August 4th, Tenth After Trinity
Exod. 16. 2-14, 9-15; Eph. 4. 1-6; John 6. 24-35
Theme: I am the Bread of Life
Today we continue a period of five weeks in which rather than work through the gospel of Mark we are taken through the sixth chapter of St John’s gospel. The passage that we have for today focuses on the period just after the feeding of the five thousand that we had last week. However, as is so typical in John’s gospel, it does this in a way which moves on many different levels. It begins with the realization that Jesus has moved on. He has left the place of the feeding with bread and gone elsewhere. So, the crowd go in search of Jesus. Once they find him, immediately Jesus engages in a cross examination of just why it is that they have come in search of him. John uses this exchange between Jesus and the crowd to dig deeper into the meaning of the feeding of the five thousand. Are they searching for him simply because he has filled their bellies? Is it that they have mistakenly interpreted the sign of the feeding of the five thousand as simply a satisfaction of their material needs?
In doing this, John is presenting Jesus as the rabbi who interprets the true meaning of the scriptures for the people. It is to the first passage that we have, from Exodus chapter 16, that the words of Jesus are meant to cast light upon. Allusion to the incident in Exodus, of the wandering of the Israelites under the leadership of Moses and Aaron and their feeding with bread or manna, is made by Jesus when he says, “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Jesus takes the passage, one which would have been well-known to the community that he was speaking to, and he interprets it so as to reveal two things. First, that it was not Moses who gave the bread to the people to eat but it was God the Father and second, that the real bread which the Father gives for people to eat is Jesus himself: “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
This “bread of life” motif is used by Jesus to interpret the deeper meaning of the event of the feeding of the five thousand which has just happened earlier in the chapter at 6. 1-15. The deeper hunger of the people is for life and life in abundance. The life which is only given by God. Again, Jesus refers to this in his singular description of himself as “the bread of life”: “I am the bread of life”. This “I am” here is not incidental. It also makes a reference to the Book of Exodus; to Exodus 3. 14 when at the “Burning Bush”, God reveals God’s name to Moses: “I am”. The revelation of this mysterious name of God identifies God with life itself. God is the source of all being and it is from God that all life receives its being as a gift.
This is the deeper meaning that the rabbi Jesus reveals through his interpretation of these scripture passages in the light of the event of the feeding of the five thousand. The basic needs that we have for food and drink are signs, as it were, of the deeper needs that we have for life itself; for the God who is life itself. Jesus is the one who gives us this life, a life which he himself has received from the Father as the only begotten Son of the Father.
This life is what we are to work for. “The work of God”, a phrase which has an intentionally double meaning in this passage, is both the work that God does and the work we do on behalf of God. This work is nothing less than faith, or as the passage puts it, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent”. In other words, that old conundrum, which caused so much trouble at the time of the Reformation; namely, the dispute over faith and works as the means of our salvation, is neatly stepped over by John in this passage. Works and faith are one in our union with Jesus in faith, as faith itself is described as the work that we are to do in order to receive eternal life. In other words, when we have received this gift of faith in Jesus it naturally flows out in good works. Faith and works are never separate for those who have been given the bread of life.
So, in our first steps into the gospel of St John this week, we are presented with a number of things which it is good for us to dwell on during this tenth Sunday after Trinity. First, we are to contemplate Jesus as the rabbi, the one who opens the meaning of the scriptures for us so that we can understand how it is that they speak to us of God and of our relationship to God through Jesus. Second, we are to understand the deeper meaning of our desires for food and drink as themselves signs of our hunger and thirst for God; the God of life who is life itself. It is this life which all our desires reach out towards and ask to be satiated. Finally, we should reflect on the intimate connection between faith and works as presented to us in this sixth chapter of John. The very work of God which we are called to is to believe in him who is eternal life. This work is itself a work of God and a work for God. It is a gift that we receive from God and which we return to God by believing in him who is our Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.