Body Image (John 6:56 - 69)

     Once again into the breach of John Chapter Six, dear friends. And once again, this week’s reading includes a substantial chunk of last week’s. This mirrors John’s infamous habit of structuring Jesus’ speeches so they are repetitive, but for the lectionary’s own reasons: when we’re working our way through an important passage like this, on a weekly basis, it’s good to remind ourselves of where we left off last time. And where that is is Jesus’ startling statement that “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

And today, 2000 years—give or take a few—after the resurrection it’s hard to understand the full impact of this statement, just how offensive it was to Jewish ears. After all, we know that he’s not advocating that we rip off a hunk of gristle and stuff in our mouth, then wash it down with a goblet of O-positive—ah . . . 33 AD, a very good year. We get that he was speaking figuratively, not literally . . . metaphorically, not actually. But back in the day, wow. This was some hard stuff to get your head around. Seven times it says we are to eat him. And four of those occasions also refer to the drinking of his blood. Our life depends on it!

And not only is it just gross, it’s ritually offensive too. As Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh remind us, God explicitly tells Noah (and thus, humans) not to eat blood: “Every living thing shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” They go on to point out that blood—and fat—is ritually dedicated to God: “the prohibitions of fat and blood … single out those organs ... that serve as the seat of life. Life is from God alone and belongs to God alone. To ingest fat or blood is to strive to be like God.”

So, the crowd listening to Jesus would hear his words, "eat my flesh and drink my blood," as blasphemy, as an abomination, as inciting his followers to try to become like God. And we know how that turned out once before … that little episode with Adam and Eve and the snake? Would Jesus’ followers, and the onlooking religious authorities, assume Jesus was trying to get them to repeat the original sin? I think that might be . . .

And then, after he describes what many would see as cannibalism (in fact, some of the locals accused first-century Christians of just that), he disses Moses, one of the heroes of Judaism: “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died.” And to top it all off, as he often did, he said these radical things in the Capernaum synagogue, the local center of the Jewish faith.

It was even too much for his own followers, whom I picture standing around like polled oxen with dazed looks on their faces: “This teaching is difficult . . . who can accept it?” And they set about muttering and complaining about it. And because Jesus is, well, Jesus, he knows what they’re saying, but does he soften the teaching? Does he come out with “It’s okay . . . I don’t mean that literally . . .”? Of course not . . . Jesus isn’t there to comfort anybody, but to make them think, to get them off their keisters . . . he’s there to afflict the comfortable, to pull them out of their comfortable little theological boxes. Does this offend you? Does it shake up your little comfortable world? Would it help any if you could literally see me taken back up into heaven? Would you believe then?

And of course, we know this is no idle threat, don’t we? They will see him ascending back to where he was before. Right after they see him nailed to a cross and hung up to die . . . and would that offend them? In point of fact, it’s the spirit that gives life, y’all, the spirit. All that stuff about eating sacrificial flesh and blood, that it’s reserved for God, it’s just ritual poppycock. It’s only my flesh and my blood that gives life . . . it’s why I say that nobody can come to me unless granted by God, who we all know is spirit.

No wonder a lot of his disciples up and leave his company, and don’t travel around with him anymore. And when he asks the twelve—his innermost, hard-core followers—if they don’t want to leave as well, Peter sounds more than a little plaintive, more than a tad lost: “Lord, where else are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life . . . We know that much, even though we may not understand all the ins and outs . . .”

And in fact, they are hard to understand, even for us 21st century types, who have a couple millennia’s worth of theology and Biblical studies to draw on. Just exactly what is it supposed to mean? How literally are we to take it? My old friends in the Baptist and other evangelical denominations tend to take it as simply a memorial—do this in remembrance of me—without any indwelling of Christ. On the other side are transubstantialists—like Episcopalians and Roman Catholics—who believe that when blessed by a priest, bread and wine are transformed into Christ’s actual body and Christ’s actual blood.

We Presbyterians take a predictably middle road, saying little about whether or not Christ is the bread and wine—or Christ is in them, as the Lutherans would have it. We prefer to follow Papa John Calvin when he opined that we’re “lifted up” to be with him in a special way, not as a symbolic, but real foretaste of the Messianic banquet at the end of time.

