12 Confused Men (John 6:56 - 69)

So.  We come to the last of five examinations of John’s remarkable sixth chapter.  In the course of them, we’ve seen movement, both physical—after the feeding of the 5,000 they cross the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum—as well as pedagogical, as Jesus’ teaching moves from group to group.  He arrives in Capernaum, maybe staying with Peter’s folks, and soon the people he’d fed—whom John dubs “the crowd”—show up looking for him, which prompts a sermon from Jesus about how he’s the bread of life.  Then the scene switches to the synagogue and his teaching to the authorities there, whom John calls “the Jews.” And at first they complain, muttering amongst themselves, because they just can’t get their heads around how Jesus could be human, the son of Mary and Joseph, and the bread come down from heaven at the same time.  Then, they begin to dispute amongst themselves, squabbling over how in the name of all that’s holy Jesus could possibly give them his flesh to eat.  Gross!

Now we come down to the response of the disciples, those people who’d been following Jesus since the beginning.  And it's important to consider the differences in the three groups . . .  The crowd has followed him across the sea because, as Jesus himself put it, they “ate [their] fill of the loaves.”  And they are irritated that he’d given them the slip, presumably because they wanted some more bread.  But Jesus tells them not to work for the bread that perishes, like that which he fed them across the sea, but for the bread that never perishes, that leads to eternal life.

Next up are the religious authorities, the experts in theology and the law, and they’re grumbling and disputing, as theologians are wont to do, and it's clear that where the crowd wants physical sustenance from Jesus, they’re after something else.  They’re after theological acquiescence, they desire that he fit in their little theological boxes, the boxes over which—not incidentally—they have control.  They react as if he’s an affront to their sense of power . . . After all, they are the ones who—in the name of God, of course!—determine who’s in and who’s out, who’s clean and who’s unclean, who was holy and who was profane.  And In answering their grumbling, Jesus threatens the status quo: the life of the world is his flesh, not in their rituals and observances, and no one may come to that life unless drawn by God—not by them, but by God.

And his followers, the disciples who—at this point, are many more than twelve—have heard and seen all of this. They’ve heard his teaching to the crowd.  They’ve witnessed the grumbling of the rabbis and scribes, and listened to his disturbing reply, they’ve seen his feeding the 5,000 and walking on the sea, they’ve been there for the whole thing, and now they’re the ones doing the complaining, doing the grumbling, and they collectively express these sentiments: “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  And though it’s tempting to read this comically, like they’re not the brightest bulbs in the old marquee, I think that they’re irritated, like the crowd, like the complaining Jewish authorities.  Here they’ve been following him around for months, they’ve given up their ordinary lives for him, their families and settled homes and occupations, and all of a sudden, here he is, spouting the most ridiculous-sounding nonsense that they’ve ever heard.

This teaching is difficult . . . who can accept it?  Well, a lot of modern day Christians can’t, for one thing . . . It offends a lot of us to say at communion “the body of Christ, broken for you” and “the blood of Christ, shed for you.”  So we substitute stuff like “the bread of life, food for the road” and “the cup of the new covenant” without the “in Christ’s blood” part.  And that’s ok, but I think Jesus asks us the same question he asked the followers of his day: “does that offend you?  Does that scandalize you?  Does it cause you to lose your faith, to stay away from the church and the life-giving sacraments?  Well, what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”

He is ascending to the spiritual realm, to a realm that is not fleshly, that is not made of what we call matter . . . “It’s the spirit that gives life,” he tells them “the flesh is useless.”  And it’s important not to read this as a dualistic “flesh bad . . . spirit good” dualism, kind of thing . . . many Christians have, after reading verses like this, and it has led to all manner of depredations, all kinds of abuse of the body to save one’s immortal soul . . . conquistadors had no problem murdering their conquests, sometimes even baptizing them beforehand, because after all, the spirit is life, the flesh of no account . . . People have been encouraged to endure tremendous suffering, because things of the flesh are of no account, the spirit gives life . . .

