The True Bread of Heaven
Text: John 6:22-35
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It never really pays to be coy with the Lord. It’s never worked. And yet people have tried to bend the truth or manipulate God when they speak with Him. Adam and Eve played a round of pass the buck. Israelite kings pretended to not know what God was talking about when he sent prophets to speak to them. So today too, in our Gospel reading we have a large crowd of people trying to nudge Jesus toward their own desires in a disingenuous conversation, rather than hearing what He would give.
It begins when the crowd wakes up the day after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. They had a pleasant dinner out on the green grass the evening before, full and satisfied, after a day of 200 proof teaching from Jesus. But as the day got started they learned what every mortal has learned ever since Eden: just because they were full yesterday does not mean that they’re full today. Their stomachs start growling again. But this time they know about Jesus and His power to satisfy their wants. So they go back to where they had dinner before, but He’s nowhere to be found. Some light detective work tracking Him leads them to the other side of the sea. But they don’t want to be too obvious about their hunger for more miracle bread, so they start out casually, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” as if they hadn’t just been chasing Him all around the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
But Jesus, being God, knows exactly what’s in their minds and hearts. He cuts to the chase. “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. You’re just here because you’re hungry again and you’re starting to think of me as your personal bakery.” So He tries to lift their gaze a bit higher, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”
OK, they’ll bite. Don’t work for the food that won’t even keep you satisfied for a couple days. Work for the food that lasts longer. “How do we do that?” they ask, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus explains: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Now they see their opportunity to bend it back toward what they want—more bread. “Very well then, Jesus. We can do that. We can believe. But what sign will you do, that we may see and believe? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness, hint hint. It’s even in the Scriptures: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
We can almost imagine Jesus sighing at this. People had been doing this from the very beginning. He gave them Paradise in Eden and they wanted the one thing they weren’t given, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He led them out of Israel in the pillar of fire and cloud, and they wanted the foods they had back in slavery in Egypt. He gave them the Promised Land, with houses already built and vineyards ready to be harvested, and they wanted a king to tax it all. And now here He was, standing before them, God in the flesh, and they wanted breakfast. “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven. That was just a foreshadowing, something to point you to what’s even better. My Father is giving the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and give life to the world.”
Something is stirred in them. Jesus’ words have awakened something: hope, realization that He’s more than they’ve thought thus far. “Sir,” they ask, “give us this bread always.” So Jesus tells them plainly, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
If this whole exchange feels somehow familiar, it’s because we walk it nearly every day of our lives. We receive good things in this world, things that are of this world and help us in this world: food, clothes, money, good reputation, good people surrounding us, so on and so forth—and we think that it’s the whole point. Those things that we can count and weigh and buy and sell, these are what make life, according to the way we’re trained to think. So when those things start to falter, when the bank account dips, when the faces we see are fewer than they were before, when all that stuff starts to fade or gives us less of a dopamine hit when we look at it, we think that it must be time for more. So we turn to Jesus to ask for that—and not much else. Like the crowds chasing Him around Galilee, we’re looking for the next fix, the next dose, the next loaf of whatever bread it is that we’re craving. Oh, we play it cool. We know the right words and phrases to add to it to make it seem more holy or pious, just like they did. We might even have a couple Bible verses to hang on it, like the crowds talking to Jesus that day. But really, we’ve only come to Him because we ate our fill of the loaves and want more—more of that stuff that He’s given very generously to us, the stuff that we might need, yes, but things of this world nonetheless.
Lift up your gaze. Look higher than your belly button, higher than the bank statement, higher than the billboards advertising what your life should look like. Look to Jesus. Don’t see Him as a dispenser of worldly goods that perish. See Him as the good gift, the best gift. See Him as the bread of life that has come into this world not just to keep you alive for another day or another year or another decade; certainly not just to make you comfortable for now. See Him as the One who comes down from heaven to give you forever. See Him as the most needful thing, the one thing that you would give up anything to receive—not because of what He can give you, but because He is your life. He is the life of the world. He is the One that the Father has sent and put His seal upon to declare you worthy of being with Him forever. That’s who He is. That’s what He’s done. He’s come down into this confused mess of humanity and He bought back every single one of us. He filled our bodies and souls with life. He continues to fill us with life. When we have Him, we have everything. Don’t work for the stuff that perishes, that’s so easily spent, the stuff that runs out. Chase the bread of heaven that is Jesus.
That’s all to say, believe in Him. Hear His Word about who He is and what He’s done and put your trust in Him above anything else. Receive Him in His body and blood under the bread and wine. It’s no accident that Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst,” and that in the Sacrament of the Altar, we eat and drink; the antidotes to hunger and thirst. But it’s always in faith, and only in faith, that we receive the benefits and treasures of it: forgiveness of sins and eternal life. “Whoever believes in Me will never thirst,” “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
Once again, with Jesus it’s all about faith, as it always is. Don’t look to the bread that perishes, whatever form it may take. Look to Him. Believe in Him. Receive Him. For when you receive Him, you receive everything, even beyond what you can imagine. In the name of Jesus, who gives us daily bread and forgives our trespasses unto eternal life. Amen.
