10, people will no more hunger or thirst when they believe (πιστεύων) in him. It is worth pondering what we learn about who Jesus is, how our insights deepen with this image, what makes us object to the image, and what promise is contained in it. Faith, that is, coming to Christ, will appease the craving because Christ directs human craving to its true goal. Faith in him is the manna that will nourish them. Jesus’ own identity is different from that of Moses, Elijah, or any of the other prophets of Israel. He is the one who can uniquely speak of God as “my Father,” suggesting oneness with the Father.[4] Everyone who looks upon the Son and believes will have eternal life, and Christ will raise such persons to life on the last day. Regarding the purpose of what God is doing, the bread that God provides is not simply to sustain the physical lives of some people for some period (as with Israel in the wilderness). Its purpose is to give life to the world (verse 33) and bring eternal life (verse 27). To those who relate to the true bread from heaven, the benefits will be theirs forever.
We can learn other ways John invites us to consider Jesus as the focus of our lives through the other “I am” statements in his gospel.
• “I am the light of the world” (8:12; 9:5) — His presence in your life sheds light on the very real dilemmas we face in these troubled times.
• “I am the gate” (10:7, 9) — He protects us and he offers us “abundant” life (v. 10).
• “I am the good shepherd” (10:11, 14) — He knows you intimately (v. 14) and lays down his life for you (vv. 15, 17, 18).
• “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25) — He is the promise of God that life and hope have victory, even when death and suffering seem so powerful.
• “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6) — He shows the “way” to God.
• “I am the true vine” (15:1, 5) — He supplies you with the necessary nutrients for a life that will bear the fruit of love and grace.
Such statements make no sense apart from the traditional doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
As the Bread of Life and the Living Water, Jesus offers spiritual satisfaction. Compare this to an account from Greek mythology. King Tantalus is a figure in one story whom the gods punished in the underworld by chaining him in a lake. The water level would rise to his chin, but when he lowered his head to slake his thirst, the water immediately receded out of reach. Over his head were branches laden with choice fruit, but they immediately withdrew whenever he reached upward to satisfy his hunger. A symbol of utter frustration, the English word “tantalize” immortalizes his name.
His name was Brad. His home was outside Brownstown, IN, where he lived with his wife and daughter. He taught Sunday School and he led the Council on Ministries. No pastor could ask for a better supporter and a better friend. When I first got there (1983), though, he puzzled me. He was about forty years old. He was always available. He never worked, except as he volunteered for the church or the community. After I was there for a month, I visited him in his home. I asked him how a person in his forties could lead the kind of life he did. His response was that in the 1960's and 1970's, he was able to make his money selling Volkswagen parts in Columbus. The business prospered. He made a lot of money. Yet, his daughter, now getting near her teen years, was almost unknown to him. He sold his part of the business, and with what he had made he was able to live off the interest and spend time with that daughter, and still provide for her college education. What made the decision more impressive to me was that he knew he would have to go back to work. They had a simple log cabin and lived what I would call a simple life. Quite honestly, I do not know if I would have done that. I would worry too much about the economy. I would want more security than that. Yet, something inside me respects him for doing what he did. Something inside me hopes I would have the courage to make that kind of decision. People like this remind me of what is important in life. It is not the sustaining of this body which is most important to me. It is decisions like Brad made, for family, for God, for his sense of calling in life. It gave his life a meaning and direction of which I sometimes lose sight.
Jesus leaves open the possibility that we can distort our spiritual lives by getting this bread metaphor wrong.
One distortion is to try to live on the bread of life alone. One person tells about a prayer chorus he learned as a teenager at church camp:
He’s all I need, he’s all I need,
Jesus is all I need.
He’s all I need, he’s all I need,
All I will ever need.