Jesus didn’t mean the flesh was evil, that it was bad . . . All you have to do is look at his life: he spent it cherishing human life, healing human bodies, feeding human stomachs . . . He is directing their minds away from temporal things.  The flesh is temporary, the spirit eternal  . . . as Isaiah said, “the grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.”

And guess who, in John at least, is the Word of God?  When we—or anybody else—pretty up the faith, however well-meaning it is, we rob the Gospel of a lot of its symbolic power.  When we ingest the word made flesh, we are commissioned—like the prophets of old—to proclaim that word.  Further, when we talk on the eternal word, he abides in us, and we in it . . . the word dwells within us, it nourishes us, powers us, it gives us life, and that eternal.

Well.  Jesus knows, of course, that he is speaking symbolically, he says as much right then and there: “the words I speak to you are spirit and life” . . . It is because he is the word of God that he is able to say that he is life as well, and here he speaks of a fusion, an inseparability of life and spirit . . . Life is infused with spirit, and spirit with life . . . They are unified on the words he speaks, and the Word he is . . . He is the very model of a complete human being, a perfect wedding of spirit and life, so that, in the end, there is no difference between them. 

Jesus also knows that there are some who don’t believe, who don't understand that he is that, that the very, living Word of God has been made flesh, has been incarnated, and stands among them.  And he takes their objection—and how it is phrased—seriously:  who can accept it, they ask, as in who is able to accept it, and he answers them when he tells them, once again, that no one can come to him, no one can believe in him, unless it is granted by God.  Who can accept it?  Only those to whom it is granted by God.

And it's at that moment when John says many of them abandon ship . . . not when he tells them they must eat his flesh and drink his  blood, but when he tells them it's God who does all the work.  Interesting, isn’t it . . . that kind of reminds me of the so-called original sin itself . . . Human beings trying to be like God, trying to do it all themselves.  Kind of reminds me as well of a lot of modern day Christian communities, who insist on doing it all themselves, who insist on trying to save themselves, to grow themselves . . . Jesus' teaching, no one can come to him unless drawn, unless granted by God, is difficult, at least as much so as eating his flesh! And it's especially hard in the modern, individualist, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps culture in which we live.  Who, indeed, can accept it?

Apparently, on that long-ago day in the hot Capernaum sun, only the twelve.  Jesus asks them: “Do you also wish to go?”  And Peter, always the spokesman, comes back with “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Believe and know.  Belief and knowledge . . . It's both.  They know that he’s the Holy One of God, and they believe it, they accept it.  They don’t understand it, necessarily, but they have faith that it is so.  One day, perhaps, they will understand it as well: Paul certainly thought so, that one day we will “know fully,” that we will understand, but that's kind of what faith isn’t it?  A being open to the revelation of God, accepting that Jesus is the Word of God, and we will continue to hear it, continue to be puzzled by it, continue to consume it.

Christianity is difficult, it is a mystery, much of it seems to go against the grain of who we are as people . . . How can we eat of Jesus' flesh and drink of his blood?  I don't know, but I do know that we do, that we must . . . I know that Jesus has the words of eternal life . . . To whom else can we go?  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Are What You Eat (John 6:51 - 58)

Thus beginneth the third sermon on the Bread Discourse from the Apostle John.  And lo!  Our reading repeateth once again the final verse of last week's passage: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  And lo again!  Those self-same Jewish religious authorities, whom John calleth “the Jews”, that last week responded to the first sentence—I am the bread come down from heaven—with grumbling, respond to the second sentence, the one about the eating of his flesh, by disputing amongst themselves.  And lo a third time!  That has been a cause of disputing ever since.  Because Christian religious authorities like to dispute every bit as much as Jewish authorities do.  Indeed, next week we’ll see some of Jesus’ own followers doing some disputing, and of all people, you’d think they’d get it, but no: it's so hard for them that some of them actually give up the whole thing, they leave off following Jesus altogether.

