John 6:51-58
Ordinary 20B; Proper 15
We get more about bread this Sunday.
John, chapter 6 is long —71 verses long. John 6 is not just long, it is dense, packed with powerhouse stories and sayings. Jesus feeds the 5,000. Jesus walks on water. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life” and repeatedly, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Jesus talks of eternal life and in this Sunday’s appointed verses we are told to abide in Jesus. Next week we will finally hear from the disciples after hearing from the crowds and the Jews.
So, what’s distinctive about John 6:51-58? Aren’t these verses simply a reiteration of what’s come before? More about Jesus being the bread from heaven, the living bread, the bread of life, not like the manna that didn’t prevent people from perishing, but something unique and available only in Jesus. More about Jews who are offended by Jesus and disputing his claims. More about Jesus’ relationship to the Father. More about eternal life. What’s new to say this Sunday that hasn’t been said last Sunday or the one before that or the one before that?
In some ways, nothing. These verses do repeat the themes found earlier in chapter 6. They also point further back, way further, to the exodus from Egypt and the manna in the desert as well as to Leviticus and ritual sacrifice. No doubt this bread talk is connected to the feeding of the 5,000, the five loaves and the baskets of leftovers. They also point forward to the Last Supper, the Passover meal that remembers what God has done and foreshadows what God is about to do through Jesus. They point forward to Jesus’ death and resurrection. These few seemingly remixed verses of John point up to heaven and down to earth. There is movement here: Jesus, the bread come down from heaven. Jesus, the bread of life who will lift up those who eat of it.
Up, down, backward, forward: these few sentences in this long chapter create a vortex of divine activity that sweeps up all of creation within it, offering eternal life and an unbreakable relationship with the Triune God. No wonder Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Nothing short of life and death is at stake in this back-and-forth between Jesus and those who dispute his claims. Perhaps that stark truth bears proclaiming this week.
All of the bread from heaven discourse leads to this moment: Will you eat and drink and live, or not? Next week we’ll find out what the disciples decide. This week, we are left to wrestle with the question for ourselves.
I imagine reading John 6:51-58 to someone who had never heard of Jesus before and wonder what their response would be. Jesus is the bread of heaven. This bread is his flesh, his body. Eat his body, drink his blood and you will live forever. When I think about Jesus’ words like this, I don’t blame the Jews for their disputing and questioning and shock. In our context, minus our Christian tradition and experience and understanding, Jesus’ claims sound like something right out of a horror movie. We need not dismiss the disgust of those Jews in John because the alternative is to clean up and sentimentalize Jesus, the bread come down from heaven, whose body and blood saves, not through a sanitized ritual, but through a crucifixion.
When Jesus tells his hearers to eat and drink the true food and the true drink in order to live and abide, he reminds them of the God who rescued them from slavery and invites them to follow him to the cross for the sake of the whole world. Perhaps caution about coming to this ever-expanding table is in order.
Eat and drink and live and abide and be ready to eat and drink and abide with those you’ve never eaten and drank and abided with before. Pull up a chair next to Gentiles and tax collectors, Samaritans and all manner of sinners. Put your lips on the cup that your enemy just pressed to his mouth. Take a piece of the bread baked by the one you’ve feared or objectified. Jesus abides in them and we in Jesus and all of us together with God. How horrifying this oneness of the body and blood of Jesus, this indivisible Body of Christ.
And yet, without this true food and drink, this one cup and loaf, this flesh and blood of the Son of Man, we will die. We will kill each other. We will be left to sin and death, alienation and separation. No wonder Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
The manna in the desert was for God’s chosen people. The bread come down from heaven is for all the nations. Eat and live forever, together, eternal, abundant, now, always. No more tribes, but only one humanity. Not just the chosen are liberated and saved, but all of creation freed and redeemed. Will you eat and live? Drink and never thirst? Become a spring of living water for a parched world? Or would you rather have a walled off, private room with a reserved table and guests only on your invitation list?
Which will it be? Choose this day: life or death?
As Jesus asks his disciples in a few more verses: Does this offend you?
Perhaps it should. The Jews of John’s Gospel are right to be shocked and disgusted, dismayed and doubting, and if those emotions and thoughts don’t wash over us when we read this text then we’ve failed to understand what’s at stake in Jesus’ offering of the bread of life, the living bread, his flesh and blood.
The gift of Jesus, the bread of life, should not be received thoughtlessly nor lightly. When we eat the bread and drink from the cup we are swept into salvation history — God’s past, present and future. We make explicit the reality that our lives are not our own. We belong to God in life and in death. We abide in Jesus who abides in God and therefore we cannot live without God nor without one another or creation. Eat and drink and be swept up in the work of the Triune God. Eat and drink and become a part of the One who came to serve. Eat and drink and be lifted up and poured out, filled up and sent out. Eat and drink, pull up a seat at the table, make space for others.
Very truly, unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. So, eat your fill, drink up and live.
This week:
- Every time you encounter bread this week consider what difference it makes that Jesus is the bread of life. Think about all of the Scripture passages that reference bread and allow those to come to mind. How do those passages expand your understanding of Jesus as the bread of life?
- What does the word “abide” mean to you? How do you abide in Jesus? Read John 15:4-7 and note how it relates to these verses in chapter 6.
- Are there particularly memorable celebrations of the Lord’s Supper you have experienced? What made them so?
- How would you explain the meaning of communion to someone who knew nothing about Jesus or the Bible?
- Read all of John chapter 6. How do these verses relate to the rest of the chapter?
- When you hear the expression that something was “bread from heaven,” what do you think about? Does it have anything to do with Jesus as the bread of life?
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