Roger was only a new Christian in those days, and he certainly had not yet had much life experience, but even at that point, that chorus struck him as unrealistic. Jesus is all he would ever need? Frankly, he doubted that. He says that he learned that chorus right about the same time he was starting to notice girls, and in his emerging adolescence, he was finding them pretty interesting. He concluded that no matter how close he became to Jesus in his life, there would be no danger of Jesus taking the place of a relationship with a girl about his own age.
Actually, no matter what our age, no matter how deep and vital our relationship with Jesus and no matter how committed we are to following his example and trusting his teaching, we will need other elements of spiritual life if we are to truly grow. Christians have found it essential to meet together for worship and fellowship. The author of Hebrews told his readers to not neglect to meet together, because they needed to encourage one another and to “provoke one another to love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24-25). Jesus is not all that we need. Almost certainly some of the spiritual leaders we have heard of recently who have gotten themselves into moral difficulties prayed about their temptations and called on Jesus to help them. However, if they had also availed themselves of the accountability possible within a group of Christians, they might well have found the strength they needed not to fall. Jesus is the bread of life, but not the whole meal.
Another distortion of our spiritual lives can occur if we try to live without eating any of the bread of life. Thanks to Dr. Atkins, we have recently learned that it is possible to live without eating actual bread or almost any carb-bearing foods. However, the Atkins diet is no friend of athletes. Stan Purdum, author of two books about bicycling (Roll Around Heaven All Day and Playing in Traffic) and a member of the editorial team at Homiletics, was trying to lose some weight a few years ago — not that he needed to lose that much weight. So, he tried the Atkins diet. A few days into it, he set out to ride his bicycle on a 15-mile route that he had ridden many times before. He tells what happened:
From the first push on the pedals, I noticed that I felt drained. In fact, in the first mile of this ride I felt the way I normally feel at the end of a 50-mile jaunt. Nonetheless, I persevered, thinking my energy might kick in, but after about three miles, riding seemed like a terrible idea, and I took a direct path home, logging a total of less than five miles for the entire excursion. To use a car metaphor, I felt as if I were hitting on only two cylinders instead of the usual eight. I had similar experiences on two more rides I tried during that diet; long rides were out of the question and even short ones were enervating. I soon gave Dr. Atkins the boot.
Likewise, it is possible to be a spiritual (though not Christian) person without eating the bread of life, but such spirituality tends to be limp, unfocused and lacking in the kind of energy that Jesus provides. Certainly, one thing Jesus did mean when he said he was the bread of life is that our most basic and important human longings find satisfaction in him. He is the foundation for a healthy spiritual diet. To be a Christian, we need Jesus. Sounds axiomatic, but you would be surprised at how many people would love to be Christians without having to deal with Jesus, at least a Jesus who claimed, or for whom his followers made the claim, to be the Son of God.
A third possible distortion of our spiritual lives is that we eat so much junk food that the bread of life ceases to be our mainstay. This is different from the previous distortion in that in this case, there is no deliberate attempt to avoid bread, but rather that we fill up on so many empty calorie delicacies that we leave no room for truly nutritional things. Thus, while appearing to have eaten too much, we actually are starving for the nutrients we need. In terms of the spiritual life, we do the same thing when we give lip service to our faith, but do not bother with such ways of dining on the bread of life. I do not want to be mysterious here. When we pray, read our Bibles, share with each other, reach out to those in need, participate in worship and the Lord’s Supper, we are dining on the bread of life. Through means such as these God has made it possible for us to allow the bread of life to continually nourish us.
As grateful as we may be for all the good things of life, we need the constant reminder that the nourishment Jesus provides sustains us our lives. As grateful as we are, God is not the dispenser of all the good things we would possibly desire. Truly, God has nothing to give us at all – except himself.[5] In fact, in that sense, we keep circling our lives around him, walk with him, have our lives in him, and allow him to live in us. In that sense, he is all we need.
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[3] Rengstorf, TDNT VII, 244.
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[5] (Simon Tugwell, Prayer, in Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, p. 250).
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