Life Sustaining Bread, Part 2

August 12, 2018

This is the second Sunday of our series of lections revolving around Bread;  it directly overlaps with last week’s text, which will overlap with next week’s…if you will go with me.

Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 

The response of the crowd tells us a lot about the difference between what people WANT and what people NEED. So often the very thing people need the most, is the last thing they are looking for. Look at the sad response of the crowd:

At this, the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven."
They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ’I came down from heaven’?" 

When you think about it, the people who walked out on Jesus wanted what he could give to them in the same way a customer might exchange service for pay. They wanted to do business with Jesus the meal ticket, Jesus the cult leader, Jesus the entertainer. But, Jesus, the Bread of Life, just didn’t resonate with them. So they walked awayAnd it turns out that even some of Christ’s closest disciples wanted Jesus only for what they could get out of Him. They had no real interest in a relationship with God.

This led to what I think is one of the most poignant, moving moments in the whole Bible. Jesus, who was totally God, was also totally human, felt what any of us would feel. He experienced the pain of rejection … especially the rejection of those he had considered to be close friends. But we’ll get into that a little later on….

John 6:24-35

The next day, when the people who remained after the feeding of the five thousand saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

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.”