By Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp ThM STL
Last week the liturgy of the Word began leading us into an extended reflection on Jesus the “Bread” of life which we see unfold in John chapter 6. As we said last week, this teaching has to be understood against the background of the Old Testament, especially the story of YHWH feeding the children of Israel with Manna in the Desert in Exodus 16: 2-12. In today’s Gospel reading, what John seems to be doing is setting up a kind of parallel, or comparison if you will, between Jesus feeding his hungry followers and Moses who arranges the feeding of the people of Israel in the desert.
In today’s reading for example, we see the Jews murmuring or complaining to each other about Jesus’ claim to be the bread come down from heaven. This should bring to mind the rebelliousness of the children of Israel in Exodus 16: 2-12 who also murmured and complained against God and against Moses in the desert:
The whole company of the sons of Israel began to complain against Moses and Aaron, in the wilderness and said to them ‘Why did we not die at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, where we were able to sit down to pans of meat and could eat bread to our heart’s content. As it is, you have brought us to this wilderness to starve this whole company to death!
The real problem of the Israelites of course, is that for their survival, they have grown accustomed to placing their trust in the bread of Pharoah, food which is merely material and which ultimately fails to satisfy. The point that this story goes on to make, is not that the manna in the desert is more nutritious. We are instead to pay attention to what the manna represents, for it is there, that we find the true source of life and well-being. It is nothing less than Israel’s sustaining life-giving relationship with Yahweh.
Jesus’ listeners too, have a similar problem. They too are taken up with food that fails to satisfy. After the miracle of the multiplication of loaves which begins chapter 6 of John’s gospel, Jesus says to the crowd:
Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life.
They struggle to understand the teaching of Jesus because they have a very ‘literal’ understanding of the word ‘food’ or ‘bread’. Jesus, when he says ‘food’, is really pointing to what sustains human life in all kinds of circumstances, the way food sustains the human body. That source of life and sustenance is Jesus’ very self, his presence to us which empowers the heart and spirit of the disciple.
Today’s gospel continues this teaching on Jesus as ‘Bread from heaven’ or ‘food that sustains’. It can be divided into three parts or segments. First, the opening section in which the basic problem is laid out when the Jews asked themselves how Jesus could say of himself ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ Jesus of course, is speaking of a different kind of ‘bread’ not to be taken literally. Second, there is the middle section. This section explains what it means to ‘consume’ this bread that came down from heaven. It means, hearing the Father’s teaching that comes through Jesus and learning from that teaching. It also means ‘believing’ in Jesus. Jesus says to his listeners: ‘everyone who believes has eternal life.’ Here we remind ourselves that in the bible, to ‘believe’ in God does not simply mean something in the mind that we come to accept. It is something that we do with all of our being, it is the act of trust by which we place our confidence no longer in our own resources but squarely and completely in the hands of God. We stake our very lives on him.
Also, to ‘believe’ is to have ‘eternal life’ – this means quite simply that to stake one’s survival on God and to trust completely in God is to establish a relationship which preserves and sustains us in every circumstance without exception including sin, sickness, failure, persecution and even death itself. We see this for example in men and women of genuine faith who are never defeated by life, regardless of what may befall them, – a young girl with cancer who remains hopeful, an old man whose legs have been amputated yet remains a source of joy for others, an unemployed father who takes exquisite care of his small children. All these are examples of eternal life flourishing in people, here and now. What links them is the fact that they all have a FUTURE with no ending.
Then we have the third section which has distinctly “Eucharistic” overtones. John the evangelist, borrowing the lips of Jesus, gives a teaching on the Eucharist to his own Christian community.
Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are dead;
But this is the bread that comes down from heaven,
So that a man may eat it and not die.
Last week, I made allusion to ‘spiritual death’ which, for example, we see in the loss of humanity that we observe in persons whose lives are given over into violence, revenge, and murder. This week, as I reflect on this last phrase from the third section of this gospel reading I am reminded that there are still other kinds of death. For example, people who have lost their ‘ethics’ have suffered a kind of death, like businessmen engaged in fraud or tax evasion; there is also the death of despair which we see for example when health or financial challenges somehow ‘defeat’ us. People who are warped by life, or who become embittered in their suffering have also suffered a kind of death. Jesus the life-sustaining bread from heaven, consumed in the Eucharist, energizes us, so that we “live forever” in other words, as the great poet Maya Angelou wrote, in life we may come to know defeat, but we will never be defeated.
Jesus, we thank you for the gift of yourself, the bread of life. In every circumstance in every valley, you heal us, sustain us and lift us up. Your divine presence transforms our vision of life. Grant your healing presence to all of us, and in a special way to those who lead and guide us, our religious and our civic leaders, Amen.