But you know what? I think that the reality—if we can even approach it with words—is a lot closer to the Catholic or Lutheran end of things than we sometimes like to think. After all, doesn’t John himself say in that magnificent prologue that all things came into being through Christ and that not one thing came into being without him? Without the Word—who both was with God and was God--nothing came into being, and we usually read that in a facultative sense, as nothing came into being without Christ’s help, or without his creative action, but it can also be read as without Christ’s presence. Like saying, no Snickers Bar has come into being without peanuts or a chewy caramel center.

And that’s how mystics read it—without Christ inside, without that divine spark, not one thing came into being. Every rock, every tree, every person, every flower, all of creation contains what Aldous Huxley calls “a divine Reality substantial to the the world of things and lives and minds,” and what we call simply Christ. Paul put it this way: In Christ all things hold together, and Teilhard de Chardin knew it from experience, he experienced it, and it fueled his love affair with matter.

As modern-day mystics James Finley and Cynthia Bourgeault say, there have been two incarnations: the original at the creation of the universe—God as Christ incarnate in all created things—and in and as Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary and Joseph, laid in a manger on a cold Bethlehem night.

Do you see the special grace, the good news in all of this? Not only does Christ the Divine pervade all reality, he pervades us. And not only is he in us, but he’s in our friends and neighbors as well, so that Jesus wan’t just whistling Dixie when he said whatever you’ve done to the least of these you’ve done to me, he could have said just as well “whatever you’ve done to anything you’ve done to me.”

So eat heartily of life, my brothers and sisters, and drink deep . . . for that’s what Christ literally is, life: all that nurtures and strengthens us. And if you want to see Christ, look at the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and mountains and oceans deep. If you want to see Christ, you don’t have to come to church to do it, all you have to do is look around and see that he’s everywhere, in the stone with which we build and dust motes dancing on the summer air. Everywhere, in the atoms and quarks and gluons and muons of all matter, and in the biggest stars and whirling planets, galaxies and black holes. If you want to see Christ, you don’t have to say ten Hail Mary’s or sing Amazing Grace til you pass out from the heat. No. If you want to see Christ, just turn and look in your neighbor’s eyes. Amen.

From Bread to Abiding (John 6:51 - 58)

     Today we finally get to where Jesus—as presented by John—wants us to be with what we’ve been reading the past few weeks, anybody figured out where that might be? That’s right . . . the Eucharist. Communion. The Lord’s Supper. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life,” Jesus says, “and I will raise them up on the last day.” And if that’s not a reference to the Lord’s Supper, I’ll eat this iPad. Of course, we should have seen it coming: in the very first lesson we drew out of Chapter Six—the feeding of the five-thousand—John describes it this way: “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.” And it has the same flavor as the the four-fold formula found in the other Gospels—take, give thanks, break and give—only it’s missing the “break” part. But for the sharp-eyed it’s there, and all this talk of Jesus being the bread leads up to the stunning statement about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

In fact, in John’s gospel there is no formal institution of the Eucharist as there is in the other gospels, where it is associated with the Last Supper. And because it is associated with that last meal, “on the night when he was betrayed,” as Paul put it, it is in those other Gospels associated inextricably with his sacrifice, his death on a cross. Here, in John, it’s not so much . . . in fact, as some biblical scholars a lot smarter than me have figured out, this scene happens in the middle of his ministry, which in John is three years long, and so is at least a year away from his death.

And so, the closest thing to the institution of Communion in John is much less about death than life, a theme that comes up over and over in the bread discourse. Of the 98 times “life” is mentioned in the Gospels, eleven—over ten percent —are in this one chapter of John. And when we think of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus—of course it’s just a metaphor—we have to ask ourselves “Just what are we being asked to eat?” Well, Jesus puts it this way: “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” And here, the Greek word we’re translating as “true” isn’t in the sense of a statement that agrees with fact so much as “genuine” or “real”. My flesh is genuine flesh, it’s the real deal. And by extension, is everything that isn’t his flesh questionable? Is it counterfeit, dishonest, false? Is this a backhanded swipe at what popular culture feeds us?