But that’s next week. This week, we look at the way some theological types reacted—rabbis and scribes and such, people who were experts in their religion, and they are puzzled, and arguing among themselves: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  And once again, we see them grappling with something outside their frame of reference, outside their normal knowledge base.  And we also see them being quite literal, which of course carried over to the organized theologians and theologies.  Just how can this man give us his flesh to eat, anyway?

Well, of course, Jesus’ comments about eating his flesh were connected by the earliest theologians to the Lord’s Supper which, after all, Jesus had commanded them to observe.  And in Matthew, Mark and Luke—but not John—Jesus actually tells the disciples what he means as he takes the bread and says “this is my body, broken for you.”  But in our passage, the religious authorities had no such teaching from the Christ to guide them, so they were left to scratch their heads in puzzlement.

But even with Jesus’ taking the bread and the wine and demonstrating just how this man can give us his flesh to eat, this passage remained a contentious one for theologians and other ne’er do wells . . . Like the earliest commentators, most relate this passage to Communion, even going so far as to say that this is John’s version of the institution, which he doesn’t literally include.  In the fourth century, John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, wrote that as is “characteristic of those who greatly love,” Christ “brought his body down to our level, namely, that we might be one with Him as the body is joined with the head.” The literal reality of this coming-down of love means we can do more than just “look upon” him.  Rather, those Christ feeds can “fix their teeth in His flesh and to be commingled with Him.”

Although most folks associated this passage with Communion, there was at least one theologian—a fellow named Martin Luther, you may have heard of him—who denied it, and with gusto.  He thought that Jesus’ use of the flesh-eating metaphor in this passage was a way of jarring us into thinking creatively about that whole incarnation thing.  He wrote that those who hear this are “to investigate what He was driving at with this peculiar speech. What could He mean? Is one man to devour the other? Surely this cannot be the meaning. Then let them deliberate and reflect on the matter, and ask what He did mean.”  According to Luther, we shouldn’t read the words as “my flesh,” with the emphasis on flesh, but as “my flesh,” as in Jesus’ flesh is not like ordinary flesh.  And with characteristic, Luther-ian rambunctiousness, he preached that this flesh is not “the sort of flesh from which red sausages are made,” nor is it “flesh such as purchased in a butcher shop or is devoured by wolves and dogs,” nor “veal or beef found in cow barns.”  Good to know.

Maybe wanting to shock them into thinking explains why he doesn’t answer their questions straight out, he doesn’t roll his eyes and say “no, you idiots, it's a metaphor.”  Instead he doubles down, he continues to hammer it home: “. . .   unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” and “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day . . .” And finally, reading it with Luther’s emphasis “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”

Zowie.  Talk about rubbing it in.  I can imagine the religious authorities’ heads almost exploding at that.  But John’s congregation, the outcast Jews who heard his gospel read aloud in each other’s homes, would have had no trouble understanding the metaphor.  They would have remembered the first chapter, where John said that Jesus is the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.  So? you say, what does that have to do with eating his flesh?  Well, they also would have recalled that a common thing that happened at the commissioning of prophets was that they ate the scroll, they ingested the word of God, and it thus becoming a part of them.  So perhaps John’s audience would have viewed this in part as a call to prophesy, a call to proclaim the Word, which Jesus embodied and which they were asked to eat.  And of course, because you are what you eat, does that imply that they became the Word as well?

Well.  Jesus says that his flesh is the bread of life, not the bread of prophecy, and those who eat it, will live, and eternally, at that  . . . thus, the ante is about as high as it gets: it’s life itself.  But what does eternal life look like?  What is its shape, it's warp and its woof?  By what is it characterized?  He gives us a hint when he speaks of abiding, and this is what advances his argument beyond where we ended up last week: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”  They abide in me and I in them . . . This life, that is in some way eternal, is characterized by a mutual abiding, a mutual indwelling.  Those who eat of Jesus’ flesh and drink of his blood abide in him, and he abides in them.

