'I am the living bread that came down from heaven' - John 6 continued

1 Kings 19.4-8

Ephesians 4.25-5.2

John 6.35, 41-51

 

Jesus said: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever;

and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ (John 6.50, 51)

 

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Today we continue our journey through the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel, the chapter that focuses on Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist: in which he declares, ‘I am the bread of life’.

 

By way of recap, Jesus has fed the crowds, numbering a good five thousand plus, by his miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes brought by a young boy.

 

He then fled to the town of Capernaum, where the crowds followed him, and he is now in the synagogue teaching them about what the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes actually signifies and means.

 

It is teaching that undergirds the celebration of the Eucharist.

 

It’s when we come to learn that the meal that is at the heart of the Eucharist is a sacred meal, a participation in the body and blood of Christ, a foretaste of the banquet of heaven.

 

The sixth chapter of John is utterly decisive about who we believe Jesus to be and what he does.

 

This teaching elevates the Eucharist beyond a simple fellowship meal of like-minded believers, beyond a miracle of feeding lots of people, to being a sacred act that is the source of our deepest communion with the Lord, and the summit, the very peak, of that communion.

 

Of course, Jesus’ hearers could not, would not, accept this teaching. When they hear him teach that he ‘is the bread that is come down from heaven’ (John 6.41b) they dismiss it as delusional human generated teaching, ‘come off it’ they say, ‘we know this bloke and his parents, he can’t be God, or God’s son’ (John 6.42)

 

But Jesus doubles down, answering them:

 

Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. (John 6.43-45)

 

This is divine teaching from which we have the Eucharist, instituted by Christ himself: it is not manufactured, not the invention of pious minds and certainly not made up by the Church sometime after the event.

 

The breaking of bread as a divine act is at the heart of Christian life and practice from the beginning: the Acts of the Apostles describes how the believers met to share the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to break bread and pray (Acts 2.42); and St Paul describes what has been handed onto him, what is already in existence, and describes the Last Supper as what Christians enact when they meet (1 Corinthians 11.23-25) and concludes saying, ‘for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.26)

 

And as the Eucharist is not simply a meal, Jesus is not simply an inspired guru, not a wonder worker, not a community organiser or social justice warrior: the witness of the Bible is that Jesus is Son of God the Father,

 

This is why this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is Saviour, the one who died for us and our salvation, and for whom the martyrs have given their lives in witness to his saving power.

 

This is so fundamentally important to the Christian faith, and revealed in the Eucharist: Jesus Christ fully divine and fully human.

 

If he is one or the other it’s no use and we should pack up now and go and do something else altogether.

 

If Jesus is only divine, then he doesn’t touch us; if he is only human, he can’t save us.

 

Jesus Christ both touches our lives and saves our souls.

 

This is where we come to seek the life of God; this is where we come to receive the life of God.

 

And bread is the token of this.

 

Mind you, it is not simply a symbol, if by that we mean that it is not the true life and presence of God we receive, as if it were simply a metaphor.

 

Someone once said to the American writer Flannery O’Connor that he thought the Eucharist is ‘a pretty good symbol’ to which she replied, ‘if it’s just a symbol to hell with it’.

 

A symbol does not save us; actual bread does not save us: a person does, the one described as the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.

 

We pray ‘give us this day our daily bread’.

 

And, as scripture says, something Jesus quotes in the face of Satan himself, ‘Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4.4, quoting Deuteronomy 8.3).

 

Even physical bread, integral to eating together, does not keep us alive for ever. The people of Israel, fed by manna in the wilderness, are no more; the prophet Elijah, miraculously fed by angelic food was hungry again, the Five Thousand fed with loaves and fishes have long since died.

 

Jesus tells us that the bread that he gives, ‘is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die’ (John 6.50).

 

This bread of the Eucharist is not ‘a pretty good symbol’ but the way in which we feed on the one who says:

 

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

 

That is why he says

 

Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ (John 6.51)

 

Let us then come to be fed by the Bread of Life, that we may know the Father and be his life to the world.