Well. Let’s drill down a bit more into this notion of the character of Jesus flesh and blood, what it might mean when Jesus says his flesh and blood are true. And to do this, we can look at John’s conception of just who Jesus is, his Christology, as theologians like to call it. And the thing about John is that his Christology is notably higher than that of the other gospels. For John, if Jesus isn’t actually God the creator in human form, he’s awful darn close. To the other gospel writers, he is Son of God in the same sense that King David was: the Messiah anointed by God the Father.

But for John, Jesus is  himself divine, and the best place to see it is way back in the first chapter. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What we ingest when we eat of Jesus’ flesh and drink of his blood is the Word of God, who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” And this has enormous symbolic weight for John: prophets are known to ingest the Word, to take it in so they can digest it and spit it out again, clothed in humanity, in terms that even we might understand. Thus, our eating of the Word is the beginning and empowering of our own prophetic ministries.

And another thing: what we eat and drink becomes a part of us, and so in our eating of Word become flesh, it not only dwells among us but within us as well. The word becomes flesh and dwell within . . . As Jesus himself says, when we eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, we abide in him and he in us. And just as he lives because of God—whom he calls “Father”—so do we live because of him. This last is what I call the chain of God, which is preeminent in John’s gospel: God endows upon Jesus certain characteristics and Jesus, in turn, passes them along to us. In this case it is life itself. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and he’s dwelling among us because he’s been sent. It all leads back to God . . . everything Jesus was and is and will be is because of his relationship to God. In the same way, everything we are is also because of God, Jesus says, through our relationship to him. God bestows it on Jesus, Jesus bestows it on us.

In 1945, Aldous Huxley—yes, that Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World—wrote a book of “comparative mysticism” called “The Perennial Philosophy.” Though the term was coined by Gottfried Leibniz—yes, that Gottfried Leibniz—Huxley popularized and expounded upon the notion, and gave numerous examples of it from scriptures of the world including, of course, the Bible, as well as other sacred writings. The Perennial Philosophy can thought of as a stream flowing through, or a structure undergirding, all major religions, and most minor ones as well. A common denominator, if you will, spoken of in every faith, albeit using different words and concepts. These religions include, but are not limited to, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

It must be emphasized that Huxley was not saying these religions are the same, or even equivalent, just that they have a common baseline, consisting of three main ideas: first, there is a divine Reality substantial to—over, under, around and throughout—the the world of things and lives and minds. Second, within each human being is an entity—a soul or ”divine spark” or atman as the Hindus call it—that is similar to, or even identical with, this divine Reality. Lastly, a person’s final end is the knowledge of and access to this immanent divine Reality.

And Jesus uses metaphors to speak of this reality, especially here in John, and this “mutual abiding” is the primary one. His abiding in us—and we in him—seems to be the equivalent of the third idea in the Perennial Philosophy: our final end is knowledge of and access to the immanent divine reality. And according to Jesus, abiding in him and he in us is how we produce fruit in our lives: “I am the vine,” he says, “and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”

Way back in the first sermon on the bread discourse we talked about “believing in Jesus,” and I opined that believing in Jesus meant not just a simple affirmation that what he says about himself is true, but that it means the whole shebang, an immersing of our lives in him, aligning our lives with him. Giving up our own lives for him. And this week, we see the results of believing in him, of “coming to him,” to use another metaphor: abiding in him. We believe in him, that’s the process, we give up our lives, ourselves, our egos, just as he gave up his life and self and ego, and we come to abide in him. And those who abide in him—and he in us—bear fruit in this life, never mind what happens in the next.

Jesus said “Those who eat of my flesh and drink of my blood abide in me and I in them,” they realize and have access to the indwelling Christ-spark within. And it seems to me that that is our purpose: to bear fruit. And is that what Paul lists as fruits of the Spirit? Is it our purpose—as some Wisdom teachers would say—manifest these fruits into the world? Compassion, loving-kindness, patience, generosity, self-control?

Now, as a response to the Word made flesh let’s symbolically bring that flesh of Christ to our friends and neighbors.

Take Eat (John 6:35, 41 - 51)

     Last week, today, and next week, we’re spending some time with the bread discourse, Jesus’ enormously influential sermon that takes place just after the feeding of the 5,000. If you’ll recall, the crowd he’d fed follows him across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum—after trying to kidnap him and make him king—and confronts him there, and in response to a series of questions and misunderstandings, he talks to them about how he’s the bread of life, come down from heaven: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry . . .”