What is this abiding, anyway?  What does it mean to abide?  Well, on the simplest level, of course, it means to dwell, to have one’s abode.  But it also has the sense of staying, of remaining.  The last line of the film The Big Lebowski is “The Dude abides,” implying that the main character—the Dude—is  steady, sturdy, immovable . . . that he abides implies that he sticks with it, come what may. Another sense of the word is of waiting, of patience. Another is tolerance . . . When someone says I cannot abide that, they mean that they can’t tolerate it . . .

And I think Jesus means it in all of these senses . . . When disciples—and that’s us!—abide in him, it is an indwelling, for sure, but it is also secure, stable . . . Our abiding in Christ implies a tolerance on our part of things we don’t understand—and there are a lot of those things in Christ as well as life—as well as things that go against our world view . . . When we truly abide in Jesus, we are patient, we wait upon God, and what does Isaiah say? “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

But there’s another side to this, of course: Jesus said “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” Jesus abides in us, within us, as we go abut our business, as we go abut our daily lives.  And he is stable, he is patient with us and tolerant of all our foibles, he is in it for the long run . . . His love permeates us and fills us with its presence.  John Chrysostom had it right: in Jesus, the love of God comes down and fills us if we ingest the Word of God, if we let it . . .

But how do we do that, how do we eat of his flesh and drink of his blood?  Well, our ancestors in the faith knew that to deepen our walk, to strengthen our journey, spiritual practices are essential . . . Prayer . . .  contemplation . . . immersion in Scripture, the Word written . . . Meditating upon the presence of Christ in everything and every person we meet . . . Although it is God who does the filling, these practices open us up to it, they empty a place in us so that it can be filled by God.

There’s one more thing I want to talk about, and it's looming over this entire portion of John’s Gospel . . . We often talk about the incarnation as in the past, as over and done with.  It began in that stable, surrounded with God’s creation, with sheep and cows and doves, and it ended when the disciples watched Jesus ascend on a cloud.  But it is clear from these verses—and that other great metaphor, where Jesus likens this abiding to a vine and branches—it is clear that the incarnation never ended, that it is happening even as we speak.  Jesus is here, among us, abiding in you—in Betty and Bill and Brad and Dot—and in me.  Wherever else Jesus is, he is here, abiding, embodied, incarnate, in us.  Amen.

iness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on otdiness, a remaining in place.  nt omeone?  Well, on ot

A Particular Incarnation (John 6:35, 41-51)

So.  Here we are in our second sermon in the Bread Discourse.  The last one ended with the iconic “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  And this reading begins with the same verse, then skips a few . . . The architects of our lectionary evidently thought it important enough to include it two weeks in a row, and it makes sense: it is the foundational saying of this whole section of the Gospel, and an important revelation about the nature of Jesus’ identity.  As we saw last week, the central importance of bread in the ancient Middle East makes it a stunning metaphor—bread represented life to its people, and so it's almost like Jesus is saying “I am the life of life.”  He is life squared, life to the nth degree.

This section of the discourse is theologically dense—sorry about that!—as it builds on the section we read last week.  It's doubtless partly because the audience has changed:  last week, if you'll recall, Jesus’ audience was a crowd who’d followed him cross the Sea of Galilee, to catch up with him in Capernaum.  Jesus used their search for him, and their rather grouchy questions when they did find him, as an excuse to contrast good, old, fragrant, solid bread, like the manna God gave their ancestors in the wilderness, or that provided the crowd in the feeding of the five-thousand, for that matter, and the bread he is, the bread of life.

John calls the bunch that Jesus addresses in today’s segment Jews, and whenever you see that word  in John, it means the Jewish religious authorities.  It's not like the crowd last week wasn’t composed of Jews, it was. But the complainers are theologically more sophisticated, and Jesus takes the opportunity to expand on the bread metaphor in greater depth.

They’re complaining (literally, murmuring or muttering) about Jesus for a specific reason: “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”  And where have we heard that one before?  We heard it a couple of weeks ago, when we looked at Mark’s version of the sending of the disciples, when Jesus came into his own home town, and the folks he grew up with were scandalized—simply scandalized—at his teaching in the local synagogue.  Remember?  They said essentially the same thing: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses . . .” etc., etc., but here, in this case, we’re not in Nazareth anymore, Toto, we’re in Capernaum, on the other side of the Galilee Sea, and how would the religious authorities in that place know a poor carpenter from a tiny little village?

Be that as it may, the religious authorities, supposedly the more sophisticated of the lot, make the same mistake as Jesus’ home-town friends and neighbors: they judge who he is by categories they already know, ones with which they are familiar, and cannot think outside the narrow confines of that box.  Jesus is a mortal man, born of mortal parents . . . How could he be this bread come down from heaven?

It might have been even harder for these people because, after all, they were the experts, perhaps rabbis and scribes, well-versed in the law.  They knew every jot and every tittle, could quote great swaths of the Torah, and could be as rigid as any of today's inerrancy-believing fundamentalists.  In fact, as theologian Raimon Panikkar points out, having a written scripture can lead to a dry, brittle religiosity if we aren’t careful.  Faith is reduced to a dry consideration, a fervent pouring-over of texts looking for pin-dancing angels and support for whatever one’s particular opinion might be.  It's a problem many religions have, of course, but it seems more prevalent in the “people of the book:” adherents of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.  We can see by this story its work in Judaism, and in the endless debate over whether or not the word “jihad” in the Quran justifies mass murder.  But it's just as prevalent in our faith, when we’ve used scripture to justify slavery, among other things—after all, Jesus never condemned it and Paul told Philemon to be a good little slave.

Well. The religious authorities in Capernaum were just as blinded by scripture as we can be today, and they had the extra, added problem of worrying about someone usurping their power, as many do today as well.  So they mutter amongst themselves, and Jesus calls them on it—“don’t complain amongst yourselves,” he says, then he proceeds to preach, and what he says has been at the core  of many a theological debate over the years.

First, he says “no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me” and this strikes at the heart of how one becomes a Christian, how one becomes “saved.”  It seems to encapsulate quite neatly the idea of “salvation by grace alone,” that nothing we can do or say or indeed, even be, can ensure our being made right with God.  And of course, this bolsters we Presbyterians’ argument about election: being drawn to Jesus doesn’t seem to leave much room for our free will.

But in what manner does God “draw” people to Jesus?  Well, he says, it is written that God shall teach them, and everyone who has heard and learned from God comes to Jesus.  Note the everyone: everyone who has heard and learned from God the father comes to Jesus.  Everyone . . . Again, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for choice . . . And that’s a scandal in these days of idolatry of the human will, of free will, if you like.  How can one even think that God wouldn’t give us a choice in things?  I mean, doesn’t God love us too much for that?

And there may be some wiggle room in this . . . The Greek word for “to hear”—akuow—can mean the simple catching of a sound—as in I heard a noise—but it can also have a deeper connotation, one of understanding, assimilating.  Similarly, certainly not everyone who hears something learns it, but the scandalous fact remains: nobody can come to Jesus unless God wants them to.  No one can come to him unless drawn by God, and certainly, even if we don’t have free will in this, God certainly does.  And of course, the question of the ages is this: if some people do not have eternal life, does it mean God doesn’t want them to?

But wait . . .  there’s more!  If it’s God who draws people to Christ, then it's not us.  We don’t have a say in who God draws to Jesus, either in what we do or do not tell them, or in how well we advertise, how well we attract them and keep them coming back.   And that’s a liberating thought, as legitimately a part of the Good News as anything else we preach.  We can sit back and relax, content to spread the gospel in thought, word and deed, and God will do the heavy lifting.

Of course, there’s a flip side to this as well . . . God draws anyone to Jesus that God wants to, no matter what we think, no matter how we interpret the Bible, no matter who we decide is worthy of ordaining, allowing into our congregation, or marrying.   God draws to Jesus, and thus bestows everlasting life, upon everyone who has heard and learned from God, no matter what we think.  And to paraphrase Billy Graham, I think we’re gonna be awful surprised who that is.