And now, on the North shore of Galilee, there are apparently some folks who knew Jesus back when, who knew Joseph and Mary and everything, and it’s like the story over in Mark when he came to his hometown of Nazareth, and you’ll remember that because of their lack of belief, he could do no deeds of power there. Here in John, the same kind of sentiment is expressed, only this time it’s a reaction to Jesus’ claims. They begin to complain about him, they begin to grumble about him, saying “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’?” Its like they think claiming he’s bread from heaven is more than a little uppity . . .

And I use that language deliberately . . . uppity. It’s the language used by people who want to keep others in the boxes they’ve placed them in. Of course, it was most famously used by white folks in the bad old days to try and keep black folks in their place, keep them in the boxes they’d been moved into. Emmett Till was a black kid who said something uppity to a white woman, and they lynched him in good, old Mississippi—where Pam and I lived for a decade, and where we have lots of friends—they strung up his skinny, fourteen-year-old body for something he said, only whaddya know? The woman he supposedly said it to now says it didn’t happen.

Thank goodness that doesn’t happen these days. Thank goodness white folks don’t put African Americans in boxes, paint them all with the same brush. Only . . . wait. Isn’t that kind of the idea behind profiling—either intentional or unintentional? Black folks barbecuing in a park have the police called on them in Oakland. A black student taking a nap in a common room in her own dorm has the police called on her. The other student—white, of course—says she appears out of place. And of course, we all know this can have fatal results, as seen by the spate of un-armed blacks being shot and by police. Jesus knew this as well, when he fled the crowd that wanted to shove him—by force, if necessary—into the box of glorious, triumphant king.

In fact, you might say that Jesus’ whole life—from cradle to grave—demonstrates the folly of this sort of thing. Everybody has a misconception about him, everybody’s got their own box. His parents search frantically—and understandably—for him when he was twelve, only to find him teaching, in temple, saying “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” His mother and brothers are embarrassed when he’s preaching, and try to get him to stop—after all, they think, he’s just a small-town carpenter’s son. The disciples never understand who he is until it’s too late, and in fact his crucifixion is arguably about the Roman authorities placing him in the box labeled “revolutionary” and “agitator.”

Well. Jesus scolds them for murmuring amongst themselves, and proceeds to offer a theology of “coming to” him, which he seems to use interchangeably with “believe in”. And remembering last week, we saw that to believe in Jesus means to give yourself over to him whole hog, to align yourself with him, to have faith in him and to unify with him. In other words, the whole enchilada. And now he’s saying that nobody can do all this unless drawn by God, who Jesus calls Father. No one can come to him unless drawn by the God who sent him. And this is very different from the presuppositions of the Jewish crowd here at Capernaum. For Jews, they are the chosen people, God has designated them as such, and for their part, there is that matter of circumcision and those 613 mitzvoth to attend to.

The idea of being “drawn” has a different flavor, a different feel. There’s no vengeful God kind of stuff, no saying “you shall be my people and I shall be your God.” Drawing has an altogether more gentle connotation. Augustine thought so, anyway: in his Tractate on the Gospel of John he wrote “See how (God) draws: Not by imposing necessity” but by grace enabling the “inner palate” of the soul to find its greatest “pleasure” and “delight” in partaking of the truth. Even for Calvin, infamous for the doctrine of pre-destination, it’s gentle: “As far as the manner of drawing goes,” he wrote, “it is not violent, so as to compel by an external force; but yet it is an effectual movement of the Holy Spirit, turning us from being unwilling and reluctant into willing.”

Most of you know that I’m a graduate of Richard Rohr’s “Living School of Action and Contemplation,” out in Albuquerque, and one of the first things we were told was that we were called there, that if we were there, we were already on the contemplative path . . . and nobody comes to that path except one who has been drawn by the Father, no one comes to that path unless drawn by God. Similarly, no one comes to Jesus, no one comes to belief in Christ on their own, without first being drawn by God.