Jesus is the bread of life, come down from heaven, come down from the abode of the divine, and a second great theological truth is in that “come down” part.  It harkens back to John’s prologue once again . . . The Word, the messiah, the Son of God is made flesh and has dwelt among us.  Here is no absentee landlord, no infinitely separate God, Jesus came down from heaven, became one of us, walked our roads, ate our food, died a death that was, after all, not so much different from our own.  As Paul said, Christ Jesus emptied himself of God-hood and dwelt among us.

And—according to the man himself—he became bread, the most common, everyday thing around, and yet absolutely necessary and vital.  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” he says.  “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  That’s what we enact every communion Sunday, and that’s where we leave off this week.  Next week, we take up this question of eating his flesh, the bread of life, something that most of those who hear this—including his disciples—just can’t get their heads around.  Be there or be square.

Sweet Mystery of Life (John 6:24 - 35)

I’d like you to sit up straight with your feet on he floor.  Your spine should not be rigid, but not slouchy either.  Think of your head sitting comfortably, supported by your spine.  Sit with your hands by your side, loosely, or clasped softly in your lap.  Now, I ask that you close your eyes . . . Close your eyes and steady your breathing.  Feel your breathing, feel it filling your lungs, then let it go, not forcing, but letting it out deliberately, neither slow nor fast, but just right, comfortably.  In and out, in and out.  See if you can feel your breath filling your being, first in the sinuses behind your face, then spreading out, to fill your body.  Imagine as you breath—in and out, in and out—that you can feel it filling your shoulders, then your torso and thighs and calves, in and out, in and out.

Now.  Do you smell the bread?  Can you smell the heady, yeasty, delightful aroma?  With each breath it fills you up, then empties you . . . Don't be greedy . . . Keep your breathing slow and steady, in and out, in and out, savor the bread . . . Did you know that when you smell the bread, you are inhaling minute particles of the loaf?  Molecules of bread, and as you breath them in, some of them remain in your lungs, and I wonder if they absorbed into the capillaries surrounding the alveoli, those tiny sacks where oxygen enters the blood.  Perhaps not, they are likely too big, but I imagine they are absorbed, anyway . . . but I know that just breathing the aroma of baking bread nourishes us, fulfills us , if not in body then surely in soul . . . In and out, in and out . . .

Now: imagine you are in a dusty mid-eastern town, imagine that you’re in Capernaum at the break of day, and the smell of bread permeates the place, inundates it, you can smell it wherever you go.  Every woman in town is baking their day’s bread in the cool of the morning, before it gets intolerably hot, so that they don’t pass out before their open oven doors.  Women are the keepers of bread, the keepers of life . . .

Bread is a staple in the ancient Middle East—you can open your eyes now—it’s a staple, or rather the staple, it is so important.  In a village like Capernaum, on the north bank of the Galilee Sea, it is supplemented by fish, at least in season,  so there’s a faint, fishy smell wafting up from the harbor, a ripe undercurrent to the overwhelming odor of morning bread.

It’s early yet, but you have been up for hours, going about your work; for you and many others in your village, it will end only after sunset.  Suddenly, there is commotion from the harbor: boats have pulled up at the quays, boats filled to the gunwales with people.  Their voices pierce the morning quiet like the shrill whinny of donkeys, and they’re getting louder as they approach you up the winding path from the harbor.

Suddenly, there is a man awaiting them, quite an ordinary-looking man, of average height and average build, with the same dusky skin as you . . . Indeed, he has the same general features as the newcomers: though they are strangers, they are clearly members of the tribe . . . you have heard that he has come from across the sea, that he arrived late one night on the wings of a storm, and that he is staying at the house of Peter’s mother, although you know him by his birth name of Simon.  And suddenly you put two and two together, and you know who this man is: it’s Jesus of Nazareth, mighty in word and deed, who healed the Royal official’s son right here in Capernaum, when he wasn’t even here!  And involuntarily, you look over and see the house with the patched roof, through which the paralytic was lowered and healed by this very man.  Oh, they know Jesus of Nazareth very well here in Capernaum, and now here he is again, waiting calmly for the approaching crowd.  A strange, wild joy creeps over you as you sidle in closer; you just know something is about to happen.  And that overwhelming yeasty odor hangs in the air, and you breath it in and out, in and out.