Is this being drawn any different from being called, a bedrock doctrine within Reformed Theology? I’m not sure, perhaps it’s in intensity? Just thinking about the words, if someone calls you, you can hear the call but there’s no compulsion to answer. If someone draws you, theres perhaps a tug, a pull involved. I don’t know . . . have any of y’all out there felt drawn?. Have you ever felt pulled by the divine?

Well. Whoever believes has eternal life, whoever has faith, whoever aligns themselves with Christ, will have eternal life. And we all think we know what this term “eternal life” means, that it means we’ll go to heaven when we die, and that maybe true. But especially in here in John, it has the connotation of fullness, of abundance. And it makes a certain kind of sense, doesn’t it? After all, the word eternal indicates that it begins right here on earth, that our lives take on a different, perhaps more blessed character. Elsewhere in John, Jesus is likened to the stem and believers the branches, nourished by him as a vine nourishes it’s fruit and leaves. Still elsewhere in John, Jesus promises that he will be in us just as God is in him . . .

In the Wisdom tradition, which is what I studied at the Living School, it is said that all have the spark of the divine within them, and the task of the seeker after Christ is to uncover, to realize, and ultimately unite with that spark. Roman Catholics call this the unitive stage of spiritual development . . . is that what Jesus is talking about when he says “eternal life?” This idea of “eternal return” is integral to many spiritualities, where at the death of the physical body this spark, our true essence, returns to being part of God . . .

Jesus is the bread of life, not death . . . the world’s bread—the miasma, the waste, the constant stream of sounds and images we are fed daily by our culture—does not give life. We can eat the manna from our wilderness and still die, but those who eat the bread come down from heaven do not die. Jesus is that living bread, that bread of life. Just like bread from wheat, from the soil, when we eat it becomes a part of us, that is the heart of the metaphor . . . Jesus feeds us, nourishes us and becomes a part of us . . . and whoever eats of this bread will live forever.

And now, during this time of meditation, close your eyes and get lost in the smells of fresh-baked bread . . . know that when you inhale it you are taking the bread into your body, it is becoming a part of you, and in the same way, Jesus becomes a part of you as you partake of him . . .

A Fulfilling Sign (John 6:24 - 35)

Let’s recap, shall we? Last week, we read John’s version of the feeding of the 5,000, with its boy, its five loaves and two fishes and its green, green grass. We saw how Jesus took a small amount of food—more than enough for the boy but not nearly enough for the crowd—and served all that multitude. And not only did they each get some food, they were filled, and the disciples collected baskets-full of left-overs in order that, as Jesus explained, “nothing may be lost.” Or, given the symbolism of the “twelve baskets of Israel,” so nobody might be lost.

Well, the people were so amazed that they declared “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” And they were so impressed that they were fixing to grab him and make him king. Now. Jesus knew this kind of deal never works out, and that further, they’d be enraged when they found out just what kind of king they’d made, and so he beat feet back up the mountain to avoid the whole thing.

Meanwhile, with Jesus gone and all, the disciples went down to the Sea of Galilee, got into a boat, and headed for Capernaum, which was on it’s north shore. Peter’s mom lived there, if you’ll recall, and it was kind of a base of operations for Jesus and his ministry. Well, you know the story: it got dark and the wind started to blow, and they saw Jesus coming toward them walking on the water, and they were terrified, thinking he was some kind of ghost, but he told them “It is I: be not afraid,” and if I were preaching that passage, I’d explain that the Greek translated there as “it is I” is literally “I am,” which is what God called Godself up on another mountain, but I’m not so I won’t.

And now the people—the same ones he’d fed, remember—see the disciples getting into the boat, and also that Jesus isn’t with them—they hadn’t seen it when he’d given them the slip—so when some boats from Tiberius show up, they get themselves into them and go over to Capernaum looking for him.

Now, by this time, they’re getting a bit testy, and they think they own Jesus or something—after all, they’d tried to kidnap him and make him king—so they ask, with not a little snottiness, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” And Jesus answers their question with a typical, Johannine non-sequitur: “You don’t want me because you saw some signs, but because you ate your fill.” Jesus knows that a lot of people can do flash and dazzle—remember the Pharaoh’s magicians?—but not everything—or everyone—can fill you up.