The crowd halts in front of Jesus, and a gentle smile crosses his lips.  The first words are from the crowd: “Rabbi, when did you come here?” And you are a bit shocked, to tell the truth, it's kind of rude, especially to someone of Jesus’ stature.  The crowd seems on edge, irritated, even, and it’s clear that they have a history together, Jesus and the crowd, and you wonder why they speak that way to him?  Did he refuse them some favor or another?  Some service?  Or maybe he gave them the slip somehow, and they really want to how he came here, but that doesn’t explain the tone . . .

Be that as it may, you expect Jesus to scold them for their rudeness, or at least answer their query, but what he says mystifies you: it has nothing to do with the question.  “You aren’t looking for me because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  And you’re thinking: what does this mean?  What signs?  What bread?  Except you know about bread, because it’s odor caresses you still.  Jesus continues: “do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which will be given by the Son of Man, upon whom God has set his seal.”  And his speech grows more mysterious, more incomprehensible still, because what kind of food endures forever, for eternal life?  What is this eternal life, anyway?  Everybody dies, every body turns to dust, some at a younger age than others, and you reflect on all the women and men you know who have passed on, most of them well before their allotted 40 seasons . . . You have heard that some wealthy landowners live sixty, even seventy years, but they don’t work in the brutal sun, or go down to the sea in tiny boats, at the mercy of the storms.  Life could be brutish and short for the men and women of Capernaum.

And because of this, Jesus’ words give you hope: what if there was this eternal food, this everlasting bread?  Jesus was a man Who was clearly in the favor of God . . . he’d healed the officials son from afar, and the paralytic man as well . . . Who knows what he can do? If there were such bread, perhaps the village women wouldn’t die so often from overwork, or from having one too many children.  Perhaps those children wouldn’t die so often from malnutrition, or from common infections . . . And so you are overwhelmed with excitement, because you know what Jesus has done in the past, but the crowd asks “what do we have to do to perform the work of God?”  What can we do to insure we get this everlasting bread, what can we do in return for this everlasting food?

But Jesus says “This is the work of God: that you should believe in him whom God has sent.”  But you see that it is not enough for the crowd, they want to make sure the get their money’s worth, to insure that they are not being deceived: “Ok,” they say, “what sign are you going to give us, so that we may see it and believe you?  What are you performing?”  And now you are incensed, your back is up, so to speak . . . they want him to prove himself, to perform like one of the trained monkeys passing tradesmen sometimes bring. “Moses gave our ancestors manna to eat in the wilderness,” they say, and the unsaid question hoping in the air: what are you gonna do?  And you steady your breath, breathing in the aroma of bread, in and out, in and out . . .

But Jesus remains calm, and reminds them that it wasn’t Moses who gave them the manna, but the Lord God almighty, it’s the bread of God that comes down from heaven that brings this true and everlasting life.  And your breath catches in your throat, and a light begins to dawn within you . . . your heart lifts up and a glow seems to surround Jesus as he stands in front of you and the crowd.

But they are still thinking solid, earthly food, bread that can last forever, like an eternally excellent harvest year, where there is plenty of grain, or like endless water drawn from a well, without a drought to slow it down.  “Sir,” they say, and at least they’re being polite, “Sir, give us this bread always.”  And then Jesus says it, and with this, you think, he says it all: “I am the bread of life,” he says, “whoever is coming to me will never be hungry, and whoever is believing in me will never be thirsty.”  And suddenly, the scent of bread in the air becomes overpowering, and you are carried away on its fragrant currents.  Amen.