It’s kind of like Hollywood’s obsession with computer-generated imagery. The wizards of Hollywood can make anything come to life, in living color and incredibly lifelike detail, so they do—and every year there’s a boat-load of CGI-heavy movies that are beautiful to look at but empty of heart and spirit. There are only one or two every year that have both lots of CGI and emotional and spiritual weight, because anyone with a big enough budget can do razzle-dazzle, but only a very few can fill you up.

It’s a metaphor for our modern society, isn’t it? We love the flash and dazzle, the shiny exterior, the red, red apple and ignore the squiggly little worm inside. Hollywood is the prime example: the #metoo movement has exposed its seamy underbelly—and much of corporate America as well. All the glitter, all the glamour, all the record-quarterly-earnings razz-a-ma-tazz is only a veneer for an abusive, white-male dominated culture.

Well. Jesus knows all that—after all, he’s had to deal with Herod, the Harvey Weinstein of Palestine—and he also knows that the bread that fills you up, the food that endures for eternal life —which he himself gives them through his relationship with God—comes not from fishing or farming or working as a day laborer. And when the crowd asks him what kind of work does get them this food he says “this is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent.” AKA Jesus his own self.

Now. I always feel the need to drill down a little bit on this verb believe. I inherited a sign on my door—I presume it’s from Marsha—that says “just believe.” It doesn’t say what one is to believe, though its presence on a pastor’s door does give a clue. But it could mean believe anything, because it has no object. Here, of course, Jesus—the one whom God sent—is the object, but it’s not just “believe Jesus,” as in believe what he says, but “believe in Jesus.” And here’s what I’d like to ask: what does it mean to “believe in” Jesus? Obviously, it’s not literally believe in Jesus, like one might believe in Santa Claus. If it were, it’d be pretty trivial . . . after all, Jesus was right there with them, right there in front of them, it would be like believing in this pulpit or that chair. Does it mean to believe Jesus is the Messiah? That is, the Christ? Are we supposed to weigh all the evidence, all the pros and cons, and decide “he’s the Messiah, all right?” Is that the “work of God?”

Here’s a hint: the Greek word we translate as “to believe” is pisteuow, and the one for faith is pistos, and they sound alike for a reason: faith is a noun form of the verb. As a result, it might be possible to translate “believe in Jesus” as “have faith in Jesus,” but we don’t. And the question is why not? Well, here’s what I think: when Jesus said “believe in him whom God sent” it’s like he’s talking “all of the above.” Does he mean believe what he says? Yes. Does he mean follow his teachings? Of course. Does he mean act as his body on earth, both as individuals and together as the church? Undoubtedly. Does he mean trust in God’s promises, be open to the Spirit’s workings, live one’s life for the divine? Yes, yes and yes.

Our evangelical brothers and sisters have a saying—“give your life to Christ”—that catches the flavor, as does a phrase I heard recently: align yourself with Christ. This last approaches the goal of the perennial wisdom, that flows underneath all religions. That is, unification, or becoming one with God.

Well. After Jesus answers their question, after he fills them in on the work of God, they proceed to totally not get it: What sign are you going to give us so that we’ll believe? Apparently forgetting the sign they’d just been given—aka that they’d been fed in the wilderness—they ask for some good old flash and dazzle: “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,” they tell him, “as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” And once again he doesn’t answer with what they want to hear but with what they need to know: It wasn’t Moses who gave you the bread from heaven but God, whom Jesus calls “Father,” who gives them true bread from heaven which, in the manner of all bread, gives life to the world.

And of course, the people once again misunderstand—he’d just told them it wasn’t he who gives them the bread, and they proceed to ask him for it. And that’s when he comes out with the most iconic “I am” saying in John: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It was just like Moses in the wilderness, only Jesus wasn’t Moses at all, but the manna. Or maybe Jesus was both Moses and the manna, the prophet and what the prophet brings.

And this is a good place to stop. Next week, we’ll continue our look at the bread discourse, and we’ll deepen our understanding of just what he means. In the meantime, meditate on his words, breathe them in and out, dream upon them in the watches of the night:  Jesus is the bread of life. Whoever comes to him, whoever believes in him, will never be hungry or thirsty again. Amen.